Chapter 8
Eight
The chandeliers sparkled too brightly.
Eleanor descended the stairs of Halesworth House on Norman’s arm, a vision in sapphire silk and diamonds borrowed from Kitty’s private collection.
The fabric shimmered with every breath she took.
Her gloves were immaculate, her posture faultless, and yet she had never felt more naked in her life.
Each step toward the ballroom felt like stepping toward a trial, and the crowd awaiting her was the jury.
They reached the ballroom threshold, and the crowd parted—not with awe but with something colder. Heels shuffled. Conversations faltered and then resumed, just a shade louder, just a touch more pointed.
“They’re staring,” she murmured.
“They always stare,” Norman replied. “It’s what they do.”
But he was frowning.
The music resumed. A gavotte. Eleanor let herself be led inside, conscious of every glance, every tilt of a fan.
The ton was exquisite tonight: jewels glittering, feathers nodding, champagne flutes catching the light.
But beneath the glamour, the room thrummed with cruelty.
They weren’t watching her walk. They were watching her fall.
Kitty joined them, radiant in emerald. “No introductions yet?”
“Not yet,” Norman said tightly.
As they moved along the periphery of the dance floor, Eleanor caught snatches of conversation—
“—always thought her too forward—”
“—traveled without a chaperone, you know—”
“—wild, the whole voyage, absolutely wild—”
“She was practically living among the sailors—”
“Who knows what really happened?”
She swallowed, her teeth clenched behind a practiced smile.
Lord Eastbrook, one of Norman’s oldest acquaintances, approached with a champagne glass in hand and a disapproving tilt to his head.
“Your Grace,” he said. “Your sister’s returned to the Season, I see.”
Norman inclined his head. “She has.”
Eastbrook’s eyes moved to Eleanor. “Bit of an adventure, that ship of yours.”
Eleanor smiled thinly. “It was certainly eventful.”
The older man’s lips curled, not kindly. “This is what comes of letting young ladies gallivant about the continent. They come home with opinions. And reputations.”
Norman’s jaw tightened. “You forget yourself.”
“I forget nothing,” Eastbrook replied. “And neither will they.” He nodded toward the dancers. “Mark my words, Your Grace—women who leave home come back changed. It gives them ideas.”
Eleanor stepped in, voice cool as porcelain. “You mean to say that travel makes us think.”
He turned back to her with a patronizing smile. “And what a dangerous thing that is.”
Norman stepped forward before Eleanor could speak again, his voice low but iron clad. “Say one more word about my sister, Eastbrook, and you’ll find yourself without a seat at any table that matters in this city.”
Eastbrook looked momentarily startled—he hadn’t expected resistance. He opened his mouth, closed it again, and gave a tight, scornful nod before retreating back into the crowd.
Only then did Norman take Eleanor’s arm and lead her away. “Come,” he said. “We’ve wasted enough breath on fools tonight.”
“I can’t,” she said, her voice tight. “They all think it.”
“They won’t for long.”
“They already do.”
Kitty fell in beside them, her tone dry as she scanned the room. “Perhaps we should begin the dance cards. Choose wisely. Men with no mothers to scold them or the ones too deaf to hear the gossip.”
Eleanor laughed too suddenly. “Do you think any of them will have me?”
Kitty glanced sideways. “They’ll want the name if not the scandal.”
As if to prove her wrong, a young baron approached, bowed, and then, glancing to the side, politely declined Norman’s offer to introduce Eleanor.
Something about a prior engagement. Another gentleman turned his back before she reached him.
A third, a second son with no fortune, offered her a dance only to be whisked away by his mother a breath later.
They did not look at her. They looked through her.
Whispers brushed at her back like silk threads pulled too tight.
“She’s the one.”
“No wonder he left her.”
“I heard it wasn’t just him.”
Her fan felt suddenly heavy in her hand. The silk of her gown too tight. The air thick.
