A Lady for a Duke

by Alexis Hall

He was trying not to dwell on Miss Carroll, though when circumstances brought them together—usually at mealtimes—it was all he could do to behave with civility. He wanted to look at her like he wanted to breathe, like she was breath and he was drowning, and every moment of his not looking was a struggle towards the thing he most needed. Except once he looked, looking would not be enough. Then he would have to talk to her—draw the delicate spool of her thoughts from that smiling mouth, until he knew all the colours of her. Until he understood how a stranger could seem so familiar to him. How something in her could call to a part of him he had long thought dead. How it was possible she could feel like homecoming to a man who had never before had any sense of home. It had to be loneliness. Or opium. Or some delirious combination of the two. And he was mortified, even vaguely remembering