Page 6 of Caught by the Forbidden Duke
“He isn’t recovering from anything. He is sitting at a piano. He was perfectly comfortable until a moment ago.”
“He was comfortable,” the Duke said, “because he walked away from his guardian without a word to anyone, in a house full of strangers.”
“He is six years old.”
“He is old enough to understand that disappearing without a word is not acceptable conduct.”
“He found a quiet room.” She kept her voice level. “He sat down here and didn’t even touch the piano until I came. I would’ve heard him from my room if he had.”
The Duke looked at her then, properly, for the first time since he had come through the door. Then, he turned back to James, who had, during this exchange, returned to the beginning of the sequence and was working through it again with the same grave attention as before.
“James,” he gritted out. “Stop playing.”
James’s hands came off the keys. His mouth pulled down at the corners. He stood and looked at the door, and not at either of them.
That was the moment the door opened, and a woman in a grey dress came in breathless, her hands clasped at her waist.
“Miss Hartley.” The Duke’s voice was entirely without warmth and also, somehow, without fury. “Take James home. We will discuss this tomorrow.”
“Yes, Your Grace.” She came to the boy’s side and touched his elbow lightly. “Come along, my lord.”
James turned, and he looked at her for a moment, then raised his hand and waved.
Annabelle raised hers back, her expression brightening at his shy farewell. “Goodnight, James.”
He went with Miss Hartley without argument, and the door drew closed behind them. The room went quiet, and somewhere at the other end of the house, the orchestra persisted.
Annabelle turned to the Duke, now free to voice her opinion with the subject of it gone. “Pardon me, Your Grace, but I believe you were too harsh with him,” she said.
He had already moved toward the door, but he stopped. He came back around and gave her the full weight of his attention, which was, she found, rather more considerable at close range than his partial attention had been.
“He left his guardian without a word in a house full of strangers, Lady Annabelle. I believe some harshness is warranted here.”
“He is six years old.”
“You keep saying that.”
“You keep behaving as though it were an irrelevant detail.” She crossed her arms. “He was frightened before you arrived. He was more frightened after. I would not call that a record to be proud of.”
He looked at her. He crossed the room toward her, standing mere inches away from her.
“Lady Annabelle.” He said it slowly. “You are Lucien’s sister, not James’s governess. You do not have the full picture.”
“Perhaps I don’t.” She held his gaze without difficulty. He had very blue eyes, level and direct, in a face that had clearly decided to reveal nothing useful. “I am not claiming expertise in the whole of his character. I am telling you what I saw. He is not a defiant child. He is not a disobedient child. He is a child who finds the world a great deal louder than most people do, and the way to manage that is not to issue orders and wait for compliance.”
He looked at her for a moment with the air of a man who had not recently been spoken to in this manner and was taking stock of the experience.
“You are very forthright,” he said.
“I’ve been told so before.”
“It was not a compliment.”
“I know.” She tilted her head. “But I notice you still haven’t told me I’m wrong.”
He was close enough now that she could see the full state of his cravat, which had endured a long evening rather badly, and the slight disarrangement of his collar.
Heavens, he was tall. She had registered this in a general way before, at various Lucien-adjacent occasions where he had been present and largely unremarkable. Proximity had a way of making previously abstract details considerably more concrete.
