Page 59 of Unraveled By the Duke
There were still a few hours before dawn, and the streets were lonely and dark, but Celia felt safe in the company of her Duke.
Is this what every wife experiences in the company of her husband? A feeling of safety and warmth? Or is this only experienced when the husband is Alexander Warren?
“Should we make ourselves more presentable before we reach more salubrious areas?” Celia wondered aloud.
“There will be no one to see at this time of the morning. It is too late for the nightsoil men and too early for the bakers,” Alexander replied.
“The city is very different at this time of day. More romantic and mysterious.”
“It is a city. Dirty and smelly. Filled with cutpurses and rogues.”
“And carousers like us,” Celia added.
“Yes, I think we would fit the definition of rogue.”
“Speak for yourself, I am a duchess. I do not know what my husband would say, were he here.”
Alexander looked at her, his face barely visible in the dark. “I should say that he would compliment you on your footwork. For a respectable woman, you know how to dance a jig.”
“As do you, for a respectable man.”
“But then I never claimed respectability. Only a title. The two do not necessarily go together.”
“So, I have been duped into marrying a rogue?” Celia injected mock horror in her voice.
“Most assuredly.”
They turned into a wider thoroughfare.
Celia looked around, recognizing Fleet Street. Ludgate and St Paul’s were to the right. The carriage that had brought them to the dockside had been sent back to Finsbury. It would be a long walk.
“Let us head towards Oxford Street; we may find a cab despite the hour,” she suggested.
“You know your way around the city,” Alexander observed.
“I do, thanks to a youth spent sneaking out of my father’s house. If I had not, you and I would not be here. Or perhaps you would, while I observed you from the shadows, sketching you as you walked past.”
Alexander was quiet for a moment. “I think I would have noticed you,” he said.
“But I was very good at being discreet. I often went as unnoticed as a mouse in church.”
He looked at her, and this time the shadows were less dense. His eyes were shrouded in darkness, but she was able to make out the strange expression on his face.
“I still would have noticed you.”
“We will never know.”
She wondered at his comment as they walked westward. Was it the arrogance of a man who did not like to admit to any failing? Or was he suggesting that he could not be in her company and not be aware of her, even in a scenario where they had never met?
That thought sent a thrill through her. The notion that they might be bound together by some kind of fate.
Nonsense. We are bound together by circumstance and necessity. And bound with the weakest of ropes, liable to break under pressure. I will only make myself unhappy if I keep hoping for something that is not there. Attraction and desire are not love. Nor have I ever sought it.
“I would prefer to undertake a march like this in the country,” Alexander said after a moment’s silence. “I never could stomach London for more than a few weeks at a time. Sometimes just a few days.”
“Yet your homes are in London. We are both children of London families.”
“When I was a boy, Cheverton was a country estate. London was a distant presence that crept closer to our walls with each passing year. I could ride or run in the woods without coming across another house. Now, Finsbury House is in the clutches of the metropolis. So is Kensington. Everything has changed.”
