Chapter 22 #2
William opened his mouth to object, but Anthony shook his head.
“Examine your own behavior for a moment, my friend,” Anthony said. “Let us look at the evidence. First, your hair.”
William’s brow furrowed. “My hair?”
“You have worn your hair impeccably styled in the exact same side-swept, structured, perfectly tailored fashion every single morning since we were twelve years old,” Anthony said, gesturing toward William’s head.
“It is your signature. You look as though you were born wearing a cravat and a perfectly combed pompadour. Yet right now, you are standing in my private quarters with your hair falling into your forehead, thoroughly disheveled, because you have spent the last hour running your fingers through it like a madman.”
William froze. His right hand, which had been unconsciously twitching upward toward his brow, halted mid-air. He slowly lowered it, his jaw tightening.
“Second,” Anthony continued, ticking a finger off on his hand.
“You do not pace. Ever. The Duke of Norwyn does not march back and forth like a caged tiger. You stand completely motionless. You plant your feet, you place your hands behind your back, and you exude an aura of iron authority whether you are addressing a stable boy or the King himself. Yet for the past sixty minutes, you have worn a visible trench into my expensive Persian rug.”
William shifted his weight, stiffening his posture, but he said nothing.
“Third,” Anthony pressed on, ticking off another finger. “You are deploying vocabulary and phrasing that I have never heard cross your lips in casual conversation.”
William glared at him. “I have done no such thing.”
“Fourth,” Anthony said, ignoring the denial completely. “You took your ward and your wife on a picnic.”
William’s chest expanded as he drew in a sharp breath. “There is absolutely nothing wrong with taking my family for an afternoon on the lawn.”
“You have spent your entire adult life despising outdoor leisure.” Anthony laughed, shaking his head.
“I distinctly recall two summers ago when Lord Harrington invited us to a garden party, and you spent a long time lecturing him on how dining on grass was an inefficient, unsanitary, and frivolous waste of daylight. You claimed the outdoors was meant for horses and agriculture. Yet ever since Seraphina entered your home, you have been gallivanting through meadows with baskets of sandwiches.”
Anthony’s smirk faded. He stepped forward, placing a hand on William’s shoulder.
“Lastly, William... in all the years I have known you, through every trial and crisis, I have never once seen you affected by any human being on this earth. Nothing fazes you. Do you remember three years ago, when the merchant fleet out of Barbados was lost in the hurricane? Do you remember that afternoon?”
William’s eyes shifted downward slightly.
“Half the underwriters were weeping, two of your partners were threatening ruin, and a fortune was sinking to the bottom of the Atlantic,” Anthony said softly.
“But you? You sat at the head of the table, entirely calm, dipping your quill in ink and calculating our recovery strategy without so much as a tremor in your hand. That was the day I realized you were made of iron. I believed nothing on this earth could rattle you.”
Anthony tapped William’s chest gently with his knuckles. “Look at yourself right now, William. Look at you. You are utterly, completely, helplessly rattled. It leads me to one undeniable, glaring deduction. You are falling in love with her. Only love makes a man like you do these things.”
The stillness returned to the room, thick enough to cut with a blade. William stared at his friend, his eyes darkening until they looked like storm clouds over an icy sea.
“If you had accused me of being merely attracted to her,” William said, his voice dropping into a register so low and dangerous it was barely more than a growl.
“I might have conceded to your judgment. I might have admitted that she is a stunning woman who occupies my thoughts more than she ought to. But love? Do not be ridiculous, Anthony.”
“I know your stance on the matter,” Anthony countered, refusing to back down.
“I know what your father did to you. I know how that man ruined your perception of human devotion. He taught you that love was a fickle, useless emotion designed to make strong men foolish and bankrupt. When you live with someone like that all your life, that is what you learn. Because of him, you built walls around your heart so high that no one could ever reach you. I know the vows you made to yourself never to succumb to that madness.”
Anthony leaned in. “But the human heart does not obey contracts, William. It does not care about your vows, nor does it care about your neatly organized business plans. You are exhibiting every classic, textbook symptom of a man who is desperately in love. I would know.”
“It is impossible,” William said. “My heart is not built for such sentimental drivel! I have a vow to uphold, a vow I made to myself when I took over this estate. I do not break my word. I am in complete control of my life.”
Anthony crossed his arms again. “Is that so? Tell me, William... did you not just inform me ten minutes ago that physical attraction is merely the precursor to love?”
William froze.
“You stated it yourself,” Anthony reminded him triumphantly, leaning in.
“You claimed that once attraction takes root, love is merely the next logical step waiting to happen. You said they are two sides of the same coin. So let me ask you your own question. Do you truly intend to stand there and wait for love to overtake you completely before you have the courage to admit it has already begun?”
William stepped back, taking a physical step away from Anthony as if the words had landed like a punch against his chest.
He couldn’t help but think back, as memories from the past month flooded his consciousness.
He thought back to the picnic, to the overwhelming, almost unbearable magnetic pull he had felt while sitting beside her on the grass, watching the sunlight play through the dark curls of her hair.
He thought of the late-night hours in the library, how he actively sought her out, inventing excuses to debate her just to hear the cadence of her voice.
He thought of how he deliberately provoked her, teasing her simply to watch her eyes flash with fire.
He had been behaving like a man possessed. He had been acting entirely outside his nature.
The most terrifying realization of all hit him. He had enjoyed it. God help him, he had loved every single second of it.
He was playing a dangerous game.
He had to stop it. Flip the off switch. He had to drag himself back to reality before he destroyed everything he had built.
Soon, massive commercial ventures, political negotiations, and enterprise expansions would demand his absolute, undivided attention.
He would be thrust back into his relentless, unforgiving cycle of endless work, and he could not afford a single point of vulnerability.
He could not afford a compromised heart.
Anthony was right about the diagnosis, even if he was wrong about the prognosis.
The attraction was real; it was potent, and it was spreading like wildfire.
But William was the master of his own destiny.
He would not allow a temporary distraction to mutate into the catastrophic weakness known as love.
He had to extinguish the flame before it consumed the house.
Anthony watched him quietly. “Looking at the fire in your eyes, I’m starting to recognize the William I know. That terrifies me for some reason. What... are you going to do now?”
William reached up, deliberately smoothing down the lapels of his coat. He adjusted his linen cuffs and cleared his throat. He ran a hand through his hair, forcing every stray strand back into its proper place.
The warmth vanished from his eyes. He reached deep within himself and slammed the internal switch firmly, decisively to off.
“What else is there to do?” William said. “I shall stay away from Seraphina. I will keep as far from her as humanly possible until this absurd attraction starves and dies.”