Chapter Twenty
The terrace ran the length of the ballroom’s tall windows, and beyond its balustrade Lady Marwood’s gardens fell away into darkness. The voices behind them came muffled through the glass, the room already beginning to make conversation out of what it had witnessed.
Selina released Nathaniel’s arm at the balustrade and put both hands upon the cold stone.
The night was cool after the heat of the ballroom, and it steadied her.
She had spent nearly the whole of her composure and had a little left and meant to keep that little for the carriage.
For a while she simply looked into the dark and let the roar of her own blood settle.
Nathaniel said nothing. He stood a little apart, giving her the space she had asked for without having to ask for it again.
“You need not stay out here with me,” she said at last. “Half of London is waiting inside to discover that it has always thought very well of us. You ought not miss the spectacle.”
“I think I can bear the loss.”
“I am poor company when I am collecting myself.”
“I know.”
She turned her head. “That was not an invitation to agree with me.”
“No. But we have established that I am occasionally truthful at inconvenient moments.”
That almost made her smile. Nathaniel remained where he was, and for a while the muffled noise from the ballroom washed over them. Then, without hurry, he came to stand beside her at the balustrade and looked out at the same dark.
He was very quiet.
Selina endured it for perhaps a minute. “You have said almost nothing since we came out here.”
“No.”
“A month ago, I should have read the silence as disapproval. I know better now. But I cannot read this particular silence, and I have grown accustomed to reading you.” She glanced at him. “I dislike being at a loss.”
“I am choosing my words.”
“That has never previously required quite so much silence.”
“These matter more.”
Something in his voice made her turn fully towards him. Nathaniel was looking down at his hands.
“There is something I want to say to you,” he said. “I have been assembling it since we came through those doors, and every version appears to become worse the longer I consider it.”
“Then perhaps you should stop considering it.”
He looked at her.
“You are making me nervous, Your Grace,” Selina said.
“Good. Then we are matched. I have not been this nervous since I asked you to marry me, and I did that badly, at dawn, in yesterday’s coat.”
“It answered.”
“Better than I deserved.”
He turned towards her. Selina waited.
“You said in there that, knowing everything, you would choose me again.”
“I would.”
“You defended me.”
“No,” Nathaniel said. “I loved you aloud. There is a difference.”
Selina went very still at the balustrade. He said nothing more. He had put the words down between them and left them there, without reaching after them to make them safer.
“You are making it very difficult for me to keep my composure,” she said. “I have very little of it left tonight, and I was relying upon the remainder to get me to the carriage.”
“Then you need not spend it on me.”
“That is easily said.”
“I know.”
She looked at him. “You told me once before that you loved me. In the rain, when neither of us was at our most sensible.”
“I was entirely sensible.”
“You were soaked through.”
“The conditions are unrelated.”
A laugh threatened and disappeared. Selina looked back towards the gardens.
“You told me then,” she said slowly, “and I told you why I could not answer.”
“I remember.”
“That the last person I loved was hanged.”
“I remember that too.”
“And you have never asked me again.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because you said not yet.” His voice was quiet. “Not yet is not an invitation to ask every morning whether today is the day.”
Her eyes filled before she could prevent them. This time she did not look away.
“I have been very unfair to you.”
“I disagree.”
“You frequently do.”
“Only when necessary.”
She laughed once through the tears and pressed the heel of one hand briefly against her eye.
“I thought if I did not say it, I could keep some part of myself outside it. As though the word were the dangerous thing.” She shook her head. “Which is absurd. I have loved you whether I called it anything or not.”
Nathaniel did not move.
Selina drew a breath.
“I think it began when you ceased being the man I had decided you were. Which was extremely inconvenient. I had formed a very serviceable low opinion of you, and then you insisted upon ruining it.”
“I apologise.”
“No, you do not.”
“No.”
Her mouth trembled.
“I love you, Nathaniel.”
There. The words were out.
For one strange moment she waited for something to follow them. Some alteration in the night. Some punishment for having named what mattered.
Nothing came. Nathaniel was simply there.
“That was considerably worse than I expected,” she said.
His face changed. “Was it?”
“I am trembling.”
“I can see that.”
“I dislike that you can see it.”
“I know.”
She gave him a wet, unsteady laugh. “You are being remarkably unhelpful.”
“I am trying very hard not to tell you not to be afraid.”
“Why?”
“Because you are afraid. And I do not think courage requires you to pretend otherwise.”
Selina looked at him for a long moment.
“I do not know how to stop waiting for it to be taken away.”
“You need not know tonight.”
“And tomorrow?”
“I shall still be there.”
“The morning after?”
“I expect so.”
“You sound very certain.”
“I am a man of tedious habits.”
That made her laugh properly, the sound breaking loose before she could make it respectable.
Nathaniel smiled.
“I can promise you tomorrow,” he said. “After that I shall promise you the next day when it arrives. Perhaps, after enough of them, you will grow bored of asking.”
“I should not rely upon it.”
“I do not.”
She reached for him then, catching both his lapels in her hands.
Nathaniel looked down at them and then at her.
“Am I permitted?”
“You are becoming tiresome.”
“That is not an answer.”
“Kiss me.”
He did.
There was nothing tentative in the kiss this time. He took her face between his hands as he had in the folly, and she rose into him willingly, without rain or fear or an unfinished answer standing between them.
When they drew apart, Selina kept her hands in his lapels.
“I love you,” she said again, experimentally.
Nathaniel’s forehead rested briefly against hers.
“Any adverse effects?”
“None yet.”
“We should continue to observe the condition.”
“That sounds like you.”
“It is the best I can offer.”
Through the tall windows behind him Selina caught sight of Georgiana. She was staring at them from the ballroom with unconcealed astonishment.
Selina raised one eyebrow.
Georgiana’s astonishment became a grin. She turned deliberately away and engaged Lady Helena in conversation.
Selina looked back at her husband.
“I believe we have been noticed.”
“We are married.”
“That has not prevented people noticing us before.”
“No,” Nathaniel said. “Very little seems to.”
This time, when he kissed her, Selina did not look towards the windows at all.