Page 50 of A Virgin to Tempt the Duke

“She will come out of it alive,” Frederick said. “Which is more than she could expect from continuing in the arrangement you presented.”

Birchall looked up once at the window where Anna was standing, and Frederick watched her look at him. With a huff, he went down the steps.

Frederick watched him go until his carriage at the end of the street had pulled away and was gone. Then he turned and came back through the door.

CHAPTER 19

The entrance hall is quiet again. That is good.

Anna was standing in the center of it. She was looking at Frederick, and she was, she realized, trembling. Not violently, not the kind of trembling that a person could not control. Small. Steady. The vibration of a body that had held itself completely still for a very long time and was now, in the absence of the thing it had been braced against, remembering that it was allowed to be a body.

Frederick crossed the hall. He looked at her face, and whatever he saw there made him take one more step, and then he put his arms around her.

It was not tentative. It was done with a decision behind it, made quickly and then committed to. His arms came around her, and she pressed her face against his chest, and the trembling moved through her, and his hand came up to the back of her head, and she breathed. The smell of him was pine and peat and cold air and something warmer underneath, and she put her handsagainst his chest and gripped the lapel of his coat and breathed again.

He said nothing, and for that she was grateful. He did not tell her it was all right. He was not a man who said things when the saying of them was the smaller comfort. He simply held her, and that was everything. She memorized the feel of his muscles against her, his strong arms and shoulders as she held tight.

The trembling slowed. She became aware of her own breathing, steadying. She became aware of his, even and deliberate. She became aware of how close she was, her cheek against his chest, his hand warm at her hair.

She looked up. He looked down.

The distance was very small, and everything that had accumulated in all the ordinary spaces between them was here, now, in this room. So much had happened and so fast, and his eyes were very dark in the lamplight, and his hand was still at the back of her head, and?—

“Your Grace,” Simmons spoke from the far side of the hall.

Frederick’s hand left her hair, and she stifled a sigh. He took one careful step back. Anna straightened. They both turned.

Simmons was on his feet, which was the first thing. He was holding the wall with one hand and had the look of a man in pain who was refusing to let the pain have the floor. There wasa bruise already forming along the left side of his jaw and his bearing, despite everything, was as professional as it ever was.

“Your Grace,” he said. “Miss Cartwell. I must offer my most sincere apologies. Lord Birchall entered before I could… I am most sorry… I cannot believe…”

“Simmons.” Frederick’s voice was quieter now, the controlled register given way to something more tiring and more genuine underneath. “Sit down.”

“If I might?—”

“That was not a suggestion.” He looked toward the back of the hall. “Mrs. Hale.” The housekeeper appeared immediately from the direction of the kitchen. “Send for Dr. Price. Now.” He looked at Simmons. “You are going to sit down and allow yourself to be looked at. I do not want to hear about professional dignity until Dr. Price has confirmed you are in a condition to have professional dignity.”

Simmons looked, briefly, at Anna.

“His Grace is right, Simmons,” she said. “Please, sit down.”

Simmons sat. The decision to do so was clearly difficult for him, but he did it.

Frederick looked at Anna. The composure was back, which felt like whiplash. It had come back quickly, with the decisionbehind it, the same way everything came back to him quickly. But underneath it she could see the remnants of the thing that had made him cross the hall. His jaw was tight. His hands, at his sides, were not entirely still.

“You need to rest,” he said.

“I am all right?—”

“Anna.” He said it quietly, without force. “Please.”

She looked at him. She thought about the hall, about standing her ground, about the shape of the thing she had known and held to. She thought about his hand at the back of her head and how easily she had let herself be held.

“I will write to Barnes tonight,” he said. “Whatever he needs to move the paperwork forward, he will have it by tomorrow. I will put everything I have at it. This…” He stopped. Started again. “You will not see him again. I will make that my personal undertaking,” he said through gritted teeth.

She believed him. Not because he was a duke, not because he was powerful. Not even because of the way he had looked at Birchall on the front steps.

She believed him because he had never told her something he did not mean, and she valued him for it.