Page 33 of A Mother for the Blind Duke’s Orphans

“You will help her overcome it, then?” He was not sure if he was asking for the impossible.

Her Grace tilted her head at him, and he saw her brows knit together at the center. She captivated him even as she frowned in her wedding attire.

“I can help her feel safe if that is what you are asking for.”

“That is not what I asked for,” he argued.

“No, it is not. But that is what would help her.”

He rested both hands on the head of his cane. “Duchess, the child cannot grow up afraid to speak.”

“I agree,” she said simply.

He raised his hand exasperatedly. “Then fix it.”

“I cannot fix that for you.”

“For me?”

“Yes. This is for you to fix.” Her voice changed with conviction. “If Aurora is nervous around you, then the answer is not to make her ashamed of how fear comes out of her mouth. The answer is to help her stop being afraid.”

“But I have not frightened her.” He frowned, trying to think about what he could have done differently to help her feel safer around him.

“You frown a lot; it is very…frightening to some people,” she pointed out, and Hector immediately stopped frowning.

Her honesty continued to surprise him, and he wanted to laugh, but this was a serious matter that needed to be addressed. He stared at her and noticed the blush that bloomed in her cheeks again.

“I beg your pardon?” Hector asked.

“You frown almost constantly, I think. If you wish a small child to feel at home, perhaps you might begin there.”

“I would not know whether I frown because I cannot see it.”

There was a sharp silence followed by the duchess’s laughter. The sound seemed to move around him, and he enjoyed its vibrations. As her laughter slowly came to an end, she stepped closer to him. He should have moved back, but before he knew it, Her Grace’s fingers touched his forehead, and Hector completely forgot what they were arguing about or how they got there.

He exhaled through his mouth and almost dropped his cane. Her touch was so light, yet the sensation roared through him like a river. He had met many predictable people before, but his duchess was unreadable.

“Here,” she said quietly, brushing her fingers softly against his skin.

Her finger rested between his brows, then traced no more than the space of a thought above them. He felt, with abrupt and humiliating clarity, the tension gathered there.

“When the muscles draw together here,” she said, “you are frowning.”

He did not answer as she withdrew her hand.

The absence of her touch felt worse. For one irrational instant he wanted to catch her wrist and put her fingers back where they had been, as if the brief contact had identified some fault in him that only repetition could explain. The impulse was so foreign that he turned cold with it.

This is dangerous.

The warning rose without fear.

Very dangerous.

It was not fear, not quite. Hector had known fear as a boy: the sound of his father’s step, the smell of liquor, and the rigid calculation of whether pain could be avoided if he kept quiet.

This was different. This was a loss of command disguised as a woman’s touch. Hector towered over her and lowered his voice.

“Aurora’s stutter must disappear within a month,” he ordered more coldly than before.