Margaret made a soft sound. “Sometimes?”
The question moved through her body before it reached her mind.
She remembered the kiss, the heat of his breath scorching her, the low warning in his voice, the way her own breath had trembled in answer to a danger she had not wanted to escape. She remembered his hand helping her into the carriage after the village, lingering around hers for one heartbeat too long, the warm pressure of his palm.
Then she remembered the dining room and the ache closed around her throat.
“He can be cruel,” she said quietly.
Margaret sobered at once. “What did he do?”
Emmeline looked toward Aaron again. He was laughing now, because Biscuit had seized the stick and was trotting in the wrong direction with his head held high.
“He said something he should not have said.”
“To you?”
“Yes.”
Margaret’s mouth tightened. “Do I need to despise him?”
“No,” Emmeline said too quickly, then hated the speed of it. “No. I do not think so. He was… wounded.”
“That does not prevent me from despising him.”
“I know.”
“Was he sorry?”
Emmeline thought of Rowan standing at the head of the dining table, his face drained of its cold certainty, his eyes fixed on the napkin she had smoothed because she had needed somewhere to put her pain. She thought of the sad way he had said her name afterward.
“He looked it,” she said. “He did not say it.”
Margaret exhaled. “Men do have such a talent for making women read their remorse like scripture.”
Despite everything, Emmeline’s mouth twitched.
Margaret squeezed her arm. “And Aaron?”
“He is dearer to me every day.” The words left before she could dress them in caution. “That is part of the trouble.”
“Because the Duke resents it?”
“I do not know if he resents it.” Emmeline’s gaze tracked Rowan through the glass doors at the far end of the house.
He had appeared in the study doorway that opened toward the garden, speaking to a footman, but his eyes had already found her. Even from a distance, she felt the pull of that gray gaze, moving over her with an intimacy deeper than touch.
Her breath changed.
Margaret followed her attention and went quiet for one beat too long. “Oh,” she said softly.
Emmeline looked away. “Do not.”
“I have said nothing.”
“You said oh.”
“And what an eloquent syllable it was.” Margaret’s voice softened, though the mischief remained. “He watches you as though he is starving and furious that the hunger has become public.”
