Page 37 of His Scandalous Duchess (Icy Dukes #4)

CHAPTER TWENTY

“ W ill His Grace not be joining us this morning?” she asked Hawkins, reaching for her cup of tea on the dining room table.

When Cecilia arrived in the dining room, Abigail was already at the table, chattering gently with the maid beside her. Cecilia has bent to kiss her cheek before taking her seat.

The butler gave a slight bow. “His Grace has gone out, Your Grace. He left earlier, on horseback.”

“Oh,” she replied, managing to keep her expression neutral. “Thank you.”

That morning, she had woken up alone, with Valentine nowhere to be found. The space he had occupied when they fell asleep in each other’s arms the night before was cold to touch when she roused from sleep. He had been gone a long while.

He had left without waking her, without a word, and knowing Valentine, Cecilia knew it shouldn’t surprise her. However, the last time they had shared a bed, she’d awoken tucked against him, warm and safe beneath his arm, as though he couldn’t bear to let her go.

This morning, she had stirred alone in a half-cold bed. Why hadn’t he woken her? Why had he left so early and so quietly?

Cecilia shook her head vigorously as she took a bite of her eggs. Perhaps it meant nothing. Perhaps he simply had matters to tend to.

But then the morning turned to noon, and the hours went on without any sign of him. She occupied herself with Abigail, helped with the household accounts, and tended to small matters about the house, anything to keep her mind from circling too tightly around Valentine.

Still, with every soft creak of a floorboard or distant voice in the hallway, she found herself half-hoping it was him. But whenever it wasn’t, she would pick herself up and check his study.

She checked his study once in the morning, then again after lunch, and once more before tea.

It was always the same. No sign of him. No coat was tossed over the back of his chair.

No half-finished brandy or ink-stained pages.

Just silence. It was impossible not to notice his absence.

She told herself not to think too much of it.

After all, he had work. Affairs of estate.

Perhaps a letter had arrived from his solicitor in London, and he’d gone riding to clear his mind.

She tried not to feel foolish. She tried not to wonder what his absence meant.

By the time the sun slipped behind the trees and the lamps were lit in the corridor, her uncertainty had stretched into something cold and unwelcome.

Still, she waited. A part of her still believed he might walk through the door and offer some excuse.

It bothered her more than she cared to admit because this was happening right after she’d told him she wanted to have children. Had her question about children unsettled him so deeply that he had simply disappeared?

The thought crept in uninvited but lodged itself firmly in her chest. It made a terrible kind of sense. Perhaps that was it. Perhaps he had needed only one reminder of what he had truly wanted from their marriage in the first place, and it had sent him running.

After all, he had warned her, hadn't he? That he didn’t want affection.

That he would never touch her. That their arrangement was one of convenience, not sentiment.

Yet, she had let herself hope. Let herself believe, after that kiss, after the way he had held her, that something between them had shifted.

That maybe...just maybe, she could want other things.

Knowing that she wasn’t going to get any sleep that night unless she talked to him, she waited up for Valentine when the rest of the house had already gone to bed.

Not in his bedchamber, he rarely spent time there unless it was to sleep.

No, if he returned at all, it would be to his study.

Cecilia had lived with him long enough to know his rhythms, his compulsions.

Valentine could avoid conversation, avoid breakfast, even avoid his wife, but he never avoided his study for long.

So she took a seat in the armchair near the fireplace and waited. Her thoughts churned too loudly, anxious, embarrassed, quietly angry. The clock ticked. Shadows lengthened. Then, just as her eyes began to blur from staring too long at the hearth, the door opened.

He stepped in, looking worn and windblown, like he had been riding all day. His coat hung open, his cravat was missing, and his boots were caked with mud. He looked human, almost. Not the polished, unreadable man she had grown used to.

He paused when he saw her. Surprise flickered across his face, there and gone in an instant. “What are you doing here?” he asked breathlessly.

