Epilogue
“Are you certain these colors do not make the ballroom look like an especially extravagant dessert?”
“I am entirely certain, Your Grace.” The butler delivered this assurance with the studied patience of a man who had seen several generations of nobility suffer crises of taste.
He bowed, executed an efficient turn, and left Eliza standing at the head of the room, surrounded on every side by fluttering bunting, gilded sconces, and so many arrangements of white camellias that the air was more flower than oxygen.
She had survived a siege of roses at Lady Hartwell’s. She would survive this.
Behind her, a swarm of maids worked to remove the last traces of winter from Wildmoore Hall’s ballroom.
The floors had been polished to a mirror finish.
The musicians had just begun tuning in the gallery.
Outside, the drive swarmed with carriages, their occupants already peering out to see who else had arrived.
It was the social event of the season, and she, the new Duchess of Wildmoore, was expected to conduct it as though she had done so every day of her life.
Eliza suppressed the urge to run. She smoothed the front of her dress—a confection of blue silk chosen by her sisters-in-law, who insisted it brought out her eyes, though she privately suspected it simply matched the family crest—and forced herself to stand still.
A month had passed since that day in the entry hall when August declared himself to the world (and the assembled household staff) with neither shame nor restraint.
In that month, the staff had doubled their efforts, Lady Hartwell had tripled her expectations, and society’s curiosity had swelled to a level rivaled only by the flood in the village last spring.
Tonight, they would all see for themselves if the hastily married couple could manage to appear in public without igniting another scandal.
April, May, and June arrived first, as they always did, in a flurry of voices and silk. They traveled as a unit, as if each feared the other two might be unable to withstand the perils of an unaccompanied entrance.
April approached and gave Eliza a quick once-over, eyes bright. “You look magnificent. I detest you.”
“Do you?” Eliza said, glancing down at her own reflection in the marble floor.
“Absolutely. It’s unsporting to look so calm.”
May hovered close behind, clutching her reticule and watching the room as though expecting a mob to storm the buffet. “Mama is pacing the west hallway,” she said in a stage whisper. “She’s making a list of every peer who arrives late.”
“She’s also crying,” June observed with the bluntness that was her hallmark. “I heard her instruct the maid to have two handkerchiefs on standby.”
Eliza had barely begun to process this before April seized her arm and pointed with a quick jerk of her chin. “There he is. Our brother. Prepare yourself for excessive compliments and questionable metaphor.”
She turned. August strode across the ballroom with the kind of composure that made everyone else look unfinished by comparison.
He was resplendent in black, cravat knotted so precisely it defied understanding, the Vestiere signet ring glinting on his right hand.
He looked like a man who could manage the world and still have time left over to flirt with his wife.
He saw her instantly. His smile was not the one he deployed for political advantage or family gatherings but the small, private version she’d come to recognize in the mornings before anyone else was awake. In spite of all the chaos of the ballroom, for the moment it was only the two of them.
“My dearest,” he said, kissing her hand with just enough ceremony to be proper and just enough pressure to be improper. “You have singlehandedly justified the price of every florist in London.”
She tried for stern. “You are supposed to be making your rounds.”
“I am,” August replied. “It merely happens that my preferred round is to orbit my wife.” He inclined his head to the sisters. “Ladies. Are we agreed on the over-under for the first peer to faint at the sight of my duchess?”
June’s smile was slow and sharp. “I say ten minutes. April says seven. May abstains on grounds of not wishing to speculate about her own family.”
August’s lips twitched. “Wise. And Mother?”
“Already in tears,” Eliza reported.
He feigned surprise. “She lasted nearly half an hour longer than I predicted.”
A new wave of guests spilled into the ballroom.
Eliza saw more dresses and medals than she’d believed existed outside of museums and at least two gentlemen whose ancestors had not been on speaking terms since the Glorious Revolution.
She caught glimpses of Dorothy, who alternated between beaming and sobbing into her handkerchief, and of Lady Hartwell, perched like a judge on her dais with her sharp eyes fixed on every arrival.
“She looks as though she expects a duel to break out,” Eliza murmured.
“Between whom?” August asked.
“My money is on Lady Pemberton and the French ambassador’s wife.”
He grinned. “Pemberton will win. She bites.”
As the sisters spun away to greet their husbands and claim a position near the orchestra, August and Eliza found themselves momentarily alone beneath the grand chandelier.
