His dark eyes locked onto hers, unblinking. He didn’t speak, but the glare he threw in her direction made her falter mid-step. She cleared her throat and pulled her shawl tighter, going over the plan again in her head.
First step. Apologize.
“Need I remind you how highly inappropriate this is, Miss Lockhart?” he said to her and rose to his feet.
“Your Grace, first, I must apologize to you regarding the events of today,” she started by saying. “It must have been quite troubling.”
“What are you doing here?” he asked, stopping a good distance from her.
Cecilia opened her mouth, closed it again, then leaned forward, her hands twisting in the folds of her shawl. “This wasn’t supposed to happen,” she muttered and started to pace. “None of it. I didn’t go looking for this, you know. I wasn’t creepingthrough corridors hoping to stumble into your chambers like some featherbrained girl from a scandal sheet.”
She turned abruptly toward him, her hands gesturing wildly now. “Not that I’m saying it’s your fault. It’s not. Not really. You didn’t ask for this either. But does that matter? No. Because somehow, we are both in this together.”
“Together?” he asked and raised his eyebrows.
“Yes, together.” Cecilia paused.
“Miss Lockhart, my patience is thinning,” he sighed. “Say what you came to say. No riddles. No dramatics. What are you doing in my room in the middle of the night?”
“We cannot get married,” she said outright. “It cannot happen.”
“Well, if you had just let me help you with the dress, you might have been properly clothed and well out of the room before Marianne arrived,” he said coolly.
Cecilia flushed. “It would have been highly inappropriate.”
Valentine arched a brow. “I wasn’t offering to ravish you, Miss Lockhart. I asked to touch the dress. That is a very different thing.”
“It is not a different thing when I am wearing the dress!” she snapped, then caught herself. She exhaled through her nose, visibly reigning in her temper. “Regardless, we’re here now, and it hardly matters how we arrived at this particular disaster. All that matters is fixing things.”
There was a beat of silence that ensued. Cecilia cleared her throat again and sighed. “Let us simply agree to disagree,” she said firmly. “Now, speaking of the disaster. Your Grace, surely there must be another way around this situation. We cannot get married. I do not consent.”
“You do not consent?”
“No, I do not.”
“But your father did.”
“That doesn’t matter,” she argued and took one too many steps forward. “Your Grace, you barely know me.”
“You are Miss Cecilia Lockhart,” he said evenly, as if listing facts on a page. “Daughter of Lord Howard Lockhart, the Viscount Lockhart. You are in your twenty-second year. Brown hair. Blue eyes. Not tall, not exactly short. Educated.”
Cecilia arched her brows and took a step back. “Well, that is entirely different from what I mean. I–”
“Do you know who I am?” he questioned.
“I’m sorry?” she questioned back.
Valentine’s gaze sharpened. He uncrossed his arms slowly before taking a step closer. “Who am I, Miss Lockhart?”
Cecilia’s breath caught, but she didn’t look away. No. She couldn’t look away from him. It was almost as if it would be wrong to do so. Like he commanded the very air between them. The room felt smaller with him standing there, and her pulse thudded traitorously loud in her ears. But still, she held his gaze, even as something in it unsettled her. Not fear. No, not quite. It was something dangerously close to awe.
“You are…Your Grace,” she stuttered. “Valentine Price. The Duke of Ashbourne.”
He waited, silent, as if expecting her to say more.
But she gave him nothing.
“That is as much as I know,” she said.
