Page 87 of Duke of Moonstone
She has been like this the entire time. This is who she is—not the careful duchess, not the woman measuring every word across my breakfast table. This.
He looked at her across the scarred table, and she looked back, and for a moment, the argument vanished. The kiss disappeared. The silence, the avoidance, and the two months ticking down like a clock neither of them could stop—all of it fell away. What was left was simply this: two people in a crowded room, sharing a meal, sharing a moment, sharing something that suspiciously looked like the start of understanding.
Frances turned back to the family as the conversation moved forward. Alexander finished his ale and ordered another, and when Will asked him whether Italian wine was truly as good as they said, he honestly replied that it was. The table then erupted into a debate about wine versus ale that lasted through the final course.
They left an hour later. The family wished them well on their journey. The boy made Frances promise to wave if she ever saw him bowling in his lane. Will shook Alexander’s hand with a grip that had hauled rigging in monsoons and seemed none the worse for it.
The carriage was waiting. The coachman opened the door. Frances climbed in, Alexander followed, the door closed, and the noise of the tavern fell away into the quiet creak of wheels and harness.
Frances settled against the squabs. Her cheeks were still pink. Her eyes still carried that brightness.
“That was unexpected,” she said.
“Which part?”
“All of it.” She smoothed her skirt. “You told them about your travels.”
“They asked.”
“You volunteered. Enthusiastically, one might say.”
“I would not say enthusiastically.”
“You used the word ‘remarkable.’ Twice.”
“The Pantheon is a remarkable building.”
“It is.” The warmth had not left her face. “You enjoyed yourself.”
It was not a question. He thought about denying it. Thought about retreating into the silence that had served him so reliably during the first half of the journey. Thought about saying something about obligation, passing time, or the need for civil conversation in public.
“Yes,” he said.
Frances smiled. She turned to the window. The carriage moved north. The hedgerows resumed their steady green procession beyond the glass. Alexander watched her profile against the fading afternoon light, and the warmth in his chest did not dissipate.
Happiness can sometimes be found in simple moments—in a crowded tavern with no title on the door and no expectation of anything but the pleasure of being present.
The thought turned itself over, and with it came another that was impossible to dismiss.
Is this what Eleanor chose?
Not the scandal. Not the defiance. Not the running and the border and the fury he had wrapped around himself like armor for weeks.
This.The warmth of a room full of strangers. The sound of someone laughing because they meant it. The particular joy of being seen—not as a duke or a duchess or a name in Debrett’s but as a person, sitting at a table, eating bread, telling stories about temples and storms.
Is this what she wanted? This ordinary, unremarkable, extraordinary thing?
CHAPTER 30
“Is something wrong?” Frances asked when she descended from the carriage and found Alexander’s scowl deepening as he released her hand.
“There is only one room available,” he announced.
“Here as well?”
He nodded, and her stomach tightened. They had been to The Cock earlier, and the inn had no rooms at all. Hoping for better luck, they had ventured here. It would seem that luck was as evasive as ever.
“I suppose it will do,” she murmured.
