Page 90 of The Duke's Sinful Deal
Maxwell’s gaze remained on hers, steady and considering. “It would seem so.”
The evening carried on, lighter now, the earlier tension replaced by something far more natural. Conversation flowed without hesitation, laughter rising and falling as though the unease that had once defined the room had never been there at all.
And as Arabella sat among them, no longer uncertain, no longer guarded in quite the same way, she found herself thinking that perhaps this was not as fragile as she had feared.
* * *
The laughter from the evening did not follow them home.
It lingered, perhaps, in the edges of memory, in the quiet warmth that had settled between them in Eleanor’s drawing room, but by the time the carriage came to a stop before their own townhouse, something had shifted. Not vanished, not diminished, but altered. The ease remained, yet beneath it ran something more charged, as though the space between them had been filled with a tension neither had yet named.
Maxwell stepped down first, turning to offer his hand. Arabella accepted it without hesitation, though the moment her fingers met his, she became aware of the subtle firmness in his grip, the way it lingered just a fraction longer than necessary before releasing.
“You were quiet on the ride,” she said as they entered the house together.
“So were you,” he returned.
Arabella glanced at him, noting the steadiness in his expression, though there was something beneath it that had not been there before. “Very well,” she said. “Whywere you quiet on the ride?”
Maxwell removed his gloves, setting them aside with deliberate care before answering. “I was considering our evening.”
“Oh! And?” she prompted.
“And the fact that it was… successful,” he said.
Arabella let out a small breath, something like relief threading through it. She hummed in agreement. “Eleanor did not seem nearly as inclined to challenge you as she did last week.”
“She will, in time,” he said. “When she believes it necessary.”
“Whenever it happens. I promise you, I will be prepared.”
Arabella smiled faintly at that, though her attention did not stray far from him. “And Roderick,” she added, “may never recover from tonight.”
“That is unlikely,” Maxwell said. “He appears accustomed to it.”
Their conversation carried them further into the house, through the familiar corridors that no longer felt quite so formal as they once had. The lamps had been lit in anticipation of their return, casting a softer glow across the walls, the quiet of the house settling around them as the door closed behind.
It was only when they reached the top of the stairs that Arabella felt the shift more distinctly.
She stopped.
Maxwell noticed at once, turning slightly toward her. “Is something amiss?”
Arabella hesitated, though not because she did not know the answer.
“It is just— Well, the evening,” she said, her voice quieter now. “The way it has… is…”
Maxwell did not speak immediately. His gaze remained on her, steady, assessing in a way that did not feel distant, but closer than it had been before.
“It is the night we agreed upon,” he said at last.
The words settled between them, simple in their meaning, though not without weight.
Arabella felt her pulse quicken, though she held his gaze. “Yes,” she said. “It is.”
There had been a time, not so long ago, when the acknowledgment of it would have brought only nerves, only the quiet, uncertain anticipation of something she did not yet understand. Now, it was different. The uncertainty remained, but it was threaded with something else, something warmer, something that made the thought of it feel less like obligation and more like expectation.
“I had thought,” she said carefully, “that it might feel as it did before.”
