Page 50 of A Bride for the Forbidden Duke
“Very well,” his valet said. “Although, I do hear the cook has prepared some excellent food today. There is talk of imported jam. It would be a shame to miss it.” He gave him a smile before departing.
“A good listener you may be, Duchess,” Henry sighed, “but the thoughts in my mind are not ones I can share.”
As he departed from his room, heading down the stairs to the long hallway where the breakfast hall branched off, he considered how his aunt’s visit had scared him.
Having her, someone who knew him and his past, so close to Veronica, so close to revealing his terrible past… It terrified him.
He did not want Veronica to know about his childhood. He did not want pity, and his aunt pitied him at times. He would loathe for his wife to do the same. Besides, Veronica had a relatively happy life, did she not? Or at least she had before her brother disappeared and her father passed away several years before, as she had told him.
She did not need to be troubled with the torments of his abusive past.
Though as he walked down the hallway, he heard a light humming from the breakfast hall.
He hesitated.
Just walk on, he told himself.Forget about her as you have been doing.
But he could not. Not since he had tasted her in the hallway, not since he had felt her climax reverberate through him, and not since he had kissed her or watched that fire burn in her eyes at his roughness.
And definitely not since she had fainted cold into his arms when his first thought had beenI cannot lose her.
Those were foolish thoughts.
Yet he found himself entering the hall, finding Veronica with breakfast dishes around her and a sheaf of papers she frowned at.
“What are you doing?”
At his voice breaking her silence, Veronica startled. Her eyes lifted up to meet his, bleary and tired, as though she had not slept well.
Henry moved further into the hall.
It would be so easy for him to simply sit down alongside her and… eat.
In an uncomfortable silence.
He enjoyed silences but it was most tense when the other person, like Veronica, did not.
“You are not usually awake at dawn,” he continued before she could answer. “My valet told me you have been rising early these last several days.”
“I have been,” she confirmed.
“Why are you not resting?” It came out as a demand, close to a growl. “I did not carry you back to your chamber just for you to neglect your need of rest.”
“I am having breakfast,” she answered matter-of-factly, “and I have rested plenty.”
I hear you, awake at night, pacing, he thought,and yet, you are awake at dawn. Is living here truly disturbing you so much?
He turned those thoughts off. He did not care. He simply stared at her, unconvinced she was rested at all.
She pointedly ignored him, shuffling her papers.
“I have never seen you awake at dawn,” he went on. “Why have you suddenly begun to do so?”
“Perhaps I wanted a change. And I am very interested in what I am reading.”
“Which is?”
Veronica met his eyes in a silent challenge. “Come and see for yourself. I promise the table shall not cease to exist if you dine once with me. Nor will the food poison you, nor will I disturb you beyond your questions from which you ask me for answers.”
