Chapter 27
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“May I speak with you?”
Juliet’s voice came from the study doorway, soft enough that once it would have touched him. The same voice that had once whispered outside his chamber, asking if she might sit near the fire because their father had been in one of his moods.
He hated that it still reached him, but did not look up from the letter before him.
“I am occupied,” he said.
Juliet stepped inside anyway. “You have been occupied all morning.”
His fingers tightened around the paper. “Then you understand the matter is urgent.”
“Rowan.”
That almost did it. The simple plea in his name moved through him like a blade turned slowly, but he kept his face lowered, his expression fixed into cold attention. If he forgave too quickly, what had all the terror been worth?
He set the letter down with deliberate care. “Did you require something?”
Juliet flinched. He saw it at the edge of his vision and hated himself for noticing.
“I wanted to apologize properly.”
At last, he looked at her.
She stood near the door in a pale morning gown, her hands twisting together at her waist. Guilt had hollowed her face, but defiance had not entirely left her eyes. She was still Juliet, his sister. Yet, she had chosen Frederick’s shelter over his.
“You hid from me for weeks,” he said. “There is no apology that makes that smaller.”
“I know.” Her voice shook, but she did not look away. “I was unfair to you.”
His expression did not change, but something in his chest sharpened.
Juliet swallowed. “I told myself you would have forced me to marry Lord Wellfield. I told myself you would choose duty and reputation before me, because that made it easier to run and hide. But it was not true, was it?”
Rowan said nothing.
“You would have been angry,” she whispered. “You would have frightened me with that awful silence of yours. But you would not have dragged me to the altar. I know that now. I think I knew it even then, and I was too cowardly to admit it.”
His fingers tightened around the edge of the desk.
“I made you crueler in my mind than you had ever been to me,” Juliet said, tears slipping down her cheeks. “And then I let you suffer for it. I let Aaron suffer for it. I dragged your best friend into my mess. I let Emmeline be caught between us… All because I was afraid to face what I had done.”
“Juliet.”
“No, please. Let me say it.” Her breath broke. “I wronged you, Rowan. I was frightened, but fear does not excuse everything. I am sorry. I am so terribly sorry. And whether you forgive me or not, I needed you to know that I do not blame you for what I chose.”
For a moment, the room was silent.
“Do not ask me to comfort you through the consequences.”
Pain crossed her face, quick and raw.
For one moment, Emmeline’s face rose before him instead, eyes lowered. Her voice breaking as she said she had thought it was not her secret to tell. He saw her soft mouth trembling again. He remembered the taste of her, the heat of her body arching beneath his.
Desire struck so suddenly that anger had to rise to cover it.
“Leave, Juliet.”
Her eyes filled. “Rowan, please.”
“Not now.”
She stood there for another breath, waiting for another word from him. He did not give her that mercy. At last, she turned and left, closing the door softly behind her.
The silence afterward was worse.
By the afternoon, he went to the club because the house had become unbearable.
Frederick found him within ten minutes. “Rowan.”
“No.”
Frederick stopped beside his chair. “You have not even heard what I mean to say.”
“I have heard enough from you.”
Frederick’s jaw tightened. His usual smile was nowhere to be found. “Then hear this. Be angry with me. I earned it. But do not make everyone else bleed because you cannot bear the sight of your own wound.”
Rowan looked up slowly. The room around them seemed to quiet, though no one had stopped speaking.
“Walk away,” Rowan said, voice low and lethal. “Before I forget we were ever friends.”
Frederick absorbed that as if it had struck him in the chest. Then he gave one short nod and stepped back.
“Do you think Father likes ships?”
Emmeline looked up from the window seat, where she had been pretending to read the same page for the better part of half an hour.
Aaron stood in the doorway with Biscuit tucked awkwardly beneath one arm and a rolled sheet of paper clutched in the other.
“I believe most gentlemen like ships,” she said gently. “Why?”
Aaron stepped inside with solemn purpose. “I drew one for him.”
Emotion moved first, quick and aching beneath her ribs, before she managed to smile. “Did you?”
He nodded and crossed the room to show her. The drawing was earnest and wildly inaccurate, all sails and flags and a row of uneven little circles that might have been portholes or cannon mouths, depending upon the interpretation.
