The thought of his late wife returned as it always did now, making breathing difficult under the weight in her chest.
“What if he still loves her?” Emmeline asked before she could soften it.
Margaret blinked. “His wife?”
Emmeline nodded. “I cannot stop wondering it.”
Margaret sat back slightly, considering. “He has never said so.”
“No,” Emmeline replied. “But he speaks of her hardly at all. He cannot bear Aaron speaking of her, and there is something so hard in him when the subject comes near that I do not know what else to think.” Her fingers slid unconsciously over the edge of the teacup. “A man does not shut a thing away so violently unless it still has power over him.”
Margaret watched her with a seriousness that made Emmeline feel newly exposed.
“And if he does?” Margaret asked softly. “What then?”
The question landed deeper than she wanted it to.
What then?
Then she would marry a man whose body reacted to hers with disturbing clarity and whose eyes could turn dark on her in a ballroom and make her forget where she stood, yet whose heart remained buried elsewhere. Then she would become duchess, stepmother, mistress of his houses, caretaker of his son, and perhaps never once be truly let in. Then she would have none of the warmth she had once secretly hoped for.
Emmeline looked down.
“Then I suppose,” she said slowly, “that I shall do what women have always done. Make a life out of whatever portion of it is offered.”
Margaret’s expression twisted with immediate dissatisfaction.
“No,” Margaret said, sharply now. “Do not sit there and speak as though you are being led to execution. You are not marrying Foxdale. You are marrying a man who, for all his faults, has behaved honorably by you at every turn.”
Emmeline let out a breath that trembled more than she wanted it to. “I know that too.”
“Then say what truly troubles you.”
She hesitated, then forced herself to answer.
“What troubles me,” she said, “is that I do not know whether what I feel around him is foolishness or warning.”
Margaret’s eyes softened.
“Perhaps both,” she said gently.
Emmeline almost smiled at that, though there was no real amusement in it. The Duke stirred her in ways she had not expected. Yet the more he stirred her, the more dangerous the question of his late wife became.
Because if she was to feel this much before she had even fully become his, what would happen if she allowed herself to want more and discovered too late that all his tenderness had died with another woman?
The bell above the door rang again.
Margaret glanced toward it first, and the expression on her face changed so quickly that Emmeline turned at once.
Lady Amanda entered the tea shop in pale lilac silk and easy malice, her smile already arranged before she had fully crossed the threshold.
“Well,” she said the moment her eyes landed on Emmeline, “if it is not the future Duchess of Ironford.”
Margaret’s spine straightened like a blade being drawn.
“Lady Amanda,” Emmeline said smoothly, though something in her stomach tightened at once.
Amanda approached their table without invitation and stopped just near enough that retreat would have seemed ruder than staying. Her gaze flicked to Emmeline’s left hand where the engagement ring still gleamed, then back to her face.
