Chapter Six #3
“Is that what this is?” she asked. “You being tamed?”
“Hardly.” He sipped his champagne. “If anything, you’re the one being domesticated. Wearing the jewels I selected. The dress I recommended. Dancing to my lead.”
“I chose to wear them.”
“Did you?” he countered mildly. “Or did you simply recognise the wisdom of my guidance?”
She wanted to argue—but the truth was complicated, tangled somewhere between autonomy and strategy. She had worn the blue silk. She had worn his sapphires. But none of it had felt like surrender.
“His Grace, the Duke of Rothwest.” A smooth masculine voice intruded. “And the enchanting new Duchess, Lady Rothwest.”
Celine turned to find Lord Ashworth approaching—the same Lord Ashworth who had once written her abysmal sonnets.
“Ashworth,” the Duke said, his greeting cool enough to frost glass.
“I must congratulate you both,” Ashworth continued, eyes lingering on Celine with a familiarity she disliked. “Though I confess I’m astonished. I had no notion Lady Rothwest preferred matches of… such drama.”
“Preferences evolve,” the Duke said mildly, though his hand settled at Celine’s waist with a definitiveness that brooked no argument. “As do standards.”
A blotch of colour rose on Ashworth’s cheeks. “Quite. Though some might say her standards have… altered direction rather than risen.”
The insult was scarcely veiled, and she felt the Duke go still beside her—dangerously still.
“How diverting,” Celine cut in, her tone light as lace and twice as sharp. “I had no idea you were such an authority on my standards, Lord Ashworth. Particularly since you never managed to meet them.”
A smothered laugh escaped a gentleman nearby. Ashworth reddened further.
“I meant no offence—”
“Of course not.” Her voice was honeyed poison. “You were merely observing that I chose a husband of substance rather than one who described himself—what was it, in that third sonnet?—as ‘ephemeral desire incarnate.’ I was never sure what that meant.”
Gentle laughter rippled through the nearest guests. Ashworth all but wilted.
“Come, wife,” said the Duke, amusement curling under his tone. “I believe I promised you a tour of Lady Ashford’s conservatory.”
He guided her away, past the French doors, into a glass-walled conservatory blooming with orange trees.
“‘Ephemeral desire incarnate’?” he repeated once they were alone.
“He fancied himself a poet,” she said. “The sonnets were crimes.”
“And you kept them?”
“Of course not. But some atrocities lodge in the memory.” She touched a blossom, releasing its scent. “He proposed. Twice.”
“And you refused him. Because of the poetry?”
“Because he bored me.” She faced him. “Everything about him was predictable. His conversation, his courtship, his kiss—”
“He kissed you?”
The temperature shifted. Not much, but enough to register.
“Once. In this very conservatory, actually, during a ball last Season.” She moved deeper among the citrus trees. “It was like being pressed upon by a damp cloth—eager, graceless.”
“Unlike the ones we’ve shared?”
She turned to find him closer than expected, backing her against one of the potted trees.
“Well,” she said lightly, though her pulse betrayed her, “we have scarcely shared anything at all—unless you count a kiss on the forehead at the church and another on the hand a few moments ago. And…” she tilted her head, meeting his gaze without flinching, “are you truly asking for comparison?”
“I’m asking for honesty.” He braced one hand against the tree beside her head, not quite caging her but making his presence unavoidable.
“And honesty requires evidence,” she countered. “Which, at present, is rather limited.”
His eyes narrowed—not in displeasure, but in something far more intent.
“Limited,” he repeated quietly. “Yet you draw conclusions nonetheless. About slipping. About control.”
“You asked what I thought,” she said. “I answered.”
“And you always do what I ask?” His free hand came up to trace the line of sapphires at her throat. “But you are right. They need to see something real.”
“And was it not? Real?”
He leaned closer, and she could feel the heat of him despite not quite touching. “What do you think?”
“I think,” she said carefully, “that you’re very good at control. At measured responses and calculated actions. But that kiss didn’t feel calculated.”
“No?” His hand stilled on her necklace. “That’s not a compliment.”
“Isn’t it?”
“I don’t lose control, Celine.” It was the first time he’d used her given name, and it sent a shiver through her. “Never.”
“Never?” She reached up, covering his hand with hers where it rested against the sapphires. “That sounds exhausting.”
