Page 46 of The Matchmaker Meets her Duke
"Last I heard she had made a voyage across the seas to America where she squandered her poor father's fortune in glamorous grief."
"Yes, grief justifies the most preposterous of actions," he said. "It would seem she's back, and newly wedded too, if her new title is anything to go by."
"How fascinating," Rose said. But she didn't sound fascinated at all. She sounded nearly bored, as if ready to move on to the next topic. Rose was about ten years his junior. She would hardly remember her dead brother or his fiancée, or have memories to hold on to from before his passing. And Pandora was not. Ready to move on to the next topic, that is.
She wanted to know more about this encounter with Victoria that had made a strong, confident man like Emmett tremble in her arms. She wanted to know what exactly the loss of his brother meant to him.
She chose her words carefully. "A meaningful encounter, was it?"
"One could certainly say so," he said. He wasn't budging, but she would not be discouraged.
"Soul-shattering? Life-altering?" she teased, expecting him to shoot up a scandalous eyebrow, to poke and tease back. But Emmett gave a bare shrug and said. "Perhaps."
Nowher interest was piqued. "Care to elaborate, Your Grace?" He cast her an inquisitive glance at the use of his title, and she shot him one right back.
"Let's just say," he said, "that perhaps I needed that encounter to shine a light on a few things."
"Such as?"
"How I've been living life." He pressed his glass to his lips and sipped. "How I might want to live life, moving forward."
"I see," she said and hoped that she did see, and hoped that she was seeing right.
He was speaking of her, wasn't he? Of their future together, of this thing that they shared. And it was more than just something. Pandora's heart throbbed, a strange but glorious feeling of warmth stealing over her. What did this mean for them? Could their marriage of convenience evolve into something else? Something better?
Beside Emmett, Rose grunted her irritation. "How poetic," she said sardonically, but Emmett only laughed at his sister's scrunched-up nose.
"Come on now, Sister. Dire love for you cannot possibly mean dire love for us all."Love.But before Pandora could dissect the implications of her husband's words, Rose's face crumpled in a sour expression.
Emmett caught himself. "Too soon?"
"Way too soon," she answered, and turned her back to him.
Pandora watched her husband part his lips, fumbling helplessly for words. He turned his gaze upon her. "How about you?"
"Me?"
"Yourfamiliar face. At the ball yesterday."
"Oh, that." She smiled, despite herself. "One could say that I needed it too."
"A light-shining encounter too, was it?" he was teasing her, and she resisted the urge to tease back.
"More like an affirmation."
"Go on."
"Of why I do what I do and where I want to go from here."
"I see.'' He seemed to ponder her words for a moment. "And is this familiar face of any acquaintance of mine?''
"No. It was Peter, actually."
"Who?"
"Lord Fitzroy. My formerly–"
"Betrothed."
