Page 31 of How Not to Marry a Duke

F.

He set down the pen.

His hand was shaking. Ink stained his fingers. The letter—if it could be called that, if confessions of lunacy qualified as correspondence—lay before him, damning evidence of his own foolishness.

A gentleman did not write to unmarried women. A duke did not confess weakness. An engaged man did not pour out his heart to someone who was not his betrothed.

Frederick folded the letter with deliberate precision. Once, twice, three times. He reached for the sealing wax, melted it over the candle, and pressed his ring into the crimson blob before he could reconsider.

Then—since apparently he was committed to making this evening as pathetic as possible—he wrote her name on the outside.

Lady Florinda Ashbourne

His handwriting looked shaky. He had written battle reports with calmer hands. He had signed death warrants with less tremor.

The locked drawer of his desk contained estate documents, his father's watch, and a miniature of his mother that he had carried through the war. Private things. Important things.

He added the letter to the collection.

Never to send, he told himself. Never to be read. This was merely... pressure relief. A safety valve. Words that needed somewhere to go that was not out of his mouth in front of his fiancée and their assembled households.

He locked the drawer.

The key went into his pocket. It seemed larger than a key had any right to be.

The clock struck three.

In six hours, he would carry her down fourteen stairs. He would count her breaths and catalogue her laughter and pretend that he had not spent the small hours of the morning writing love letters he could never send.

He went to bed.

He did not sleep.

But the wanting had somewhere to live now—somewhere outside his own skull. It existed on paper, sealed and secret and absolutely, categorically never to be read by anyone but himself.

The locked drawer was louder than it should have been.

Chapter Ten

The Dinner

The wheeled chair had been a kindness. Florinda kept reminding herself of this as Frederick pushed her into the dining room, the wooden wheels making a soft rumbling sound against the polished floors.

A kindness. Not a humiliation. Not a public announcement of her continued invalidity. Simply a practical solution that allowed her to join the household for dinner rather than taking her meals alone in the morning room like some sort of Gothic invalid waiting for the consumption to carry her off.

She had finally felt strong enough to attempt it—not merely sitting in the morning room in a day dress, but the full ritual of evening. Her maid had spent an hour on her hair. Frederick had carried her upstairs to change, then back down again an hour later, her silk evening gown carefully arranged to hide the splint. Two trips. Twenty-eight stairs. She had counted every one and tried not to think about the way his arms felt around her.

She was not grateful. She was irritated, which was much easier to manage.

"Your Grace," Lord Ashworth said, rising from his seat with a smile that did not reach his eyes, "how delightful to have Lady Florinda joining us at last. We had begun to wonder if she existed only in rumour."

"I assure you, my lord, I am quite corporeal." Florinda allowed Frederick to position her chair at his right hand—an honor she suspected was more about logistics than precedence. "Though I understand the confusion. Invalids do tend toward the spectral."

From across the table, Penelope offered her a warm smile. The Dowager, seated at Frederick's left, offered nothing at all—merely a cool assessment that suggested Florinda's continued existence was neither delightful nor particularly relevant.

The soup course arrived. Florinda focused on her spoon, on the precise angle required to bring broth to mouth without spillage, on anything other than the awareness that Frederick's sleeve was three inches from her elbow and she could feel the warmth of him even through the damask tablecloth.

This was absurd. She was a grown woman. She had attended hundreds of dinners. She knew how to navigate conversation and cutlery and the treacherous waters of aristocratic small talk.