Page 61 of Duke of Moonstone
“Miss Bennet, where is Emily? It is nearly time for dinner.”
Frances stood in the doorway of the nursery, one hand on the frame, scanning the room. The small bed was neatly made. A stack of picture books sat on the nightstand beside the silver music box. The chair by the window was empty.
Miss Bennet looked up from the writing desk where she had been composing a letter. “His Grace came for her not five minutes ago, Your Grace. He said he would take her down himself.”
Frances blinked. “The Duke came for her?”
“Yes, Your Grace. He knocked and asked if Miss Penford was ready for dinner. She went with him directly.”
Frances could not remember the Duke ever fetching Emily for anything. Meals were structured. Arrivals were timed. People appeared at their designated places at their designated hours, and the Duke managed his household the way a conductor managed an orchestra—from a distance, with a baton, and without ever picking up an instrument himself.
“Thank you, Miss Bennet.”
She turned and made her way down the corridor, her slippers quiet on the carpet. The staircase stretched below her, candlelight pooling on each step, and she descended at a pace that was neither hurried nor leisurely, driven, in truth, by a curiosity she would not have admitted to under oath.
She reached the dining room. The doors stood open.
The Duke was seated at the head of the table with Emily on his left. He was leaning slightly toward her—not much but enough that the rigid line of his posture had softened—and he was speaking.
“The stones are enormous,” he said. “Each one taller than this room. Taller than the house, some of them. And they were placed there thousands of years ag, by people who had no machines, no engines, nothing but rope and will and extraordinary ingenuity.”
Emily’s eyes were enormous. “Can we visit them someday?”
Something flickered across his face. Brief and unguarded—a look that Frances could not name that hovered between longing and loss. It was there for just a moment. Then he smiled. A genuine smile, not the controlled expression he usually showed in compan, but something that reached his eyes and transformed them.
“I should like that very much,” he said.
Frances’ hand tightened on the doorframe.
He would make a good father.
The thought arrived whole and unannounced, and with it came a pain she had not braced for—sharp and deep, lodged somewhere behind her ribs where she could not reach it.
But we will never find out.
She would never give him an heir. She had decided that weeks ago in the quiet of her own room, staring at the ceiling in the dark. She could not bring a child into a marriage built on obligation. She could not offer that piece of herself—the most vulnerable, the most permanent—to a man who had told her, plainly and without apology, that this was an arrangement. That love had no part in it. That their lives would be separate, their union a matter of paper and propriety and nothing more.
He had made that clear from the beginning. She would not forget it simply because he looked gentle in candlelight.
Frances drew a breath, straightened her shoulders, arranged her face into something that would pass for composure, and stepped into the room.
Both heads turned.
Emily’s face lit up. “Frances! Did you know the pyramids are in Egypt? And they are made of stone, and nobody knows exactly how they were built, and there are secret chambers inside?—”
The Duke rose to his feet.
The movement was immediate. He stood the instant Frances crossed the threshold and remained standing, his hand resting on the back of his chair, while she crossed to her place and sat. Only then did he lower himself back into his seat.
“Good evening,” she said.
“Good evening.” His gaze held hers for a moment. Neutral. Measured. The warmth she had seen from the doorway was gone, hidden behind the composure he wore around her like a coat buttoned up to the collar.
The echo of their argument lingered between them. She called him selfish and said he used duty to numb himself. She walked out of his study before he could reply, and neither of them mentioned it again. The silence on the topic grew heavier, and they both tiptoed around it like rearranged furniture in a dark room.
“Frances, did you know there are temples in India with carvings of elephants?” Emily’s spoon hung suspended in the air, forgotten. “And the carvings are so detailed you can see the wrinkles on their skin.”
“I did not know that.” Frances turned to her with a smile that required no effort at all. “How wonderful. Are the temples very old?”