She wanted to scream. Or sob. Or disappear through the floor. Something, anything, to escape the unbearable weight of being watched and judged and silently dismissed. Desperation clawed at her chest, hot and tight and breathless.
She had known it would be bad—but not like this. Not this cold refusal, this collective rejection dressed in lace and velvet. She felt herself unraveling by degrees, held together only by the rigid line of her spine and the mask she could no longer wear without cracking.
Norman pulled her aside. “We’ll find another route. A family friend. Someone discreet.”
“You don’t have to do this,” she said.
“I do.”
She blinked. “Why?”
“Because you’re my sister. And because I didn’t protect you when I should have.”
For a moment, her anger lifted. Not entirely—but enough.
“I will clear your name,” he said. “No matter what it takes.”
But it was too late. The damage had been done before she entered the room. She could feel it clinging to her skin like ash.
Kitty touched her arm. “There’s always Paris.”
Eleanor gave a hollow laugh. “Is exile our only option?”
“Exile or marriage,” Kitty said quietly. “You know how this ends.”
Eleanor looked away. Her gaze caught on a vase near the far windows—ornate, blue and gold, placed for symmetry not sentiment.
She’d meant to gift a Greek one for Kitty and Norman to mark the baby and their new beginning.
But it had shattered the moment she collided with him, and now all that remained was a faint scuff on the deck and the memory of his arm around her waist.
Her jaw tightened.
Everything was breaking this season.
“I need some air,” Eleanor said. Her throat ached.
Kitty’s brow furrowed. “Shall I come?”
“No. Stay. Make our excuses. I won’t be long.”
She turned and walked, posture still perfect, through the glittering crowd and into the side corridor.
She passed tapestries, candles guttering in sconces, the hush of velvet curtains.
Every step away from the ballroom lifted a weight from her chest, but her heart did not slow. It beat like a drum behind her ribs.
She found the library without looking.
It was empty. Blessedly so.
She crossed to the window. Her breath fogged the glass. Below, the garden glittered with frost, silent and untouched. A world she could not enter.
Her hand pressed flat to the cold pane.
This is what it was to be a woman in society. You smiled. You curtsied. You paid for someone else’s sin with your own name.
She had tried to be good. To play by the rules. And now, she was ruined anyway.
She remembered Ramsay’s voice—low, certain, unflinching. The way he had spoken to Gifford. The way he had looked at her on the deck. Like he saw her. Like he believed her.
Her throat closed.
No man would save her. And she did not want saving. She wanted to vanish. Just for a moment. Just until the whispers grew tired of circling. Until the world forgot her name.
She walked past the hearth, fingers trailing along the books as if they might ground her. One had been left slightly ajar—Shakespeare. Henry IV. She touched it absently.
Behind her, the door opened. Her heart knew before she turned around.
It was Ramsay.
She watched his reflection in the window first. He did not speak at once but closed the door behind him, soft and deliberate, as though this room was a chapel and silence something sacred. The faint click echoed like a tolling bell.
She turned slowly.
He looked perfect—which, for Ramsay, was unusual. His cravat was precise, his coat unwrinkled, his hair neat—none of the careless rumple or windblown indifference she had grown accustomed to. As though he had dressed for a reckoning.
But it was his gaze that startled her most. There was a kind of wariness to him tonight, as though he had come into the room not just to speak but to confess.
“Rough night?” he asked, voice quiet.
She raised an eyebrow. “Oh, is it showing? I thought the diamonds would distract from my downfall.”
Ramsay crossed to the hearth and stood beside it. “You hold up well. They wouldn’t know unless they were looking. And they’re all looking.”
Eleanor let out a breath, too sharp to be a laugh. “I was thinking I might take the ship back to Greece. Would you recommend the voyage?”
“Winter is coming soon,” he said, his mouth tilting with something like amusement. “I would not. Not without a very warm coat.”