“It’s necessary.”
“Why?”
For a moment, she thought he might actually tell her. His eyes searched hers, and she saw that struggle again—the man beneath the marble fighting to surface.
Then someone laughed in the ballroom, the sound carrying through the glass walls, and the moment shattered. He stepped back, putting proper distance between them again.
“We should return,” he said. “Our absence will invite comment.”
“And far be it from us,” she said lightly, “to do anything noteworthy.”
“You’ve already been noteworthy enough for one evening.” Yet there was warmth in his voice now—real warmth—a fleeting echo of the man who had lifted her hand to his lips rather than the Duke who controlled everything.
They returned to the ballroom, where they were instantly drawn back into the machinery of society.
But something had shifted between them. She felt it in the way he kept her close, the way his hand found her elbow or the small of her back—guiding, not directing.
In the private smiles he gave her—small, dangerous, meant for her alone—whenever she murmured a particularly surgical observation about someone’s unfortunate turban or Lord Charles’s hair-piece, which appeared to be migrating steadily southward over the course of the evening.
“You’re enjoying yourself,” she observed during a brief moment alone.
“I’m enjoying your company,” he corrected. “That is rather different.”
“I thought you despised these events.”
“I despise the performance of them. The false smiles. The empty pleasantries. The delicate choreography of ambition.” He accepted two glasses of wine from a footman, handing her one. “But observing you dismantle the room with such precise viciousness? That, I find rather diverting.”
“Precise viciousness?” She tried to look affronted, but amusement betrayed her. “You make me sound like a weapon.”
“Aren’t you?” His head tilted, assessing her with infuriating thoroughness. “Beautiful, sharp, and dangerous when provoked. I chose better than I knew.”
“You didn’t choose me. You won me in a card game.”
“I won the opportunity,” he corrected. “You chose to take it.”
Before she could muster a retort, Lady Ashford materialised—glittering, perfumed, and hungry for gossip.
“Your Grace, you simply must not monopolise your bride! Everyone is dying to speak with her.”
“Everyone is dying to interrogate her, you mean,” he said.
“Oh, you protective creature!” Lady Ashford’s laugh tinkled like breaking glass. “One might almost think you were actually in love.”
“One might,” he agreed blandly.
“But surely Lady Rothwest can spare a few moments for us? We’re gathering in the blue salon for a comfortable coze.”
It wasn’t an invitation. It was a summons.
“Of course,” Celine said smoothly, before the Duke could refuse. “I’d be delighted.”
She saw his jaw tighten, but he merely nodded. “Don’t let them exhaust you with their curiosity, wife.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it, husband.”
The blue salon was packed with ladies arranged in strategic clusters—alliances of silk and fanwork. They descended upon her with predatory enthusiasm.
“Lady Rothwest! How enchanting you look!”
“Those sapphires—wedding gifts, surely?”
“Such a whirlwind romance! You must tell us every detail!”
Celine settled into a chair, arranging her skirts with care. “Ask, and I shall answer what I may.”
“Well,” Lady Weatherby breathed, “how did he propose? We are absolutely dying to hear.”
“Are you?” Celine allowed herself a demure sip of wine—time enough to craft a plausible fiction. “It was not what one would expect.”
“Nothing about His Grace is what one expects,” Mrs Faxtone observed. “The man is a complete enigma.”
“He is quite straightforward once you understand him,” Celine said. “He simply does not waste words on matters of little import.”
“And you matter?” Lady Ashford asked, her tone sugar-laced scepticism.
“I must. He married me.”
“Yes, but so quickly…” Lady Ashford pressed. “Forgive me, my dear, but there are rumours…”
“About my father’s debts?” Celine kept her tone mild. “I’m aware. He has had some… reversals. But my marriage had nothing to do with that.”
“Truly?” Miss Weatherby sounded crushed by the lack of scandal.
“The Duke proposed before my father’s recent difficulties,” Celine lied smoothly. “We were simply discreet. He has little patience for public spectacle.”
“But that little scene on the dance floor tonight!” Mrs Charles fanned herself dramatically. “That was spectacle enough.”
The ladies tittered. Celine felt warmth rise in her cheeks but maintained perfect poise.
“My husband is a man of strong feeling,” she said. “He chooses his moments.”
