She Refused to Curtsy to the Most Feared Duke in London—But Instead of Punishing Her, He Protected Her From the Ballroom’s Cruel Whispers. Months Later, Just as They Fell in Love, One Rumor Made Her Believe He Was a Terrible Man.

 PART 4

Later, walking along an upper loggia before dinner, Emily lingered near the stone balustrade where the terrace fell away toward the canal below. She glanced over the edge, felt the dizzying pull of the height, and stepped back.

“You dislike heights.”

“I possess good judgment.”

“That must be a recent development.”

She turned with a retort ready — and her heel caught the worn edge of a loose flagstone. The ground slipped away beneath her.

James moved before the cry left her throat, his arm locking hard around her waist, hauling her back against him. Her palm struck the solid warmth of his chest. The world steadied. Then stopped entirely.

“Are you hurt?”

“No,” she whispered.

He did not let go. Not immediately. And Emily became acutely aware of how differently a man felt when there was no easel standing safely between them.

She stepped back at last. His arm fell away.

“Good judgment, was it?” he murmured, falling into stride beside her.

“Do not ruin the rescue.”

His soft laugh followed her down the path, and she found herself smiling before she could stop it — a discovery far more unsettling than the fall had been.

The last sitting should have restored the sensible distance between them. Instead it made matters worse. James sat by the open windows in shirtsleeves while Emily worked on the line of his hands, and their conversation wandered, without either of them admitting how, toward marriage. He spoke of alliances arranged between families as though discussing drainage rights: practical, sometimes necessary, rarely inspiring.

“You make matrimony sound delightful,” Emily said.

“I have rejected three women precisely because I refused to make that bargain.”

Her charcoal paused. “The famous heiresses.”

“The very same. They deserved husbands who wanted them rather than their acreage.” He looked directly at her. “And I deserve the same honesty.”

It was an answer she had not expected from a man everyone described as ruthless. Emily lowered her eyes to the paper, suddenly aware that the hand she was drawing had once caught her at the terrace edge without hesitation. Kindness, she thought, was easy to praise when it came from safe men. From James, it was destabilizing, because every decent thing he did contradicted the defenses she had built against him.

When her carriage departed the palazzo two mornings later, he stood at the steps until the turn of the canal hid him from view. Emily told herself she was relieved to be leaving. She did not ask why she kept looking back.

She returned from Venice to find Casper Ingrams sitting in her parents’ drawing room — and, far more troubling, his parents beside him, and a formal tea service laid for six.

“Your mother and I have been in discussion with the Ingrams,” her father began carefully, “while you were abroad.”

“About?”

“Your future.”

Emily’s gaze went straight to Casper. The easy grin had vanished from his face entirely.

“You have been discussing marriage,” she said, letting the word sit heavy in the room.

No one denied it.

“No arrangement has been made without your consent,” her father pressed, “but we have spoken of the possibilities.”

“How long have you known?” she asked Casper.

“Not long,” he said. “I told them there was little sense arranging a marriage without consulting the woman meant to be in it.”

It was a fair answer. It did nothing to soften the sting of discovering her whole family had been quietly plotting her life the instant her back was turned.

That night, Lucy slipped into her bed chamber and asked the only question that mattered. “Do you want to marry him?”

“He is kind,” Emily said. “He would never hurt me.”

“That is not what I asked.”

Silence stretched, tight and unyielding, until Emily finally looked away toward the hearth.

“No.”

The admission hurt more than she expected. Casper represented everything her mother wanted for her: a familiar family, an uncomplicated name, a man whose temper she had known since childhood and whose affection had never frightened her. She could imagine a life beside him with painful clarity — pleasant breakfasts, predictable Christmases, children who climbed the same trees they once had. It was not a bad life. That was precisely what made refusing it so difficult.

“I love him,” Emily said at last. “But not in the way a wife should love a husband. I keep thinking gratitude ought to become desire if I am patient enough. It does not.”

Lucy reached across the coverlet and squeezed her hand. “Then do not punish both of you because everyone else finds safety romantic.”

Emily let out a humorless laugh. “You make it sound simple.”

“No. I make it sound true. Those are different things.”

Lucy simply nodded after that — no scolding, no attempt to talk her into safety. Then, propping her chin in her hand: “Did anything interesting happen in Venice?”

Emily’s fingers stilled on the ribbon she was folding. “The Duke of Westfall was there.”

“You failed to mention that in your letters.”

“I’m mentioning it now.”

“And why,” Lucy said slowly, “have you gone pink?”

“I have not — James was available for the sittings.”

The name slipped out too easily. Lucy said nothing at all, which was infinitely worse than teasing.

“His grace,” Emily corrected, too stiffly. “It was a professional sitting.”

“Naturally.”

For the next several days Emily tried to prove Lucy’s suspicion ridiculous by working from dawn until the lamps were lit. She completed a study of an old woman selling flowers, began a landscape of the Serpentine, and ruined both because every stern male profile gradually acquired the same severe brow and pale scar near the temple. On the third evening she tore a sheet from her pad so violently that her father looked up from his newspaper.

“Bad picture?” he asked.

“Persistent subject.”

He wisely returned to the financial pages. Emily stared at the charcoal smear on her thumb and understood that leaving Venice had solved nothing. Distance had only removed James from the room; it had not removed him from her mind.

Three weeks passed before a heavy cream envelope arrived, bearing the Westfall seal — an invitation to a private viewing of paintings for a select circle of guests. Tucked inside, a second, smaller card, bearing only her name in dark, decisive ink.

I find I have developed an inconvenient preference for seeing things as they are. If you are willing, bring one of yours.

Inconvenient. The word rang through her like the echo of a ballroom conversation months old — his cool reply to her theory of fairy-tale love. Extremely inconvenient.

Lucy read the note twice, eyes narrowing. “It is about painting?”

“Naturally.”

“Apparently it is something he remembers,” Lucy said, handing it back.

Three weeks since Venice. James was back in London, and with a single deliberate sentence, he had managed to command every corner of Emily’s thoughts.

At the viewing, Emily stood near her own canvas, explaining a detail to an elderly couple, when the warmth suddenly drained from her face. Her hand pressed against her stomach. She lowered it, turned away, tried to hide it.

James had already seen.

“You are unwell,” he said, reaching her before her knees gave entirely.

“I am perfectly —” The lie broke on a sharp, shaking breath.

“Not now,” he said, offering his arm. She took it without protest, which frightened him more than anything else that evening.