Page 213 of Courting the Wrong Duke

The look he gave her was so familiar that for an instant she might have been ten years old again, testing the limits of his patience merely to discover where they were.

Then his expression softened. “I have never properly thanked you.”

“Papa, you do not need to thank me.”

“Perhaps not, but I would like to.”

There was enough quiet determination in his voice that Rosalind did not argue.

He reached for her hand. “When I was at Bryn Hir, I spent a great deal of time thinking about you and your mother. I wondered whether you were safe, what you had been told, and whether you believed any of it. But whenever I thought of you, I realized I was still imagining the little girl who used to follow me from room to room asking questions until I surrendered merely to make her stop.”

Rosalind smiled. “I was very persistent.”

“You were exhausting.”

“I prefer persistent.”

“I am sure you do.”

His thumb moved slowly across the back of her hand, and when he continued, the humor had left his voice.

“Then you came to Bryn Hir.”

Rosalind’s throat tightened.

“You questioned what everyone else was willing to accept. You followed the evidence, crossed half the country, and found me.”

“I did not do it alone.”

“I know. Accepting help does not diminish what you did.”

Her father looked down at their joined hands. “I spent so many years thinking it was my responsibility to protect you that I failed to notice when you stopped needing me to.”

Something tightened in Rosalind’s throat.

When her father looked at her again, there was pride in his face, but something deeper too. For perhaps the first time, he was not looking at the little girl he remembered.

He was seeing the woman she had become.

“You are stronger than I knew.”

Rosalind could not answer around the sudden tightness in her throat, so she leaned forward and wrapped her arms around him instead.

He held her close.

“I missed you,” she whispered against his shoulder.

“I missed you too.”

She closed her eyes and allowed herself to remain there for a moment. “I never believed you left us willingly.”

His arms tightened around her.

“I knew something was wrong,” she continued. “I did not know what, and there were days when I wondered whether I would ever understand any of it, but I knew you. That letter never changed that.”

Edmund drew a shaky breath. “I hoped it would not.”

Rosalind pulled back and wiped beneath one eye. “Although you could have made the entire affair considerably easier by not being kidnapped.”