“And in private?” Lady Weatherby’s tone dripped with insinuation.
“In private,” Celine said calmly, “my husband is everything a wife could wish.”
The ladies collectively exhaled in satisfaction—vague insinuation was the finest fuel for gossip.
Yet even as she said the words, Celine felt something inside her shift.
Was it possible that the man who touched her hand so carefully, who smiled at her barbs, who had faltered—just for a heartbeat—in the conservatory, could be everything a wife might wish?
If he ever allowed himself to be.
After another quarter hour of artfully deflecting inquiries, she excused herself on the pretext of needing air.
She found the Duke alone on the terrace, the night wind stirring the edges of his coat.
“Survived the inquisition?” he asked, still staring into the dark.
“Bloodied but unbowed.” She joined him at the balustrade. “They wanted scandal. I gave them romance.”
“Clever.”
“I told them you were everything a wife could wish in private.”
He turned. “And what does a wife wish?”
The question hung between them—too large, too intimate.
She considered kindness, affection, tenderness, love. But what she said was:
“Honesty.”
He studied her. “Honesty. Even when unpleasant?”
“Especially then.”
He nodded, slowly. “Very well. Honestly? You terrify me.”
She blinked. “I terrify you?”
“You’re unpredictable. Unmanageable. You see too much and understand more than you should.” He reached out, adjusting the tiara that had begun to slip. “Three days, and you’ve already upended every routine I’ve lived by.”
“By being ten minutes late to dinner?”
“By existing.” His voice dropped. “By being nothing like what I anticipated and everything I did not know I was looking for.”
Her breath caught. “That sounds dangerously like a declaration.”
“It’s an observation.” He stepped back, breaking the moment. “We should go. It’s nearly midnight and—”
“Let me guess,” she said. “You have a rigid schedule that cannot be disrupted.”
“Actually,” he said dryly, “I was going to say that tomorrow is Sunday, when I review the estate accounts. I hoped you might join me.”
“You want me to review accounts with you?”
“You mentioned being clever with figures. I’d like to see how clever.” He offered her his arm. “Unless you’d prefer to spend the day receiving callers who’ll want to dissect every moment of tonight?”
“Accounts, then.”
As they collected their cloaks, Lady Ashford seized Celine’s arm one last time.
“My dear, you’ve done the impossible. You’ve made the Beast look almost human.”
Celine glanced at her husband—elegant, aloof, devastating—and gave a small, knowing smile.
“No, Lady Ashford,” she said softly. “I’ve merely discovered he was human all along.”
***
The carriage ride home was quiet, but not the strained quiet of earlier. This was full, humming with unspoken things.
“Thank you,” he said at last as the carriage rolled to a stop.
“For what?”
“For tonight. For playing the part so convincingly.”
“Who says I was playing?”
He looked at her sharply, but she was already stepping down from the carriage, leaving him to follow.
In the entrance hall, they paused at the foot of the stairs.
“Celine,” he said—her name softer than she’d ever heard it, touched with a warmth that might have been alcohol… or something riskier. “What you said about honesty—ask me again. Why I need so much order. Ask me on the morrow, in the daylight, when it is safe, and I might actually answer.”
“And tonight?” she asked.
He exhaled—quiet, almost a laugh, though not quite. “Tonight, I think I should like that locked door between us.”
The words drifted between them, softened at the edges by the lateness of the hour.
“Why?” she asked softly.
He hesitated, and for once the hesitation didn’t feel calculated.
“Because if it weren’t locked,” he said slowly, as though choosing each word to keep it from slipping further than he intended, “I might forget that you are owed a month’s peace.
I might forget that we are strangers performing familiarity.
I might forget…” His gaze flicked to her mouth, then away.
“Everything except the way you looked when—”
He stopped himself, jaw tightening faintly. “Goodnight, wife.”
“Goodnight, husband,” she said, meeting his gaze until he was the one who looked away.
She climbed the stairs on unsteady legs, keenly aware of his gaze following her. In her room, she dismissed Sally and sat alone with the storm of sensations the night had stirred.
She’d meant to test him.
Instead, she had discovered something far more dangerous:
He could crack.
He could warm.
He could want.
And she could want him back.
Twenty-seven more days of locked doors.
She wasn’t entirely sure either of them would survive it.