Page 16 of The Duke’s Caught Bride

Freddie lingered for a few seconds more, then waved at them and left.

Kenneth looked at Alice one final time. Her cheeks were flushed. She held his gaze for three heartbeats, and then she turned and climbed the staircase without a word. He saw her hand gripping the banister all the way up, her knuckles turning white.

He stood at the foot of the staircase until the sound of her footsteps had faded into the upper corridors.

He ran a hand through his hair and exhaled.

What have I gotten myself into?

Then he walked back to his study alone.

Chapter Five

Three days later, Alice could still feel the imprint of Kenneth’s hand on her jaw. The memory had a physical weight, like a bruise beneath the skin that throbbed when pressed. His thumb stroking her cheek. His body warm through the layers of her gown. The look in his eyes before Charlie had appeared.

Alice reached for the hairbrush that should have been on the dressing table’s right-hand corner. It was not there.

She frowned, running her fingers across the polished surface where the silver-backed brush had sat minutes ago. Perhaps the maid had moved it during the evening tidying. Perhaps she had placed it elsewhere herself, distracted by the lingering heat of the staircase encounter.

She checked the drawer. The bedside table. The writing desk where her correspondence lay in a neat stack. No brush.

It appeared on the windowsill ten minutes later, balanced on the narrow ledge, the bristles facing outward as though the brush had decided to admire the view.

Alice picked it up and turned it over in her hands. The silver felt cool against her palm.

She said nothing, only brushed her hair in silence, watching the copper strands catch the lamplight, and then set the brush deliberately on the dressing table where it belonged.

Her nightgown had been folded and placed at the foot of the bed when the maid turned down the covers. Alice remembered this with perfect clarity because she had noted the care with which the cotton had been arranged, the corners squared with the precision of a woman who took pride in her work.

Now the nightgown resided in her wardrobe, tucked between two day dresses, folded into a tight cylinder that bore no resemblance to its original configuration.

A noise sounded in the corridor—a muffled exhale that might have been a stifled laugh, quickly suppressed.

Alice paused with the nightgown in her hands. The cotton carried the faint scent of lavender from the sachets in the wardrobe drawers.

“I see,” she said to the empty room. Her voice carried just far enough to reach the door, which stood ajar.

Wide enough for a small boy to hide.

After she closed the door, her maid came in soon after and helped her change into her nightgown.

When the maid went to fetch her slippers, which were usually arranged side by side beneath the bed when she retired to her chamber, she halted.

“They’re over there.” Alice pointed at the windowsill, where the slippers now sat at attention, toes pointed outward.

After her maid left, Alice crossed the room and extinguished the lamp on the dressing table. The room dimmed to the soft glow of the single candle beside the bed.

Another sound from the corridor, clearer this time: a giggle, hastily muffled by a cough that fooled no one.

Alice climbed into bed. The sheets were cool and smelled of starch. She arranged the covers around her shoulders and turned toward the wall, presenting her back to the door and the small observer she knew was stationed there.

She counted to twenty beneath the covers. Then, she released a sigh, the soft contented exhale of a woman settling into sleep.

Footsteps sounded in the corridor. Small, quick, retreating with the satisfied rhythm of a mission accomplished.

Alice smiled into her pillow. The smile ached a little at the edges, worn thin by the day’s accumulated weight, but it was genuine. Freddie had chosen to engage with her. It was far from acceptance, but still it warmed her heart. After all, he was just a boy.

She understood him. She had acted similarly once, in the years when her father’s attention had been a currency too scarce to spend on her. She had rearranged the ornaments on his desk. Moved his ledgers an inch to the left. Small alterations designed not to anger but to provoke a response, any response that would acknowledge she existed in the same room.