Chapter Fifteen
Two more dances later, Celine felt her pulse pounding at her throat—and then
Elias leaned in, voice low and utterly frayed.
“Terrace,” he said as the music died. “Now.”
He guided her through the crowd with a hand at her back, ignoring greetings and inquiries and the rustle of curious whispers that followed their path.
Celine heard their names, but nothing registered except the heat of his palm and the certainty that if he didn’t get her out of the ballroom, something—or everything—would break.
Outside, the December air hit like a blade, crisp and sharp. She barely felt it.
Elias drew her into a shadowed recess beside the balustrade, out of sight of the windows and the small clusters of guests braving the cold.
“This is a mistake,” she whispered as he bracketed her between his arms.
“Everything about us is a mistake,” he said, breath unsteady. “That does not mean it is wrong.”
He caged her in, not touching her—but close enough that she felt claimed.
“Do you know what you did to me in there?” he demanded softly. “Dancing as you danced, looking at me as you did—saying my name as though it meant something to you?”
“The same thing you did to me,” she said. “I imagine.”
“Which is?”
“Made me forget every sensible reason to uphold our agreement. Made me want things no one should want in a public ballroom. Made me consider throwing propriety into the fire if it meant touching you.”
His jaw flexed. “Then touch me.”
“Elias—”
“Touch me,” he repeated, voice threaded with desperation. “Just once. Something to sustain me through the rest of the night.”
Her hand lifted before she had fully decided to move. When her fingers touched his cheek, he closed his eyes and leaned into her palm like a starving man.
“This is torture,” he murmured.
“The sweetest kind.”
“There is nothing sweet about this. It is agony.” His eyes opened, dark and unguarded. “I need to kiss you.”
“We shouldn’t—”
“I am well past shouldn’t. Past sense. Past control. One kiss. One that is ours.”
“One kiss won’t be enough.”
“No,” he agreed hoarsely. “But it is all we may have for now.”
And then he kissed her—a kiss desperate and tender all at once, a claiming and a surrender combined. His tongue traced the seam of her lips, and she opened for him, tasting champagne and need and something darker, richer.
His hands came up to frame her face, holding her like something precious and breakable, even as the kiss turned deeper, hungrier. She gripped his coat, pulling him closer, feeling the solid warmth of him against her.
Someone laughed nearby, the sound carrying on the cold air, and they broke apart, both breathing hard.
“We should return,” she said, though she did not move.
“We should,” he agreed, making no attempt to release her. “In a moment.”
“People will notice.”
“They have already noticed everything tonight. Our dances. Our proximity. The way we…” His voice dropped. “The way we look at one another.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“That depends entirely on what you want from this marriage.”
“What do you want?” she asked softly.
He held her gaze, thumb sweeping the curve of her cheek.
“Everything,” he said quietly. “The appearance and the truth. The duty and the desire. The public role and the private reality. I want the woman you are with others, and the one you are only with me. All of it. Forever.”
She swallowed. “That is… very exact.”
“I am a very exact man.”
“So I have observed.”
His breath touched her lips. “What else have you observed?”
“That you are not the Beast they whisper about. Nor the untouchable, unfeeling Duke you pretend to be.” Her fingers brushed his shirtfront. “You are a man who has been wounded and is terrified of being wounded again. So you built rules and routines to fortify yourself.”
He gave a short, low laugh. “And what, exactly, are you?”
“A woman who is tired of walls. Who wants something real, even if it is difficult.”
“I can promise difficulty,” he said. “And truth. And perhaps—if you allow it—happiness.”
“Can you promise honesty?”
“Yes.”
“Partnership?”
“Yes.”
“And that this could be… more than a business arrangement that got out of hand?”
“It already is.”
“Is it?” she whispered.
He kissed her again—brief, fierce, honest. “You know it is. You knew it from the first moment. We recognised each other. Two people pretending competence while quietly breaking beneath the strain.”
“Duke and Duchess of Rothwest!”
Lady Vanceley’s shrill voice shattered the moment.
They stepped apart—barely—Elias keeping a proprietary hand at Celine’s waist.
“Lady Vanceley,” he said with cool civility. “How fortunate.”
