Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
“You are frowning at the newspaper as though it has personally offended you.”
Rowan looked up from the breakfast table and found Emmeline watching him over the rim of her teacup, her eyes far too bright for a woman who had spent half the night in his bed and had, in his private opinion, no right to look so composed afterward.
“It has,” he said.
Her mouth curved. “What did it do?”
“It contains opinions.”
“How unforgivable.”
“Several of them printed by men who ought not be trusted with ink.”
Aaron, seated between them with a piece of toast in one hand and Biscuit’s head resting hopefully on his shoe, looked up with solemn interest. “Are they very b-bad opinions?”
Rowan folded the newspaper with care. “Most opinions are bad when they are printed too loudly.”
Emmeline laughed softly into her tea.
The sound moved through him before he could stop it.
Three days ago, he would have forced himself to ignore it.
Now he looked at her and knew exactly what his body wanted.
Knew what it meant when her lips curved that way—the small, breathless sound she made when his mouth found the place beneath her ear, the way her fingers curled into his shoulders when pleasure rose too quickly, the way she looked at him afterward.
Sometimes, he still left her bed before dawn.
The first morning he had tried to do so, she had stirred, caught his sleeve with sleepy fingers, and murmured, “Do not make a habit of vanishing.”
He had stayed another hour and nearly lost his mind.
That was the trouble with Emmeline. She did not ask for everything at once. She simply placed one hand on him, spoke one quiet sentence, and suddenly everything he had sworn impossible felt less like principle and more like cowardice.
Biscuit whined beneath the table.
“No,” Rowan said without looking down.
The puppy put one paw on his boot.
“I said no.”
“He has not asked anything,” Emmeline said.
“He is always asking something.”
Aaron peered beneath the table. “He wants toast.”
“He has eaten.”
“He says he has not.”
Rowan glanced down. Biscuit blinked at him like a starved orphan.
“He lies,” Rowan said.
Aaron smiled.
It was still new enough to strike him. That small smile. The way Aaron looked at him now, as if expecting an answer. He had begun to bring Rowan reports of Captain Morley each morning.
Yesterday, with Emmeline standing behind the chair pretending not to listen, Aaron had told him nearly an entire page.
He had stammered, stopped twice, whispered “bark” under his breath once, and continued.
Rowan had sat through every word as though the fate of Captain Morley were a matter of state.
Then Emmeline had looked at him with warmth afterward.
“Will you come to the park with us today?” Aaron asked.
The question landed so quietly that Rowan almost missed the courage inside it.
Emmeline’s eyes lowered to her plate, not interfering.
Rowan looked at his son. Biscuit’s tail thumped against his boot, as though the dog too awaited judgment.
“I have business this morning,” Rowan said.
Aaron’s face began to close.
Rowan heard himself continue before the retreat could finish. “But after luncheon, yes.”
Aaron’s head lifted. “Truly?”
“Yes.”
Emmeline’s gaze came to him then, quick and tender, and his body answered like a fool.
He returned his attention to the newspaper, but the words on the page had become entirely meaningless.
Frederick came on a wet Thursday afternoon with mud on his boots, mischief in his eyes, and a small wooden ship tucked beneath one arm.
“I have brought tribute,” he announced from the library doorway.
Aaron looked up from the rug, where Biscuit was chewing the corner of a discarded ribbon. “Tribute?”
“For Captain Morley,” Frederick said, stepping inside and bowing gravely. “Or for you, if the captain is unavailable.”
Aaron’s eyes widened as Frederick presented the little ship, its sails carefully carved and its hull painted dark blue.
“For me?”
“For Biscuit, if you refuse it, but I suspect he will eat it.”
Biscuit sneezed.
Aaron laughed and took the ship with both hands. “Thank you, Lord Calham.”
“Frederick,” he said. “If your father permits. Lord Calham makes me sound older.”
“Absolutely not,” Rowan said from behind him.
Frederick turned, hand to his heart. “Ironford. How long have you been lurking?”
“This is my house.”
“And yet you lurk so well within it.”
Emmeline entered behind Rowan, smiling before she could suppress it. “You brought him a ship.”
Frederick grinned. “I am a man of generosity and taste.”
Aaron was already examining the little vessel, his fingers careful along the carved mast. “It needs a storm.”
“Most good stories do,” Frederick said.
Rowan glanced at Emmeline.
She was watching Aaron, but she must have felt his gaze because she looked up. For one breath, the room narrowed to the two of them. Her eyes warmed, and something in his chest responded before he could stop it.
