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What would she do if she knew the fire she inadvertently stoked in him with just a flick of her hand?

He gulped.

He shook his head and looked down. Dirt stained the hem of her gown, and a smear of it ran along one wrist. She looked nothing at all like the composed, careful woman who dined across from him in silence most evenings.

She looked warm. Alive. Thoroughly undone. And he wanted to undo her more. He had to look down at his ledger for a moment to remember how to speak.

“Duchess.” He cleared his throat.

“If you have a moment, I would like to speak with you.” She stepped further into the room, glancing around at the shelves crowded with account books and correspondence he hadn’t the heart to sort through, and at the cup of coffee going cold on the corner of his desk. “I won’t keep you long.”

“Sit, please.” He gestured to the chair across from him, grateful for the desk between them and the excuse it gave his eyes to land somewhere respectable.

He didn’t dare look at her too long, seeing how their kiss had ended.

To his surprise, she didn’t sit. She stood with her hands folded in front of her stomach, which he was coming to recognize as her way of preparing to say something she had rehearsed. He found it endearing.

“I would like it if we dined together. All three of us. Regularly, I mean, not only on the odd evening when it suits.”

He went still as a stone before looking up at her.

“My work keeps me up past Iris’s bedtime most nights. I dine late as a rule. I always have. It would mean either rushing my business or keeping her up well past when she ought to sleep. Neither is wise.”

“Then leave your work an hour early. Just once, to start.” Her chin lifted, the same stubborn set he’d noticed in Iris a hundred times. It occurred to him, absurdly, that the two of them were beginning to resemble each other in ways that had nothing to do with blood. “She is fond of you, Your Grace. More than fond. And she needs you, not simply a name on a door she’s told is her uncle’s. She has lost both her mother and her father. You are the only family she has left.”

“I am aware of exactly what my niece has lost,” Nathaniel said, sharper than he meant to. “I do not need the reminder.”

Her brow furrowed, but she didn’t retreat. “I didn’t say it to wound you. I said it because I don’t think you see what’s in front of you. She lights up the moment your boots sound in the hall, and then you disappear into this room the entire evening. While she loves the stories you read to her before bed, that isn’t enough. You should be more present, a true father figure, not a ghost who comes and goes.”

Ghost. You have no idea what ghosts haunt my mind.

Nathaniel clenched his fist. “You have known this family for a matter of weeks.”

“I’ve known Iris for a matter of weeks. That is long enough to see how badly she misses you.” Laura held his gaze, not backing down an inch, and he found that he respected her more for it even though it chafed at every raw place inside him. “I’m not asking you to abandon your work, or your grief, or whatever it is you disappear into this study to avoid. I’m asking for one hour.”

“One hour?”

“Yes. Supper, together. Three nights a week, to begin with. She could tell you about the garden. She’s very proud of it. She planted an entire row of tulips and insisted on naming each one.”

The corner of his mouth twitched. He pressed it flat with his hand as he rubbed his chin. “She named the tulips?”

“Gerald, mostly. There are several Geralds, for some reason.” A small, unguarded smile tugged at her lips, there and gone. “I did not ask why.”

Nathaniel looked down at the ledger in front of him. Five minutes ago, the columns of figures had felt like the only thing in the house he could still control. But now, he could no longer remember why an hour of his evening mattered more than the sound of his niece explaining why several tulips were named Gerald of all things.

“She used to garden with Isabella,” he said quietly, the fight leaving his voice before he’d decided to let it. Laura was beginning to have this effect on him, but that was something to worry about later. “I saw the two of you out there today.”

“I know. I saw you turn away rather quickly.”

He didn’t say anything. There wasn’t an answer that didn’t require handing her more of himself than he was ready to part with.

Laura seemed to understand that too, because she didn’t press it.

“You don’t have to tell me why it hurts to watch. I only ask that you don’t let it keep you from her. She isn’t Isabella. She’s her own person, she’s still here, and she needs you as much as you’re afraid to admit you need her.”

The silence that followed stretched long enough for him to hear the clock on the mantel tick in time with his heart.

He thought of Isabella’s laughter under the oak tree, Iris explaining why several flowers shared the same name, and how easily and carelessly he’d let whole evenings slip past unlived.