Page 47 of Duke of Moonstone
“Children need more than money and protection,” she said. “They need to be seen. They need to know that someone will come when they call. That someone cares whether they are frightened or lonely or sad.” She held his gaze. “The same is true for adults.”
Something flickered across his face. She could not identify it. It appeared for a moment—vulnerable and unprotected and almost hard to look at—and then he turned his head, and it was gone. He was now staring at the bookshelf as if the spines held the answer to something she had not even asked.
The silence stretched. Frances’ heart was beating hard, and her hands were trembling, just slightly, from the force of everything she had said and everything she had not.
She was too close now. Close enough that if he turned, they would be separated by barely two feet of carpet and a great deal of unacknowledged feeling.
“Your mother is right,” she said. Her anger had not gone—it was still there, hot and bright beneath her ribs—but it had changed shape. It was softer now. Steadier. “Emily should come live with us here at Whitestone.”
The Duke turned his head. “That is not?—”
“I will not hear any arguments.”
“You have not yet heard the argument.”
“I do not need to hear it. I already know what it will be. It will involve practicality and logistics and the disruption to household order, and none of it will matter because that child deserves a proper home.” She lifted her chin. “Not to be hidden away like some shameful secret.”
“I am not hiding her.”
“What would you call it?”
“Providing appropriate care at a suitable distance.”
“That is hiding her with a better vocabulary.”
His mouth pressed into a thin line. He was looking at her with an expression she had seen before—the look of a man who was losing a battle and knew it yet was not ready to surrender. His hands remained clasped behind his back, but his knuckles had turned white. She could see it from where she stood.
“You would take responsibility for a child who is not yours?” he asked.
The question was quiet. Stripped of argument. There was something in it that sounded almost like genuine curiosity—as though the concept itself was foreign, a thing he had heard described but never witnessed.
“Of course,” Frances said. “Unlike some,” she added and held his gaze, “I understand that duty without love is an empty thing.”
The words landed. She watched them land. She watched them move through him—across his face, through the set of his shoulders, down into whatever he kept locked behind that careful, disciplined composure. The room was very still. The clock on the mantelpiece ticked once, twice, three times, and neither of them moved.
Say something. Argue with me. Tell me I am wrong. Tell me I am sentimental and naive and that I do not understand how the world works.
He did not say any of those things.
“Very well,” the Duke said. One nod, brief and final. “I will make the arrangements.”
Frances released a breath she had not known she was holding. The relief was immediate and physical—a loosening in her chest, a softening in her hands. She had won. She had actually won. Against the Duke of Whitestone in his own study on a matter he had clearly considered closed.
Emily is coming home.
“Thank you,” she said, and she meant it which surprised her because she had not expected gratitude to be among the things she felt in this room today.
She turned toward the door. Her hand was on the handle when something made her look back.
The Duke was standing by the window with his hands at his sides and his face turned half away from her, and there was something in his expression that she had never seen before.
It was neither composure nor control. It was not the blank, impenetrable mask he wore into every room, conversation, and moment of his meticulously ordered life. It was something beneath all of that. Something that looked, in the half-second before he caught her watching and locked it away again, very much like a man who was afraid.
Not of her. Not of the argument. Of something older and deeper and closer to the bone. He straightened. The mask returned. His hands went behind his back.
“Was there something else?” he asked.
“No,” Frances said. “Nothing else.”