She came to lean against the back of a velvet chair, the cool fabric grounding her. Her eyes roamed his form—flawless tonight and entirely unlike him. It unsettled her more than she cared to admit.
The sharp lines of his coat, the deliberate calm of his posture, the way his hair was combed rather than wind-tossed—it all struck her as… ceremonial. And still, he looked magnificent. Like something carved out of stone and dusk.
How strange, she thought, that a man so serious could carry beauty so carelessly, as if he did not know it. Or worse, as if he did, and it meant nothing.
“You never told me the story. About Penelope.”
There was a pause. Longer than she expected.
“Her mother is dead,” he said.
Eleanor straightened, heart folding in. “I’m sorry.”
“So was I.”
She hesitated. “Why were you in Greece?”
He looked at her then, squarely. “Athena was my brother’s mistress.
Penelope’s mother. George kept them in London for three years, but he was meant to marry someone else.
An Englishwoman. He had to let go of Athena.
When the pressure came, he folded. Sent her away.
She took Penelope and returned to her hometown in Corfu, and George died before he could make any of it right. ”
Eleanor’s lips parted slightly. She hadn’t expected the answer to strike so deep. “You went to find her.”
He nodded. “It was my brother’s dying wish.”
Eleanor studied him, uncertain. “And how did you feel? Suddenly taking in a child who wasn’t yours.”
Ramsay let out a breath through his nose. “Unprepared. Furious. Terrified. But I wasn’t going to abandon her. She looked at me like I was the only one left.” He glanced toward the fire. “Maybe I was.”
Eleanor absorbed this in silence, stunned by the quiet nobility of it. He had taken on a life that wasn’t his—no obligation, no reward—just a promise made to the dying and a child who clung to his coat.
There was no performance in him, no martyr’s posture. Just a steady, brutal goodness that left her breathless. She was surprised by the bluntness of it, the way he neither excused nor sentimentalized anything.
It was more than strength. It was something rare. And it terrified her.
“Why do you want to know?” he asked, quieter now.
She shrugged, but the gesture didn’t land. “I don’t know. I suppose I’m trying to understand you.”
“That’s dangerous,” Ramsay said quietly. His tone was not mocking. Just honest.
Eleanor tilted her head, eyes narrowing. “What, you don’t like women trying to understand you?”
“No,” he said. “I don’t like being understood.”
She smiled slowly, amused. “That sounds exhausting.”
“It keeps most people away.”
“And yet here I am.”
His gaze flicked over her. “Yes. Here you are. Drenched in scandal. Daring to ask questions. Terribly inconvenient.”
“Irresistibly so, I hope.”
A beat.
“You shouldn’t say things like that,” Ramsay said, low.
“Why not?”
“Because I might take them seriously.”
Her pulse fluttered. “And if I meant it seriously?”
He didn’t move toward her. Not yet. But something in the air did. It shifted. Tightened.
“Then I’d have to do something about it,” he said.
Her breath caught. The way he said it—quiet, steady, like it was fact, not threat—sent a ripple of heat down her spine.
He studied her closely, as if memorizing the shift of her breath, the flush in her neck, the way her lips parted without sound.
Something flickered in his gaze, a spark of approval that made her skin heat. And it seemed, from the faint tilt at the corner of his mouth, that he liked the effect he had on her.
After a beat, he spoke.
“I came here tonight to speak to you first,” he said, “because if you say no, I see no reason to speak to your brother.”
Eleanor stilled.
“I need a duchess. For the estate. For the child. For the future that doesn’t fall apart the moment someone whispers the wrong name in the wrong room.”
Her lips parted, but he wasn’t done.
“In return, I offer you protection. A title no one will dare mock. A place where no one whispers behind your back because they wouldn’t survive the echo. And freedom—the kind most women never get. I don’t care where you go, what you read, what you do with your time. I won’t demand submission.”
He let the word hang.
Eleanor stared.
He added, quietly, “What say you, lass; will you be my wife?”