Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Dinner was a gay affair.

Lord and Lady Fethmire and her mother and father got on famously, talking and laughing even through the first course. Josephine interjected, enjoying herself and the food much more than she had thought she would when she first arrived. She had expected everything to taste like ash in her mouth, thanks to her nerves, but the little talk before dinner and the food quality ensured that that wasn't the case.

But.

Because there was a but.

Something had shifted.

While they had been in the sitting room, Josephine had thought the duke to be distant, restrained even. Haunted, she thought she might have coined.

Ever since he had helped her off the loveseat to head into dinner, though, he was even more so. Reclusive even.

Oh, he said all the right things and remained polite and amiable throughout. He smiled, if it could be called that, and nodded. He even made several jokes of his own. But that light behind his eyes had disappeared. It was like looking into a solarium on a cloud-covered day. Like sitting just beneath the vertex of a storm.

And she'd seen the shift.

He had been looking at her, his eyes boring into hers and his hand so large and warm engulfing hers that she'd suddenly felt much smaller and more feminine than she ever had in her life.

And then he had winced.

Only it hadn't quite been a wince; it was only the closest expression she could think to give a name to it. He had been staring at her, and then he wasn't. His eyes had still been on her, but there was a pain in his face, his expression twisted into one so gravely impassioned that for a moment, Josephine had feared she had squeezed his hand too tightly or stepped on his foot.

But it was the briefest window into that pain. A glimpse and nothing more. Within seconds, his expression had become shuttered and cold, an ice fortress that seemed near impenetrable.

Josephine had struggled to figure out if she had said something that could have caused it. She didn't remember speaking when she stood, but she had been so focused on the intensity of his green eyes and the strange feelings they inspired in her that she could have.

She had even tried asking when she had found her voice, so that she could offer him an apology.

But he skimmed over it as if nothing had happened and joined the rest of them without so much as another word.

And dinner carried on.

The ladies talked of their children and home, anecdotes about their pasts. At one point, Lord Fethmire started in on a story from his boyhood. It was merry, full of laughter. But Josephine noted just how little the duke interjected beyond what was strictly necessary.

And, what was more, it seemed like she was the only one who did notice. No one else seemed to recognize how carefully placed his words were or how flat his jokes fell regarding the lack of merriment in his eyes.

Before Josephine knew it, dinner was over, everyone at the table complaining of being overly full as Lord Fethmire made his apologies for having to leave so early.

"Children, you know," he joked, winking at Lord St Vincent as he clapped the duke on his shoulder affectionately.

"You'll have to bring them by for tea within the next few days," the duke murmured, leading their little entourage out into the hall. "As my apology for their having to miss tonight."

"Demons," Lord Fethmire jested. "They don't need apologies; they can survive without being invited to everything."

"It is nice to get out of the house without them," Lady Fethmire added with a smile.

"And yet you're still so very eager to get back to them," Lady St Vincent pointed out with a knowing grin. "I do miss those days."

"Are you saying you aren't eager to return home when I don't go out with you, Mother?" Josephine teased, trying to cover her fascination with the duke once more.

She found it touching that he cared so much what his friend's children thought. Enough, she realized, to go out of his way to try and ensure that they knew it wasn't that they hadn't been wanted, just that it had been an adult affair.

That didn't at all match with the icy, withdrawn recluse that she had expected him to be.

She was starting to doubt the verity of any rumours that had swirled about him. Or at least her interpretation of them.

"I'll write you for that tea," Lady Fethmire promised as she shrugged into her pelisse, her husband's steadying hand at her back. "The both of you!" she added, grinning over at Lady St Vincent.

Josephine didn't think she'd ever seen her mother look so pleased.

Within a handful of moments, their number in the entrance dwindled by two, the St Vincents left standing with the duke as the Fethmires' carriage pulled away from the manor.

A strange, heavy silence filled the space in the aftermath, all eyes falling to Josephine as if expecting something from her.

For the life of her she couldn't think what. At least not until her father glanced not-so-surreptitiously at the duke.

"I'm very excited for our engagement," Josephine quickly announced, prompted by her mother's elbow in her side.

The duke turned from her father, his green eyes skewering her to the spot. That distance was still within them like he was staring at her from down some long corridor, but there was something else as well. Something vaguely unsettling, as if he could see right through her social facade.

"Are you?" he asked bluntly, one eyebrow raised.

Josephine could feel the weight of her parents' gazes. Of their hope. Still, the immediate reassurance that she was stuck in her throat, unable to move past the sudden blockage there.

"I endeavour to be," she said honestly.

Lady St Vincent made a small, distressed noise, but for the first time since they had sat down to dinner, Josephine could almost swear that the ghost of a smile played about the duke's lips once more.

And her stomach did a somersault seeing it.

Lord, he really was handsome. Her stomach tightened, a foreign feeling filling her as she watched the green of his eyes darken. All thought of their conversation, the strange change in his demeanour, and everything else fled her mind as she stared at him, her heart hammering in her throat.

"You are a very singular woman, Lady Josephine," Lord Wallburshare murmured, his eyes moving slowly over her face.

Josephine's breath caught all over again.

She'd heard that line before, just never in that tone. As if he were admiring her for it. As if he desired for her to be.

