A Scandal By Any Other Name-Chapter 52 - Fifty Two

No. That was impossible.

He shook his head, physically dispelling the image. The Mystery Girl was gone. She was a ghost from three years ago. Delaney Kingsley was a practical, English spinster who was stern.

She probably learned it from one of her clients, Rowan reasoned. Or maybe she heard it in the street. It is a common song.

He dismissed the familiarity.

But he couldn’t dismiss the voice.

It was a beautiful voice. It was rich and slightly husky, stripped of the sharp, professional tone she used with him. It sounded sad. It sounded lonely.

It sounded exactly like he felt.

The attraction hit him then, hard and sudden in the quiet hallway.

It wasn’t the polite appreciation he felt for Celine’s beauty. It was a visceral ache in his chest. He wanted to open that door. He wanted to walk in and see her sitting there, probably in her gray dress, letting her guard down. 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

He wanted to sit beside her. He wanted to ask her why she was singing a lullaby in the middle of the afternoon. He wanted to know what made her sad.

He wanted to touch her hair, the loose curl that had escaped the pins last night.

Rowan slid down the wall.

He didn’t mean to. His legs just gave way under the weight of his confusion.

He sat on the floor of the hallway, his back pressed against her door. He stretched his long legs out in front of him, crossing his boots at the ankle.

He sat there in his expensive brown coat, the Duke of Ford, guarding the door of his matchmaker like a faithful dog.

He tipped his head back against the wood. He could feel the faint vibration of her voice through the door panel.

Hummm... hummm...

She was still singing. It was a comfort. It was a torture.

He closed his eyes. He pictured her inside. Was she sitting by the window? Was she looking out the courtyard like the day she watched him riding?

He thought about the morning. The way she had sat in the Farrington drawing room, taking notes while he flirted with another woman. She had been so cold. So distant.

But here, alone, she was singing.

Rowan felt a surge of frustration. Why did she have to be so difficult? Why did she have to be so perfect for him in all the wrong ways?

She challenged him. She made him laugh. She made him angry. She made him feel.

Celine was the safe harbor. Delaney was the open sea—dangerous, unpredictable, and thrilling.

And he was contractually obligated to dock in the harbor.

Rowan rubbed his face with his hands. The stubble on his chin scratched his palms.

"What do I do, Miss Kingsley?" he whispered to himself.

His voice was barely a breath in the silent corridor.

"You gave me a map to find a wife," he murmured. "But you didn’t give me a map to navigate this."

He tilted his head toward the crack under the door.

"I found her," he whispered, as if confessing a sin. "I found the perfect woman. She is everything you said she would be. She is perfect."

He swallowed hard. The lump in his throat tasted like regret.

"So why am I sitting outside your door?"

There was no answer. Only the soft, rhythmic humming from the other side.

Rowan sat there for a long time. The shadows in the hallway lengthened as the sun began to set. He watched the dust motes dance in the slanting beams of light.

He knew he should get up. He knew Simmons might come up and find him sitting on the floor like a lovesick boy. It would be undignified. It would be un-ducal.

But he couldn’t move.

Being near her, even with a door between them, felt better than being anywhere else in the world.

He felt a pull in his chest—a tight, hot cord connecting him to the woman inside. It terrified him.

I am attracted to her, he admitted to himself.

He let the thought settle. It was forbidden. She was leaving in less than two months. She had told him she felt trapped.

He couldn’t act on it. He couldn’t ruin her life or his own honor.

But God, he could sit here. He could steal these few minutes of proximity.

Inside the room, the singing stopped.

Rowan froze. Had she heard him?

He held his breath.

He heard the soft creak of floorboards. She was moving. She was walking toward the door.

Rowan scrambled to his feet. He moved with a speed he didn’t know he possessed. He brushed the dust from his breeches. He straightened his coat.

He couldn’t let her find him sitting on her doormat. She would mock him. Or worse, she would look at him with those pitying eyes.

He stepped back into the shadows of the cross-hallway, hiding behind a large potted fern.

The door handle turned.

Click.

The door opened.

Delaney stepped out.

She was wearing her gray dress. She had taken off the cornflower blue. She looked small. She looked tired. She held a small, empty teacup in her hand, likely intending to take it down to the kitchen herself rather than ring for a maid.

She paused in the hallway. She looked left. She looked right.

She looked at the spot where he had just been sitting.

She frowned. She took a step forward and looked at the floor.

Rowan watched her from behind the fern. His heart was pounding in his ears.

Delaney stared at the carpet. The pile of the rug was flattened slightly where he had been sitting.

She looked up. She scanned the empty hallway.

"Hello?" she whispered.

Her voice was soft, trembling slightly.

Rowan stayed silent. He pressed his back against the wall, willing himself to be invisible.

Delaney stood there for a moment longer. Then, she shook her head. She sighed—a sound of deep, weary resignation.

She turned and walked toward the back stairs, carrying her teacup.

Rowan stepped out from the shadows. He watched her retreat.

He watched the gray dress disappear around the corner.

"Two weeks," Rowan whispered to the empty air.

The Hamilton Ball was in two weeks. He had two weeks to pretend he wasn’t falling apart. He had two weeks to convince himself that Celine was what he wanted, and that Delaney was just a shadow he needed to forget.

He turned and walked toward the East Wing.