It probably made sense that Aaron was unaccustomed to being disobeyed, what with his whole determination to turn everything into a military excursion, but—as Phoebe had saidmany, many times—she was not a soldier.
To really punctuate this point, she swept past him and out the door that was still gaping open after his arrival. He looked at her, visibly astonished, but he made no move to stop her.
She made it halfway down the walk—and would have gotten farther if she hadn’t needed to exercise caution due to all the ice—when he came to his senses and caught up with her.
“Phoebe, you can’t just walk away,” he said, overtaking her and standing in front of her to block her path.
She stepped around him. It caused the lingering snow to crunch up and get inside her boots, which meant she’d suffer from cold, wet feet later, but it was worth it.
“I think,” she said, “that you will find that I can.”
The coachman stood at the side of the carriage, hovering and clearly uncertain about how to navigate this disagreement. Phoebe took pity on him and reached out to open the carriage herself. The coachman instinctively took a step forward to help her clamber up into the conveyance, then, at a quelling look from the Duke, stepped back just as hastily.
No matter. Phoebe was wearing extremely practical clothing. She could climb.
“Phoebe!” her husband protested as she did precisely that.
Phoebe wasn’t a fool. She knew that her odds of convincing the coachman to actually drive away with her in the back were low. Vanishingly low. She also knew that asking the coachman to openly defy his employer would be both unkind and ineffectual.
But sometimes a woman had to take a stand. And this seemed like her moment.
She sat in the back of the carriage and stubbornly crossed her arms over her chest.
And then she gasped when Aaron climbed right in after her and pulled the door shut behind him.
“What are you doing?” she demanded.
This time, he was the one mimicking her; he crossed his arms and looked stubbornly at her.
“I’m joining you,” he said. He was trying to sound calm in a way that she could tell was designed to annoy her, but he was clearly practically trembling with irritation, and that satisfied Phoebe to no end.
“I’m going to a consortium for ladies who like to embroider butterflies on screens to be sold to pay for music lessons for orphans,” she lied, gathering every single thing she thought might bore a gentleman and combining it into a single soiree. “The orphans will be performing, obviously.”
“Surely it’s after the orphans’ bedtime,” he observed. This time, he did manage the annoying calm thing. And lo, she was indeed annoyed.
“Do you know what I think?” he asked when she didn’t respond right away. “I think you are going somewhere you ought not. A salacious performance, perhaps?”
This was distressingly astute.
“No,” she scoffed. Even she didn’t think it sounded credible. “I’m going to the flower embroidery thing.”
“I thought it was butterflies,” he said.
It was probably for the best that she could not see his face because if he was enjoying this, she was going to hit him. And she’d learned the things she knew about defending herself in the more dangerous parts of the city. She was going to aim for thesensitive spot between his legs that made men drop like bags of rocks.
She’d seen more than a few women use this move against slimy men who didn’t know when to take a step back. It might not be entirely sporting to use such a move against her husband, but Phoebe wasn’t feeling particularly inclined to fairness at the moment.
“Can you just… go away?” she asked, feeling suddenly exhausted by this whole back and forth. She enjoyed verbal sparring as much as the next woman, but, God, it would be nice not to have to fight and sneak and scheme for a while.
Aaron didn’t react at first. Then, he let his arms uncross, his posture becoming more open.
“I was out with my friend,” he said. “Jacob—you saw him at our wedding. He made me buy him dinner, and then he also insisted onchoosingthe dinner which took us to this little pub in the far end of nowhere.” He paused. “Admittedly, they had good stew.”
Phoebe was nonplussed.
“I—what?”
“You asked where I was,” he said, as if this should be obvious—and maybe it should. She couldn’t seem to get her head on straight around her husband. “That’s where I was. Now. Were you going to a raunchy play?”
