Chapter Eight
Leticia stood still long after the ballroom erupted, not applauding, not invisible either. Guests glanced her way with curiosity, perhaps even approval.
A fairy tale unfolding, except the tale had a borrowed gown and the wrong ending.
The jewels had vanished. The music had stopped. And Ash, no, Lord Ashcombe, had proposed to her in the most public, irreversible way possible.
Not to Leticia Salisbury, exactly. But to the woman he believed her to be.
The shock of it hadn’t landed until well after the dancers had scattered, the whispers had started, and Barrington’s sharp command had drawn Ashcombe away. Then her aunt appeared at her side.
“I suspect that wasn’t planned,” her aunt said, her tone dry.
She hadn’t answered for Erica. Or him. She had answered for herself. Leticia could only shake her head. Her hands trembled, but she kept them clasped tightly at her waist.
“I’m told the jewels were real. And now they are very much not here.”
Leticia glanced at her. “Do you believe I had anything to do with it?”
Lady Eastbury arched one eyebrow. “I believe you wore a gown that didn’t belong to you, attended a masquerade you weren’t meant to enjoy, and accepted a proposal that wasn’t yours to receive. That’s an impressively full evening.”
“I didn’t plan any of it.”
“I rather assumed that.” She squeezed Leticia’s arm gently. “You needn’t explain yourself to me. But you’ll need to decide how you mean to proceed.”
“I don’t know.”
“Then be certain of your next step, Leticia, because you may not get another. Now go. Get some fresh air. A walk in the garden will do you good. Breathe. Decide.”
So Leticia had stepped into the garden. Not to flee. To think. Her slippers crunched softly on the gravel. The air was cooler here, tinged with sea salt and something quieter. Moonlight, perhaps, or the hush that follows catastrophe.
She stood near the edge of the path, the sounds of the ballroom muffled by distance and clipped hedges. Lanterns glowed along the walkways, soft and low. The pulse in her chest had not yet settled. She stood between two lives, the one she had borrowed and the one she might lose.
She heard his footsteps before he spoke.
“You left quickly,” Ash said.
“I needed air.” Her voice was thinner than she intended.
He stopped a few paces behind her. “I didn’t expect…” He paused. “None of it went how I planned.”
Leticia turned. The moonlight caught the edge of his jaw, the line of his mouth drawn tight.
“You didn’t plan to propose?”
“I didn’t plan to propose to you.”
The words were blunt. Not cruel, but close.
She nodded once, as if confirming something she had long suspected. “And yet, I said yes.”
He looked away. “You didn’t correct me,” he said quietly.
“No.”
A moment passed between them, too full of all the things neither knew how to say.
“I was aware the moment Erica showed,” he admitted. “I should have seen it earlier.”
“Too many masks,” she murmured. “And borrowed gowns.”
He looked back at her then. Not with regret. Not with apology, only awareness.
“Why didn’t you stop me?”
She inhaled slowly. “Because it was already done. Because the room had seen and heard and decided.”
His brow furrowed. “But you knew. You knew I…”
“Yes, I knew.”
He stepped closer. “Why?”
Leticia looked at him fully. “Because I wasn’t ready to let go of that moment.” Her voice cracked faintly at the edge of the confession.
The silence stretched.
He stood with his hands at his sides, not reaching for her, but not retreating either. She wrapped her arms more tightly around herself, as if bracing for something that hadn’t yet struck.
“Everyone believes it now,” he said.
“Yes.”
“We’ll be expected to make announcements. Host dinners. Be seen.”
“That’s true.”
He looked down, his voice quiet. “We could end it.”
“We could.”
A shift in the air. He wasn’t looking at her now, but she could feel him beside her.
“But it would create a scandal.”
“Yes.”
He looked up and met her gaze again. “Perhaps… we don’t end it. Not yet.”
Leticia unfolded her arms, then folded them again, holding them tightly across her ribs. “What are you proposing?”
“A temporary arrangement. Two weeks. That should be enough time for the story to settle. For me to…” He paused. “To finish what I came here to do.”
Leticia’s voice was steady. “And afterward?”
“We dissolve the engagement quietly. Blame a difference of temperament.”
“And the public?”
“They will have tired of us by then.”
Leticia hesitated. “Do you make a habit of false engagements, Lord Ashcombe?”
“No,” he said. “But I appear to have made one tonight.”
A breath of laughter escaped her. Dry. Unbelieving.
She nodded. “Two weeks.”
He bowed his head. “Thank you.”
She looked back toward the ballroom. “This is not what I imagined.”
“Neither did I.”
And yet neither moved.
The music resumed behind them, a waltz.
Leticia didn’t turn to go.
“I knew it was you,” he said. “Not by name. But in the way you moved.”
She went still.
The wind stirred the lanterns and her hem, but she didn’t turn toward him. Didn’t speak. Not yet.
He stepped beside her, not close enough to touch. “I danced with you before. At the musicale.”
“I remember.”
A pause. “I should have known then.”
She looked up at him slowly. The lines of his face were unreadable in the half-light.
“You do now.”
“Yes.”
The air between them held, not with tension, but with the fragile burden of possibility.
She looked toward the ballroom windows, where music bled out faintly into the night.
“Two weeks, my lord,” she said. Her voice was softer now, as if testing the shape of it.
He nodded, hesitated. “If we are to maintain the illusion, perhaps you should call me by my given name, Gabriel or Ash, if you wish.”
She looked at him, something flickering behind her eyes. “That would complicate things…Gabriel. You must call me Leticia.”
A small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, but he said nothing more.
Leticia breathed in the salt air. Her skin tingled beneath her borrowed gown.
She had stepped into the garden to clear her thoughts. Instead, she’d stepped deeper into uncertainty.
Neither of them moved. Neither of them spoke.
And neither knew how it would resolve.