Page 63 of The Duchess’ Little Miracle

He did not move.

“Is there something wrong?” she pressed, taking another step closer to the edge of the desk. “Why will you not look at me?”

Slowly, almost painfully, William lifted his head and sighed... almost as if he was reluctant to do so.

When his serious gaze finally met hers, the air was instantly sucked from Seraphina’s lungs. That terrifying flutter deep in the pit of her stomach. Her breath caught in her throat.

It hadn’t gone away. Weeks of distance, weeks of silence and empty halls, but the moment his eyes locked onto hers, that absurd, electrifying current flared back to life. It was infuriating. It was illogical. It defied every rational framework she had built to protect herself.

Yet as she stared at him, the initial spark of irritation dissolved into a troubling realization. There was something deeply wrong. The shadow in his eyes was not merely fatigue. It was a brooding intensity that felt dangerous. He looked at her not with that familiar, dry affection she had over time come to expect, but with a guarded, almost resentful distance.

She opened her mouth to ask if she had offended him, to inquire if she had made a mistake in assuming they had built a friendship amidst this bizarre arrangement.

Before she could utter a single word, William spoke.

“Seraphina... you cannot fall in love with me.”

The world seemed to halt on its axis.

Seraphina froze, her jaw slackening. The silence that followed was deafening.

What?

Her mind scrambled, racing through a dozen different interpretations of what he had just said. Had she misheard him? Was this some twisted, bizarre joke? Was she wearing her awareness of him so blatantly on her face that he felt compelled to issue a warning? They had already acknowledged the physical tension between them, had they not? They had agreed it was an attraction that would pass with time.

A nervous, disbelieving scoff escaped her throat before she could stop it. She let out a laugh, trying desperately to lighten the oppressive weight in the room.

“Where on earth is this coming from?” she demanded, crossing her arms tightly over her chest to hide the frantic beating of her heart. “I thought we had thoroughly established the nature of our dynamic, William. We acknowledged a mutual... physical awareness at the ball, remember? A temporary chemical response... to proximity. I am most certainly not in love with you.”

She began to pace the edge of his desk, her voice rising in pitch as her defensive instincts kicked in full force. “To suggest such a thing is utterly preposterous. Finding a man visually pleasing and intellectually engaging is hardly a precursor to tragic, romantic devotion. Science dictates that physical attraction is a sensory response to... familiarity. It is not a crime, nor is it a sentence of eternal adoration. I am a rational woman. I do not swoon, and I most certainly do not fall into unrequited love like a heroine in a foolish penny-novel!”

William did not interrupt her. He simply sat back in his chair, resting his chin on his steepled fingers, watching her pacing with an unreadable expression on his face.

His silence only fueled the fire beneath her pride.

“Is that what this has been?” she exploded, throwing her hands up in the air as the pieces suddenly clicked together in her mind. “Is that why you have been hiding away in this room for weeks? Avoiding meals? Slipping through the corridors like a ghost? Because you manufactured this delusional notion in your head that I was pining for you?”

She stopped in front of his desk, her cheeks burning hot with a mixture of embarrassment and anger. “You must think remarkably high of yourself, Your Grace. You assume that because I enjoy our conversations, I am lying awake at night weeping into my pillow over a... temporary marriage contract?”

She knew, deep down, that her dramatic tirade was slightly exaggerated. She knew her heart was hammering not just from anger, but from the truth that his words had struck far closer to a tender, vulnerable nerve than she dared to admit. But she was in no state of mind to dissect her own emotions. She just needed to defend herself. She needed to tear down his arrogant assumption before it destroyed whatever dignity she had left.

“You are being entirely absurd,” she added, her arms crossing tightly. “William, do not make this awkward. You are making things incredibly weird.”

William’s jaw clenched. A muscle ticked rhythmically beneath his cheek. He slowly lowered his hands, resting his palms flat on the desk as he leaned forward.

“I am a practical man, Seraphina,” he said. “I live my life by hard, unyielding parameters. Men in my position, men who navigate the viper’s nest of political society, survive by anticipating risks. I am not a man who acts on impulse, nor am I a man who tolerates variables he cannot control.”

He stood up, his frame towering over the desk, casting a shadow across the floor. “People think twice before crossing me. They calculate their words around me. But ever since you walked into this house, the dynamic has shifted into something I do not recognize. I find myself distracted. I would really hate to give you a false notion of what this is.”

He stepped around the desk. “I like it less when I cannot read the person sitting across from me. I prefer clarity. You did not give me that clarity at the ball.”

Seraphina took a deep breath, willing her hands to stop shaking. She forced herself to stand her ground as he approached.

“Fine,” she said. “If clarity is what you require, then let me give it to you clearly. I can see your point. You are protective of your boundaries, and you fear that emotional entanglements will complicate our ultimate goal. That is fair.”

She looked him dead in the eye, trying to project absolute confidence. “So let me reassure you, Your Grace, it is entirely harmless if I happen to find you handsome. I am human. I have eyes. But you can rest completely assured that it will never pose a problem to our agreement. When the time comes for the blackmail to be resolved, and for us to seek our annulment, I will walk away without a single tear, a single protest, or a single pathetic plea for you to keep me. You will not have a swooning, heartbroken woman on your hands.”

As the words left her mouth, a strange, hollow ache echoed in her chest. A whisper inside her mind asked if she was truly as prepared to walk away as she claimed to be, knowing the question she had left unanswered with Alice. But she crushed the thought instantly.