“It won’t.”
His brow arched at that.
“It cannot,” she amended, more carefully.
Another pause.
“Very well.” The words seemed drawn from him by force. “Your narrative may serve—particularly as Felicity and I are not in the habit of advertising our schedules.”
Between them, the rest of the details were settled by the end of the evening. Who had been where, and when.
At the end of their discussion, Rosamund inclined her head, alreadyreshaping the article in her mind—the tone, the sequencing, the emphasis. It would have to be exact.
As she rose, his voice stopped her. “Keep in mind, Rosamund, if Felicity objects, this entire arrangement is void.”
“Of course.” Rosamund did not hesitate. She knew her sister-in-law—a woman who had once donned breeches to reclaim her own father’s estate. Felicity would understand what was at stake.
Still, when Rosamund stepped into the corridor, any sense of triumph was far overshadowed by grief.
She had secured the article.
She would safeguard the Duke of Bexley’s reputation, and all of the people who depended upon him.
But in protecting him, she had quietly undone herself—because somehow, over the course of those four days, she had discovered what it was to feel whole… and she had just relinquished him.
HOLLOW
JULIAN
After Rosamund and her dratted brother left, Julian had fully intended to rage.
The impulse rose hot and immediate—an urge to shatter something, to prove to himself that his decision to let her go had been the right one. For his sake, but moreso for hers.
But once the carriage wheels faded down the drive, the fury bled out of him as swiftly as it had come.
What remained was worse.
Silence.
An emptiness settled deep in his chest, heavy and unrecognizable. The house that had so recently crackled with temper—and before that, with her… brightness—now yawned wide and hollow.
He stood in the center of the dining room and waited for the fury to rise again, to fill this unsettling void. It did not.
He could overturn the table. Shatter the glass. Tear the damned portraits from their hooks and grind the frames beneath his heel.
The thought flickered through him—brief, violent.
And then it passed.
Not suppressed or contained, simply gone. He could not drag it back out of himself, and he did try. Shameful as it was, hewantedit.
The rage was simple. The lack of control was simple.
Whatever this was… was not.
If he was not the brute society whispered about—if he was not the volatile, dangerous creature Rosa—Lady Harrington’sbrother had prepared to confront—then what, precisely, was he?
A man abandoned in his own house.