Page 42 of Corrupting his Duchess

“Anna,” he said her name like a warning.

She touched her fingers to her lips, dazed. Her heart pounded like a drumbeat. “I know.”

His gaze searched hers, wild and unguarded. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“I know,” she whispered.

He let out a short, incredulous breath, brushing a knuckle across her cheek. “God help me, I don’t want you to leave.”

She swayed toward him, forehead brushing his. “Then kiss me again.”

And he did.

CHAPTER 8

The library was mostly quiet, save for the soft rustle of pages and the occasional distant footfall in the corridor. Anna sat near the window, the light glinting off the book in her lap though she hadn’t turned a page in some time.

Henry entered quietly, noting her stillness before speaking. “If that book is as riveting as your expression, I daresay the author should be hanged.”

Anna blinked up at him. “You startled me.”

He offered a faint smile. “Apologies. I was only passing through, didn’t mean to interrupt a staring contest with the margins.”

She closed the book, setting it aside. “It’s just a dull treatise on estate management. Very enlightening, if one wishes to lose the will to live.”

Henry chuckled and wandered closer. “You read things like that for pleasure?”

“No,” she replied. “It’s the sort of thing one reads when one has a cousin threatening to mismanage everything. I read them because I might one day need to explain to my cousin why we can’t sell the tenants’ winter fuel stores to settle a gambling debt.”

There was a pause. He studied her more carefully now. “That’s… oddly specific.”

Anna shrugged, eyes fixed on the garden beyond the glass. “He’s done worse.”

Henry lowered himself into the seat across from her, no longer feigning casualness. “You manage the estate yourself?”

“I used to,” she said. “Before Isaac came. My father was…” Her voice caught. “Not reliable. I learned quickly. I made sure the tenants had food and fuel so that the house didn’t fall into complete ruin.”

“And now?”

“Lord Stenton thinks I ought to marry someone useful and disappear into a drawing room.”

His gaze didn’t waver. “And what do you think?”

“I think I’ve held things together for too long to vanish now.”

For once, Henry didn’t have a clever retort. Instead, he said, very simply, “I see.”

She looked at him then, properly, for the first time that day. The memory of last night flickered in the air between them, unspoken, but present. The moment in his room, the kiss, the heat of it still clinging to her skin like a secret.

His voice was quieter now. “Last night…”

She didn’t flinch. “I haven’t forgotten.”

“Neither have I.”

He didn’t reach for her, nor did he press. He just sat there, looking down like he was relieving the moment in his head.

She broke the silence first. “I’m not sorry it happened.”