Page 67 of A Highly Unlikely Duchess
Emily could not believe her ears. “I was pregnant? And hide it?”
Euphemia nodded. “Yes. They keep saying you have made a fool of the Duke.”
If the rumor had been solely about her and not Theodore, Emily figured she would not have been panicking that much.
In that moment, Emily felt a desperate, irrational need for Theodore. It was a realization that hit her with more force than the rumor itself. In the short time they had been at Carrowell, he had become the person who grounded her. He had a way of speaking that made the world feel manageable again.
“Excuse me,” Emily said.
“Emily—”
“I just need a moment,” she said. “I will be back.”
She wanted Theodore.
She wanted his voice. She wanted the specific quality of it when he was being direct and calm and certain, the voice he had used outside Frederick's room when she was trying not to cry, the voice he had used in the garden when she had been sitting in the roses avoiding lunch and he had come to find her, and simply sat beside her, talked until the weight of the morning had lifted.
He knew how to talk to her. She had noticed that. Not talking at her, but to her, in the particular way that landed. She came to a stop near the edge of the dance floor and stood there and breathed.
She felt him before she saw him. His hand settled at her waist, and she exhaled. Emily felt her lungs expand for the first time since Euphemia had spoken.
“Emily.”
She turned her head. He was beside her, having appeared from thin air, his expression attentive and already slightly watchful.
“There is... Theodore, there is a rumor,” she whispered, her voice cracking. “They are saying that Frederick is... that I am —”
“I know,” he interrupted.
Emily looked up at him, her eyes wide with panic. “How can you be so calm? We don’t know how long this rumor has been spreading for. It’s entirely wrong. What is your business partners heard it? It is —”
Theodore’s gaze softened, though his jaw remained set. “Relax your shoulders, Emily,” he commanded softly. “You’re doing it again.”
Instinctively, she obliged, her muscles going slack under his touch. He shifted his hand from her waist, bringing it up to her shoulder and giving it a slow, deliberate squeeze.
“Everything is fine,” he said, his eyes locking onto hers, forcing her to find her center. “It is just a rumor, born of boredom and probably malice. You must calm yourself. If you look like a woman with a secret, they will believe you have one. But if you look like my Duchess, they will realize they have made a very dangerous mistake.”
“Theo —”
“You are going to breathe,” he continued. “You are going to stand here beside me, and you are going to remember that you are the Duchess of Carrowell and that means something in this room whether you feel it right now or not.”
She looked at him.
“Breathe,” he said.
She breathed.
“Good,” he said.
Emily looked up at him, her chest finally rising and falling in a steady rhythm. “How can you be so calm?” she whispered, her fingers curling into the fine wool of his sleeve. “These people are trying to damage your reputation. They are dragging your name through the mud just to get to me.”
She knew what she wanted from this life: security, a home for Frederick, but she had never intended for her presence to become a weight around Theodore’s neck. The thought that her proximity might tarnish the prestige he had spent a lifetime maintaining made her stomach twist with a fresh wave of guilt.
Theodore’s expression didn't waver. If anything, his features sharpened into something flinty and immovable. “My reputation is not so fragile that it can be toppled by the bored whispers of people who have nothing better to do than invent tragedies,” he said. “I will not stand for you, or Frederick, or my name being insulted. You are my wife. He is my ward. That is the beginning and the end of the matter.”
He stepped a fraction closer, his shadow shielding her from the prying eyes of the ballroom. “It’s just a rumor. If it dies on its own, which it may, then good. If it does not want to die on its own... then I will kill it.”
She stared at him and then smiled. “With what?”
