“Not strangers. That’s what makes it strange.” Rose sighed in her sleep and Penelope pressed her lips to the top of the baby’s head. “I don’t know what we are.”
Neither do I.
The fire had burned low. He should add another log. Should stand, should move, should do anything other than sit here ona nursery floor watching Penelope hold a sleeping child whilst the last daylight caught the loose strands of her hair and turned them to copper.
He didn’t move.
Outside, a wood pigeon called—a low, mournful sound that seemed to belong to the strange suspended world they’d built inside this room.
“Here,” he said instead. “Let me put her down. Your arms must be aching.”
She hesitated—barely a breath—then nodded. He rose to his knees and reached for Rose, and the transfer required closeness. Required her leaning toward him, his hands sliding beneath the warm weight of the baby, their arms crossing and brushing in the narrow space between them.
Rose settled against his chest without waking. He stood slowly and carried her to the cradle, lowering her with a steadiness his hands did not entirely feel. When he turned back, Penelope had risen too, rubbing the stiffness from her shoulder, and they were standing far too near to one another in the half-dark nursery.
He could smell lavender. The faint sweetness of the pear she’d been feeding Rose. The clean scent of soap on warm skin.
“Alastair.” His name in her mouth—notYour Grace, notduke—landed somewhere beneath his sternum and stayed.
“Penelope.”
Neither of them moved. The firelight caught the curve of her jaw, the hollow of her throat where her pulse beat visibly. His hand lifted—he could not have said whether by choice or instinct—and hovered near her cheek without touching. Close enough to feel the warmth radiating from her skin. Close enough that his fingertips trembled with the effort of not closing that final inch.
Her breath hitched. He watched the small, sharp movement of her chest, the way her lips parted just enough to undo every resolution he’d ever made. Her eyes were enormous in the half-light.
Kiss her.
The thought was a fist closing around his lungs. Not a rake’s calculation, not a practised seduction. Just the blinding, desperate want to close the distance between his mouth and hers and find out whether she tasted the way he’d been imagining for weeks.
Penelope stepped back.
One step. Enough to break the thread that had drawn taut between them, enough to let air rush into the space where warmth had been. Her hand found the edge of the cradle behind her, steadying herself—or holding herself in place.
“We agreed,” she said. Her voice was not quite steady. “Rules. Boundaries. A marriage of convenience and nothing more.”
The words landed like cold water. He let his hand drop.
“Of course.” He manufactured a smile from somewhere—God only knew where, because every part of him was still standing in the space she’d vacated. “Forgive me. Nurseries at twilight are evidently hazardous to a man’s judgement. I shall have Pemberton issue a household warning. Perhaps a placard on the door.Beware: proximity to sleeping infants may cause temporary loss of reason.”
The joke landed in the space between them and died there. She didn’t laugh. Her fingers were white against the cradle’s edge, and he could see the rapid flutter of her pulse at the base of her throat—a small, involuntary betrayal that told him everything her words refused to.
“Goodnight, Your Grace.”
Your Grace.The title sealed the distance between them like a door swinging shut.
“Goodnight, duchess.”
He walked out of the nursery and down the corridor without looking back, his stride measured and unhurried, every inch the careless rake with nothing at stake.
He made it as far as the staircase before he stopped. Pressed his hand flat against the wall. Closed his eyes.
The plaster was cool beneath his palm. Somewhere below, a servant moved through the house, closing shutters for the night. Ordinary sounds. The machinery of a life that had become, without his permission, the only life he wanted.
Something had shifted tonight—some invisible line redrawn in a place neither of them could pretend to ignore. He’d seen it in the way her breath caught. In the pulse hammering at her throat. In the step backward that had cost her just as much as it had cost him.
She’d stepped back because she was afraid.
Not of him.