Page 18 of His Scandalous Duchess (Icy Dukes #4)

“This isn’t the first time I’ve heard accounts of you and Abigail playing about the estate,” he said. “Is that what you intend to teach her? To run wild? To disregard decorum?”

Cecilia blinked, stunned. “What?” she whispered, confused.

“I did not marry you to play with my daughter, Duchess,” he said, taking a step forward. “You are supposed to teach her. Guide her, not encourage her silly habits.”

“She is a child,” Cecilia continued. “You asked me to be a mother figure to her, did you not? Then permit me to know her...to understand what makes her laugh, what soothes her. I cannot do that with strictness alone.”

Valentine’s brows furrowed. “This household has rules, Duchess.”

“I am not breaking them,” she answered, lifting her chin. “I am merely trying to bring a bit of warmth into a house that, frankly, feels like it hasn’t known it in a long while.”

Valentine’s expression didn’t soften. “You are to follow the rules that have been laid down, Duchess,” he said.

“Running about the estate with Abigail may seem harmless, but it encourages behavior that is…unrefined. She needs structure. Discipline. We want her to grow up properly, in a good home. A complete one.”

“Oh?” she asked, lifting her head. “Is that what this is? A complete home?”

Her gaze held his, steady and unflinching.

“If this is your idea of a whole and proper household,” she added. “Then I fear we do not share the same understanding of what that means.”

Valentine’s jaw ticked, but he didn’t offer a reply. For the first time since they’d begun speaking, he looked more conflicted than he was angry.

“I’ll clean myself up,” Cecilia added. “If that’s permitted.”

Without waiting for his reply, she turned and walked off, skirts dragging damply behind her.

Duchess. Miss Lockhart.

That was all he ever called her. Never Cecilia.

Not once had her name crossed his lips, and now that she thought of it, the omission cut far deeper than she expected.

He spoke to her like she was an interloper, a well-dressed governess hired to manage his child.

Nothing more. Rules, structure, discipline, he spoke of them like they were iron bars, and for the first time in days, she remembered with jarring clarity that she hadn’t chosen this life.

She had been maneuvered into it, trapped. Just when it had started to feel like something close to belonging, just when Abigail had begun to trust her, to laugh with her, he had come along and stripped it all bare.

It still unsettled her that she didn’t quite know what their marriage truly was, or worse, what was even convenient about it.

A frustrated sigh escaped from Cecilia’s lips as she dumped another stack of books on the floor.

“Where is it?” she whispered, already losing hope that the book was even in the library after all.

She stood halfway up the tall ladder, fingers trailing along a line of worn leather-bound volumes as she searched for the book she had promised Abigail they would read together.

Cecilia exhaled slowly, shifting her weight as she peered at the spines again.

Her thoughts, however, refused to cooperate.

They drifted away from the alphabetized shelves and returned to the garden, more specifically, to Valentine.

The ladder creaked under her, but she ignored it. She drew in a breath, steadying herself, but her thoughts refused to follow suit. Instead, they spiraled back to the agreement, the marriage, the bargain she had struck in a haze of necessity and pride.

There were parts of it she had quietly made peace with.

She had never yearned for children the way other women did, not truly.

She adored her siblings, yes, and loved the bustle of family, but she had not daydreamed of cradles or lullabies.

If Valentine didn’t want more children, well.

..she could live with that. It did not tear at her heart.

But this?

The not touching?

It had started to bother her again.

She exhaled, fingers tracing across the book spines as though answers might be tucked between the pages. Her slipper slid a little against the narrow rung beneath her, and she paused to adjust her footing. The second level of shelving was taller than she’d anticipated.

“What is it with you and climbing things?”

The voice snapped through her reverie.

Startled, Cecilia turned too quickly. Valentine was striding through the doorway, his gaze fixed on her with an expression that was half exasperation, half something unreadable. She straightened too quickly in surprise, and the ladder wobbled under her.

“I beg your pardon?” she asked, hand clutching the edge of the shelf for balance.

“You,” he repeated, crossing the room with quick, deliberate steps. “Why do you always seem to be precariously perched on something? What are you even looking for now?”

“I am entirely capable of retrieving a book, Your Grace,” she replied, biting back annoyance. “Miss Flaxman said it might be here.”

But her words had barely left her mouth before her slipper slid on the same rung. Her fingers clawed for stability on the shelf, but it was too late. The ladder wobbled violently. She gave a short cry, bracing herself to hit the ground, but she didn’t.

Valentine had reached her in a flash, arms wrapping firmly around her waist just as she slipped from the rung. Her body collided with his chest, the shock of it knocking the breath from her lungs.

The library fell utterly still, as though the dust motes themselves were holding their breath. Cecilia’s fingers were splayed against his chest, caught mid-clutch, and his hand, meant only to catch her, now lingered at the small of her back, anchoring her in place.

It was too close. Far too close.

Yet, she did not pull away. She should have. She knew she should.

But her heart was thudding wildly against her ribs, and her limbs, though steady now, remembered the sudden lurch of the ladder and the quiet thrill that followed...the thrill of being caught. Of being held.

It was the first time they had truly touched.

Though she had spent every day convincing herself she could live with the terms of this marriage, she found herself not moving.

Not even blinking. Her fingers curled slightly into the fabric of his coat.

She could feel the solid, living heat of him beneath.

She tilted her face upward, panicking even more on seeing that Valentine was watching her.

There was something in his eyes, something she couldn’t name, that made her forget how to breathe.

“Shall I carry you to your chambers, Duchess?” he asked, his voice low and maddeningly composed. “Or do you mean to cling to me all evening?”