“Oh, indeed.” Her smile sharpened. “The entire ballroom is aflutter. Three dances! And now a clandestine stroll to the terrace.”
“We are married, Lady Vanceley,” Celine said. “We require no chaperone.”
“Yes, well—propriety is still propriety. And your marriage was hardly proper to begin with, was it?”
Elias went still.
“And what precisely,” he asked in a very soft voice, “do you mean by that?”
“Oh, only that it was all so sudden.” Lady Vanceley gave a simpering shrug. “And with the rumours of dear Baron Broker’s difficulties at the gaming tables... well, one does wonder about the impetus.”
“One does, indeed,” Elias murmured. “Particularly when one has so much time to meddle. Perhaps if ‘one’ spent less time gossiping and more time tending to one’s own household, ‘one’ might notice that Lord Vanceley has been keeping a mistress in Bloomsbury for the past six months.”
Lady Vanceley went white. “How dare you—”
“How dare I deal in truth while you peddle insinuation? Quite easily, as it happens.” He drew Celine closer. “My wife and I married swiftly because we had no desire to delay. If that offends you, look elsewhere for diversion.”
“You are claiming it was a love match?” she demanded.
“I am claiming,” Elias said evenly, “that the nature of my marriage is none of your concern. But if you must have something to whisper about, try this: I am wholly, hopelessly devoted to my wife. If she asked it, I would raze half of London. And if anyone continues to malign her—or us—they will regret it.”
Lady Vanceley fled without further argument.
“That was… perhaps excessive,” Celine murmured.
“That was mercy,” Elias said. “What I wished to do was throw her into the shrubbery.”
“That would have been worse than three dances.”
“Debatable.”
He looked at her then—truly looked—and something softened.
“Do you mind?” he asked, not quite steady. “That they talk about us?”
“I mind that they talk about things they do not understand.”
“And what do you understand?”
“That this is not simply a transaction. Or a scandal. Or even a grand romance.” She took his hand, lacing her fingers through his. “It is something that does not fit neatly into any of their notions.”
“What would you call it?” he asked.
She thought for a moment. “Inevitable.”
“I used that word once. You seemed to like it.”
“I did. I do. It fits us—this sense that we were always going to happen, one way or another.”
“Even if your father hadn’t lost at cards?”
“Even then. We would have met at some ball, probably annoyed each other tremendously, and then spent months pretending we weren’t fascinated by each other.”
“Instead, we’re pretending we can wait another evening.” He groaned, dropping his forehead to rest against hers. “We should go back inside,” he continued, “before someone else comes looking and I’m forced to threaten them too.”
“You do realise you just declared your obsession with me to one of the worst gossips in London?”
“Good,” he said, offering his arm. “Let the city know. Let every last one of them understand.”
“Understand what?”
“That you are mine, and I am yours, and I will not hear a word against it.”
“Very possessive.”
“Very honest.”
***
They stepped back into the ballroom—and the stir their reappearance caused nearly eclipsed the music.
“Lady Rothwest!” Miss Weatherby materialised at Celine’s elbow, her sweetness so brittle it might shatter. “What a delight to see you enjoying yourself so thoroughly. And His Grace dancing three dances! How… singular.”
“Is it?” Celine replied pleasantly. “It seems odder to me that so many married couples avoid one another. If one cannot enjoy one’s spouse’s company, what is the point of marriage?”
“Well, yes, but—there are proprieties. Appearances.”
“Oh, certainly. Warmth between spouses is terribly unfashionable, I hear. Far better to display the chilly composure that ends in separate residences and discreet indiscretions.”
Miss Weatherby’s smile thinned. “Well, some might say excessive public display hints at private inadequacy.”
“And some might say envy is dreadfully aging,” Celine answered with equal sweetness.
“But I would never be so impertinent. Ah—there is Lord Ashworth. Did you not hope for a dance with him this evening? I imagine he is quite at liberty now that his companion seems to have abandoned him for Lord Charles.”
Indeed, Miss Grayson was hanging upon Lord Charles’s arm, laughing as though she had never heard the name Ashworth in her life.
Miss Weatherby fled.
