Page 47 of A Duke to Reclaim Her
“There are some things worth forgetting.”
She thought about all the things she had misjudged, all the times she had looked at him and seen only the surface.
She reached for his hand, squeezing it once.
He looked at her, startled, as if she were the last person in the world he expected to be kind.
For the first time since their wedding, Rose wondered if she could actually learn to love him.
But she did not say it out loud.
The carriage rolled on, the city a blur of lamps and mystery, and Rose realized she was not afraid of the darkness anymore.
She was afraid of what waited in the light.
The moonlight slanted through the tall windows of the entry hall as they returned from the Rutledge House ball, its pale glow pooling across polished floorboards.
Rose lingered by the coat stand, her gloved hands busy unfastening the clasp of her cloak, yet her eyes never met his. Felix stood a few paces away, shoulders squared beneath his tailcoat, as if braced against some unseen burden. Between them hung a hush denser than any library, unspoken words heavier than their evening finery.
She shrugged out of her cloak and draped it over a peg, then crossed the room in tentative steps, never too close, never too far.
In the dim light, the silk of her dress sparkled like distant stars. He watched her silently with his fingers curled at his side. Allthat passed between them was Rose’s steady gaze and Felix’s reluctant silence.
Their footsteps echoed when they moved, as if the house itself strained to hear what they would say. Rose paused at the threshold of the drawing room; her profile framed by the doorway. She flexed one gloved fingertip, then let her hand fall.
Felix shifted, the soft rustle of his coat the only answer. She wondered if he felt the same tug of unease, an urging that this standoff could not hold forever.
At last, she took a slow breath and stepped over the threshold, stopping just inside the room. He hovered near the window, where the city lights trembled beneath a scattering of stars.
She smiled—small, tremulous, but real.
He crossed the floor in two strides and offered her his hand. At the touch of his glove against hers, the tension in the room shivered and released, and the unspoken truce between them finally broke.
Rose did not move. She waited because she had learned that with Felix, silence was the only thing that ever-produced truth.
“You are not what I expected,” he said at last. “Any of it. The convent. The baby. I… need you, Rose. Desperately.”
The words hung in the room. Rose felt their weight settle over her like a shawl.
“I need you, too,” she said carefully. “I simply won’t let it undo me.”
Felix looked at her for a long moment. The fire snapped in the grate, and somewhere in the house a door closed. “That,” he said softly. “Is exactly what I mean.”
The warmth of the room pressed in, the scent of old books mingling with the faint spice of his cologne, and it emboldened her.
“Then tell me, Felix,” she said, her voice steady despite the flutter in her chest. “Precisely why you cannot give me what I’m asking for.”
He looked away, his jaw tightening as if her question was a hook snagging at something raw inside him.
“Love… is a luxury for those who can afford it,” he replied, his tone edged with deflection, but she saw the way his fingers curled into fists at his sides.
He took a step back, as though distance could shield him from her persistence.
Now, she would not allow him a retreat. Rose closed the gap, her hand brushing his arm with a gentleness that demanded he stay.
“You’re more than what you think you are,” she insisted. “You’re a good man, Felix. I’ve seen it in the way you care, even when you pretend not to.”
The fire crackled louder in the silence that followed, and he began to speak, his voice low and frayed. “My father… he was a storm that wrecked everything in his path. Affairs that shattered my mother, turning her into a ghost of the woman she once was. She’d weep in the dead of night, whispering about betrayal and broken vows, and I’d lie awake, hearing it all.”
