There was no cruelty in it, and it always ended with him inviting her somewhere. She always found a reason to decline, but eventually, she gave in and agreed to share a meal with him. However, she chose breakfast so that it was not too formal.
“You look better than I expected,” he said when she arrived.
“Am I supposed to be flattered by that?”
“I’m simply saying that you have outdone yourself,” he replied. “Make of it what you will.”
It was always like that with him. Not quite flirtation in the way she had once assumed it would be, but something less performative, as though he had stopped trying to convince her of anything and had started observing her instead.
He appeared in corridors without warning, always as if he had been heading somewhere important and simply happened to find her along the way. When she spoke with the servants, she would occasionally sense his gaze on her long before she turned to confirm it, and every time she did, he would look away.
But she knew that he was doing it. He watched her constantly when he believed she could not see him, and not with the careless interest of a man amused by novelty, either.
Once, in the corridor outside the west drawing room, she paused without announcing herself. The Duke stood a short distance away, speaking with a steward, but even from where she stood, she could tell his attention was not entirely focused on the man in front of him. It kept drifting toward her, as though he could feel where she was without needing to see.
When the steward finished speaking and left, he did not immediately move. Instead, his gaze shifted toward where she stood half in shadow. Neither of them spoke, not at first. Then,as though the moment required no acknowledgment beyond its existence, he laughed.
“You are not very good at hiding.”
Anne stepped fully into view, eyeing him carefully. “I was not hiding.”
“No,” he agreed, after a brief pause. “Of course not.”
That should have irritated her, for they both knew that that was precisely what she had been doing and that she had not wanted to be caught. Instead, she could not help but once again notice his playful smile, as well as any real lack of attempt to get under her skin.
“I am still deciding what I think of this place,” she said.
“And me?” he asked lightly.
Anne hesitated a fraction too long, and he noticed.
“I am still deciding,” she replied. “Though you are not entirely awful, if that is anything.”
“Good.”
The conversation ended there, as easily as it began, but many unspoken things between them lingered longer than either of them acknowledged.
It was difficult to believe that she would soon become his wife, and she wondered why society had accepted it even before she had. There were, of course, people who disagreed with it all, but even they were aware that the match would go through.
Anne, on the other hand, still could not entirely believe it. She was to be a duchess, someone with remarkable influence, but she did not see it in herself. All she saw was Anne.
And she was terrified that that was all society would see, too.
CHAPTER 6
As preparations for the wedding began, Rosemere settled into a rhythm for the first time since her father had passed.
The servants smiled again, and though her mother still wore black as was customary, she did smile along with them.
“I ought to show my face to society soon,” she sighed over breakfast. “I cannot be in mourning forever.”
“But that would be so disrespectful to Papa!”
“Anne, I cannot have this same conversation with you,” she snapped. “We must all move on, eventually. I have found a man who is willing to care for me, and now you have too. There is nothing further to discuss.”
There was, as far as Anne cared, but that hardly mattered to her mother. She wondered if that would change somehow once shehad real influence, or if she would simply remain her daughter and nothing more.
After breakfast, Anne left the house. The stables at Ashford House became her refuge almost immediately, the one place where nobody wanted anything impossible from her. Tempest, now at least familiar with his new surroundings, had reluctantly begun to stand in the farthest corner of his pen, rather than growing restless. It was a start, at least.
