No harm shall come; no shadow will…”
A floorboard creaked somewhere beyond the door.
The sound cut through the quiet like a note gone wrong.
“You take extraordinary care of her,” a familiar voice said quietly. “I don’t think she could have found better.”
Rose stopped mid-breath. The lullaby faded on her lips as she turned.
The duke stood in the threshold, half-shadowed, as though he had no intention of announcing himself to the house at large and had simply decided the rules did not apply to him tonight.
His gaze found her immediately, and then, more precisely, the child in her arms.
Rose smiled, and this time it felt real. “She’s an easy child. She only cries when she’s hungry or tired. She wants for so little.”
“You have a lovely voice, as well,” he whispered.
Rose was surprised to feel her face growing flushed and hot. She looked down, blinking rapidly, and focused on the steady rise and fall of Lizzie’s chest. The silence drifted again, then she stood, the motion calculated to not wake Lizzie.
“We should leave her to her quiet,” she said, not meeting the duke’s eyes. “She needs rest.”
He nodded and stepped aside, allowing Rose to walk past him. She laid Lizzie down in her crib, tucking the blanket around her with infinite care. For a moment, she watched the baby sleep, all while admiring the curve of her cheek and the fist curled at her mouth.
When she turned towards the doorway, the duke stepped out from the dark, as if he had been caught by surprise and was not waiting for her.
“Are you well?” he asked.
Rose tried to laugh, but it came out as a puff of air. “I imagine I am as well as can be expected.”
The duke said nothing, but the silence pressed her to continue.
“You didn’t have to defend me in front of my parents. But… thank you,” she said.
“You’re going to be my wife, Lady Rose. It’s my duty,” he said matter-of-factly.
She tilted her head to the side. How could this man speak of duty? How could he when Julia had found herself…
She shook her head, the exhaustion settling in. It was too late to fight him again.
“Either way, I hope they won’t be any more bothersome than today. It’s not the first time I’ve disappointed them.”
“It should not be so easy for them to speak to you in such a manner.”
Rose felt the heat rise up her neck before defending them as she had always done. “They did their duty. I’m not sure what else anyone could expect.”
Even she struggled to believe her words these days. It was difficult to forget that they had disowned her after yet another failed Season, and then she had been sent away.
The duke crossed the hallway. He did not touch her, but the presence of him at her side was overwhelming. “Do you seriously believe that? You were abandoned because you didn’t meet their criteria. Your parents were cruel. I don’t like cruelty, not from family.”
Rose snorted. “I find that difficult to believe, given the rumors about your own.”
He smiled, a sharp, private thing. “Perhaps that’s why I have little patience for it now.”
“I survived it.”
The duke watched her for a long moment. Then, in a voice much lower, he said, “It is not always about surviving.”
Rose blinked, caught off guard by the intensity. “What else is there?”
