Page 28 of His Auctioned Duchess
“Edmund.”
“Alive, then,” the newcomer said, clapping him hard on the shoulder. “By God, I half believed the rumors. I’d have bet half my estate you’d been eaten by cannibals.”
“Only nearly,” Richard replied dryly.
Their laughter filled the room, rough and familiar. Caroline had never heard Richard laugh like that—not the measured chuckle of amusement, but something freer, warmer.
Edmund turned, catching sight of her. “And who is this vision? Have you gone and married while I was away?”
Caroline arched a brow, her tone cool but amused. “Not yet. Though I appreciate the promotion.”
Richard’s gaze flicked to her, warning and protective all at once. “Lady Caroline Hughes, my guest. Lady Caroline, this is Duke Edmund Grant—once my friend, now an insufferable meddler.”
Edmund laughed, unoffended. “A pleasure, my lady. You must have remarkable patience to endure his company. I’m still trying to recover mine.”
Caroline smiled. “We have an arrangement. I test his temper; he pretends not to be irritated.”
“Ah,” Edmund said, glancing at Richard with open mischief. “So, she is the one.”
“The one what?” Richard asked, tone edged.
“The one who might finally teach you how to smile.”
Richard’s expression shuttered instantly, his good humor vanishing like a candle snuffed by wind. “We have work to discuss,” he said flatly. “If you’ll excuse us, Lady Caroline.”
Caroline inclined her head gracefully. “Of course, Your Grace. AndYourGrace.”
As she swept from the room, she could feel the weight of Richard’s gaze upon her back—not soft, not cruel, but filled with something she couldn’t name.
When the door closed behind Caroline, the air in the study shifted. The warmth she carried seemed to leave with her, replaced by the familiar stillness Richard found both comforting and suffocating. Edmund paced to the window, hands behind his back, whistling low through his teeth as though reacquainting himself with the very stones of Ashwood.
“Three years,” he said finally. “Three bloody years, and you vanish like smoke. Do you know how many rumors I’ve heard about you?”
“I can imagine,” Richard replied, his tone clipped but not unfriendly.
“Oh, you’ve no idea.” Edmund turned, his grin wry. “They said you’d been murdered in Spain. Then someone swore you’d turned pirate in the Caribbean. And one fellow swore you’dmarried a sheikh’s daughter in Arabia and built yourself a palace of gold.”
“Pity,” Richard said dryly, “none of them true. Though the palace sounds preferable to this.”
Edmund laughed, crossing the room to clap him on the shoulder again. “Still the same damn man. Grimmer, perhaps. But alive. I’ll take that.”
The laugh faded as he stepped back, studying him more closely. “Though God above, Ashwood—you look like you’ve been through the fire.”
Richard poured two glasses of brandy from the decanter on his desk, sliding one across. “Not fire,” he said. “Just the world.”
Edmund accepted the glass but did not drink. “You never sent word. Not once. You let us all think you were dead.”
“I was, in all but body,” Richard said quietly.
The silence that followed was not the comfortable kind that came with old friendship but something heavier, filled with unspoken things. Edmund sipped the brandy, his eyes never leaving Richard’s face.
“When you disappeared, I searched for weeks,” he said finally. “No trace. Then the reports came—‘press-ganged,’ they said. A nobleman taken among the common ranks.”
Richard’s expression hardened. “I was careless.”
“You were betrayed,” Edmund corrected. “There’s a difference.”
Richard looked away, jaw tightening. “It no longer matters.”
