He was quiet for a moment. “The boy would have died,” he said at last.
“And that mattered to you. Despite everything you claim.”
“Of course it mattered. He’s ten. He has his whole life ahead of him.”
“A life you risked your own to save.”
“Stop trying to make me into some sort of hero. I’m not.”
“No,” she agreed. “You’re something rarer. You’re a good man pretending to be a beast because it’s easier than admitting you care.”
They reached the Manor. He dismounted stiffly, then helped her down. But once she was on the ground, he didn’t release her immediately.
“You could have been killed,” she whispered.
“Would that have mattered?”
“You know it would.”
“Do I?”
She reached up, touching the bandage on his forehead gently. “You matter to me, Elias. Beast, man, whatever you want to call yourself. You matter.”
Something shifted in his expression—surprise, perhaps, or fear. “Celine—”
“Your Grace! My lady!” Mrs Morrison hurried out. “We heard about the accident. Hot baths are drawn, and Cook has prepared a meal.”
The moment shattered. The Duke stepped back, his control reasserting itself. “Thank you, Mrs Morrison. We’ll dine in our rooms tonight. It’s been a trying day.”
“Of course, Your Grace.”
As they climbed the stairs to their separate suites, Celine thought about locked doors and missed opportunities. But then the Duke paused at her door.
“Thank you,” he said quietly. “For insisting on the physician. For… caring.”
“Always,” she replied.
He looked as though he might say more. Instead, he nodded once and retreated to his own rooms. Another locked door. Yet after today, it felt less like a barrier and more like a postponement.
Twenty-three more days.
But counting was beginning to feel futile when every moment drew them nearer to something neither could name—something gathering like a storm on the horizon.
***
That evening, alone in her rooms with dinner on a tray, Celine couldn’t settle. She kept thinking about the Duke disappearing into that collapsed barn, the way he’d held that injured boy, the blood on his forehead that he’d ignored to tend to others.
A soft knock interrupted her thoughts.
“Come in.”
But it was not the maid or Mrs Morrison. It was the Duke himself, still in his shirtsleeves, the bandage on his forehead stark white against his dark hair.
“I wished to be certain you were well,” he said, hovering in the doorway.
“I am not the one who was injured.”
“No,” he conceded, “but you were frightened. I saw your face when I went into the barn.”
