Page 23 of Duke of Moonstone
“And a duchess,” he continued as though she had not spoken at all, which was a habit of his that she found particularly maddening, “is expected to provide an heir.”
Frances went very still. The heat in her cheeks changed, shifted from embarrassment to something that burned hotter and sat deeper, and she felt the breath catch in her chest before she could stop it.
An heir.
She stared at him. He stood there with his hands behind his back and his expression calm, as if he had just made a casual comment about the weather or the drainage in the south field, and something inside her chest suddenly caught fire.
“Is that all I am to you?” The words came out before she could measure them, and her voice shook, just slightly, just enough that she heard it herself and was furious about it. “A vessel for your heir?”
“That is not what I said.”
“It is precisely what you said.”
“I said that providing an heir is an expectation. I did not say it was the sole purpose of our arrangement.”
“Our arrangement.” She let the word sit between them. “Is that what you call this? An arrangement?”
“What would you prefer I call it?”
“A marriage, perhaps. Though I confess the distinction may be lost on you.”
His eyes narrowed just enough for her to notice, and she did. That noticing made her heart do something it had no business doing—beat faster instead of slower, which was the wrong way entirely.
“I am attempting,” he said, and there was something very controlled about the way he said it, something that suggested the control was costing him effort, “to discuss a matter of some importance with you. I had thought you might prefer directness to pretense.”
“How dare you?” Frances folded her arms across her chest. “You come to my bedchamber on our wedding night, having abandoned me for the entirety of the day, having failed to appear at dinner, and you stand there and tell me that my principal function is to produce your heir, and you call that directness?”
“I call it honesty.”
“I call it appalling.”
“I have not expressed myself well,” he said.
“On that we are agreed.”
He looked at her, and she watched his gaze drop just for a moment. Just long enough to be certain it had happened. His eyes moved to her mouth and then returned to hers, all in less than a heartbeat, and Frances felt it in every nerve she had.
Do not. Do not think about that.
She took a breath, held it for a count of three, then released it. “Goodnight, Your Grace.” She gestured toward the door with a steadiness she did not feel. “I believe this conversation is finished.”
He did not move.
She kept her arm extended, her hand pointing to the open doorway, met his eyes, held them, and waited.
The Duke studied her. That was the only way to describe it. His gaze swept over her face with such intensity that her skin felt warm beneath her nightdress, despite all the layers of fabric separating them. Frances suddenly had an irrational certainty that he could see right through everything—the dressing gown, the nightdress, and the composure she was barely holding together—all the way down to the thing beneath which she didnot want him to see and which she was not entirely sure she wanted to see herself.
She did not lower her arm.
“Of course,” he said at last. “I would never do anything against your will.”
He said it quietly and plainly, without performance, and something about the way he said it landed somewhere in Frances’s chest in a way she had not braced for.
“We shall discuss the matter tomorrow,” he added and turned toward the door.
Frances watched him go. He moved without hurry, the way he always moved, with the measured stride of a man who did not rush because the world generally arranged itself around his timeline rather than the reverse. He reached the doorway, and she should have let him leave. She should have stood there in silence and watched him go and closed the door behind him and gone to bed, and that should have been the end of it.
“I expect you to join me for breakfast.”
