Page 83 of A Night of Desire with a Duke
“My parents were at war—an elegant, frozen kind of war. No arguments, no reconciliation. Only silence. Separate chambers, separate lives.” His gaze drifted to the hieroglyphs. “I could not bear the sound of it.”
“So you came here?” she asked softly.
He inclined his head. “Every day. The attendants knew me by name. I daresay they pitied me—a lonely boy seeking wisdom among the dead.”
They stopped before a painted sarcophagus, its colours still vivid despite the centuries. Catherine regarded the serene face upon it.
“Do you suppose they were happy?” she asked after a moment. “The ancients?”
“I suppose they were human,” he said. “Some happy, some wretched, most somewhere between the two.”
“How very unromantic of you.”
He smiled faintly. “Would you prefer I claimed they possessed some forgotten secret of contentment?”
“Perhaps.”
He turned to her then, his gaze softening. “The secret, Catherine, is the same in any age. To find someone whoseesyou...not for title, fortune, or duty, but for yourself. And, once found, to hold fast.”
Her breath caught. “Is that what you have done?”
“It is what I am doing.” His voice was low, intimate, and for one dizzying instant she forgot entirely that they were standing beneath the vaulted ceiling of a museum.
He lifted a hand as though to touch her cheek, but thought better of it. The restraint in the gesture made it all the more tender.
“What your mother said...” he began quietly.
“...was cruel,” she interrupted. “And I would rather not speak of it.”
“But it has wounded you.”
“Not today,” she said softly. “Today, I would prefer to pretend that we are merely a very ordinary betrothed couple admiring very ancient relics.”
His smile deepened, wry and affectionate. “Nothing about us has ever been ordinary.”
“No,” she agreed, her lips curving. “But I should like to imagine it, all the same.”
In retaliation, she composed impromptu verses in praise of a particularly shapeless Greek vase, reciting them with the solemnity of a tragedian. The echo of her laughter, bright and free, rang through the corridors, startling the few remaining visitors and scandalizing the attendants.
“His Grace is causing a scene,” she whispered, trying and failing to suppress her mirth as one of the uniformed guards began to approach.
James leaned close, his voice warm against her ear. “If the British Museum expels me for unseemly behaviour, I shall consider it my proudest distinction.”
“James,” she hissed, still laughing.
“Come,” he said, capturing her gloved hand with easy confidence. “Let us escape before they insist upon a written apology.”
They left the museum arm in arm, the brisk October air washing over them like a benediction. The afternoon had softened into that golden hour between day and dusk, when London’s rooftops glowed and the scent of smoke and autumn leaves mingled on the wind.
They walked without hurry, saying little. The city moved around them: carriages rattling by, the distant sound of a monger calling his wares, the rhythmic clip of their footsteps on the pavement.
James had removed his gloves, and when his fingers brushed hers again, she did not pull away. It felt entirely natural, that slight pressure of his hand over hers—steady, warm, unspoken.
“I love you,” Catherine said suddenly. The words escaped before she could call them back. They hung between them, startling in their simplicity.
James stopped walking. “What brought that on?”
She smiled a little, embarrassed. “Today. Everything. You didn’t have to settle those debts.”
