For a few minutes, dinner almost became bearable.
Emmeline asked Aaron which books he wished to show her next. Aaron told her about the orchard with increasing animation, his stammer still present, but softer when she gave him time.
Then Aaron said, “Mama never saw the orchard, I think.”
The change in Rowan was immediate.
It passed through him like a door slamming shut. His shoulders squared. His gaze hardened. Even the footman behind him seemed to still.
“Aaron,” Rowan said.
The boy’s smile faded. “I only said?—”
“That is not a suitable subject for dinner.”
Emmeline’s heart sank.
Aaron looked down at his plate. “I was only w-wondering.”
“Then wonder about something else.” The words were controlled, cold.
Emmeline felt anger flare so hot that her skin prickled. “He asked nothing improper.”
Rowan’s eyes cut to her. “I did not ask for your judgment.”
Aaron’s breath hitched, the sound small and frightened. “I d-did not mean to?—”
“No one thinks you meant harm, darling,” Emmeline said at once, softening her voice for him even as she kept her gaze on Rowan.
Rowan’s jaw worked. “He must learn there are proper times and places.”
“For remembering his mother?”
“For dwelling on what cannot be changed.”
Aaron’s fingers trembled around his fork. “I d-d-don’t remember her. That is w-why I?—”
His face reddened as the words trapped themselves. He tried again, shoulders tightening, breath catching, the stammer worsening under the pressure of Rowan’s stare and his own embarrassment.
Emmeline moved before she thought.
“Aaron,” she said gently, turning her whole body toward him, giving him a new place to look. “Tell me about the orchard.”
The rest of dinner limped forward, held together by Emmeline’s careful questions and Aaron’s quiet answers. Rowan said very little. But she felt him watching her at intervals, and every glance struck her like the memory of a hand.
She hated it. She wanted it. She wanted him to speak, to explain, to apologize, to touch her, to stop looking at her as though he had built a wall and found her standing on the wrong side of it.
When Aaron was taken to bed, he bowed to her again. “Good night, Duchess.”
“Good night, Aaron.”
When the door closed behind Aaron, only the silence remained. Rowan sat across from her, rigid and unreachable, as if loneliness were another rule he meant to enforce.
Chapter Fourteen
“Why will you not let him speak of her?”
Rowan’s head lifted from the papers spread across his desk, though Emmeline knew at once that he had not been reading them.
