Chapter 20 #2
Elizabeth exhaled slowly, shaking off the tension — though it clung a moment longer than she would have liked.
Jane nudged her gently. "Do not mind him. The fool does not realize you have a duke in your corner."
That drew a laugh from all three of them — even Elizabeth. But hers was thinner, forced a little at the edges.
She smiled. She played along.
But every mention of Damon pulled at something quiet underneath the evening's brightness.
Not longing, exactly — she had, after all, walked through half of London with him only days before, hand in hand, entirely unafraid.
It was something smaller and more specific than longing.
She simply wished, standing in a room full of people finally willing to celebrate her, that he might have been permitted to stand beside her while they did it — not hidden, not implied, not a rumor traded between old school friends over champagne, but simply present, the way any two people who loved each other ought to be allowed to stand together in a crowded room.
That, for now, remained impossible. She had made her peace with it once already, in a quieter conversation with her uncle. It did not mean the wanting had gone entirely silent.
Just then, a waiter approached with a tray of champagne, his manner humble but his eyes bright. As he offered each of them a flute, he paused before Elizabeth.
"I admire you greatly, Miss Whitaker," he said, sincerely. "You gave a man back his life. Not only the Duke — though that alone would be enough. But I have read what the papers say of your firm. You fight for justice. For truth. Even for men like me."
Elizabeth blinked, caught off guard.
The man bowed slightly. "It is an honor to meet you."
Then he walked on.
For a moment, silence.
Then Jane leaned in. "Well. Some men do have manners."
Clara added, deadpan: "A pity he was so unfortunately unremarkable to look at."
They all laughed again — real laughter this time — and Elizabeth let herself enjoy it properly, the earlier heaviness easing by degrees.
Tonight, the lights were bright. The music was pleasant. The room, for the first time in longer than she could easily remember, had gathered to admire her rather than merely tolerate her presence.
It was, she thought, very nearly enough.
Not entirely.
But very nearly.
◆◆◆
Milton was already at the manor when Damon returned home the evening, after being out in London the whole day.
"Milton." Damon set the last bottle down on the sideboard with the easy confidence of a man entirely in control of his evening. "You are early."
"I heard rumors of wine and good spirits," Milton said. "I came to collect on both."
Paul entered a moment later, a ledger tucked under one arm, and took his usual place near the window.
Damon poured himself a glass, unhurried, and settled into the chair opposite Milton with the loose, easy posture of a man who had already decided the outcome of his evening before it had properly begun.
"I am going to propose to her tonight," he said.
Milton's brows rose. Paul went still.
"Tonight," Milton repeated. "As in — this very night."
"At midnight, to be precise." Damon took a slow sip of his wine, entirely unbothered.
"Charles has arranged a letter — a false one, describing an urgent witness threatening to sell evidence to Harwood's people unless he is paid within days.
She will come running to the office to salvage the case.
And there, instead of a crisis, she will find me. "
Milton let out a low whistle. "That is either the most romantic thing I have ever heard, or the most diabolical."
"Both, I should think," Paul offered.
"I have learned from the best," Damon said, and smiled — the easy, assured smile of a man who had once talked his way through a card table full of strangers without breaking a sweat.
They talked a while longer — Milton recounting some minor scandal from the week's ballrooms, Paul updating him on the households that had already sent word of gratitude for the wine — and Damon answered easily enough at first, his composure entirely intact.
But as the hour crept later, something in him began, almost imperceptibly, to shift.
He found himself rising to refill a glass that was not yet empty.
He found his fingers tapping once, twice, against the arm of the chair before he noticed and stilled them deliberately.
When Milton asked him a simple question about the ring — had he one prepared, or did he intend to improvise — Damon answered a full three seconds later than the question warranted, and answered it, moreover, with something less than his usual certainty.
He caught himself at it. He always caught himself, these days; it was, he supposed, one of the few genuine skills the whole ordeal had left him with — the ability to read a room, and to read, now, when the room in question was simply himself.
"I am nervous," he admitted, with something between surprise and rueful amusement. "I do not believe I have been nervous in a great many years. It is a rather undignified sensation."
Milton studied him for a long moment, and then something warm and unguarded crossed his face.
"You look remarkably well for a man in the grip of undignified sensation," he said. "Truly. Even now, half out of your composure, you look better than most men manage on their best day. It is little wonder half of London has spent years being thoroughly jealous of you."
Damon huffed something close to a laugh. "Thank you."
Damon rose, straightened his coat one final time, and reached for a single bottle of the Chateau du Lierre from the sideboard — the same vintage his father had once reserved only for ministers and visiting dukes.
"Wish me luck," he said.
"You do not need it," Milton said. "But have it anyway."
Damon left them there, bottle in hand, and stepped out into the cooling night toward Whitaker and Co., toward midnight, toward the one conversation he had spent the entire day rehearsing and had still, somehow, not managed to fully prepare for.