Page 83 of Duke of Moonstone
She looked up.
Alexander descended. He was dressed for the day, but there were shadows beneath his eyes that had not been there two days ago. His jaw carried the particular set of a man who had been arguing with himself for forty-eight hours and had not yet determined the winner.
He reached the bottom of the stairs.
Their eyes met across the entrance hall. The marble floor stretched between them—five feet, perhaps six—and the air held the same charge it had held in the study and in the library before that and in every room they had occupied together since the night of the storm.
Alexander looked at the trunks. At the open door beyond where the carriage stood ready. At Graves, who had the good sense to find something fascinating about the ceiling. Then back at her.
“I am coming with you,” he said.
Frances went still.
“I will not allow my wife to travel alone on a journey of that distance.” His hands were clasped behind his back. His spine was straight. His face gave nothing away.
Frances looked at him. Her gloves were half-buttoned. Her cloak hung over her arm. The carriage waited. Scotland waited. Eleanor waited.
And Alexander stood at the foot of the stairs with something in his expression that was not apology or surrender but might, if she looked long enough, be the beginning of both.
She did not ask why he had changed his mind. She did not ask what the last two days had cost him or what he had decided or whether this meant he had forgiven Eleanor or simply could not bear to let Frances go alone. She asked none of it.
“The carriage leaves within the hour,” she said.
He nodded once, turned, and took the stairs two at a time.
Frances watched him go. Her heart was hammering beneath her ribs, and her hands were not quite steady inside her half-buttoned gloves, and she could not have said whether what she felt was relief or anticipation or something far more complicated than either.
Scotland. Four days in a carriage. Together.
CHAPTER 29
“We shall stop within the hour,” Alexander said without looking up from the window.
Frances turned a page in her book. She had been turning pages at irregular intervals for the past thirty miles which meant she was either reading very selectively or not reading at all. Alexander suspected the latter. He had not seen her eyes move across the text once.
“There is a coaching inn at Stony Stratford,” he continued. “It will serve for a meal.”
“Very well.”
Two words. She had given him precisely two words at a time for the better part of four hours.Very well. Of course. Thank you.
The carriage rocked over a rut in the road. Frances’ shoulder pressed briefly against the squabs, and she steadied herselfwithout looking up. Her gloved hand rested on the page. Her profile was turned toward the glass.
Say something. Ask her about… anything. The weather. The road. Whether she is comfortable.
The silence had solidified between them across the miles, hardening into something neither of them seemed willing to break first. Pride, maybe. Or self-preservation. Or the stubbornness of two people who had said too much and not enough in equal parts, unable to decide which mistake to fix first.
Alexander gazed out his window, watching the countryside unfold in shades of green and gray. Hedgerows, fields, and a distant church spire came into view—England at its most mundane and without offering any useful distraction.
I should not have come.
The thought had occurred approximately seven times since London. He dismissed it each time with the same inadequate reasoning:A duke does not allow his wife to travel unaccompanied.It was true. It was also insufficient, and they both knew it.
“Is Stony Stratford agreeable to you?” he asked. “Or would you prefer to press on further?”
Frances looked up from her book. Her eyes met his, and for a moment, the carriage felt very small.
“Stony Stratford is perfectly acceptable,” she said. “I am not particular about where I eat.”
