Page 75 of Duke of Moonstone
The lamp burned low. The rain struck the glass in heavy, relentless sheets. And Alexander was looking at her with an expression that was nothing—nothing at all—like the one she had grown accustomed to.
The composure was gone. The careful blankness, the measured control, the mask he wore in every room, at every meal, and during all their shared conversations in this house—all of it had fallen away. What remained was raw. Open. It was the face of a man standing at the edge of something he had spent his entire life building walls against, and those walls were no longer holding.
Frances looked up at him.
His breathing had shifted—she could feel it that close—the rise and fall of his chest changed from its usual steady rhythm into something faster. Something uncontrolled.
This is the moment. This is the thing we have been circling for weeks—in the library and the garden and the carriage and the drawing room at Evermere and every quiet room where we stood too close and said too little and pretended it was nothing.
Something shifted between them. She sensed it. Not a sound or movement but a change in the air itself—like the space between them had been holding its breath and finally, at last, let go.
Alexander bent down. His lips met hers.
The kiss was uncertain at first. Careful. The pressure of his lips was light, almost questioning, as though he were not entirely sure he had the right and was bracing himself for the moment she pulled away.
Frances did not pull away.
I should. I should stop this. I should...
She kissed him back.
Her hand rose to his chest—neither pushing nor pulling, just resting there against the front of his waistcoat, her fingers pressing into the fabric—and when she responded, something shifted between them. Alexander’s hand tightened around her waist. He pulled her closer. His other hand left her arm and found the side of her face, his fingers slipping into her hair, and the kiss deepened into something that was no longer tentative.
His mouth was warm. His hand on her jaw was steady. And Frances felt the weeks of careful distance—the measured breakfasts, the polite conversations, the arguments that burned too brightly, and the silences that hurt too much—all of it dissolved like sugar in rain.
The storm pounded the windows. And Frances stood in the center of the library with Alexander’s hand in her hair and his arm around her waist and his mouth against hers, and she forgot every single thing she had told herself on terraces and in dark bedrooms and in the privacy of her own stubborn, guarded heart.
This. This is what it feels like.
They pulled apart. Not suddenly but slowly—as if the space between them needed to be rebuilt brick by brick. His hand released her hair. His fingers loosened at her waist. The air rushed back in, cool against her flushed skin.
Frances looked up at him. She could not hide what was on her face. She knew it, and she could not stop it, nor did she try. Hope. Simple, honest, and completely unguarded.
Alexander looked back at her.
His breathing was uneven. His hand was still raised, suspended in the air between them where her face had been a moment ago. And his expression—God, his expression. She could see everything in it. The want. The fear. The war between the two, playing out across his features in real time, as clearly as if he had spoken every word aloud.
Say something. Please. Tell me this was not a mistake. Tell me you felt it too. Tell me...
He stepped back.
The distance between them grew, and she watched his face tighten gradually. First, his jaw tightened. Then his shoulders pulled back. Finally, his eyes, which had been so open, so unguarded, and unlike anything she had seen from him before, became careful and still.
“Goodnight,” he said.
The word fell into the space between them like a door swinging shut.
Alexander turned and walked to the library door. He opened it, stepped through, and pulled it closed behind him.
CHAPTER 27
“When can I see Sophia again?”
Emily asked the question before Frances had finished buttering her toast. The child was sitting up very straight in her chair, her feet swinging above the floor, her breakfast largely untouched save for a single bite taken from a piece of bread that now lay abandoned on her plate.
“Soon,” Frances said. “I shall write to my sister today.”
“Today?” Emily’s face brightened. “Could she come here? Or could I go there? Sophia said they have a lake. She said there are fish in it. Real fish, Frances, not painted ones.”
