Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
“You look murderous,” Frederick said, lifting his glass. “I assume marriage is going well.”
Rowan’s hand tightened around his tankard.
The tavern was too loud for his mood. Too full of men laughing with their mouths open, dice rattling on scarred tables, tankards striking wood, boots dragging over rushes scattered across the floor.
But he could not bear to be in Ironford, because all he heard there was Emmeline’s voice.
And beneath all of it was the memory of her beneath the beech tree, eyes bright, mouth parted, chest rising beneath the modest cut of her gown as she dared him to come closer.
Rowan drank.
The ale was bitter. It did nothing.
He wished Juliet were home.
The thought came with such sudden force that his fingers tightened around the tankard.
He had sent men across roads, inns, villages, coaching houses, and every place she might have thought to hide, and still there had been nothing.
No reliable sighting. No second note. No scrap of certainty that she was safe. Only silence.
Juliet had always filled a room with feeling, even when he had not known what to do with it, and now her absence sat in the middle of his life like another accusation he could not answer.
Frederick watched him over the rim of his glass, his golden-brown eyes far too knowing for a man who made such an art of appearing useless.
“Ah,” he said. “So it is your wife.”
“It is not my wife.”
“No, of course not. You rode nearly seven miles after supper to sit in a tavern that smells of onions and regret because of estate matters.”
Rowan set the tankard down with enough force to make the liquid jump. “Do you intend to be amusing all evening?”
“I intend to be useful. Being amusing merely makes the usefulness easier to swallow.” Frederick leaned back, stretching his long legs beneath the table. “So. Tell me what Her Grace has done now.”
Rowan stared into his drink.
He had almost kissed her again.
He had been seconds away from taking her mouth beneath a tree like some green boy with no discipline, while his son stood somewhere nearby and half the household might have rounded the corner at any moment.
And some part of him had not cared.
Some part of him had wanted the scandal of it, wanted to know whether the soft little hitch in her breath would break into his name if his mouth found her throat.
His body tightened at the thought.
Frederick’s brow lifted. “That bad?”
Rowan dragged his gaze up. “She is meddlesome.”
“All wives are meddlesome. It is the Lord’s way of ensuring husbands do not become entirely insufferable.”
“She interferes with Aaron.”
“Ah.” Frederick nodded as though this explained everything. “What did she do?”
Rowan did not answer at once. There was something absurdly intimate in describing it. Barking. The puppy. Aaron’s uncertain little face turning toward him, waiting for judgment. Emmeline standing beside them, steady and warm and unashamed of the strange method because it had helped the boy.
“She has him making sounds,” Rowan said at last. “When he cannot finish a word. To help him through it.”
Frederick’s expression shifted, the mockery fading. “And did it?”
Rowan looked away.
Frederick exhaled. “You are angry because it worked.”
“I am angry because she does not consider what the world will do if it sees him as something to laugh at.”
“Perhaps,” Frederick said slowly, “she is considering what will happen if he grows up believing every sound he makes is something to hide.”
Rowan’s hand tightened around the tankard again. “Do not repeat her arguments to me.”
“Then stop making her sound reasonable.”
A muscle jumped in Rowan’s jaw. The tavern noise pressed at him, the laughter too sharp, the air too close. He had come here to escape the house, but Emmeline had followed him into the smoke and fire anyway.
Frederick studied him for a moment longer, then tilted his head. “There are, of course, many ways to vent this… exasperation.”
Rowan’s eyes cut to him.
Frederick took a drink, entirely unbothered. “Some of them are even marital.”
A low growl left Rowan before he could stop it.
Frederick’s grin appeared. “There he is.”
“Do not.”
“Do not what? Suggest that a man might consider going home and taking his very lovely wife to bed?” Frederick leaned forward, lowering his voice, though his amusement remained intact.
Rowan looked down into his ale because if he looked at Frederick too long, he might hit him.
His mind, traitorous thing, supplied the image without permission.
Emmeline in his bed. Emmeline beneath his hands.
That proud mouth losing its arguments against his skin.
Her sandy hair spread over the pillow, freckles flushed across her cheeks, honey eyes dark and stunned as he showed her, properly, what her defiance did to him.
He could almost feel the softness of her waist beneath his palms. The warmth of her breath at his throat. The yielding shock of her body when he would first press his weight over hers.
His blood went hot.
He drank again, harder this time.
Frederick’s amusement softened into curiosity. “Why not?”
