Page 78 of Duke of Moonstone
“Do it. All of it. Start with the Harker roof.”
The bailiff nodded. He made a mark in the leather notebook he carried and moved on to the next item—a fence line that wanted replacing, a gate hinge that had rusted through—and Alexander listened and asked the right questions and gave theright instructions, and none of it required him to think about the library.
He had left the house before breakfast. The corridors had been quiet, the servants only just beginning their rounds, the light through the windows thin and gray with early morning. He had dressed without ringing for his valet, pulled on his boots in the hallway, and gone out through the side entrance that led directly to the grounds.
There are matters requiring my attention. A duke does not neglect his estate.
This was true. The bailiff’s report confirmed it. The cottages did need repair. The drainage did need attention. These were genuine responsibilities that demanded his presence and his decisions, and he had fulfilled them with the thoroughness that had kept Whitestone solvent for a decade.
It was also true that he had timed his departure to avoid the breakfast room.
“The fence along the north pasture, Your Grace—shall I have it replaced entirely, or will a repair suffice?”
“Replace it. A repair will only hold until the first hard frost.”
“Very good, Your Grace.”
They continued walking. The bailiff spoke. Alexander listened attentively. The fields on either side of the path were green and damp, and the sky above was a pale, washed-out blue that often followed a storm. The air carried the scent of wet earth and grass, quite different from the library at Whitestone House.
Her hand pressed against my chest, her fingers digging into my waistcoat. The way she kissed me back... It was as if she had been waiting for it just as long as I had.
He stopped walking. The bailiff stopped beside him.
“Your Grace?”
“The drainage. You said sixty pounds.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“Make it eighty. I want the work done properly. No shortcuts.”
“Of course, Your Grace.”
They resumed walking. Alexander clasped his hands behind his back and fixed his gaze on the path ahead while the bailiff continued his report. The morning unfolded as mornings do—one practical matter after another, each requiring attention and giving a reason to be outside on the grounds instead of inside at the breakfast table in the same room as his wife.
I am in love with her.
The thought had already been there—sitting in the corner of his mind like a piece of furniture he had been walking around for weeks, refusing to look at directly, pretending it wasn’t taking up space. He had felt it in the library when she read to Emily. He had felt it at Evermere when he crossed the drawing room to claim the dance. He had felt it last night, right before he kissed her, when the lamplight caught her face, and the storm pressed against the glass, and every rational thought he had simply stopped.
I am in love with my wife. I have been for some time.
He knew it now with the kind of clarity that left no room for argument. The way one knew the ground was solid, or the sky was above. It was not a question. It was not an uncertainty he could resolve through further analysis. It was a fact, plain and immovable, and it changed nothing.
Because he also knew this: Frances had made her position plain.
That first morning at the breakfast table, she had looked at him across the cold toast and the silence and said what she said. She did not want children with him. She had been clear. She had been direct. She had spoken with the same quiet certainty she brought to everything, and he had heard her, and he had agreed, and the arrangement had been sealed.
She meant it. She has every right to mean it. I have no grounds to revisit the matter simply because I have been foolish enough to fall in love with her.
He thought of Frances with Emily. The patience she brought to every moment. The way she knelt on marble floors and talked about dragons. The way Emily reached for her hand without thinking, the way Emily laughed now—really laughed, bright and sudden and unafraid—because Frances had made her safe enough to try.
She is exactly the kind of woman I would want as the mother of my children.
The thought was there before he could stop it.
He closed the door on it.
She does not want that. Not with me. And wanting it does not give me the right to ask.
