Page 51 of His Duchess of Scandal
Charles gripped the knob and turned it, but the door was locked and would not budge.
“Phoebe,” he bit out, “open the door this instant.”
“Hmm. No!”
And then came a clamor of raised voices and hurried footsteps echoing through the corridor.
“Lady Phoebe!” Mrs. Nightgale shouted. “Come back this instant! This is not how a young lady behaves!”
“You must calm yourself, child!” the butler called after her. “You cannot simplylockHis Grace and Her Grace in?—”
“I can, and I did!” Phoebe’s voice rang out, far too gleeful.
Miss Tarnen’s voice joined in, breathless. “Lady Phoebe, be reasonable. This is hardly—Phoebe!”
But Charles could only make out snippets now, as his daughter’s laughter grew fainter and more muffled with distance.
She was runningfast, and she was clearly delighted with herself.
Silence fell over the parlor, thick and heavy.
“She has the key.”
Charles whirled around at Hermia’s sigh.
“She does,” he snapped. “No thanks to you.”
“Me?” she scoffed. “Whatever do I have to do?—”
“Everything!” he shouted, unable to rein in his temper. “You have been too gentle with her, and she has gotten used to not being punished for her wrongdoings. Punishment can be harsh, yes, but sometimes it is the only way a child would learn.”
“So your method is to make her fear you?”
“I did not say I want her to fear me.”
“But she does! Do you not see that? She fears your rebukes and punishments because she knows you have no patience for her childish innocence. All your methods have earned you is her resentment, her disobedience, because it is the only way she feels you notice her. Sometimes she just needs to be a child, Charles. In eight years, she will debut, and you will long for the years when she is running to you with a four-leaf clover rather than a broken heart. How will you handle that?”
Charles was trying to focus on her words, but all he could hear was his name on her lips.
A slip of the tongue, he was sure, but it had come out anyway. The way his name rolled off her tongue, even if in the heat of anger, had him reaching for her.
“I will handleanything,” he vowed.
Before he knew what he was doing, he had cupped her face in his hands.
Hermia blinked up at him, and he stared back at her, not in control of himself.
“You infuriate me.”
“And you cast a curse on my life,” she hissed.
And still, he gave in to temptation, for anger had always quickened his heartbeat. But he knew whythis time—because his anger was a cupid’s arrow, and it was aimed right at Hermia.
His wife.
Whatever are you waiting for, Charles? What do you cower from?
His mouth crashed into hers, and he dipped her so passionately that she had to catch herself on the chair she had vacated.
