Page 28 of A Highly Unlikely Duchess
A small scoff left his lips. He was a duke. He was, by most available measures, one of the most sought-after men in all of London. Women did not leave him mid-conversation to attend to things. Women did not curtsy at him and walk away as though he were a mildly interesting painting they had finished looking at.
“Unbelievable,” he mumbled.
He walked to the door, paused with his hand on the frame, and looked back at the empty room. She had not even looked back.
He dismissed the thought before it fully formed. It was not a thought worth having. It was not a thought that meant anything. He did not require Emily Pierce's undivided attention. He did not require anyone's undivided attention. He was, if anything, relieved to leave.
He was almost entirely sure he was relieved.
CHAPTER SIX
“Is it Alistair’s child? Is that why you are keeping it a secret?”
Emily gasped.
The sound left her before she could stop it, a small and sharp sound. She turned to find Theodore standing closer than she had realized, his eyes on her face with an attention that was direct and unguarded and entirely without his usual performance behind it.
For a moment, she wanted to be offended. The words arranged themselves in her mouth, the particular kind of words she kept specifically for Theodore Merrick and his complete inability to mind his own affairs. She and Alistair had courted. They had been friends. That was all they had ever been and all they had ever wanted to be, and the idea that she would have... that they would have...
But then she looked at his eyes.
He was not being cruel. Strangely, she could see it. He was not prodding, not this time. He was simply looking at her, his gaze moving between her eyes, back and forth, searching, the way a person looks when they genuinely want to understand something and do not know how else to find it.
He just wanted to know.
She opened her mouth.
“No,” he said before she could speak. “No, forget I said that.” He took a short breath and looked away briefly, his hand moving to the back of his neck. The gesture made him look like he was thinking, like something was working in his mind faster than he could organize it. “That is not possible. I know Alistair. I have known him for a long time, and there is simply no way he would —” He shook his head. “No. Not Alistair. Alistair would never.”
Emily said nothing.
“So it is not Alistair.” He turned back to her, his brow furrowed slightly, thinking now, visibly thinking, and she watched it happen with a detached curiosity, observing him with no intention of interrupting. “Then who?” It was not quite a question. More the beginning of a calculation. “A woman like you does not simply...” He stopped. Started again. “I mean to say, you are the most correct person I have ever met in my life. The most proper. You have never done a single thing that was not precisely what the occasion required. You look at me like I am a cautionary tale whenever I so much as —” Hegestured vaguely at himself. “So a woman like you would never—” Another stop. A slight narrowing of the eyes. “Although...”
Emily raised her eyebrows.
“Although,” he repeated, more slowly this time. “I do not actually know you very well, do I?” He said it half to himself. “Every time we are in the same room, we end up arguing about something, and I have never once in all that time thought to ask...” He paused. “I mean, I know what I think of you. I know what I see when I look at you. But I cannot claim to know what happens when I am not looking.” He tilted his head. “Can I?”
She said nothing.
“So perhaps,” he continued. “I cannot speak for you. I cannot say with any certainty what you would or would not.” He pressed his lips together. “The father. What happened to the father? Did he reject the child? Is that why you need a husband so urgently, because the father is not...” He stopped again. Looked at her. “Did he pass away? Is that what you are not telling me? Was there someone before all of this, before the Season, before any of it, and something happened, and now you are without any options?”
He looked at her for a moment. She looked back at him.
“What are you not telling me?”
His voice had dropped. The thinking-out-loud quality had left it entirely, and what replaced it was a tone that was quieter and more direct. Like he had arrived at the edge of something and needed to know what was on the other side.
He took a step forward.
Just one. Slow and deliberate, closing the distance between them in a way that the room had not previously contained, and then he was there, close enough that she had to tilt her chin slightly to hold his gaze, close enough that she could feel the warmth of him, close enough that when he exhaled, she was aware of it.
His eyes searched hers.
She could feel her own heartbeat, and it was entirely inconvenient.
The candlelight moved between them, and the room was very quiet. All she could dwell on was the fact that Theodore was looking at her with an expression she had never seen on him before, open and intent and stripped of every clever thing he usually kept between himself and the world.
She thought, distantly and unhelpfully, that he had extraordinarily beautiful eyes.