At the bottom, in careful, wavering letters, he had written: FOR FATHER.
Emmeline’s throat tightened.
“It is beautiful,” she said.
Aaron looked pleased for one fragile second, then worried. “Do you think it will make him smile?”
The question undid some quiet seam inside her.
For three days, Ironford House had been holding its breath.
Rowan rose early, shut himself in his study, and emerged only when duty required it.
Whenever Emmeline entered a room, his gaze found her at once and then withdrew with such careful control that it felt more intimate than indifference could have done.
“I think,” Emmeline said carefully, “that your father will be very glad to know you thought of him.”
Aaron’s gaze dropped to Biscuit, and he released the puppy at last. Biscuit tumbled to the rug, shook himself, then immediately climbed into Emmeline’s lap.
“I brought him to cheer you,” Aaron said.
The ache in her chest sharpened. “Me?”
“You do not smile much either.”
Emmeline stared at him.
Children noticed everything one wished to hide. Their innocence made them merciless.
“I am sorry,” she whispered.
Aaron’s brow furrowed. “You need not be sorry. I only thought Biscuit could help.”
Biscuit, who had placed his chin upon her wrist, sighed with theatrical exhaustion. Under other circumstances, she might have laughed properly. Instead, the sound that escaped her was soft and broken enough that Aaron studied her with open concern.
“He does help,” she said, stroking the puppy’s silky head. “Very much.”
But it was not enough. Nothing was. The heaviness remained, settled into the walls, into the carpets, into the silence at supper when Rowan sat across from her and treated her with such immaculate courtesy that she wanted to weep.
Worse still, her body had begun to betray her.
The faintness came in small waves, never long enough to frighten anyone properly, but often enough that Emmeline had begun to fear it herself.
Standing too quickly made the room tilt.
Too much heat in the conservatory sent a shiver through her knees.
Once she had had to grip the back of a chair until the black spots at the edge of her vision cleared.
By the fourth day, she could not stand it any longer, so Emmeline went to see her father.
Weston House felt quieter than she remembered, smaller than Ironford House, but warmer in a way that struck her the moment she stepped through the familiar entrance.
Her father came to the drawing room with his spectacles still in one hand, his gray hair slightly disordered, his expression softening the moment he saw her.
“My dear,” he said. “This is a lovely surprise.”
The tenderness in his voice nearly broke her composure.
She went to him and allowed him to kiss her cheek. “I hope I am not interrupting you.”
“You could never interrupt me.”
That was not true, and they both knew it, but she loved him for saying it.
They sat together near the window, tea between them, and for several minutes, Emmeline managed to speak of ordinary things.
The weather. Aaron’s puppy. Juliet’s return, though she smoothed the edges of that tale until it scarcely resembled truth.
Her father listened, nodding gently, but his eyes never stopped studying her.
At last, he set down his cup. “What is the matter?”
Emotion rose so suddenly that Emmeline had to look away.
“I am only tired.”
“My dear, I have known you since you were smaller than that teacup. Do not insult us both.”
A laugh escaped her, but it trembled. She looked at her hands in her lap, at the careful fold of her gloves, and felt suddenly very young.
“Things between Rowan and me are…” She stopped, unable to find a word that did not expose too much. “Tense.”
Her father’s face changed with immediate concern. “Has he been unkind?”
“No,” she said at once, because even now she could not bear Rowan being made into something simple. “No. He has been hurt.”
“And you?”
She pressed her lips together.
Lord Weston’s expression softened with a sadness that made him look older. “Ah.”
“I made a choice I thought was compassionate,” Emmeline said. “And perhaps it was. But it hurt him. I knew it might, and I did it anyway.”
Her father was quiet for a moment. “It is a cruel thing to discover that doing what seems kind to one person may be a wound to another.”
Her eyes burned. “Yes.”
“And does he understand why you did it?”
“I do not think he wishes to.”
Her father reached across and covered her hand with his. “Then perhaps he will, when the pain is no longer speaking first.”
She turned toward him, something desperate moving in her chest. “And if he does not?”
“Then you will survive that too.”
It felt like grief, even though it was meant as comfort.
When she returned to Ironford House later that afternoon, the corridors seemed too long, too silent.
She removed her bonnet and gloves herself rather than summon a maid, needing the small occupation of ordinary motions.
