Page 112 of Courting the Wrong Duke

“No.”

“Then I suppose I had better be convincing.”

William looked down at their still-joined hands. “I do not believe that will be a problem.”

Only after the words left him did he realize quite how sincerely he meant them.

Rosalind followed his gaze.

A delicate flush spread across her cheeks as though she, too, had only just realized that somewhere during their conversation, what had begun as comfort had become something neither of them seemed particularly eager to end.

Her fingers lingered around his for another heartbeat before she slowly withdrew them.

“Tea, then,” she said, smoothing one hand over her skirts with rather more attention than the task required.

William smiled. “Tea.”

She slipped her hand back through his arm, and together they resumed their walk.

It should have felt no different than before.

Somehow, it did.

And as William felt the warmth of her hand resting lightly against his sleeve, he found himself wishing she had not let go.

Chapter 16

By the time Rosalind returned home, she was even less certain of everything than she had been when she left.

She sat quietly through the final minutes of the carriage ride, watching familiar streets pass beyond the window while William’s account replayed stubbornly in her mind.

His brother’s childhood. The late duke’s cruelty. Her father’s unexpected place within the Sinclair family. Rosalind had always known Edmund and Algernon were close, but she had never imagined how much lay beneath that friendship, or how profoundly her father had shaped the family William remembered.

It should have made her trust Algernon more.

Instead, she could not stop thinking about the gardens.

William believed she had been mistaken, and there were perfectly reasonable grounds for believing him. She had seen the gentleman only briefly from the balcony, after all. The gardens had been dimly lit and crowded with guests, and she had been looking down from a distance.

Yet every time she returned to the memory, she saw the same thing: the familiar breadth of the duke’s shoulders, the turn of his head, and the unmistakable glimpse of his profile before he disappeared among the hedges.

She had recognized Algernon before she had even stopped to wonder what he was doing there.

If she was wrong, then her own certainty could not be trusted. If she was right, Algernon had looked his brother in the face and lied to him.

After everything William had learned that morning, the thought felt particularly cruel.

He had already discovered that his family had concealed the truth from him for most of his life. Rosalind would not give him another reason to question his brother unless she was certain.

By the time the carriage stopped before Carlisle House, the confusion of the morning had settled into a dull ache behind her temples.

She had scarcely removed her bonnet when she remembered her painting lesson with Isabella. For once, the prospect came as a relief.

She desperately wanted to tell her friend everything, but William had trusted her with something painfully private, and whatever suspicions Rosalind might harbor, she would not repay that trust by repeating his family’s secrets.

She was still wondering how much she might safely say when Isabella entered carrying her sketchbook and a small wooden case of paints, her expression stormy enough to make Rosalind’s own troubles temporarily retreat.

“That man is completely mad.”