Frederick made a small, thoughtful sound.
Rowan did not look at him. “Do not.”
“I said nothing.”
“You were about to.”
“I was admiring the domestic peace.”
“Then admire it silently.”
“Very well.” Frederick dropped onto the rug beside Aaron with a complete lack of dignity. “Now, my lord, shall we teach Captain Morley how to cheat at cards?”
“Frederick,” Emmeline said.
“What? A sailor must be prepared.”
Aaron looked scandalized and delighted. “Is cheating allowed?”
“No,” Rowan said.
“Rarely,” Frederick corrected.
“Never,” Rowan said.
Frederick leaned closer to Aaron. “This is why your father is a duke and I am invited to fewer respectable dinners.”
Aaron laughed so suddenly that Rowan felt it strike him clean through. Emmeline’s hand brushed his for a moment, only enough for him to know she had felt the same thing.
The next event should have been tedious.
Lady Haversham’s musical evening was the kind of gathering Rowan endured rather than willingly attended: too many candles, too much conversation disguised as culture, and a soprano determined to murder an Italian aria with dignity.
He stood beside Emmeline near the long windows, one hand behind his back, listening to a man with silver whiskers explain at length why London standards had declined since the last king.
Then he heard Lady Amanda.
“Of course, one admires any woman willing to accept such a position,” she said, not loudly, but with perfect placement. “A second wife must possess unusual tolerance. Particularly when the first left such… echoes.”
Emmeline stood three steps away, speaking with Margaret, but Rowan saw the words reach her. Her expression did not change and that was how he knew they had cut.
Amanda’s companion murmured something Rowan did not catch. Amanda gave a light laugh. “But she is very composed, is she not? One must give her that. Composure is useful when affection is scarce.”
Rowan moved before he considered it.
“Lady Amanda.”
She turned, and the color left her face so quickly it pleased him more than it should have. “Your Grace.”
The nearby conversation thinned.
Rowan stopped before her, calm enough that even the fools around them understood calm was the dangerous part. “You seem very occupied with my marriage.”
Amanda’s fan fluttered once. “Not at all. I was only speaking generally.”
“No,” Rowan said. “You were speaking carelessly.”
Her mouth opened.
He continued before she could decide whether denial would serve her. “You will not speak of my wife again. Not generally. Not privately. Not behind a fan, in a corner, to other women.”
Someone behind him inhaled sharply.
Amanda’s face flushed. “Your Grace, I meant no offense.”
“Then you must cultivate the discipline to match your intentions.”
Her eyes flashed, humiliated and furious.
He leaned slightly closer, lowering his voice enough to make the next words hers alone and therefore worse. “If your disappointment over my marriage has made you careless, learn dignity quickly. I will not warn you a third time.”
When he turned, Emmeline was watching him.
The room was watching too, of course, but he did not care. Let them. London liked a spectacle until it remembered consequences. By morning, the story would spread, and by supper the lesson would be understood: the Duchess of Ironford was not a woman to be tested for sport.
He returned to Emmeline’s side.
Her fingers curled once against her fan. “You should not have done that so publicly.”
“Yes,” he said. “I should have.”
Her eyes searched his face.
He offered his arm. “Shall we?”
She took it.
Only when they had crossed into the next room did she speak, voice low. “You cannot fight every woman who says something cruel to me.”
“I did not fight her.”
“You wounded her.”
“She will survive.”
“Rowan.”
He looked down at her. The candlelight caught the honey in her eyes, and he saw too much there. Gratitude. Concern. Something perilously close to tenderness.
“She hurt you,” he said simply.
Her breath changed.
“So I answered.”
For a moment, she said nothing. Then her hand tightened on his arm.
“That is not an apology,” she whispered.
“No. But it is right.”
She looked away before he could see too much of what that meant to her.
By the end of the week, the whispers had changed.
They did not vanish. London never gave up entirely on cruelty; it merely grew bored and found fresher blood.
Foxdale’s name ceased appearing in every conversation like a knife set prettily beside a plate.
Juliet became less scandal and more mystery.
Wellfield’s humiliation became less urgent than a countess’s elopement, a marquess’s gaming debt, and a baron’s daughter rumored to have thrown wine at a poet.
And Emmeline, to Rowan’s grim satisfaction, began to be spoken of with more admiration than pity.
“She carries herself well,” he heard one matron say.
“Pretty creature,” said another.
“Not merely pretty,” a gentleman replied, and then saw Rowan across the room and remembered urgent business elsewhere.
