Chapter 23
The dance began as it ought.
Amos moved well enough, with the polished confidence of a man who had spent years practicing how to appear agreeable in crowded rooms. His hand rested properly at her back, his steps were sure, and his conversation at first remained fixed upon the sort of harmless matters a gentleman might reasonably raise with a married woman he had once known in passing.
The ball itself. Lady Lampton’s talent for spectacle.
The absurdity of masks that concealed very little once people began to speak.
Arabella answered as civility required, though she found the exchange thin almost from the start.
Perhaps it was the setting. The ballroom was too bright, too alive with movement for pretended ease to feel entirely convincing.
Candlelight caught on polished floors and jeweled masks, and the air carried the mingled scents of wax, perfume, and the faint sweetness of crushed flowers from the arrangements placed along the walls.
Laughter rose and fell in pockets around them.
Silk rustled. Gloves brushed. The orchestra maintained a measured pace that kept every pair in proper motion.
And still, something about Amos’s attention felt too fixed.
Even through his mask, she could tell he was studying her, not with admiration, but with a kind of indulgent concern that sat ill with her. It made her feel less like a duchess in the middle of a ballroom and more like a child being observed by an elder who had already decided he knew better.
“You look well,” he said at last, his tone warm in a way that was almost convincing. “Though I confess I have spent some time hoping that was truly the case.”
Arabella kept her expression pleasant. “That is kind of you, my lord, though unnecessary. I am very well.”
“I am glad to hear it.” His fingers shifted slightly at her back as they turned. “Still, it has all happened so quickly.”
There it is. Arabella had expected it from someone tonight. “Are you speaking about my marriage?” she asked, though she knew perfectly well what he meant.
Amos inclined his head. “You must know that I am only speaking out of concern.”
“I know that a great many people have dressed curiosity as concern these past weeks,” she replied sharply. “I do understand the difference.”
His smile did not falter, though something in it sharpened. “Then I hope you will not place me in that category. I would not presume upon your affairs without cause.”
Arabella held his gaze. “And still you have found the audacity to raise them?”
The turn of the dance forced them briefly apart before bringing them together again. Amos used that space to let out a small breath, as if regretting what he was obliged to say next.
“You were always generous,” he said. “Perhaps too generous. It is one of your best qualities, though it may leave you vulnerable where harsher natures are concerned.”
Arabella felt her patience tighten, though she kept her voice even. “If you mean to speak plainly, Lord Covington, then do so. I have no taste for subtlety.”
His brows lifted fractionally, as if mildly surprised by the firmness in her tone. “Very well. I only fear that you may have entered into something without fully understanding the man involved.”
“My husband and I understood one another sufficiently when we wed.”
Amos gave a low murmur that might almost have passed for sympathy. “Forgive me, Your Grace, but I do not think any lady can ever fully understand such a man before it is too late.”
The disgust of it struck her first, not because of the words alone, but because of the satisfaction he seemed to take in speaking them.
The music continued around them, polished and bright, while he spoke of her husband as though he were some regrettable ruin she had been too na?ve to examine properly before accepting it.
Arabella’s mouth cooled into a smile that no longer held warmth. “You speak very boldly for a man who claims concern.”
Amos leaned the slightest degree closer, enough to make the intimacy of his tone feel deliberate. “You were too young to know at the time, perhaps, but Northwood was not always what he is now. He was a rakehell once. Quite notorious, in fact.”
Her fingers tightened in his.
Amos went on, lowering his voice as though what followed pained him to share.
“I ought not say such things in the company of a duchess, and yet I would rather offend than remain silent where your peace is concerned. Men like that do not change in their nature, no matter how much society may pity them after the fact.”
Arabella stared at him.
“What, precisely, do you imagine you are implying?”
His expression arranged itself into something regretful, which made him look all the more slimy for it.
