Page 116 of A Duchess for his Family

He felt the pull toward her even in absence. That decided him.

Distance could restore proportion. Distance could place the arrangement where it belonged. He would be courteous and kind. He would fulfill every responsibility he had assumed when he married her. Nothing would be withdrawn from Sophia, nothing except the dangerous intimacy he had foolishly begun to permit.

No searching for her in rooms. No unnecessary walks. No lingering beside her after the girls had gone to bed. No touching merely because he wanted to.

And certainly no more kisses.

His chest tightened at the thought.

Nathaniel watched him as though he could see every conclusion forming. “This will not be as simple as you imagine.”

“It does not need to be simple.”

“No?”

“No.”

Benedict looked again toward the door.

“It merely needs to be necessary.”

Nathaniel said nothing. For once, he seemed to have no joke waiting. Benedict was grateful for that.

“If I am to regain any control over my life,” he said slowly, “and over my home…”

He stopped. The silence stretched. A coal shifted in the grate behind him with a soft collapse. Nathaniel waited. Benedict’s chest tightened once, then discipline closed around the ache.

“I have to start keeping my distance from her.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Sophia noticed on the first morning. She told herself she did not.

Benedict did not come to breakfast. There was nothing remarkable about that. A duke had correspondence, estate matters, tenants, accounts, solicitors, and approximately a thousand other responsibilities Sophia had only recently begun to understand. Before their marriage, she imagined dukes spent much of their time attending Parliament, looking severe at dinner, and possessing estates large enough to be inconvenient. She had since discovered that Benedict’s days were filled with an alarming amount of drainage.

Still, he usually breakfasted with them, even if only for twenty minutes. He would sit at the head of the table with his coffee, having unfolded his correspondence with unnecessary precision, having corrected Marjorie’s attempts to feed toast to Admiral beneath the table, and having listened while Amelia described whatever she had read the previous evening.

Sophia had begun to know the small rhythms of him: two cups of coffee, very little sugar, toast before eggs, the newspaper read from the final page backward for reasons she had not yet managed to discover.

That morning his chair remained empty.

“Uncle Benedict is working,” Amelia explained.

Marjorie buttered her toast. “He is always working.”

“He has important letters.”

“He always has important letters.”

Sophia lifted her tea.

“He is a duke,” she smiled lightly. “I believe important letters are one of the principal inconveniences of the position.”

Marjorie considered this. “Do duchesses have important letters?”

“Occasionally.”

“Have you?”