Page 40 of To Steal a Duchess

“Will you give me clear skies and calm waters to sail through, or will you continue to give me storms and resistance?” she dared to ask.

Dorian’s mouth twitched. “We shall see. But the map of me, Duchess, is not as easy as you want to make it. Know that the destination you seek is not always where you might want to end up.”

“And if I do not care?”

He stopped for a moment as though not expecting her boldness. “You should.”

“And yet I find myself only hoping you might linger a little longer with me in conversations, stay in a room in my company a moment more.”

“We agreed what this marriage would be,” he told her, but his voice had still not returned to his usual, uninterested tone. It was still rough, as though he was holding something back. “Convenient. A thing to save us both. Advantageous on both sides.”

“Indeed,” she said softly. “Convenient indeed.”

His face was almost lowered to hers completely.

“But you… You, Eloise, are not convenient at all,” he murmured as breath swept over the side of her face. “Especially when you look at me with those dangerous eyes of yours.”

She turned toward him, her heart pulsing erratically in her chest.

His fingertips just about brushed hers, his mouth an inch away. Eloise held her breath, wondering, and even, deep down, hoping, that the inch would be closed. Neither broke the gaze, and Dorian’s eyes were even darker than usual.

Eloise could not breathe, did not want to move, did not want such a moment to cease, their closeness entirely contradicting their words.

Until a demanding bark came from the ajar drawing room door.

Eloise broke away with a start, her feet carrying her away from Dorian’s space, her hands clasped together so he didn’t see how they trembled.

“I—” She began. “Pickle, he… He likes his nighttime walks at this hour. I—I forgot.”

Heavens, she was suddenly thrown off-kilter.

She gazed at her husband, hoping he would tell her to delay the walk, that they might even go out together. Did she want him to have kissed her? She didn’t know. Her stomach sank, and she knew it would only complicate things further, but she had ached to know the taste of his mouth against hers.

Confusion swirled through her as her mind tried to pick apart how she felt, but Dorian saved her from having to linger in her conflict when he nodded, his jaw tight, and he turned back to the cabinet, a dismissal enough without words.

Chapter Ten

Dorian had barely slept all night, kept awake by everything that had happened the evening before.

He had come so close to letting Eloise see him—to tugging down the mask of control he wore that hid the man beneath. The man who, no matter how many times he planned and worked, knew that things did not always work out the way he wanted.

He was starting to worry that Eloise was that sort of thing.

He had planned this through: a convenient marriage to save him the fuss of having to find a wife in the more traditional way. He had not even wanted a wife. Having another person around him so permanently meant a liability, a variable he could not control or plan for.

Dorian’s world was rigid, and Eloise, despite him trying to assess every outcome of their arrangement, did not fit into it. She was already proving that, and Dorian was already weary that he had not considered the very last outcome.

That he might be enticed by his wife.

That he might lose control around her.

“Are you with us, Dorian?”

Gideon’s voice knocked him from his reprieve, and Dorian flinched.

“What?” he snapped.

“You look a thousand miles away,” Eloise noted, and he tried not to look at her, tried not to let it show that she was the reason he was so distracted.