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 5

A physician was summoned. Fever, exhaustion, no travel across London that night. Lady Margaret settled the matter before Emily could object, and James sent word to her family himself.

That should have settled him. It did not.

Past midnight, Lady Margaret found him pacing the corridor outside Emily’s door for the sixth time. “If you intend to haunt this passage until dawn,” she said, opening the door, “you may as well do it somewhere warm.”

He crossed the room and took the chair opposite the bed. No one questioned him. Least of all his aunt.

The physician had left strict instructions: water every hour, cool cloths when the fever climbed, and immediate summons if her breathing changed. James listened as though receiving military orders. At one, he replaced the basin himself because the maid carrying it was half asleep. At two, he opened the window an inch when Emily complained weakly of heat, then closed it the moment she shivered. At three, Lady Margaret returned and found him counting the spaces between Emily’s breaths.

“James,” she said quietly.

“Do not.”

“I have not said anything.”

“You were about to.”

His aunt studied him for a long moment. “Very well. Then I will say only that physicians generally know more about fevers than dukes do. You may stop glaring at the thermometer as if intimidation will lower it.”

Against his will, a tired laugh escaped him. It vanished when Emily stirred. He was beside the bed immediately, holding the glass while she drank two mouthfuls without fully waking. Her fingers, searching blindly for balance, closed around his wrist. She kept them there after the glass was gone.

James did not move for nearly twenty minutes.

By four, the fever finally began to ease. Only then did his shoulders loosen. Lady Margaret, watching from the doorway, understood far more than he was prepared to say aloud and had the mercy not to name it.

Emily remembered the night only in fragments — cool linen against her forehead, a low voice telling her to drink a little more. When she finally surfaced into gray, pre-dawn quiet, she found him stretched across the chaise, coat discarded, one forearm thrown over his eyes in exhausted surrender.

He had stayed. No one had required it of him.

She shifted. His arm dropped immediately, alert at once. He was on his feet before she could sit.

“I only want water,” she murmured.

He supported her shoulder while she drank, then set the glass aside.

“You need not stay,” she said.

“I know.”

He returned to the chaise, and those two words disturbed her far more than they should have.

Lucy arrived after breakfast expecting a deathbed and found instead a very alive, very irritable sister — and a duke asleep in the corner.

“He stayed all night,” Lucy said later, once James had gone down for breakfast.

“Apparently.”

Lucy had encountered him in the corridor ten minutes earlier, unshaven, tie crooked, carrying an untouched breakfast tray back toward Emily’s room because the housekeeper had mentioned she might manage toast. The sight had rearranged several of Lucy’s assumptions about dukes.

“For a man with a reputation for terrifying Parliament,” Lucy observed, “he looked remarkably close to murdering a slice of bread because you had not eaten it.”

Emily tried not to smile. “He is attentive to his guests.”

“Does he sit beside all of them until sunrise?”

“Lucy.”

“I am saying nothing. Please continue.”

By afternoon, seated by the window, Emily watched James appear in the doorway. The relief that crossed his face at the sight of her was immediate, unguarded — and gone almost as quickly. But she had spent hours in Venice studying every line of that face with charcoal in hand. She knew exactly what she had seen.

“Thank you,” she said, when the teasing faded.

He held her gaze. They both knew she was not thanking him for the physician.

“You would have done the same,” he said.

She almost denied it. She would have summoned doctors, ordered blankets, sent the household running. But would she have sat through the night simply because leaving felt unbearable? She did not know. From the quiet understanding in his eyes, he knew she did not know either.

A footman appeared. “Your grace — Mr. Casper Ingrams has arrived.”

James changed instantly. The warmth vanished, his shoulders straightened, and every trace of the tired man who had kept vigil beside her disappeared behind the Duke of Westfall’s polished restraint.

“Show him in.”

Casper arrived bearing a crate of figs and the easy comfort of a man who had known her all his life. He offered her one.

“The physician was quite clear,” James said, appearing in the doorway. “She has only just begun tolerating broth.”

Casper glanced between them. “With respect, your grace — Emily has never rested a day in her life.”

“My housekeeper prepared barley water,” James said, and set it within her reach.

Casper knew her favorite fruit without asking. James knew exactly what she had managed to eat since waking.

Lucy, watching from the corner, rose with sudden interest in the conservatory and swept Casper out the door.

Alone, James stood beside her chair, all the usual distance gone from his face. “You collapsed in my gallery,” he said, low and rough. “You spent a night burning with fever while everyone kept telling me you would recover.”

“You stayed,” she said quietly. “You did not have to.”

“I know.” He looked away. “I could not have been anywhere else.”

Emily said nothing. Casper was easy — she knew his jokes, his habits, the way he smiled before he said something he thought was clever. James was not easy. With him, every answer led to another question, and sitting beneath his tired, honest gaze, she could no longer tell herself what she felt for him was merely curiosity.

Four days later, an envelope arrived with no formal seal — only James’s decisive hand, securing her private admission to a print collection before public viewing hours. He was waiting at the gallery steps, and when he handed her down from the carriage, his fingers lingered a fraction too long.

For an hour they walked the quiet rooms together, his shoulder brushing hers before a Venetian sketch, the scent of cedarwood and rain-washed wool wrapping around her. Before a study of the Grand Canal, his hand found hers on the railing — warm, firm, fingers sliding between hers.

She froze. He was not looking at the art. He was looking at her, jaw soft, eyes stripped of every defense, showing a devotion so unguarded it terrified her to the bone.

“Wait here,” he murmured, thumb brushing her wrist. “I’ll have the curator bring out the Florence folios.”

He stepped away. And from the gallery entrance behind her, two fashionable voices drifted in, clear and careless.

“Lady Annalise’s carriage was seen at his gates twice this week. Westfall has always been discreet, but a man of his standing cannot delay a betrothal forever.”

The warmth in Emily’s blood turned instantly, entirely to ash.