Page 26 of A Duke, a Spinster, and her Stolen List (Duchesses of Ice #1)

Chapter Nineteen

C eline poked a limp piece of fish with her fork, watching it flake into smaller and smaller fragments. If she concentrated, she could almost convince herself that the act of slicing it was satisfying.

Yesterday, the table had been lively with Dahlia and Helena, but tonight, dinner was once more a solitary affair.

Her friends had left, as all guests did. Rhys, despite all the talk of cohabitation and marriages of convenience, had simply vanished.

“Will you be needing anything else, Your Grace?” Mr. Grayson asked.

Celine blinked at the untouched roast, then at the untouched wine. “No, Grayson. Thank you. I’m—” She almost said fine , but the word seemed a cruel joke tonight. “You may clear the table.”

She pushed back her chair and left the room before the butler could reply, her slippers soundless on the marble as she navigated the echoing hallway.

She could have walked straight to her rooms, could have buried herself in the limp remains of her embroidery or the long-abandoned romance novel. But something restless and sour kept her moving. It was as if her skin was too tight for her bones.

The scent of roasted duck and charred lemon trailed behind her as she passed the hallway that led to the west wing. She almost missed the figure in livery, nearly collided with him as he rounded the corner bearing a tray heavy with covered dishes and a bottle of the better brandy.

The footman paled and made a noise like a startled bird. “Beg your pardon, Your Grace. I was?—”

“Who is that for?” she demanded, her voice sharper than she had intended.

He shifted the tray from one arm to the other. “His Grace. In his study.” He bobbed his head, as if this might excuse the breach of dinner etiquette.

Celine stared at the tray, then at the footman, who was only doing his job, and finally at the closed study door down the hall. She took the tray from him, ignoring his protests, and walked with purposeful strides toward the study.

When she reached the door, she did not knock. She shoved it open with her hip.

Rhys looked up from the battered copy of A Stolen Glance —the same volume she’d finished reading last week, the one with the infuriatingly oblivious lovers—and blinked at her over the rim of a brandy glass.

He wore no coat, only a linen shirt with the cuffs undone and a blue waistcoat that looked like it had seen better days. His hair was mussed. There was a patch of ink on his right hand, just below his thumb.

“Celine.” He hastily set the novel down, as if he’d been caught reading something far more salacious. “Is something the matter?”

She set the tray on his desk with a thud. A few drops of sauce leapt from beneath the silver dome and stained the open ledger.

“Is something the matter?” she hissed, fixing him with a glare she hoped would bore straight through his skull.

He seemed taken aback, but not enough for her liking. “If the kitchen sent the wrong wine, I’ll?—”

“It’s not the wine.” She leaned both hands on the desk, placing herself directly between him and the comfort of ignoring her. “It’s you.”

He blinked slowly. “Me?”

“You are, without question, the most spectacularly obtuse man in England.” The words spilled out, raw and almost foreign.

“You’ve spent the last week hiding in here, pretending there is nothing unusual about eating every meal alone in this mausoleum of a manor, and you have the nerve to act as if you’re surprised to see me? ”

He stared at her, his amber eyes wide. “I didn’t realize?—”

“Oh, please do not insult my intelligence by pretending you didn’t notice.”

She could feel the anger now, finally, blessedly, outstripping the sadness that had settled in her chest since her friends left.

“You know exactly what you’re doing. You’re following in your father’s footsteps as if he were a dance tutor—neglecting and treating your wife like a piece of inconvenient furniture.”

She realized she was shouting, but she didn’t care.

“At least your father had the decency to occasionally summon your mother for state dinners. You can’t even be bothered to sit at the same table.”

Rhys’s mouth twitched at the mention of his father, but he did not interrupt. He only watched her, his hands now clenched on top of the stained ledger, his jaw tight.

“Do you know what it’s like,” she continued, “to spend every day alone, with nothing but memories for company? To be married in name and never see your husband except when he deigns to pass you in the gardens, or when he wants to remark on the state of his tenants? I suspect you do. I suspect you know exactly what it’s like, and you’re recreating it by choice. ”

She looked down, searching for words, and found only the tray, its contents already cooling.

