Page 45 of The Duchess’ Little Miracle

William narrowed his eyes at her, though the exasperation in his chest was rapidly giving way to an overwhelming, dangerous sense of amusement. For weeks, he had lived with a woman whose mind operated like a perfectly calibrated piece of clockwork. She approached conversation the way a general would approach a siege or a scholar approached a rare manuscript.

It was exasperating. It was absurd...

...It was, he was beginning to realize, completely captivating.

“You are utterly ruthless,” William muttered, reaching for a glass of lemonade to mask the rise of blood to his face. “A tyrant.”

“I am a lover of accuracy,” Seraphina retorted, pouring herself a splash of tea. “The leaf is dead, William. It has been separated from its life source. It is no longer living.”

“It is green! It was attached to the branch five minutes ago!” William countered, setting his glass down. “If I pluck a flower, it does not instantly become a corpse the second my fingers sever the stem. It retains its vitality. Ergo, for the purpose of a game, it is alive.”

“By every law of nature, once the vascular supply is severed, it enters a state of decay. It is biologically dead.”

“It is alive,” William insisted. “You are twisting the definition simply to deny my victory.”

“It is dead,” she maintained, smiling.

“It is green, it is intact, and it is winning this argument. It is alive.”

“It is dead.”

The tiny voice cut between them like a blade.

Seraphina paused, while William sat back, completely stunned, staring at Alice as she took another bite of her strawberry. Her words were tiny, no louder than the rustle of a breeze through the grass, but he heard her loud and clear.

Beside them, tucked safely on the far corner of the wool blanket, Alice was sitting with her knees drawn up to her chin. She was holding a half-eaten strawberry in one hand, her eyes wide, clear, and fixed directly on William. There was no hesitation in her face, no shadow of the terrifying retreat that had claimed her for the past couple of months.

“It is dead,” Alice repeated.

The world seemed to shrink down to the space of that blanket. Inside William’s chest, his heart gave a massive thud, followed by a hammering rhythm. Alice had looked him in the eye and spoken directly to him.

Every protective instinct in William’s body screamed at him to throw his arms around her, to call for the servants, to sigh with relief. But months of guidance warned him that a grand spectacle would be fatal. If he made a fuss, if he treated this miracle like a fragile glass vase breaking, Alice would retreat right back into her shell like a startled snail.

So, swallowing the lump in his throat, William forced his features into a look of lighthearted betrayal. He placed a hand over his heart and glared at her.

“You too, Alice?” he grumbled, putting on his most aggrieved, grumpy facade. “You are taking her side? Is that what this household has come to? I am your family too. I buy you sweetmeats. I spent hours yesterday teaching you how to identify the constellations, and you side with the woman who abuses botanical definitions to win a silly game?”

Alice bit into her strawberry, a tiny giggle escaping her lips. She didn’t look down. She didn’t flinch. She just watched him through her long lashes, her small shoulders shaking with bubbling laughter.

“Don’t you dare attempt to bully my ally,” Seraphina interjected smoothly, as she reached out and gently patted Alice’s shoulder. “She simply possesses superior analytical reasoning, Your Grace. Accept your defeat with dignity.”

“Traitorous, the pair of you,” William muttered, though the feeling spreading through his limbs was so warm, so dizzyingly sweet, he felt almost intoxicated by it. He turned back to Alice. “Very well then, Lady Genius. Since you are so exceptionally clever at this game, it is your turn. Go pick an object, and let us see if Seraphina’s analytical reasoning can save her this time.”

Alice’s eyes lit up. She dropped the green stem of her strawberry onto a silver tray, scrambled up from the blanket without a single trace of her usual languor, and went trotting off toward the edge of the rose garden. Her small leather slippers rustled softly through the clover as she began peering under leaves and bushes, utterly absorbed in her quest for a secret object.

The very instant Alice was out of earshot, the playful air evaporated, leaving a taut, breathless quiet beneath the trees.

William turned his head toward Seraphina, his chest heaving as if he had just run a mile. “Did she just—” he spoke in an urgent, hushed rasp.

“—speak directly to you?” Seraphina finished.

“That has never happened before. Usually she refuses to meet my eye,” William whispered. He ran a hand through his hair, gripping the back of his neck.

“It was magnificent,” Seraphina whispered back. “Perhaps all she needed was time. Who knows the weight she carries? A gentleman of high standing, a powerful man of the town, may have intimidated her in the past. It would explain why she is so wary around people.”

She paused, watching Alice crouch near the rose bushes. “We read together almost every afternoon, you know. We speak of society, of rank, and... we speak of you.”

William tilted his head, a curious stillness settling over him. “What, precisely, do you tell her about me?”