Page 74 of Duke of Moonstone
He looked at her. She looked back. The firelight moved across her face, and her blue eyes held his with that particular directness he had never quite learned to defend against.
“Do you still believe it?” she asked. “That love is unnecessary in a marriage?”
“I believe,” he said, “that trust and duty are more reliable foundations than feeling. Feeling shifts. It deceives. A man may feel one thing on Monday and quite another by Friday, and where does that leave the people who depended on Monday’s conviction?”
“And duty does not shift?”
“Duty holds. That is its purpose.”
Frances looked away. Her profile was clean against the firelight—the line of her jaw, the curve of her mouth, the faint crease between her brows that appeared when she was thinking something she had not yet decided to say. He watched her, unable to stop, and the question that formed in his mind was one he could not answer.
What are you thinking? What is it that moves behind your eyes when you look away from me?
“Some people still wish to be chosen.” Her voice was quiet. Not tentative—Frances was never tentative—but careful in a way that suggested the words cost her something. “Not as a practical matter. Not as a sensible arrangement. Chosen. With love first.”
The fire crackled. Rain hammered the glass. And Alexander looked at her face—at the way she held herself very still, at the steadiness of her gaze, at the vulnerability she was permitting him to see—and he understood.
She was not speaking in abstractions.
She was speaking about herself.
The clarity settled in his chest like a stone dropped into deep water. Heavy. Undeniable. Sending ripples outward into places he had kept still for years.
She wanted to be loved. Not provided for. Not protected. Not managed, arranged, or settled. Loved.
“Our marriage...” he said. The words came slowly. Each one measured. “It does not have to be unhappy.”
Frances looked at him. Her eyes were very bright.
“Unhappiness is not the only thing a woman fears.” She closed the book and set it on the table beside her chair. “Sometimes what she fears is a life that simply feels empty.”
The word landed between them.Empty.It sat in the air the way all true things did—quietly and without apology.
Frances rose. She smoothed her skirts. She lifted her chin and met his gaze one final time, and in her expression, there was something he could not reach and did not know how to answer.
“Goodnight,” she said.
She turned toward the door.
Thunder rolled again—deep, shuddering, close enough that the walls seemed to feel it—and the lamp on the side table guttered and dimmed.
Frances startled. The sound was enormous, pounding through the windows and into the room, and her body moved before her mind did—a quick step backward, her weight shifting, her heel catching the curled edge of the carpet.
She pitched forward.
Her hands reached out. The floor rushed up. And then—hands. One at her waist, steady and firm, the other gripping her arm above the elbow, pulling her upright with a strength that refused to be challenged, drawing her back from the fall and into something far more dangerous.
Alexander held her.
She was close. Closer than the settee, closer than the dance, closer than any of the careful distances they had measured and maintained and pretended were enough. His hand was at her waist—she could feel the press of each finger through the muslin, warm and steady against the curve of her hip. His other hand gripped her arm. His chest was inches from hers.
Frances’s breath stopped.
Move. Step back. Say something—anything—and step back.
She did not step back, nor did he.
His hand stayed on her waist. She could feel the heat of his palm through the fabric, sense how his fingers pressed—not pulling her closer but not letting go either. Holding. As if he had caught her and forgotten to release or remembered and chose not to.