For a moment, relief washed over her, warm and disarming. He was here. He had come back, and just like that, her anger began to soften, unspooling quietly as she took in the sight of him. All day, her mind had chased circles around itself, but now…at least now he was here.

“I was worried,” she said softly, rising from the chair. “I hadn’t seen you all day.”

He didn’t reply immediately. He set his gloves down on the desk, methodically, slowly.

“Hawkins said you were out,” she continued, watching him. “What were you doing?”

Still no answer. Not really. He busied himself with nothing in particular, removing his coat, loosening the top button of his shirt, glancing toward the window, though there was nothing out there to see.

“Valentine,” she tried again, gently, searching his face. “What’s going on?”

He turned to her then with tired eyes. “Nothing is going on, Duchess,” he said. “I just had matters to tend to.”

Cecilia stilled. It had been weeks since he last called her that.

Not because the title had vanished, but because it had softened.

Somewhere between the civility of their arrangement and the quieter, warm moments they’d begun to share, ‘Duchess’ had quietly disappeared.

He had started calling her by her name. Like they had somehow become more than what they had agreed to be.

Her fingers curled slightly where they hung by her side.

So she had been right. His distance was because of what she said the night before, lying beside him, warm and foolish and strangely hopeful.

She had let the thought escape into the space between them, as though it were safe to do so, but now she was starting to regret it.

Had she asked too much of a man who told her, from the very beginning, that he did not want affection, or closeness, or even touch?

She smoothed her skirts and took a breath, steadying herself. “I was just going over the plans for dinner,” she said, lifting her chin and managing a small smile. “For the gathering in a few nights with my family.”

He paused at the decanter, poured himself a modest glass of port. “Ah. Yes. That.”

“I think it’ll go well.” She pushed forward, trying to ignore the heaviness in her chest. “Abigail’s been helping.

We’ve mapped out seating and table placements.

I made sure not to put my father and Aunt Marianne remotely close to each other.

We also decided on flower arrangements and centerpieces.

White lilacs. You like lilacs, don’t you? ”

He turned toward her. “They’re agreeable enough.”

“Hopefully, Lucy will come. Since everyone else is coming, it would be nice to have her there too, so we can talk,” Cecilia said, with a hopeful smile.

“I hope she comes too,” he said and walked over to his chair to sit. Immediately, he picked up a ledger and pulled it towards himself.

She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again. A chill had settled in her bones, sharp and sudden. She had no idea what to say to him again, so she turned towards the door.

“I’ll leave you to your work, then,” she said to him, strolling towards the door.

“Sleep well,” he said to her, still engrossed in his work.

Valentine didn’t stop her. She stepped out of the study and shut the door behind her. In the stillness of the hallway, she finally let her breath go.

Her eyes stung. She blinked hard, willing the tears away, but they gathered anyway, warm and blurring her vision. It was foolish. She told herself it was foolish. It was just a conversation. Just a chill in the air between them. He hadn’t even said anything cruel.

Yet, it hurt. More than it should have. She leaned lightly against the wall, her palm pressed flat to the paneling as though steadying herself. In that still moment, she realized the truth. It was sharp and impossible to ignore.

She had fallen in love with Valentine Price.

It had not been the grand, breathless sort of thing she had imagined when she entered society.

It had not been sudden or sweeping. It had built itself into her quietly, through the routines, the stillness, the safety of being near him.

Now, standing outside his study, she felt the full weight of it.

The cold air between them did not simply sting; it confirmed what she feared.

She had come to care for him deeply, perhaps too much.

But this sudden return to formality, to distance, left her unmoored.

She didn’t want to challenge him. She didn’t want to mend it with defiance or cleverness.

Not this time. Because somewhere along the way, without meaning to, she had fallen in love with him.

The worst part was not that he did not seem to reciprocate her feelings, but that they had drifted into silence, like strangers all over again, and she did not know how to find her way to him.