Heat flooded her, her lips opening and only the smallest breath whispering out.

But, just like before, the moment was short-lived.

The duke's gaze shuttered again, a pained pinch of his lips all that he allowed to show before he turned and put on a polite smile for her parents.

"I will send over the necessary arrangements if you are willing," he said to her father, his eyes cutting only to Josephine at the end.

She didn't know why. She didn't have a voice to speak with, even should she recover hers. The arrangements to be made were between her father and her intended. And yet the duke looked to her as if he were also waiting for her agreement.

She nodded, a small precursory movement just in case. And the duke's eyes shifted back to her father once more.

"Of course, we are still amenable." Lord St Vincent laughed. "You have shown us what a wonderful match you will make, sir. And I can say that I quite enjoyed tonight much more than I anticipated."

"Darling," Lady St Vincent groaned.

The duke smiled, but Josephine could tell that it was forced once more. "I see where your daughter gets her honesty, Lord St Vincent."

"Bluntness," Josephine's mother corrected him with a long-suffering sigh. "They're both inescapably blunt. It's really lost on most polite company, you know."

"I find it a breath of fresh air," Lord Wallburshare contradicted. "I find it far easier when one says what they mean instead of speaking in circles to get to the same outcome."

Josephine could feel her lips twitch; her agreement, she was sure, as plain as day on her face.

"I do want a quick engagement," the duke added, "speaking of bluntness. I would prefer to be married as soon as possible, given that there are no objections."

Josephine's parents shared a quick look.

"I can think of none, as of now," Lord St Vincent said slowly. "Though I beg leave of you to consider how quick we are comfortable with. When we write to discuss arrangements further, I should have a better timeline for you."

The duke nodded.

"Until then," he murmured, dipping his head graciously as he walked them out the front door and all of the way to their carriage.

Josephine watched her mother flush as he helped her into the carriage and had to fight doing so herself when her turn came.

She tried to remain and appear unaffected, her eyes carefully downcast well after their carriage door had been shut. It was only when the horses' hooves sounded against the crushed gravel that she dared to look up again.

The duke stood outlined by the torchlight from behind him, his green eyes glowing embers and that wall he had built around himself for one moment completely lowered.

The look of anguish and guilt on his features, the way he stared after their departing carriage, stuck with Josephine long after he had passed out of sight.

Forget a man haunted. He had looked like a spectre himself at that moment, his pain on full display for her to see.

"Oh, he was so much lovelier in person than I even remembered," Lady St Vincent exclaimed as they turned down the road towards home. "Did you see how impeccable his manners were?"

"And his humour," Josephine's father agreed with a chuckle. "I quite enjoyed his company. And his friends speak well of his character as well. Lord and Lady Fethmire were wonderful dinner companions."

"I agree. I see no reason why we should delay the marriage at all. Do you, Josie dear?"

Josephine shook her head, her voice still stuck somewhere down in her ribcage.

"Good, good. That's settled then," Lord St Vincent declared with a clap of his hands. "We shall have to place an official engagement announcement in the papers of course. And give a little time for planning, shall we not?"

"A little," Lady St Vincent snorted.

Neither seemed to notice their daughter's preoccupation or the way she still stared out the window. The duke's green gaze was burned in her mind almost as inescapably as those feelings he had stirred within her.

"We will have to write to the girls to tell them," Lord St Vincent added, his grin growing. "A duke! In our family. Priscilla will be green with envy. But they'll all want to attend, of course."

"All things to include in your arrangements with the duke, dear," Lady St Vincent reminded him softly.

Josephine felt as if her head was spinning.

She knew that she ought to be commenting on such things or, at the very least, providing some opinion, but she couldn't force herself to pay attention to the actual goings-on inside the carriage.

She was too busy replaying the conversation before dinner and after. Too busy focusing on those intricacies in the duke's gaze and how his green eyes had skewered her to the spot.

It would be easy to dismiss such feelings as unease or fear, but neither was true. Not in the strictest sense. It was only now, remembering that agonized look on his face, that she felt uneasy.

At the time … both times … she had felt …

God, she had been aroused. That was the word for it. He had barely touched her, his voice like silk over gravel, and she had swooned in place, her heart beating and her whole body becoming uncomfortably hot.

Had he known?

Had he seen?

Was that why he had looked so aggrieved?

Surely not. He was asking after her hand, after all. She didn't know much in the way of romance, but she knew that a man asking one to be his wife should be pleased by such a thought, not haunted.

So, then, it only stood to reason that he had been so removed on account of his own ghosts.

Lord, his late wife.

She knew so very little about that situation. Even less than she knew about him, she realized. She didn't pay enough attention to the gossips around town.

But she knew one person who delighted in such things.

And she knew, now, that she would have to talk to Caroline and find out all she could about her future husband and his late wife. And anything between.

Which, of course, meant telling Caroline the news in the first place.

Oh, she was going to think it was terribly romantic. And Josephine was going to be hard-pressed not to confess all those inelegant emotions that the older duke had inspired in her. Because they still rang about her head like rocks being tossed by the carriage wheels.

Oh, this was so much more terribly messy than she had accounted for it to be.