Page 19 of The Duke’s Hidden Runaway Bride

She began to lean towards him.

Then the practical part of her, the part that had spent years balancing ledgers and weighing consequences, reminded her that a life still waited beyond the snow.

She was promised to a man Adrian knew. Her name was a scandal across England, her father’s fortune under threat. If she kissed Adrian, even if she accepted his gentle offer to wield his influence on her behalf, she would draw this kind man into the wreck with her.

Ophelia pulled back.

She drew the greatcoat close and lowered her face.

“I cannot,” she said. Her voice shook. “It is not that I do not wish to. I must not.”

Adrian moved back at once.

“No. Of course. You need not explain.”

He did not sigh or ask her to reconsider. He merely restored the distance she needed, and sat beside her in the growing dark.

They waited a hand’s breadth apart while the storm died beyond the walls. The space between them felt more intimate than touch.

Ophelia had not protected herself at all. What lay between them was a fact now, and the snow that had hidden her from the world had trapped her with a man she could not afford to want.

The wind dropped.

Far off, faint, came Bronwen’s voice calling their names.

Ophelia gave Adrian back the greatcoat. They rose and brushed the hay from their clothes, moving carefully and not looking at one another.

Outside, the cold struck sharp and clean after the closeness of the croft, and Ophelia was glad of it; it gave her something honest to feel. Then they went down the hill together, following the bob of Bronwen’s lantern through the thinning snow, to be found.

Chapter Ten

For the rest of that day after the croft, Adrian conducted himself like a gentleman.

He kept his distance. He spoke to Ophelia only when company required it, directed his charm impartially at everyone else, and gave her every opportunity not to meet his eyes. She ought to have been relieved.

Instead, his absence trailed her through every room, a silence at her elbow where his voice ought to have been.

The next forenoon he found her in the small library. The household was busy elsewhere, fine snow ticking steadily against the window, and Ophelia was seated at the writing table with the candle accounts before her, the fire burned down to embers, when he entered.

He closed the door softly but did not latch it. Then he remained beside it, leaving the width of the room between them and the way out within her reach.

“Miss Jones,” he said, and he said it in a tone she had not heard him use before, all lightness gone from it.

She set down her pen, sudden fear curdling in her stomach.

“I know that is not your name,” he said. “I will continue to use it if you wish me to.”

The dread she had carried through the last weeks settled at last into certainty. Ophelia rose, one hand braced against the writing table.

“How long have you known?”

“I suspected after the story about Markham. I was nearly certain before Christmas. What happened at the feast removed the last honest possibility of doubt.”

He watched her face without moving nearer.

“I believe you are Ophelia James. If I am wrong, tell me so, and I shall never mention it again.”

“You are not wrong,” she said quietly.