Page 73 of A Deal with her Forbidden Duke
“I can tell when you pretend with me.” He gave her a stern look. “But I can understand why. So let us pretend that we do not protect the other from the darker sides of ourselves, and eat, shall we?”
“I would like that.”
“Have the Duchess served her morning eggs,” Alexander instructed the servants. “And a plate of French bread.”
Soon enough, they were eating together, and Alexander kept looking at her as though she puzzled him and he was not sure why.
“My husband, if you keep staring at me so I might be tempted to show you something to truly stare at.”
“I have everything on show I need to gaze at right now,” he told her smoothly. “I am not, however, immune to your… feminine ways.”
“Right here, on the terrace?” she asked, pretending to be shocked. “Alexander.”
“I would take you anywhere I pleased.” His smirk was dashing, and Madeleine met his gaze just as strongly. “Would you give yourself to me in any manner?”
“Any you ask of me,” she responded.
“Interesting.” His grin flashed as she bit into her French bread.
He himself slathered jam over his toast.
Throughout their breakfast, her thoughts still lingered on all the things they had not said the night before.
Her refusing to talk about Donald, and him calling his mother a wound he did not touch.
She could bandage any wound—or so she hoped. Grief was there; it had pooled in his eyes for a brief moment before Alexander blinked it away.
She understood such a weight. She could only wonder if it was emotion that held him from speaking about her, or something far deeper, darker.
“I am eager to go to the music room,” she hinted once they finished their breakfast.
“Then go we shall.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Idid not ask if you played,” Alexander said, sitting next to her on the wide pianoforte bench as Madeleine’s hands hovered over the instrument.
She toyed with a little tune. “I am not entirely proficient with the pianoforte, but I am with the harp.”
Her husband blinked, raising his brows. “The harp? Well, you must demonstrate for me.”
“May I have some sheet music?”
“You may.” He gave her a low chuckle, standing up to approach one of the cabinets lining the walls.
She watched him rifle through before he pulled out a sheaf of papers, turning to her. “These were some of my mother’s favorites.”
Madeleine had already spotted the harp resting in the corner, right below the window.
Outside, she was presented with a view of the lake at the back of Silverton Hall. A swan glided over the surface, its feathers as white as snow.
She picked up a sheet and brought it over to the stand Alexander set up for her. Lowering herself to the harp on a small stool, she placed her fingers just so.
“My mother liked ballads,” he told her after a moment. “She played them the most. I think… well, part of me believes she played them to reconcile her heart’s loss. Her marriage to my father was not one of love. Their marriage is why I never envisioned it for myself.”
“But you care for the duchy,” Madeleine said. “I can see it when you speak of it. You are proud of whatever it is you have done, as if it has been… a project, of sorts.”
Alexander laughed. “A project indeed, yes. I—I care for the duchy I have inherited from my father. He squandered it terribly, and I put a lot of effort into rebuilding it, into making Silverton what it is today. It prospers greatly beneath my influence. As for marriage…”