The words landed like a splash of cold water. Her eyes flew to his, wide with disbelief as she awkwardly broke free from his hold. “My apologies,” she managed to say. “Thank you.”

She remained turned toward the shelf, pretending to study the spines of several books she wasn’t truly seeing. The heat hadn’t left her cheeks. Nor had the echo of his touch.

Behind her, he hadn’t moved. She could still feel the shape of his presence, tall and very still as always.

She cleared her throat softly. “Are you following me, Your Grace?”

“Following you?” he questioned.

She finally glanced back over her shoulder. “Well, I have seen you twice in one day. That is quite surprising.”

The corner of his lips twitched as he reached down to adjust his shirt. “I don’t like how things ended in the garden,” he said at last.

His response surprised her. She turned fully to him then, curious.

He studied her a beat longer, then added more carefully. “You are allowed to play with Abigail, Duchess. That…wasn’t what I meant. I want her to grow up well. I don’t always know what that requires. But I know she smiled when she was with you, and that is not something I take lightly.”

Cecilia gave him a small smile. A threadbare gesture of peace, stitched together with all the things she did not wish to say aloud.

She turned her face slightly so he couldn’t see too much in her expression.

Arguing again would yield little, so she decided not to table all her concerns at that moment so as not to ruin it.

“What is it you’re searching for?” he asked, glancing at the shelves behind her as he changed the subject. “Surely nothing so rare as to risk another fall.”

He stepped closer, his gaze flicking briefly to the ladder she’d nearly toppled from. “There are servants for that sort of thing, you know. You’ve no business climbing shelves like this. Or climbing stone benches to reach roses in the garden. In fact, I strongly advise against it.”

Cecilia didn’t look at him, but the corner of her mouth twitched ever so slightly. “I’m perfectly capable of climbing a ladder, Your Grace.”

“That may be true,” he replied, folding his arms. “But whether you should is another matter entirely. What were you looking for?”

“A book,” Cecilia said, still scanning the row of spines before her as if it might magically appear now that he was watching. “Goody Two-Shoes. Miss Flaxman said it might be somewhere on the upper shelf.”

Valentine’s brow arched higher, his arms crossing more tightly across his chest. “Goody Two-Shoes? Why on earth would you assume a book like that would be in my library?”

Cecilia blinked, straightening. “Because Miss Flaxman said it might be, Your Grace,” she answered plainly. “Also because it’s a book worth reading.”

He made a low sound, something between incredulity and disdain. “It’s a penny moral, written for the lower class.”

She stiffened. “I don’t think that matters, Your Grace. What precisely is wrong with obedience and thrift? Or kindness, for that matter?”

He looked as though he might laugh. “I have no intention of filling my daughter’s head with populist fairy tales. It’s not the sort of thinking I want to foster in her.”

“Have you even read the book, Your Grace?”

Valentine squinted his eyes. “Why would I need to? I know enough about it to form an opinion.”

Cecilia let out a breath. “So, you haven’t read it.”

“I’ve heard enough,” he replied crisply.

“That’s not the same,” she countered. “You dismiss it because it was written for the poor, as though that invalidates every lesson between its pages.”

He opened his mouth, but she wasn’t finished.

“I suppose you’d prefer I read Abigail a treatise on Roman agriculture or the economic implications of the Corn Laws,” she said, chin tilting ever so slightly.

“But Goody Two-Shoes teaches a young girl to work hard, to care for others, to find joy in simplicity. I cannot see how that could ever be harmful.”

“This is my household, Duchess. The values taught here must be carefully chosen. Not plucked from a dusty shelf in the name of whimsy. Are you claiming you read the book growing up?”

Cecilia lifted her chin. “I did not grow up with it, no. As you know, my father is a viscount. Books like Goody Two-Shoes did not line our nursery shelves.”

Valentine arched a brow, as though that settled it.

“But,” she continued. “I remember finding it once. A battered old copy, left behind by one of the maids. I must have been eight, perhaps nine. I read it in secret, cover to cover, and I remember thinking about how kind the story was. How simple. How it made me feel as though the world could still be good.”

She folded her arms, steadying her breath.

“I didn’t understand half of the sermons my governess read aloud. But I understood Goody Two-Shoes. I understood Margery, and I remember wishing I knew her.”

Valentine said nothing for a beat, and the stillness stretched.

“I want Abigail to feel that too,” she continued. “If there’s a story that might interest her and teach her valuable life lessons, should it matter where it came from?”

“There are hundreds of books in this house, Duchess. All of them are more carefully chosen, more suitable. If lessons are what you’re after, surely something with more intellectual merit would serve her better.”

Cecilia turned fully to face him. “What would that be? Latin primers? A dusty sermon on the necessity of propriety?”

“She’s a duke’s daughter,” he said sharply. “She must learn what is expected of her. She cannot afford to fill her head with peasant fables about barefoot girls who rise to comfort and importance simply because they are good.”

Cecilia’s eyes narrowed. “So you would rather she read things that tell her what not to be? That she behave correctly and never question why? That she aspire to coldness, as long as it’s well-mannered?”

“That’s not what I said.”

“It’s precisely what you implied.”

“I am not raising a sentimental fool, Duchess.”

Cecilia stood frozen for a breath, her pulse quick with disbelief.

Sentimental fool?

The words clanged inside her head, heavy and unkind. She could feel the heat of fury rush to her cheeks, and before she could talk herself out of it, before reason or grace could still her step, she turned on her heel and stormed out of the library.

She didn’t glance back. She kept walking until she reached her room and crashed on the bed, panting.

Never in her twenty-two years in this world had she met someone utterly impossible.