“I didn’t come here for love, Rhys,” she said, her voice almost a growl. “I didn’t come here expecting to be cherished. But I won’t be invisible. I refuse!”

Rhys opened his mouth, but she cut him off with a raised hand.

“And don’t you dare tell me I’m exaggerating or being dramatic. If you try, I swear I will walk out of here and never return, and you will have to explain to the whole of Hertfordshire why your Duchess spends her evenings at the Rose and Crown.”

She yanked the lid off the brandy bottle and poured herself a glass, the liquor sloshing perilously close to the rim.

“I would at least be among people there,” she finished, and drained half the glass in one go.

Silence reigned for a moment, broken only by the faint ticking of the clock and the steady, shallow breaths she was forcing herself to take.

When she looked up, Rhys was staring at her, his face more open than she’d ever seen it. He looked almost… frightened.

He stood up, which surprised her, and rounded the desk to stand beside her. He looked at the tray, then at the novel, then at her. He tried to speak twice, but the words died in his throat.

Finally, he said, “I thought—I thought you wanted solitude. That you needed it.”

She stared at him, disbelief warring with exhaustion. “Why would you think that?”

“Because you never asked for company. Because you vanished when your friends left, and I assumed—” He stopped, searching for the right words. “I assumed that what happened at the stables, and after, had made things worse.”

She scoffed. “You cannot possibly be that dense.”

He smiled, or tried to. “Apparently, I can.”

For a second, the tension ebbed, and she felt the air thicken with something softer, more dangerous. Then, she remembered her anger, and the ache returned tenfold.

“Rhys,” she said, this time in a whisper, “you could spend the rest of your life hiding in this study, and it won’t change the fact that you have a wife.

I know you think you’re protecting me, or yourself, or the world at large, but all you’re doing is recreating the misery you grew up in.

” She looked at him, unflinching. “I won’t let you do that to me. Or to yourself.”

He met her gaze, and for a moment, she thought he might say something meaningful, something raw.

Instead, he said, “I’m sorry. I’ll do better.”

She could have laughed. “Do, or don’t. But don’t apologize. I can’t bear another man who apologizes and then does nothing to change.”

He flinched at that, a tiny movement, but she saw it.

She turned to leave, the unfinished glass in her hand. At the door, she paused, her anger ebbing just enough for a sliver of regret to sneak in.

“You should finish your dinner,” she said, not looking back. “The cook made a lemon tart. It’s not terrible.”

She walked out, not caring if she slammed the door. If she did, it was only because it helped drown out the silence.

She’s right. I’m exactly like him.

The realization burned through every part of him.

Rhys found himself at the bottom of the staircase, staring up at the hallway that led to Celine’s rooms. He debated, for a second, whether he should wait until morning, give her time to calm down.

He tried, half-heartedly, to resume work.

There were ledgers to balance, rents to adjust, and a letter from the solicitor waiting for his signature.

But the numbers blurred, and the words on the page made less and less sense, until finally, with a muttered curse, he shoved the ledger aside and stood up.

He needed air. No, he needed her .

The realization rattled him so thoroughly that for a long moment, he just stood there, his hands braced on the edge of his desk, trying to summon the will to move.

He’d meant what he said—he’d thought she wanted solitude. Everything about her since the foal’s birth, since the conversation about children, had pointed to a woman retreating into herself. He’d tried to give her the space he’d always wished for, convinced it was what she needed.

But he had been wrong. Again.

He climbed up the stairs, each step a deliberate act of will. At her door, he paused, his fist raised, but the thought of her ignoring his knock—of her shattering whatever fragile truce remained between them—was intolerable. He turned the knob and pushed the door open.

Celine stood by the window, backlit by a single lamp, her figure outlined against the darkening sky. Her hair was down, wild around her shoulders, making her look younger, softer. But there was nothing soft in the way she paced the carpet, her arms wrapped tightly around her waist.

She stopped at the creak of the door. Her head whipped around, her eyes wide, startled. For a moment, neither of them spoke.

