Page 13 of The Duke’s Hidden Runaway Bride

Instead, she looked at him.

The firelight moved across his face, his eyes steady and level as he watched her, but there was no demand in his expression. Only hope, that she might choose to open one of the doors she kept locked and guarded. He had asked a real question, plainly and without a hook, and he was waiting for a real answer.

“I do not dislike you,” she said at last. “I am afraid of you. They are not the same, though I have spent a long while pretending they were.”

Something in his expression changed, but he did not interrupt.

“You have refrained from questioning me,” she continued. “I appreciate it. I will allow you one question tonight, and then I must go up.”

“A dangerous gift,” he said gravely.

“Spend it wisely.”

He considered, turning his cup.

“You understand useful work in a way I do not. You know the larder and the linen, the price of tallow and how long the stores will last. Where did you learn it?”

The question made her catch her breath, though he had asked it gently, his eyes on the fire rather than on her, leaving her every avenue of retreat. And considering, it was a far less dangerous question than many he might have asked.

She found that she could give him one true piece without giving him the whole.

“My father is a man of business. A great deal of business. I grew up among ledgers, clerks, and ships’ manifests. I could cast up a column before I could sew a straight stitch. He intended another life for me, but the skills were acquired all the same.”

Adrian nodded slowly, thoughtfully. He said nothing, though she was sure more questions were burning his tongue. She respected him all the more for his choosing not to press.

“There,” she said, lifting her chin. “That is more than I have told anyone in this house. I do not know why I have told you, except that you have a very unfair way of asking.”

“It is my single talent,” he said. “Making people tell me what they had rather not. My grandfather considered it a most ungentlemanly accomplishment.”

He smiled, but his eyes still spoke of more questions.

“Thank you, Miss Jones. I shall abide by our bargain and ask nothing more, though you should know that speaking of your father in the present tense rather invites another.”

She had slipped, and he had seen it. Her heart began to pound with sudden panic.

He did not press his advantage, though. He merely showed her where she had left herself exposed and allowed her to close the door.

“It grows late,” she said quickly, rising to hurry away.

She was shaken less by the knowledge in his eyes than by what he had chosen not to do with it.

Miss Pettibone caught her on the stairs and said what Ophelia had not allowed herself so much as to think.

The old lady waited on the half-landing, her candle throwing a small circle of light. She took both Ophelia’s hands in hers, her whole face bright with certainty.

“My dear, I shall say nothing to a living soul, so you may be easy. But I have eyes in my head, whatever else the good Lord has taken, and I know the look of a man who has left off playing.” Miss Pettibone beamed at her. “His Grace is grown serious about you.”

Ophelia shook her head in denial.

“Oh, do not tell me otherwise. I have lived a great while. A woman learns some things even when no one thinks to explain them.”

Miss Pettibone pressed Ophelia’s hands, kissed her cheek, and went into her room, serenely certain that she had done a great kindness.

Ophelia shut her own door and stood in the darkness with one hand pressed over her mouth.

His Grace is grown serious about you.

The foolish, romantic old woman who thought every story ended in a wedding had spoken aloud the one hope Ophelia had kept deliberately in darkness. Pettibone had held a candle to it, and now Ophelia could not pretend she had not seen it.