“You do look lovely,” he said quietly.
“You’ve seen me in this dress three times,” Eliza replied.
“It improves with repetition. Like poetry or my regard for you.”
She tried not to smile. “You are insufferable.”
“And you are dangerously close to laughing in public. Control yourself, Duchess.”
“Or what?”
August’s eyes glinted. “I shall be forced to make a scene.”
She dared him. “Go on, then.”
But just then, the orchestra launched into a country dance that required immediate partner attendance, and August’s grand declaration was replaced with the ceremonial offering of an arm. Eliza accepted, and together, they joined the throng of color and motion.
They danced. He led, as always, with the assurance of a man who never once questioned his own rhythm or that of his partner.
Eliza followed, not because she was obliged but because she wanted to.
She trusted him which, as she had learned, was a far greater feat than simply following a set of prescribed steps.
They spoke little during the dance. Instead, their conversation was conducted in a series of looks, of small smiles and the press of his hand at her waist. For the first time in weeks, she forgot about the eyes upon her, the expectations, even Lady Pemberton’s insatiable hunger for gossip.
It was simply she and August, spinning together at the center of everything.
After the final turn, he did not release her hand at once. Instead, he bent to murmur, “If you are not otherwise occupied, Duchess, I would like very much to see you on the terrace.”
“Are you inviting me to flee my own ball?”
He smiled, lips close to her ear. “I am inviting you to be selfish for a single moment.”
“Lead the way, then, Your Grace.”
He did.
The ballroom’s side doors led to a terrace bathed in moonlight. The night was cool and smelled faintly of earth and green things. The music of the dance still drifted through, but out here, it was softer, distant, as though they had stepped into another world entirely.
August took her hands then her face and drew her close. “You are very quiet,” he said, searching her expression.
“I was simply thinking how strange it is to be content.”
He laughed, quick and low, and kissed her then—without the urgency of their previous reunions, without the need to prove or demand or persuade. It was the kiss of a man who knew, finally, that his heart had been accepted, and the kiss of a woman who had stopped guarding her own.
She leaned into him, her hands slipping around his neck. “We must go back inside,” she murmured. “You are about to start a rumor.”
August’s response was to kiss the tip of her nose. “Let them talk. Let them think me utterly besotted. They would be right.”
She could not help it. She laughed.
A sharp gasp interrupted them. Eliza twisted, still caught in her husband’s arms, and saw Lady Pemberton standing at the threshold, fan in hand, mouth open in the perfect O of a woman who has just found the most precious nugget of society gossip in the entire season.
“Your Grace!” Lady Pemberton gasped, looking from August’s disheveled cravat to Eliza’s position in her husband’s arms. “Forgive me—I was merely— Oh dear.” She nearly swooned with anticipation.
August did not so much as shift. “Lady Pemberton, always a pleasure.”
“I… I…” The fan fluttered as Lady Pemberton attempted to recalibrate her expectations. “I had only meant to… Oh.”
Eliza was the first to recover. She extricated herself, as gracefully as one could with a six-foot duke anchoring one’s waist, and bestowed a beatific smile on the would-be interloper. “You wished to enjoy the terrace? Please, Lady Pemberton, do not let us detain you.”
Lady Pemberton eyed them both, hope and despair warring in her expression. “Is everything… quite as it should be?”
August managed to look both arch and innocent. “Absolutely,” he said. “Though I confess, Lady Pemberton, my wife is rather more bewitching by moonlight than by chandelier.”
Eliza bit her lip to keep from laughing aloud, but Lady Pemberton seemed to wilt on the spot.
“Well. Well. I suppose I— Yes. Well.” She retreated, tripping over her own train.
Eliza watched her go then turned to August. “You are incorrigible.”
“I would call it romantic. In fact…” He drew her close again. “… I believe I am required to kiss you at least once more to undo the trauma of that interruption.”
She obliged him, and this time there was no one to witness except the moon, the stars, and a pair of footmen on the far side of the terrace who pretended an urgent conversation about lantern placement.
They lingered there, neither speaking for a while, and when August finally broke the silence, it was with the simple words, “Thank you for coming back.”
“I never truly left,” Eliza whispered.
He pressed his cheek to hers. “Stay with me forever, then.”
“I suppose I could manage that,” she said. “So long as you promise to occasionally stop buying out entire florists.”
“No promises,” August replied. “But I will save you the violets.”
She laughed again, and he kissed her.