Page 73 of A Highly Unlikely Duchess
Theodore stiffened, his jaw tightening. "We had an understanding, Alistair. Pardon me, but I am in no mood to get into the details. She needed a shield for Frederick, and Ineeded... well, I needed to fulfill my duty. We both got what we wanted. It was a settled matter."
Alistair chuckled, a dry, knowing sound that grated on Theodore’s nerves. "Theodore. Whatever Emily told you she wanted from this marriage, whatever arrangement you two agreed to before you stood in that church, I am telling you right now that what I watched tonight was not two people honoring a transaction." He paused. "You were looking at her all evening."
Theodore opened his mouth to protest, but Alistair held up a hand.
"Like a man who has forgotten entirely that there are other people in the room," Alistair continued. "I have known you for over a decade. I have watched you charm half of London. I have never once seen you look at a woman the way you were looking at Emily tonight." He paused. "Like something primitive in you had simply decided, and the rest of you had not quite caught up yet."
Theodore said nothing.
"I know what that looks like," Alistair said quietly. "I still look at Yvette that way. I recognized it immediately." He let that sit for a moment. "I also noticed that Emily was looking at you."
Theodore turned to look at him.
"Not when you were looking at her," Alistair said. "Every time you looked away. Every single time. She looked at you the moment your attention went elsewhere and looked away the moment it came back." He tilted his head. "That is not a woman honoring a transaction, Theodore. That is a woman who has feelings she is not ready to admit to."
The corridor was very quiet.
"Which means..." Alistair continued. "... that she has let her guard down. Which means that whatever she told you she wanted from this marriage, she wants something different now, whether she knows it yet or not."
Alistair stepped closer, his expression turning uncharacteristically grave. "I knew Emily long before this marriage, Theodore. I know she wants children. If she has developed feelings for you — and it is painfully obvious that she has — then hearing what you said earlier was a death knell. She must have overheard you telling me that you’d never be a father to your own blood because you weren't raised to know how. Did you ever actually say those words to her face?"
Theodore felt a cold hollow opening up in his chest. The memory of her shocked, violet eyes flashed through his mind, suddenly making a terrible kind of sense. "No," he admitted, his voice barely a whisper. "I never told her."
"Then there is your problem," Alistair said, reaching out to clap Theodore on the shoulder. "You’ve just told the woman who is falling for you that the one thing she likely dreams of is a dooryou’ve already locked and bolted. Good luck, Theodore. You’d better find a way to solve this.”
With a final, pitying look, Alistair turned and walked toward the guest wing, leaving Theodore standing alone in the dark.
Theodore remained frozen in the corridor, Alistair’s words sinking into him like lead. He could not deny it anymore; something had been brewing between him and Emily since that night in the library, a shift that had moved far beyond the cordial bounds of their arrangement into something dangerously visceral. He hated the way it made him feel, hated the sharp, biting jealousy that had flared up just watching her socialize with Yvette and Alistair. He had never been a man ruled by such petty, primitive impulses, yet he had felt a surge of genuine anger toward Alistair simply for occupying the space at Emily’s side that he craved for himself.
It was a loss of composure he wasn't ready for, and it confirmed his deepest fears; he was drifting into a territory where he had no map.
Theodore had no intention of venturing into the messy, uncertain world of fatherhood. He was a man of skill and strategy, but family was a language he had never been taught, a legacy of silence and desertion left behind by his father and the mother who had fled. If his words earlier were indeed the cause of Emily’s coldness, it meant they had already crossed a line they were never supposed to touch.
For her sake, and for the sake of his own sanity, he knew he had to find a way to retreat to the safe, sterile side of that line before the fire he’d sparked consumed them both.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
"Iwill be going to London for a while," Theodore said. "Business that requires my attention in person."
Emily looked at him across the table. She should have known, when he asked to have breakfast together that morning, that he was going to drop something on her.
She sat stiffly, the silver spoon in her hand feeling unnaturally heavy as the clinking of china filled the gaps in their conversation. She wasn't a child; she knew exactly what this was. This was a retreat. He was putting distance between them because the air in the house had become too thick with things they had left unsaid.
Deep down, a cold knot of guilt tightened in her stomach. She was certain it was because of her, because she had dared to touch him.
“Business, you say?” she asked, her voice tilting upward in a sharp, challenging edge. “What specific business requires the Duke of Carrowell to vanish so abruptly?”
Theodore hesitated, his gaze fixed on his plate for a fraction of a second too long before he looked up with a mask of perfect, infuriating calm. “A matter regarding the shipping lanes and a meeting at the club. It cannot be delayed.”
“How long is a while?” she asked, trying to meet his eyes.
"Two weeks," he said. "Perhaps a little longer."
She nodded. Then she added. "The shipping lanes?"
He looked at her. "Yes."
"Which ones specifically?"
