Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
“Hazel, dear, will you stop craning your neck like a startled goose?”
Hazel jerked her gaze away from the far corner of the ballroom and forced a tight smile for Matilda. “I am not craning my neck.”
Evelyn arched a brow. “You are absolutely craning your neck.”
“I am simply…” Hazel adjusted her gloves. “Looking.”
Cordelia snorted. “Looking? Darling, you’re plotting a military rescue mission.”
Hazel lifted her chin with dignity she absolutely did not feel. “I am assessing the area.”
“For what?” Cordelia asked, already grinning.
Hazel’s eyes went through the entire ballroom again. There were dozens of guests, while the orchestra played something far too cheerful, and still no sign of her sisters.
“For Chastity and Patience,” Hazel muttered. “Where else do you think they’d be? I have not seen them in nearly twenty minutes. Twenty minutes!”
Matilda exchanged a weary look with Evelyn. “Hazel, it is your wedding ball.”
“Yes,” Evelyn added, gently squeezing Hazel’s arm, “and you ought to be enjoying it.”
“I am enjoying it,” Hazel lied.
Cordelia laughed outright. “Your eye is twitching.”
Hazel slapped a hand to her cheek. “It is not twitching.”
“Oh, it is,” Cordelia assured her. “I would swear an oath on it.”
Hazel huffed and tried to accept another round of congratulations from the passing guests.
All the words blurred into an endless sentence of smiles, curtsies, well wishes, comments on how radiant she looked, how handsome the duke was, how charming the ball appeared.
It was a vicious cycle, yet all Hazel could wonder was where are they?
“I could look for them,” Cordelia offered cheerfully.
Hazel grabbed her arm. “Absolutely not. They will spot you coming and flee. They view you as an accomplice.”
Cordelia grinned wider. “That is because I am an accomplice.”
Matilda sighed. “Hazel, relax. They are two young ladies at a perfectly respectable wedding ball. What could they possibly be doing?”
Hazel stared flatly at her.
Matilda blinked. “Right. They could be doing… anything.”
“Exactly,” Hazel said as another wave of anxiety tightened her spine. “Anything and everything. All of it terrible.”
Evelyn took her hands, squeezing them warmly. “Hazel, this is your moment. You married a duke today. You look beautiful. The ceremony was lovely. The ball is elegant. At least for tonight, let someone else worry.”
Hazel let out a hollow laugh. “If someone else would worry, I would gladly hand it over. But you do not understand. Chastity and Patience are…” She gestured helplessly, “uncontainable.”
Cordelia hummed thoughtfully. “That’s correct.”
Matilda patted Hazel’s shoulder. “We mean it. We will keep an eye out.”
Evelyn nodded. “We will fetch them and keep them out of trouble if we see anything suspicious.”
Hazel inhaled, trying to calm the pounding of her heart. “Thank you,” she murmured. “But I still think none of you grasp how effortlessly mischievous they can be.”
Cordelia looped an arm around Hazel’s shoulders. “Oh, we grasp it. We simply choose to have faith.”
Hazel blinked up at her. “Well, that makes one of us.”
Matilda stepped closer, her calm presence a soothing contrast to Cordelia’s buoyant energy and Evelyn’s soft concern. She laid a gentle hand on Hazel’s forearm.
“Hazel,” she said quietly, “you know I adore your sisters. But… have you ever considered that perhaps they act up because you hold such a tight rein on them?”
Hazel stiffened. “I do not hold a tight rein.”
Evelyn made a delicate sound of disagreement, and Cordelia laughed into her fan.
Hazel glared at both of them. “I simply keep them from disaster. You know, like I’ve always done?”
Matilda nodded with sympathy. “Yes. And we all appreciate your… remarkable skill in doing so. But they are still young. When you press too hard, they push back twice as much. It’s their nature.”
Hazel frowned, looking across the ballroom again for any sign of the girls. Nothing.
Matilda continued. “And Hazel, dear… you are married now.”
The words hit Hazel with strange force.
“You are a duchess,” Matilda said gently. “You have a new life, new duties, a new household to oversee. Your sisters are no longer your responsibility in the same way.”
Cordelia nodded enthusiastically. “Exactly! They’re old enough to get into trouble and old enough to get out of it.”
Hazel crossed her arms. “You don’t know them as I do.”
Evelyn smiled knowingly. “Hazel, all younger siblings cause chaos. It is their nature and in a way, their art form.”
Hazel tried to let her friends’ words sink in because all of it was true. Her duties had shifted. Her life had changed. Her role in her family had transformed the moment she said I do.
She understood all of that. She even agreed with it, and yet that unease twisted in her stomach in the guise of tension she had lived with for years.