She had almost reached the stairs when Rowan appeared from the opposite corridor.
They stopped at the same time.
For a moment, neither spoke.
Her body recognized him before her pride could gather itself, warmth pulling low in her stomach despite the wreckage between them.
He was in dark clothes, his hair slightly disordered as though he had run a hand through it too often, his mouth set into a hard line.
He looked tired. Beautiful. Unreachable.
She hated that she still wanted him.
“Your Grace,” she said.
His eyes flashed at the title. “Duchess.”
She inclined her head and moved to pass.
“Were you out?” he asked.
She stopped. “Yes.”
“Where?” The question had no softness in it.
Her fingers tightened around her gloves. “To see my father.”
His gaze moved over her face. “Without telling me.”
A laugh nearly escaped her, though there was no humor in it. “Am I required to report my movements now?”
His jaw tightened. “You know that is not what I meant.”
“I no longer know what you mean, Rowan. You asked for formality. I am trying to oblige.”
Something moved across his face. Pain, perhaps. It was gone too quickly. “Do not twist my words.”
“I have been living inside them for days.”
He stepped closer, and the air changed at once.
Her body knew him too well. It remembered before pride could intervene.
The scent of him reached her, clean linen and cedar, and beneath it the masculine warmth that had once filled her bed and made her forget every sensible fear she had ever possessed.
His eyes dropped briefly to her mouth. Her breath caught, and she hated herself for it.
His voice lowered. “You look unwell.”
“Do not.”
“Do not what?”
“Sound concerned only when it costs you nothing.”
His expression hardened. “You think my concern costs me nothing?”
“I think you have found a way to care from a distance. It must be very comfortable.”
The blow landed. She saw it in the tightening around his eyes.
Before he could answer, small footsteps sounded down the corridor.
“Are you arguing?”
They both turned.
Aaron stood a few paces away, Biscuit at his heels, his face pale with worry. He looked from Rowan to Emmeline and back again, and the sight of his fear cut through her anger at once.
“No,” Emmeline said quickly.
“Yes,” Rowan said at the same time.
Aaron’s mouth parted. “Why?”
Emmeline forced herself to smile, though it felt fragile enough to crack. “We are only discussing something difficult.”
Rowan’s voice came colder. “Adults disagree sometimes.”
Aaron looked at him. “But you are angry at her.”
Rowan went still.
“She is not the only one at fault,” Aaron added, and the words were small but brave.
Emmeline’s heart lurched. “Aaron, darling—”
“No,” Rowan said sharply, though not loudly. “You will not involve yourself in matters you do not understand.”
The boy flinched.
Emmeline felt something protective and furious rise through her. “He understands more than you think.”
Rowan turned on her. “Do not encourage him to challenge me.”
“I am encouraging you to see him.”
“I see him perfectly.”
“No,” she said, the word tearing out of her. “You see danger. You see disrespect. You see everything except a child frightened that the people he loves are pulling away from one another.”
Rowan’s face went white.
Aaron looked between them, eyes wide, Biscuit pressing against his ankle as though even the puppy understood something had gone wrong.
Her vision blurred.
The heat rose first, sudden and sickening. Then the floor softened beneath her feet, the walls stretching too far away. Emmeline blinked, trying to steady herself.
“Emmeline?” Rowan’s voice changed at once.
There was real concern in it. How unfair that it should reach her now.
“I am…” she began, but the words slipped from her.
Her fingers opened. The gloves fell.
Aaron cried out.
The world tilted.
Rowan caught her before she struck the floor. She felt his arms close around her, hard and immediate, felt his body gather her against his chest. His voice sounded above her, roughened beyond recognition.
“Emmeline. Look at me.”
She tried.
His face hovered over hers, pale with fear, his gray eyes wide and unguarded. For one strange, floating second, all she could think was that this was the face he had tried so hard to hide from her.
Then he lifted her.
Her head fell against his shoulder as he carried her up the stairs, his heart pounding so violently beneath her cheek that even through the darkness gathering in her mind, she felt it.
“Send for the physician,” Rowan snapped, his voice shaking with command. “Now.”
Biscuit barked somewhere below. Aaron was crying. Juliet called her name.
But Emmeline heard only Rowan, felt only his arms, and then even he slipped away.