The sound of his voice broke the moment apart.
Emmeline felt herself come back sharply. What was she doing? What was she thinking? This was the same fate given a different face—marriage to a stranger, this time one larger, harder, more unsettling than the first.
Still, her heart refused to settle.
Lord Weston was thanking him now with a gratitude that sounded perilously close to desperation, and Emmeline could hardly blame him.
A duke offering marriage was no small thing. It was salvation for a family like theirs. It was restoration. Security. And what right had she to stand there and think only of the danger of his eyes when her father’s entire future might depend upon this one man’s willingness to take responsibility?
She pressed her lips together and inclined her head. “That is… generous of you.”
The word felt inadequate, but she would not call it kind. Kindness implied softness, and nothing about him seemed soft.
He gave one short nod.
“I will speak to Foxdale first,” he said. “Nothing further needs to be decided before that.”
“Of course,” Lord Weston said immediately.
Emmeline did not miss the subtle relief in that either, as if the promise of delay, however brief, still mattered to him. Perhaps it mattered to her, too. She did not know.
“You should go, then,” she said, because standing there under his gaze felt increasingly like staring at the sun. “If there is any chance of reaching him, you ought not lose time.”
The Duke looked at her again, and this time there was something unreadable in it, something that seemed to pause over her face before moving on.
“Very well.”
“Take Emmeline’s carriage, Your Grace.” Her father gestured back toward the carriage with tired courtesy. “It is faster than sending for another.”
The Duke inclined his head. “Thank you.”
Then his attention returned to her, and for a second that stretched longer than it should have, they simply looked at one another.
Emmeline could not have said what held her there. Perhaps the heaviness of all he had just promised, or the fact that she could not seem to look at him without remembering the drop of his gaze to her mouth in the carriage.
Heat and unease moved together through her in a way that felt impossible to separate. She might have been curious what it would feel like to let a man like that come closer when she was younger, but not anymore.
The thought made her pulse jump again.
Then he bowed, turned, and went.
She watched him walk away before she could stop herself, watched the measured confidence of his stride, and only when he mounted the carriage and disappeared from view did she force herself to breathe properly again.
What on Earth had just happened?
Chapter Four
Emmeline and her father climbed into the carriage in silence. For a while, the sound of the wheels was the only thing between them. Then her father cleared his throat.
“Emmeline.”
She looked up.
He did not meet her eyes at once. “I must ask you something, and I ask it only because… because today has become so muddled that I no longer know which fears are sensible and which are cruel.”
A cold knot formed in her stomach. “What is it?”
His hands twisted together once before he forced them still. “Did anything…untoward happen between you and the Duke of Ironford?”
