Page 99 of Duke of Moonstone
He found her in their bedchamber. She was standing at the window with her back to the door, her hair pinned up, and her traveling dress already fastened. Not the morning dress she wore yesterday. Not the soft muslin she had slept beside him in. The dark blue pelisse lay across the bed. Her trunk sat open on the floor, half-packed.
Something cold moved through him.
“Frances.”
She turned. Her face was… displeased. That was the only word for it. The warmth that had lived in her features for days, that had bloomed in the tavern and softened in the church and glowed in the candlelight of their shared bed—all of it was gone. Her blue eyes met his and gave him nothing. The gaze of a woman looking at a stranger.
“I have been thinking,” she said. “About Scotland.”
“As have I.” He stepped into the room. “I spoke with the coachman this morning. He suggests we travel north through?—”
“We should return to London.”
He stopped. “I beg your pardon?”
“London.” She turned back to the window. Her hands were clasped before her—tight, the knuckles white. “We should go back. Immediately.”
“But you said yes.” The words came out sharper than he intended. “Last night. You said yes to Scotland.”
“I have changed my mind.”
“Why?”
She did not look at him. “Emily needs us. We have been gone for more than a week already. It is not fair to leave her so long.”
The excuse landed between them, thin as paper. Emily was well cared for. They both knew it. Miss Bennet was there. Mrs. Wells. His mother. An entire household designed to function in their absence.
“Frances.” He took another step forward. “If something has happened, if I have done something?—”
“You have done nothing.” She picked up the pelisse from the bed and folded it over her arm. “I simply think it is time we returned.”
Her voice was even. Composed. The voice she used at dinner parties and formal calls, the one that held everyone at a distance so measured it could have been drawn with a compass.
What happened? What changed between last night and this morning?
Last night, she had smiled at him in the dark. Last night, she had saidyeswith a softness that had made his chest ache. And now, she stood before him with her trunk half-packed and her eyes like glass, and he could not understand.
“Very well,” he said.
She looked at him then. It was brief but enough of him to catch a shadow in the depths. Then she turned back to the trunk.
“I shall inform the coachman,” Alexander said.
“Thank you.”
He stood in the doorway for a moment longer. The distance between them felt immense. He wanted to cross it. Wanted to take her by the shoulders and ask what had stolen the warmth from her face and the light from her eyes. Wanted to say,Tell me what I have done, and I will undo it.
He did not. She had not asked him to. And a man did not force his way past a door that had been deliberately closed.
He turned and walked away. The cottage was quiet behind him. Scotland stretched green and wild beyond the windows, and they would not see any of it. The lochs, the Highlands, and the week that might have been—all of it dissolving like mist in the morning sun.
She has changed her mind. About Scotland. About staying.
About me.
Four days of silence stretched like a wire between them. Four days of Frances sitting across from him in the carriage with a book open in her lap and her eyes never meeting his. She spoke briefly and politely when addressed. She thanked him when he handed her down from the carriage. She said goodnight at each inn with a nod and a closed door.
Alexander arranged separate rooms. He did not ask whether she wished it. He simply told the innkeepers—one room for the duchess, one for himself—and watched her disappear upstairs without looking back. Each night, he lay alone in unfamiliar beds and stared at unfamiliar ceilings and tried to understand what had broken.