“If I let go,” Hazel murmured, “everything falls apart.”
“Hazel, you’ve been holding everything together for so long, you don’t remember how to let others try.” Matilda smiled at her.
Hazel sighed.
Cordelia squeezed her hand. “Maybe it’s time.”
Hazel wanted to believe them. She wanted to step into her new role with grace. She wanted to trust that the world wouldn’t crumble the moment she stopped bracing herself against it.
Yet, she couldn’t shake the prickling unease beneath her ribs that somewhere on these very grounds, her sisters were brewing chaos like alchemists in training.
Perhaps Matilda is right. Perhaps I need to release my grip.
But Hazel’s instincts whispered that it was not the time for that yet, not when everything else in her life was changing so abruptly.
She forced a small smile. “Perhaps you’re right,” she said softly. “But I still can’t help feeling that something is… not right.”
Cordelia’s eyes widened. “Oh! We should check the refreshments. Or the orchestra. Or—”
Evelyn pressed a hand to her forehead. “Cordelia, please do not give Hazel more to fear.”
Hazel took another steadying breath. Her friends meant well. Her sisters were growing. And her life had shifted. Still, the unease refused to let go of her.
Hazel Thorne had learned something important a long time ago: when she sensed trouble, she was almost always right.
Greyson watched his new Duchess from across the ballroom with the sharpened attention of a man who tried very hard not to appear as though he were watching anything at all.
Yet Hazel made such attempts pathetically impossible.
She stood amidst her circle of friends, women he respected, tolerated, or feared in varying degrees, and radiated the sort of anxious vigilance one expected from a general awaiting news of enemy advancement.
Her eyes combed every corner. Her shoulders tensed each time a door opened. She was all but vibrating with dread.
He knew that look. He had seen it in her far too often: the burdened caretaker, the weary sentinel of Belvington, eternally bracing for the next calamity brought on by her younger sisters.
Greyson, who had entered this room prepared to endure a night of polite admiration and unbearable sentimentality, suddenly found himself moving toward his bride with unusual purpose.
And though he scarcely admitted it, even in the quietest parts of himself, her frown bothered him more than it ought.
He reached her side just as her sigh reached its most despairing volume.
“Your Grace,” Evelyn murmured pleasantly, dipping her head.
“Ladies,” Greyson offered them all a brief nod.
“Oh,” Hazel got startled upon seeing him, almost as if she hadn’t expected to see her own husband at her own wedding ball. It almost made him chuckle. Then she continued. “I didn’t see you.”
She absolutely had not seen him. Her eyes were aimed everywhere but at him.
“Evidently,” he replied.
Cordelia bit her lip behind her fan. Evelyn looked delighted. Matilda appeared deeply relieved, as though she had been wishing very hard for divine intervention and had just received it.
Greyson turned to Hazel fully. “Might I have the honor of this next dance?” He offered his hand.
Hazel froze. “Dance? Now?”
“It is customary,” he reminded, “for the duke and duchess hosting a wedding ball to be seen dancing at least once.”
Cordelia made a strangled sound of laughter. Hazel shot her a glare before reluctantly placing her gloved hand into Greyson’s. He led her to the dance area, and momentarily, the musicians lifted their bows. And much to his chagrin, his wife exhaled like a prisoner being marched to the gallows.
“You needn’t look as though I am forcing you,” Greyson murmured once they found the rhythm. “I assure you this dance is purely voluntary.”
Hazel’s eyes flicked toward the crowd, scanning desperately. “Oh, I’m… sorry. I am simply distracted.”
“Yes,” he replied, “I had noticed.”
She scowled at him. It was astonishingly endearing. “My sisters have vanished.”
“I suspected as much,” he said calmly. “Their absence appears to be causing you mortal distress.”
“It is not mortal,” she muttered. “Just… significant.”
Greyson’s lips twitched. “Hazel.”
He liked how her name rolled down his tongue, lingering on the L sound.
“Yes?”
“Look at me.”
She blinked up at him, startled by the gentle command. He lowered his voice.
“You look beautiful.”
Hazel nearly tripped over her own feet.
“I… what? No, I do not.”
Greyson stared at her. “I was not aware my eyesight was in question this evening.”
She flushed. “I only meant… I am wearing a dress I have already owned for years. It is nothing new.”
“I see.”
“And I did nothing special with my hair.”
“I noticed.”
She frowned. “I did not even have time to sit for more than a basic wash, because Chastity lost her—”
“Hazel.”
Her name sounded even more delectable this time.
She snapped her mouth shut.
He leaned in, drawn by something he could not describe. “You are arguing with me about your own beauty.”