Page 49 of The Duke’s Caught Bride

Kenneth then set Charlie on the bed next to it. Alice crossed the room and pulled his coat free, folding it on the chair. The almonds spilled across the seat, and she gathered them into the bag and placed it on the nightstand where he would find it in the morning. She smoothed his hair back from his forehead. His face was slack and still, younger in sleep, the careful watchfulness gone.

Kenneth stood at the foot of the bed, staring at his sons. Alice stepped back and left the room quietly, letting him have the moment.

He found her in the corridor outside. The hall was dark except for the sconce near the staircase, and their footsteps sounded loud on the stone.

“Alice.”

She stopped and turned to face him.

“Thank you,” he said. “For today. For the way you are around them. They are…” He seemed to search for the right word. “They are different when you are near.”

“They are wonderful boys, Kenneth. It is no hardship to spend time in their company.”

He nodded.

The candlelight caught his face, the line of his jaw and the shadows beneath his eyes. He looked tired and unguarded and very close to saying more.

Alice waited. She could feel the pull of him, the gravity he exerted without intending to, and she recognized it for what it was: an invitation she could not afford to accept. Not after the parlor and the carriage and all the distance he put between them.

She could not survive another door closed in her face.

“Goodnight, Your Grace,” she said, pressing her trembling hands to her sides.

She turned and walked toward her chamber. Her hand found the door handle, and she pressed it down and stepped through without looking back.

The door clicked shut.

On the other side, she heard no footsteps retreating, no movement at all, only the heavy silence of a man standing still in a dark corridor.

Chapter Sixteen

London smelled different than Bearmoor.

Alice noticed it the moment the carriage turned onto Park Lane: coal dust and horse dung and the faint mineral tang of the Thames, layered beneath the perfume of cut flowers from the sellers who lined the pavement. She had grown accustomed to clean moorland air, and the city felt close and heavy around her.

The boys had taken the return badly. Freddie had declared London boring before the carriage crossed into Mayfair, and Charlie had pressed his forehead to the glass and watched the countryside vanish without speaking.

Three days into their return, Alice sat in the morning room reading an invitation on cream card stock.

“The Countess of Pembroke requests the pleasure of our presence,” she announced. She turned the card over. “A garden party, next Thursday.”

Kenneth looked up from his correspondence. “Accept it.”

“Truly?”

“We are in London. We must be seen.”

The door swung open. Freddie entered first, Charlie close behind.

“A party?” Freddie planted himself between his father and the desk. “Can we come, Papa? We have been trapped in this house since we arrived. There is nothing to do. Please!”

Charlie stood near the door, his eyes fixed on his father’s face.

Kenneth set down his pen. He looked at Freddie, then at Charlie, then at Alice. She raised her eyebrows.

“If you run amok,” he said, “we leave immediately.”

Freddie’s shout of triumph echoed off the ceiling. Charlie’s mouth curved upward, small and satisfied.