Page 19

“I see,” said Phillipa, who did not, and he could see her not seeing it, curious and puzzled and being decent. She did not ask but merely rocked the baby a little more and let it lie. He was more grateful for that than he could say.

“We shall find one,” she said, after a moment. “Together.... at a later time.”

Together. The word went through him like a hand along a string.

“Later,” he agreed.

The baby was starting to droop. It happened all at once, as it does, the small head going heavy on her shoulder and the fist uncurling on her collar, and she smiled down at him with such open and unguarded tenderness that Gregory looked at the fire. When she at last turned to give him back to Martha, she did it with soft, reluctant care, as though she were handing over something breakable, and Martha, sensibly, said nothing whatsoever, curtsied, and vanished with her armful.

The door closed behind them.

Phillipa said, briskly, “I ought to go.”

She was aware of how it sounded. She was aware, in fact, of a number of things at that moment, chief among them the whiskey, which had made a warm and unfamiliar bloom in her stomach and was doing her no good at all.

She smoothed her cloak with both hands. She had dropped a slipper somewhere and her feet, in her stockings, were very cold on the carpet.

But all of that could be dealt with, she thought. What was most annoying was that her heart seemed to be beating a mile a minute. Philipa was not one to get nervous very easily, and so it was doubly annoying that the duke seemed to be having this sort of an effect on her.

It was best she made her leave before things got out of control, she thought to herself and stood up.

“Thank you for receiving me, Your Grace.”

“Did you forget what I told you before?” he raised an eyebrow in her direction, as though she had committed some unforgivable sin and he was chastising her for it. “First name basis... only.”

“I must admit,” she steadied herself, once again annoyed by the wild flutter of her own heart. “It will take me a while to get used to it.”

“How come?” he said in a matter of factly tone. “I can get used to it just fine, Phillipa.”

He said her name so easily as though he had done it a thousand times before. It came naturally to him, and that made her nervous for some reason.

“You and I are different in that regard,” she conceded, making sure not to meet his gaze directly.

“Hmm,” he regarded her with a glance that lingered a bit too long, “how different can we truly be?”

“I suppose that is something we will eventually find out,” she said and then stole a glance at him. Immediately, she knew she was in trouble when their eyes met.

It was something... hard to explain. Surely, she had never experienced this sort of strange, building tension with someone before. It was something she had heard about, sure but experiencing it felt different all together.

Like a dull fire, lit somewhere in the base of her chest and it only seemed to grow stronger the more time she spent in his proximity.

Enough, she said to herself and turned towards the door.

She had her hand on the latch, and she had it half turned, when a shadow fell across the wood beside her and a broad palm came down flat above her head and pushed it shut.

She went still.

He was standing directly behind her. She could feel him. She could feel every inch of the space between them, and that it was not very many, and that her back, in its thin gray cloak, was very nearly touching his chest.

He smelled of woodsmoke and whiskey and clean linen. Like a man. It was oddly dizzying and definitely distracting.

“I have to ask you one more thing. Did you get what you came here for?” he asked.

His voice was low and quiet, close beside her ear. She felt the breath of it stir the hair at her neck, and every nerve she possessed woke and stood up.

“I…yes,” she said. It came out in a whisper.

“And are you sure now?”