Amanda’s smile widened by a fraction. “Oh, I do not mean to pry. I only imagine it must have been difficult, being so nearly married one day and engaged to another duke the next.”
Margaret opened her mouth?—
“Lady Amanda.”
The Duke’s voice cut in so cleanly that even Amanda started slightly. He had come up behind them without Emmeline noticing, and his presence altered the little corner at once, making Amanda’s bright malice look smaller than it had a moment ago.
She turned toward him, and all the false edge in her expression melted instantly into flustered softness.
A hot, sharp feeling rose in Emmeline’s chest at once.
“Your Grace,” Amanda said, dropping into a delicate curtsy.
The Duke did not smile. “If you have offered your congratulations, then I am sure Lady Emmeline has received them.”
Lady Amanda colored. “Of course. I only meant?—”
“I know what you meant,” he said.
The flush deepened. Margaret, to her credit, looked ecstatic.
Lady Amanda recovered herself only enough to murmur a brief apology, though plainly it was given to him rather than to Emmeline, and then retreated with as much dignity as she could salvage.
Silence sat in her wake for half a beat.
Emmeline turned to the Duke. “Thank you,” she said quietly. “Though you did not need to intervene.”
His gaze rested on her with that same grave directness that still felt too much every time.
“I did,” he said, his voice dropping into a register that made the hair on her arms stand up. “You are mine to protect.”
The words went straight through her, her stomach dropping. He had said it simply, but she felt the meaning of it all the same.
Whatever this engagement was or was not, he had claimed her before all of them, and he meant for no one to question that claim.
Chapter Eight
“Do not cling to my coat, Aaron. You will drag it crooked,” the words came out lower than Rowan intended, and he felt the small tug on the dark fabric at his side ease at once.
Aaron lifted his hand obediently, his dark eyes moving over the bright sweep of lawn ahead of them with the solemn caution that had become too familiar these past days. The garden party spread out before them in ordered clusters of elegance and noise, ladies beneath parasols, gentlemen drifting with glasses in hand, children darting along the trimmed paths.
The host, Lord Blackmere, came toward them at once.
“Ironford,” he said with an easy smile, clasping Rowan’s hand. “You honor us. And Lord Aaron as well. Delighted, delighted.”
Rowan inclined his head. “Blackmere.”
He had barely finished the word when his eyes caught her.
Lady Emmeline stood not thirty yards away beneath the pale shade of a sycamore, her father beside her and Miss Margaret Godwin just beyond. She wore a soft green afternoon gown that made her skin look warmer, her hair brighter, her presence more quietly arresting than all the silks and jewels around her. She was not even looking at him. That, absurdly, made the pull of her stronger.
He turned back to Blackmere before the lapse became noticeable.
“You have chosen a fine day,” he said.
Blackmere laughed. “For once I may thank heaven rather than my gardener. Come, come, there are a few people eager to congratulate you properly.”
Of course there were.
