Page 21 of Duke of Fire
Eliza shook her head. “Nothing would please me more than to join you.”
August grinned and—without invitation—reached for her hand. He brought it to his lips, and for a split second, his eyes caught hers. There was heat there, expertly modulated, and yet it threatened to set every inch of her ablaze.
He released her but not quickly enough to erase the memory of his thumb against her knuckle.
Eliza pulled her hand back, just a fraction too fast.
Albert saw it and smiled but said nothing.
Dorothy resumed her campaign of flower arrangement, steering Albert inside with a rush of activity. August lingered, letting the door shut behind the elders.
Alone on the terrace, he regarded her with that same impossible warmth.
“You survived them,” he said.
“It was not difficult. They are kind,” Eliza replied, willing her pulse to even out.
“I’m glad,” he said, quieter now.
They stood in silence. The weight of the garden, the house, the entire future pressed around them.
“You know,” August said, very softly, “I never thought I would miss this place. But somehow, with you in it?—”
She stopped him, not with a word but a look: a challenge, a warning, and underneath it, the wish that he would finish the thought anyway.
He stepped closer, but she did not yield. The space between them was small, and yet, it was an ocean.
“Are you always this stubborn?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said.
He leaned in, as if to kiss her cheek, and she held utterly still. Instead, he whispered, “Good.”
He walked away, his footfalls receding across the terrace.
Eliza stood alone, staring after him.
He is pretending,she told herself.It is all a performance.
But the warmth at her wrist said otherwise. And that, above all, was what frightened her most.
Seven
August had long been acquainted with sleeplessness, but tonight, as the hall’s grandfather clock tolled the third hour, he found it more tenacious than usual. The hallways of Wildmoore Hall had an unfamiliar hush, as if the very air braced for crisis. He was, for once, not the cause.
He drifted down the main staircase in shirtsleeves and stocking feet, the marble cool under his heels. A left, a right—instinct guided him to the music room, the only place in the house not haunted by his quest for perfection.
He did not light the candles. Instead, he slid onto the piano bench and let the darkness close in, save for a pale shaft of moonlight that sliced across the lid of the grand pianoforte. He flexed his fingers, cracked his knuckles. Then, softly, he played.
The melody was one he’d composed as a boy, back when melancholy was a flavor of longing, not the central ingredient of his character. He played it slowly, stretching each note intoa question he could not answer. The music did not require an audience, and he relished its company. It was honest at least.
He played for an hour, maybe more. Time blunted at the edges. Sometimes, he would pause and listen to the way the notes dissolved into the velvet dark. When he reached the end of the last movement, he let his hands fall, spent.
He was not alone.
A faint rustle, the unmistakable hush of a woman’s slipper. He turned, and there she was: Eliza, Marchioness of Barrington, standing just inside the doorway.
She wore a simple nightdress and a robe, hair twisted into a loose knot. There was something ghostly about her—her refusal to announce herself, the way she watched him as if he were the one trespassing.
