Page 36 of Duke of Storme
The question echoed in her mind and unsettled her more than she cared to admit. For the last week, she’d been learning how to be his Duchess, his anchor, his proof that he belongedin Highland society. Tonight, she’d succeeded beyond her own expectations. So why did she feel so… unmoored?
It was the way he’d looked at her, she realized. Not like a Duke assessing his Duchess’s performance, but like… something else entirely. Something that made her pulse quicken and her breath catch.
Diana pressed her fingertips to her lips, remembering the intensity blazing in his gray-blue eyes during those final moments of the dance. There had been something there she’d never seen before – something that made her stomach flutter in ways that had absolutely nothing to do with nervousness.
Don’t read more into it, she told herself firmly.It was just the music and the candlelight and the success of the evening. Nothing more.
But even as she tried to dismiss her own thoughts, Diana couldn’t shake the feeling that something fundamental had changed between them.
She closed the sketchbook and pressed it against her chest, feeling the rapid beat of her heart under the leather binding.
Tomorrow they would, no doubt, return to their careful politeness, their measured interactions, and their marriage of mutual benefit. But would either of them be able to forget the moment when it had felt like something more?
As if summoned by her thoughts, a soft knock came at her chamber door. Diana’s heart leapt into her throat and her pulse fluttered with sudden hope.
“Come in,” she called softly.
But when the door was opened, it wasn’t Finn standing in the doorway. It was a servant carrying a small silver tray.
“Beggin’ yer pardon, Your Grace, but His Grace asked me to bring ye this.”
Diana’s hands trembled slightly as she took the tray. On it, lay a single sprig of Highland heather, still fresh with evening dew, and a folded piece of parchment bearing her name in Finn’s bold handwriting.
Her breath hitched as she unfolded the note. Inside, in his precise script, there were only four words:
You were magnificent tonight. – F.
Diana sank onto the edge of her bed with the note clutched in her trembling fingers. Short, simple words they might be, but they carried more weight than any elaborate declaration. He’d seen her tonight – really seen her – and found her worthy of acknowledgement.
She brought the heather to her nose, breathing in its wild, Highland scent. Tomorrow, perhaps, they would return to their careful distance.
But tonight, she had this – irrefutable proof that whatever had passed between them on the dance floor at Inverthistle Hall, had been real.
CHAPTER 12
“Icould hardly believe my ears when I heard ye’ve gone and gotten married to asassenachfor a Duchess.”
Finn looked up from the estate reports scattered about his desk to find a familiar figure filling his study doorway – Laird Lachlan MacRae, tracking mud across the Persian carpet with the same casual disregard for propriety he’d shown since their midshipman days.
The sight of his old friend brought an unexpected warmth to Finn’s chest. Locke had always possessed the rare ability to appear precisely when needed, whether during naval crisis, or, apparently, a domestic one.
“Locke.” Finn rose, unable to suppress the ghost of a smile. “What brings ye north? Run out of whisky?”
“I had to come see the miracle for myself,” Locke replied, crossing the room with that easy stride that had carried him through countless tavern brawls and naval battles. His bone-crushing handshake felt like coming home. “A Scottish Duke tamin’ himself for marriage? The Highland gossips are beside themselves with the novelty of it all!”
Finn gestured toward the chair across from his desk, noting how Locke’s presence immediately filled the room with an energy that he himself had been lacking for weeks. “Ye’ve ridden hard to get here. How long since ye left Edinburgh?”
“Two days of hard ridin’ through weather that would make even the toughest warrior weep,” Locke replied. “But I had to see this transformation with my own two eyes. The Terror of the Atlantic, domesticated at last.”
“Ye’re late. The miracle’s already worn off.”
“Has it now?” Locke’s dark eyes glittered with mischief as he studied Finn’s face with the practiced assessment of someone who’d served as his first officer for seven years. “Then why do ye have the look of a man who’s been wrestlin’ with demons?”
“Marriage has been… an adjustment,” Finn said instead, moving to the sideboard. The decanter felt heavier than usual in his hands, and he wondered when pouring whisky had become his solution to uncomfortable conversations.
“Dram?”
“Is the Pope Catholic?” Locke accepted the glass with a grin. “Now then, tell me about this mysterious English rose who’s supposedly captured the cold heart of Finn Hurriton?”
