Page 205 of Courting the Wrong Duke

There was no teasing in her voice this time.

William smiled. “Thank you, Miss Hartwell.”

After she left, silence settled over the room. William remained aware of Rosalind’s hand in his, warm and steady, until his attention drifted once more toward the strange rosy light filling the bedchamber.

“What is that?”

Rosalind followed his gaze. “The cloth?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.” For some reason, she looked suddenly self-conscious. “The morning light was rather harsh yesterday. Isabella found it somewhere in the house, and we hung it over the windows.”

William studied the pink fabric for another moment. “I thought I was dead.”

Rosalind turned sharply toward him. “What?”

“When I woke. Everything was peach-colored.”

Something changed in her expression, though William could not determine what.

“I had a strange dream,” he said.

Rosalind became very still.

“I was walking somewhere.” He closed his eyes, searching for pieces of the dream that already seemed determined to escape him. “There were fields and hills, and a road that seemed to go on forever. The sky was peach-colored too.”

When he opened his eyes, Rosalind was staring at him.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“That is very clearly not nothing.”

Her eyes had begun to shine again, and William frowned. “Rosalind?”

“It sounds like a magical place.”

He thought about it.

There had been warmth there. An endless road beneath an impossible sky and the peculiar sense that nothing waited at the end of it except whatever he chose to find. No expectations. No duties pulling him one way or another. He could have gone anywhere.

And yet, looking at Rosalind now, William knew what had been missing.

His fingers tightened around hers. “It would only be magical if you were there.”

Her breath caught.

William had not intended to say it. Or perhaps he had. He was beginning to suspect that some truths simply grew too large to keep politely tucked away.

So much of his life had changed in the space of a few weeks. His father was no longer the man William remembered. His brother was almost a stranger to him, and even the Sinclair name seemed to carry a different weight now that he understood how many secrets had been hidden beneath it.

But Rosalind...

But Rosalind was startlingly simple.

Whatever else had become uncertain, whatever pieces of his life he would have to sort through when they returned to London, he knew what he felt when he looked at her.