Rhys’s heart hammered. The sight of her—untamed, fuming, so alive—shook him harder than he cared to admit.

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” he said, realizing at once how stupid it sounded. No one could have slept with that storm inside.

Celine drew herself up to her full height, her jaw rigid. “I wasn’t asleep.”

He took a step inside, leaving the door open behind him. “Celine, what you said?—”

“You don’t have to explain,” she said, her voice flat, her gaze fixed over his left shoulder. “I understand. I do.”

She went to her writing desk and began straightening already-ordered papers, her movements mechanical, desperate.

“You’re busy. You have the estate, and tenants, and… solitude. It’s what you wanted from the start.”

He advanced another step, unwilling to let her escape behind formality. “No, that’s not true. I thought it was what you wanted.”

She laughed, the sound brittle and hollow. “That’s convenient, isn’t it?”

Rhys flinched. “I never meant for you to feel abandoned.” He swallowed, searching for words that might reach her. “I am not my father, Celine. Or yours.”

She froze, her hands white-knuckled around the edge of the desk. “Aren’t you?” she said, her voice trembling. “You make yourself a ghost in your own house. You shut everyone out. You don’t even try?—”

“I try every day!” He caught himself and lowered his voice. “You have no idea how hard I try.”

She whirled around, her eyes blazing. “Then why bother with any of this? Why pretend? You’re not obligated to do anything beyond providing a roof over my head.

You made it perfectly clear that there would be no heirs, no future, so what is the point of—” She cut herself off, her breath sharp, her cheeks flushed with the effort to hold herself together.

He closed the gap between them. “You’re wrong,” he said softly. “There is a point.”

She scoffed. “Enlighten me, Duke.”

He reached for her, but she shrank back, retreating until her shoulders hit the wall.

“I can’t,” she whispered. “I can’t be like her. I can’t spend my life loving a man who refuses to let me in.”

Her words gutted him.

He put his hand on the wall, trapping her there, not touching but close, so close .

“You are nothing like her,” he declared. “You’re braver. You fight back.”

She glared at him, but her eyes shone with tears. “And what does it get me? A study door slammed in my face. Dinners alone. Even now, you’re only here because I forced your hand.”

He smiled bleakly. “I’m here because I can’t stay away. I’ve tried. God knows, I’ve tried harder than I ever thought possible.” He rested his other hand on the wall, boxing her in. “Every day it gets harder. Every day it hurts more. That’s what I was trying to avoid.”

She blinked, thrown by his confession. “Hurts?”

He nodded, his jaw tight. “Being near you is—” He stopped, searching for the right words. “It’s like being set on fire. It’s terrifying. I don’t know how to want something without destroying it.”

They stood there, their breaths mingling, the silence between them charged.

“You said you wanted a marriage of convenience,” he continued, his voice rough. “You said you didn’t want love.”

She looked down, then back up, her eyes shining, defiant. “I lied.”

He laughed, a broken sound. “So did I.”

They were so close now that he could see the smattering of freckles on her nose, the way her lips trembled with each breath. He didn’t touch her, not yet, but the urge was nearly unbearable.

She looked at him, her face soft and vulnerable, and he thought he might break in two.

“Why do you stay away?” she asked, her voice so small that it nearly killed him.

He reached out, his hand trembling, and cupped her elbow, feeling the heat of her through the muslin. She didn’t pull away.

“Because if I let myself have you, even a little, I’ll never be able to stop. And that’s not what you signed up for.”

She reached up, grabbed the front of his shirt in both fists, her anger and grief and longing warring in her eyes. “Let me decide what I signed up for.”

He bowed his head, pressing his forehead to hers. “Fine,” he whispered, his voice raw. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Her hands slid up to his shoulders, then his neck, tentative, as if she expected him to vanish at any moment.

“Rhys,” she breathed.

He tilted her chin up, forcing her to look at him. For a long, suspended moment, he just gazed at her, memorizing the way her lashes caught the light, the faint smudge of ink on her wrist, the wild tumble of hair that framed her face.

“Celine,” he said softly, “the only way I can keep my promise to you is by staying far, far away.”