Rowan smiled for the first time that evening.
“Did you just frighten that man by existing?” Emmeline murmured.
“I try not to waste my talents.”
Her laugh was quiet and warm.
He wanted to take her home at once. Instead, he stood beside her like a civilized husband and thought very uncivilized things about the curve of her wrist above her glove.
Then a woman’s amused voice cut gently through the space between them.
“Forgive me,” she said. “I would not interrupt, but I have been wanting to meet the new Duchess of Ironford all evening.”
Rowan turned.
Lord and Lady Westmere stood before them, recently returned to town after some weeks in the country. Cassian Westmere was dark, composed, and watchful, while his wife, Isabella, stood beside him in deep rose silk, her beauty softened by warmth and a cleverness in her eyes that missed very little.
“Your Grace,” Isabella said, taking Emmeline’s hand. “I have heard such lovely things.”
“Then you have been speaking to unusually generous people,” Emmeline replied.
Isabella laughed. “I always try to, though London does make it difficult.”
Cassian inclined his head to Rowan. “Ironford.”
“Westmere.”
There was a pause.
Emmeline glanced between them. “Is this a conversation?”
Cassian’s mouth barely moved. “For us, yes.”
Isabella sighed. “They are very proud of how little they can say.”
Rowan looked at Cassian. “Efficient.”
“Exactly,” Cassian replied.
Emmeline and Isabella exchanged a look and, without needing to know one another well, seemed to reach a complete understanding.
Later, as the music began in the adjoining room and the card tables rearranged themselves into clusters of gossip, Isabella walked beside Emmeline near the windows. Rowan watched from across the room, pretending to listen to Cassian discuss a bill before Parliament.
“You watch your wife very closely,” Cassian said.
Rowan’s gaze did not move. “Do I?”
“Yes.”
“You are mistaken.”
“I am rarely mistaken when the matter is obvious.”
Rowan looked at him then.
Cassian’s expression did not change. “It is a compliment, if clumsily made.”
“I did not ask for one.”
“No. Men like us rarely do.”
Rowan studied him for a long moment. There was something in Westmere’s tone that suggested recognition, of what it meant to stand apart from the room and still be undone by one woman’s turn of head.
Rowan looked back at Emmeline.
She was speaking with Isabella now, her face animated, her hands moving slightly as she described something. Candlelight caught the sandy softness of her hair, the curve of her mouth, the quiet strength in the way she held herself among people who had tried to make her feel uncertain of her place.
Rowan felt it like a hand to the chest.
Cassian followed his gaze. “Dangerous, is it not?”
Rowan said nothing.
Cassian’s mouth curved faintly. “Yes. I thought so.”
That night, when Rowan returned home with Emmeline on his arm, London seemed quieter than it had in weeks.
A note from Juliet arrived two mornings later. Rowan recognized her hand before the footman had fully crossed the threshold.
He took the folded paper, dismissed the servant, and broke the seal with more force than necessary.
Rowan,
Do stop scowling. I am alive, uninjured, and presently more sensible than anyone is willing to credit me for being.
I have heard enough to know matters are settling. When it is safe to return without being paraded before every hypocrite in London, I shall come home.
Do not send half of England after me. It is dramatic.
Tell Aaron I miss him.
Tell your duchess I am grateful.
-J.
Rowan read it once, and relief moved through him so sharply he had to sit.
Then irritation followed, because Juliet had always had a talent for surviving a crisis and making him feel unreasonable for objecting to the crisis in the first place.
Emmeline entered moments later, took one look at his face, and stopped. “Juliet?”
He handed her the note.
She read it quickly, then pressed it to her chest for half a second before returning it. “She is safe.”
“She says so.”
“You do not believe her?”
“I believe she is alive and determined to be difficult.”
Emmeline’s mouth softened. “Then she is very much your sister.”
“She refuses to say where she is.”
“Because she knows you would fetch her immediately.”
“Yes, I would.”
She smiled then, and the tenderness in it did something quiet to him.
“What will you do?” she asked.
“Continue sending men to find her.”
“After she told you not to send half of England?”
“I shall send a quarter.”
Emmeline laughed.
Rowan looked down at Juliet’s sharp, familiar hand and let his thumb pass once over the edge of the paper. His sister was alive. The scandal was fading. His household, against every expectation, had begun to sound like laughter instead of silence. Relief should have been simple.
Instead, he looked at Emmeline and felt the old fear stir beneath it, because everything he had begun to want now had something to lose.