“Only that the ton has long said his excesses led him to where he is now. That one cannot live so freely without consequence. A man who spends his nights in bad company and worse beds rarely escapes untouched. And now…” He let the sentence trail off with practiced heaviness. “Well. You have seen what remains.”
For the length of a heartbeat, Arabella heard nothing at all. The music receded. The room itself seemed to narrow until all that existed was the smooth, self-satisfied venom of his voice.
“Some men invite consequence,” Amos said, too lightly. “Though I suppose not all of them expect it to come quite so… thoroughly.”
There was something in the way he said it. It was not just the words, but the familiarity beneath them unsettled her more than the insult itself.
Then the heat of anger came crashing all around and in her. It was so distracting that she nearly missed her next step, but she recovered at once, but only just.
“How fortunate I am,” she said, her voice silk-smooth now, “to have such vigilant guardians appearing at every turn.”
Amos seemed encouraged by the calm of it, mistaking restraint for receptiveness. “I am only telling you so that you are aware of who and what exactly you have associated yourself with.”
The dance continued. Around them, other couples turned and shifted, unaware or politely pretending to be so. Arabella did not lower her voice, but neither did she raise it. She had no wish to make a spectacle of herself. What she wanted was far simpler than spectacle.
She wanted him to understand.
“You may clothe it in concern as often as you please,” she said, meeting his gaze without flinching, “but I am not so easily misled as you seem to think, Lord Covington. The stories that society has amused itself by repeating, you will not repeat them to me. And you will certainly not speak of my husband as though I ought to be ashamed of him.”
Amos’s jaw shifted beneath the line of his mask. “You misunderstand me.”
“No,” Arabella replied. “I do not. You have spoken plainly. There was very little room for misunderstanding.”
For the first time, some of the confidence left him. Not enough to make him truly uncomfortable, but enough that his next words came more stiffly.
“If I have offended you, then I deeply regret it.”
“You have said your peace, in full, and in more ways than one.”
His expression tightened. “I do apologize, Arabella. I shall say no more.”
“See that you do not, Lord Covington. And I shall be addressed as Your Grace hereto forth, am I understood?”
“Of course, Your Grace,” he said obligingly, but his tone cursed her.
The music was already nearing its close.
Arabella endured the final measures with a composure she did not remotely feel, her anger held so tightly it had become almost cold.
When Amos bowed at the end, she inclined her head only as much as courtesy demanded, then turned away from him before he could attempt another word.
The room was too warm now, and far too crowded. Every light burned more sharply than before.
She found Maxwell more quickly than she expected, though perhaps that should not have surprised her.
Even masked, even surrounded by others, he held a presence that made him easy to locate.
He was speaking to Roderick when she approached, but whatever her face revealed was enough to draw his full attention at once.
“Arabella?” he said softly, hand outstretched.
“I wish to leave.” The words came before she had quite decided on them, and she knew at once that he heard more in them than the request itself.
Maxwell’s posture stiffened so subtly that anyone else might not have noticed. She did. The stillness in him sharpened. Even behind the mask, she could feel the shift in his gaze as it moved over her face.
“Did Lord Covington say or do something to upset you?” he asked, his voice quiet enough not to carry, though there was nothing soft in it.
Arabella forced herself to breathe evenly. “No.”
It was not wholly true, and they both knew it.
Maxwell looked at her for one beat longer, then offered his arm. “Come.”
He did not ask again. He did not question her before the room. He simply turned them toward the edge of the ballroom and guided her through the crowd with a calm that would have reassured her had it not been for the deadly restraint beneath it.
The corridor beyond the ballroom felt cooler, the noise of the musicians dimmed by distance and thick walls. Their footsteps echoed softly over the runner as they made their way toward the stairs and the waiting carriages beyond.
Arabella kept her hand on his arm, though the touch had become less elegant than it ought to have been. She was aware of it. Aware, too, that Maxwell said nothing at all.
He said nothing, which told her more than enough.
The carriage had not yet cleared the sweep of the drive before Maxwell spoke.
“What happened?”