Page 41 of My Demanding Duke

Falconbridge’s expression shifted—not quite scowling, but dark and serious.

“You should not associate with him,” he said, his tone firm.

Anna blinked. “Why ever not?”

“I have my reasons,” he replied, with the finality of a locked door.

Anna’s spine stiffened with annoyance; he could not dictate to her as though she were a member of his household staff, expected to follow his word without explanation.

“You forbid me to walk alone, you forbid me to speak with certain people; am I permitted to breathe without your say-so?”

He did not rise to the bait.

“I expect to be obeyed on this matter,” he said, his tone making it clear that he would brook no argument.

Anna stared at him, stunned into silence. Finally, he had decided to claim his first marital right as a husband, yet the one he had settled for was obedience. It felt somewhat humiliating.

“My, don’t you both look the picture of wedded bliss?”

Edwina arrived before them with a rustle of silk and bombazine. She wore a feathered turban upon her head, which bobbed with a cheeriness that Anna felt almost mocking.

“Mother,” Falconbridge said stiffly in response.

If Edwina noticed her son’s bad mood, she did not let on. Instead, she looped her arm through Anna’s and declared that she wished to spirit her away to mingle.

“I’d ask you to join us, dear, but you appear to have found new employment as a brooding sentry, and I would hate to interrupt your post.”

With a wink, she whisked Anna into the crowd, leaving Falconbridge to glower alone in peace.

“He can be difficult at times,” Edwina confided to Anna in a whisper, as she led her through the crowd. “But his heart is in the right place.”

Anna bit her lip to stop herself from retorting that as far as she could see, the duke had no heart. Instead, she nodded silently in agreement, her expression passive.

“He does have one,” Edwina smiled, interpreting Anna’s silence with the same startling gift of omnipotence her son possessed. “He is a curmudgeon, I’ll admit, but a lovable one. He wasn’t always this imperious and bossy. That came after Jack.”

“Jack?” Anna asked, caught off guard.

Edwina blinked. “He hasn’t told you?”

“Told me what?”

The dowager duchess hesitated for a beat, long enough for Anna to note her discomfiture.

“Jack was Hugh’s brother,” Edwina said quietly. “My firstborn son, my angel. He died over a decade ago. A hunting accident…”

Edwina trailed off, silent for a moment, her fine-boned face a picture of pain.

“It was all very sudden. He had inherited the title at nineteen when my husband died. He was dead by twenty-two.”

Anna’s breath caught as she recalled the portrait that had seemed like a poor likeness of Hugh. Of course, it hadn’t resembled him—because it wasn’t him. It had been Jack. But why hadn’t Hugh told her?

“I am so sorry for your loss. I did not know—Hugh never told me,” she stammered.

Edwina sighed and took a glass of ratafia from a passing tray.

“Yes, well. Hugh doesn’t speak of it. Not to anyone. I think he decided that grieving was an indulgence unbefitting of a duke. He seems to believe that if he can just control everything and everyone, then the worst will never happen again. Very annoying, but as I said, his heart is in the right place. Ah! There is Lady Limehouse. Come, she has been seeking to speak with you all evening.”

Anna allowed Edwina draw her away, into the chattering tide of the ballroom toward Lady Limehouse, but her thoughts remained elsewhere. The man she had married—that highhanded, mysterious creature—was suddenly more complicated than she’d imagined. Was he motivated by a grief so deeply buried that he could not even acknowledge it when asked by his wife? The wife he had decided he wished to save, without being asked, without consideration of the consequences.

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