Rowan stared at the table.
“Because,” he said, each word roughened by restraint, “Emmeline wants children.”
Frederick stopped smiling, and the silence between them changed. The tavern carried on around them, laughter and movement and drunken talk rolling over the pause, but at their table, the air grew still.
“Ah,” Frederick said quietly.
Rowan’s mouth twisted without humor. “Yes. Ah.”
Frederick set his glass down. “She told you this?”
“She did not need to. She speaks of family as though it is a church. She looks at Aaron as though loving him has only taught her she has more love to spend.” Rowan’s voice lowered. “She wants a child of her own. I can see it.”
“That is not unreasonable, Rowan. Not from where she’s standing.” Frederick rubbed a hand over his jaw. “You must speak with her.”
“No.”
“Rowan—”
“No.”
“This is not a matter one casts aside because it is inconvenient. She is your wife.”
Rowan gave a short, humorless laugh. “I am aware.”
“Then she has some right to know why.”
“She entered this marriage knowing it was born of duty, nothing more.”
“She did not enter a tomb.”
The words landed too close. Rowan went very still.
Frederick sighed, all amusement gone now. “If she wants children and you do not, that must be spoken plainly.”
“And then she will ask why.”
“Yes,” Frederick said gently. “She may.”
“She will not stop there. She will keep digging. She digs at everything. Aaron. The house. Me.” Rowan’s fingers curled against the wood. “She will ask about Catherine.”
At the name, the table seemed to harden beneath his hand.
Catherine.
Pale face. Cold river air. Aaron crying. Ice cracking like a gunshot beneath her feet. His own boots slipping over frozen ground as he ran. Catherine’s eyes wild, not seeing him, not seeing the danger, only clutching Aaron to her chest.
Rowan’s stomach turned, sharp and immediate.
Frederick’s voice lowered. “It is only natural that she is curious about the late duchess.”
Rowan pushed his tankard away and stood. “I am done.”
Frederick looked up at him, his face creased with concern now beneath the habitual ease. “You have barely finished your second drink.”
“I said I am done.”
For a moment, Frederick did not move. Then he exhaled and rose as well, tossing coins onto the table. “Very well. I shall not chase you through the village like a jilted mistress. I have better obligations.”
Rowan’s expression flattened. “The dancer?”
Frederick’s mouth curved at once, but not in quite the way it usually did. “She is waiting.”
“This is the first time you have spent more than one night with a specific woman.”
“Counting now, are we?” Frederick asked lightly.
“You are becoming predictable.”
“Impossible. I am far too handsome to be predictable.” Frederick reached for his coat, shrugging into it with careless grace. “Besides, she is more fun than I expected.”
Rowan gave him a dry look. “A ringing endorsement.”
“It is, from me.” Frederick’s smile flickered, then softened. “Go home, Rowan.”
“I intend to.”
“And when you arrive, try not to punish your wife for being able to see what the rest of us pretend not to.”
Rowan’s eyes narrowed, but Frederick was already turning toward the door, whistling as though he had not just stepped too near a wound.
“You cannot mean to keep us cooped up in here forever.”
Rowan looked up from his letter. The room was thick with the scent of ink and leather, but beneath it was the dark, clean warmth of him, a scent that settled in her lungs and made the simple act of standing before his desk feel like a transgression.
“Good morning to you as well, Duchess,” he said.
Emmeline clasped her hands before her and held his gaze. “It was good when it began. It has since suffered from confinement.”
His brow shifted. “Confinement?”
“Yes.”
“You live in a house with forty rooms, three gardens, an orchard, a stable, and a library.”
“And yet all of them belong to the same cage.”
Rowan’s face stilled.
His gray eyes held hers across the desk, unreadable and far too searching, and Emmeline felt her pulse begin its foolish climb. She had come here with a practical purpose. A simple one. She would ask to visit the village, insist if required, and leave before the room could become charged.
But he was looking at her now, and her body reacted.
She remembered his nearness. The heat of his breath against her mouth. The low scrape of his voice when he had told her to be careful. She hated that the memory moved through her, warming her skin beneath her gown until even the lace at her wrists felt too tight.
Rowan set the letter aside, aligning its edge with the others on his desk before lifting his eyes to her. “You wish to go somewhere?”
Emmeline held her hands still at her waist, though her fingers wanted to twist together. “I wish to go into the village.”
“No.”
The refusal came so quickly that her lips parted. “No?”