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It was more than she could have ever asked for.

Chapter Eighteen

Over the next week, Dorian felt something shift further between him and Eloise.

Maybe it had been the teasing outside the jeweler’s she had taken him to, or maybe it had been staying awake to watch over her hound, or maybe it had been how they had both fussed over Pickle ever since.

Maybe it had been meeting Gideon in White’s, and how Dorian had found himself confessing that his view of his wife was going beyond just noticing her. Noticing her curves and her face and how she spoke. He was noticing how she thought and acted and loved.

It terrifies me, he’d told Gideon, thinking of the night of the ball at Almack’s, when he had first realized Eloise was more than just his duchess. That perhaps duchess and wife could mean two different things. And that there could be a third thing to link everything together, and he was terrified to think of her as that.

Pickle barked as Dorian walked him along the street. They had left before Eloise awoke, as Dorian was eager to get the dog moving his leg. He took it slow and easy, and always carried him back if his paw faltered. He was getting better. As Dorian had assured Eloise, the dog had strength in him.

Once he returned, he delivered Pickle back to his mistress, leaving them both to rest. He went into his chambers and dressed for the day. He had several meetings—notably avoiding the letter Lord Wittby had written, eager to meet with him—and he wrote Eloise a note himself to tell her where he was going.

He had no intention of making connections with that false man, not when he could not even bother to visit his own daughter several streets away.

His day passed by, meeting by meeting, cup after cup of coffee, and the occasional brandy.

At one point, he met with the Duke of Knightford.

“Knightford,” Dorian said, inviting him to sit down. “I have heard good things since my return to London.”

Andrew sat down, smiling pleasantly. It had been a while since Dorian had seen such a look on the duke’s face, and part of him was a little envious of how natural it had become.

“I am certain you have,” Andrew laughed. “But we are both dukes, are we not? We can call one another by name, Dorian.”

“Very well, Andrew,” Dorian agreed. “Word around is that your duchess, Jessamine, is having your first child.”

At the mention of that, Andrew’s face lit up. He smoothed down his cravat as if trying to compose his pride. “Indeed, we are. If she is a girl, we are naming her Rebecca. If a boy, Percy. However, Jessamine is rather certain we are having a girl. I believe it is a boy.”

“How so?”

Andrew chuckled quietly. “It is foolish, but when my mother was having me, apparently pears grew rather unexpectedly on a tree in her garden. It mostly produced apples, which signify a girl, so some superstitions say, but pears growing can mean a boy is to come. Jessamine found a fallen pear, and the start of a new one. She does not believe my superstition, but I do.”

Dorian nodded. “Well, whatever your baby is, I wish you all the health and happiness. Now, shall we speak of business?”

“Of course. But first, a brandy? To toast to my impending fatherhood and business association with you.”

Dorian made no hesitation to do so, and the dukes toasted. As their glasses clinked, Dorian thought through the rest of his day and the case files he would be writing up later in his study.

When Dorian returned home, exhausted and hands weary from signing contracts and eyes strained from reading letters, he knew the last thing he wanted was to shut himself away in his study as usual to continue the day’s work. He used to push himself to continue.

Work was better than thinking.

Work was better than his eyes straying to the lighthouse beyond his study window in Oldcliff Hall. Now, he was in the townhouse, and there was no lighthouse to haunt him, and there was his wife and newfound dog upstairs to see.

His mind was too tired to keep focusing on work, and it didn’t want to stray anywhere but Eloise.

Dorian trudged up the stairs, picking his way through the dim hallways. Despite his mind being on his wife, he should not disturb her at such a late hour. And the lure of simply collapsing into bed was admittedly appealing.

He opened the door to his chamber⁠—

And stopped short.

Pickle’s curled-up body was the first thing he saw at the foot of his bed, but above him, nestled into one side of the pile of pillows, Eloise had laid her head, her hair spilling over the silk white sheet of the pillow. In the darkness, her hair looked a deeper shade of brown.

Her eyes were closed, her mouth parted slightly in sleep.