A warm hand settled at Celine’s back.
“Vicious,” Elias murmured in her ear.
“She started it.”
“You finished it. Quite decisively.”
“Someone must. I am not overly given to reserve like you.”
“I nearly threw Lady Vanceley off the terrace.”
“In your mind. I actually drew blood—metaphorically.”
“Bloodthirsty little creature.”
“Only when someone attacks what is mine.”
His hand tightened infinitesimally. “What is yours?”
“You. Apparently. According to everyone here, I have tamed the Beast of Berkeley Square.”
“Have you?”
“I hope not. I like you wild.”
“Careful. Statements like that make me forget we’re in public.”
“Maybe I want you to forget.”
“Do not tempt me.”
“I believe I already have.”
“Dance with me again.”
“We’ve already danced three times.”
“Then let’s make it four and really give them something to discuss.”
“That would be—”
“Scandalous? Perfect? Inevitable?”
“All three.”
He was already drawing her onto the floor as the next waltz began. This time, other couples discreetly widened the circle, leaving the centre of the ballroom to the two of them.
“Everyone is staring,” she whispered.
“Good.”
“This will be in every gossip sheet tomorrow.”
“Let them earn their ink for once.”
“You despise gossip.”
“I despise gossip that wounds. This is spectacle. Theatre. And we shall give the performance of a lifetime.”
“Is that all this is?” she asked.
He spun her, catching her back against him, close enough that her breath stuttered. “You know it is not. You know this is real. More real than anything either of us has experienced before. Real enough to terrify us both.”
“You do not look terrified.”
“I am. Have been since you strode into the room that day ready for battle. Terrified of wanting you. Of needing you. Of this… feeling that has overrun every rational thought I possess.”
“What feeling?” she pressed.
“You know it.”
“Say it.”
“Not here,” he murmured. “Not with half of London watching.”
“Then when?”
“Later. Tonight.”
“You’re going to say it then?”
“I’m going to say it and show it and prove it in ways that will leave no doubt in your mind or anyone else’s.”
The music swelled around them, and Celine gave herself over to it, to him, to this moment that felt both endless and far too brief.
His hand at her waist was firm, possessive.
His eyes never left hers. And everyone watching could see what was written across both their faces—desire, need, something deeper than both.
When the dance ended, the ballroom erupted in applause and whispers. Four dances. The Duke of Rothwest had danced four times with his wife, each dance more intimate than the last.
“We should leave,” he said roughly.
“It’s not even midnight.”
“I could not care less. If we remain, I will dance with you again. And again. Until someone drags me from the floor.”
“That would certainly make the gossip sheets.”
“Everything tonight will. Better we choose the final image they carry home.”
She inclined her head. “I shall fetch my cloak.”
“I will make our excuses to the Duke.”
As she crossed the ballroom, conversations dimmed and heads turned. In the ladies’ retiring room, she encountered the Duchess of Haverford.
“Four dances,” the Duchess said coldly. “With His Grace.”
“Is there a purpose to this recital?” Celine asked.
“You make a spectacle of yourself.”
“By dancing with my own husband?”
“The Duke does not enjoy anything. He merely endures.”
Celine’s temper sparked. “Perhaps you do not know him as you imagine.”
“I knew his mother. I knew what he put her through.”
Celine’s temper flared. “You knew a child. A child who had lost his father and was drowning in grief. A child who needed compassion. I wonder—where was yours?”
The Duchess paled. “How dare—”
“I dare because truth is not slander. You have spent twenty years blaming a boy for tragedies that were never his doing. If you require someone to blame, your Grace, I suggest you begin with your own neglect.”
Celine left before the woman could answer.
Her hands trembled slightly as she collected her cloak.
Elias was waiting near the entrance. His expression sharpened immediately at the sight of her face.
“What occurred?”
“Your mother’s friend and I exchanged… perspectives.”
“About my childhood,” he guessed.
“Yes.”
“And you defended me,” he said quietly.
“Of course I did.”
“No one ever has.”
“Well, you have me now,” she said simply. “And I protect what is mine.”
Something deep and unguarded flickered in him. He drew her close, heedless of footmen and guests.
“Let’s go home.”