Chapter 3 #4
“I am patient,” she said, and the slight edge in her voice suggested she was drawing on that particular quality at this very moment.
“I would not call that a good thing,” Theodore said. “Patient women tend to store things up. It comes out eventually. Usually at the worst possible moment.”
Emily glared at him. “You are the most infuriating man I have ever met.”
“Now that...” Theodore said. “...is not boring.”
She made a sound that was not quite a word.
Her composure, that magnificent, impenetrable composure of hers, had developed several small but visible cracks, and he could see her working to seal each one as it appeared, which was, he thought privately, one of the most interesting things he had ever watched anyone do at a dinner party.
“I am loyal,” she said, through her teeth.
“Boring.”
“I am discreet.”
“Boring.”
“I am —”
“Lady Emily.” His voice gentled, just slightly.
“I do not doubt that you are every single thing you are listing. Truly. You are accomplished and capable and by every measurable standard precisely what a duke should want in a wife.” He held her gaze.
“But you are also standing here on a dance floor telling me about yourself like you are reading from a book, and while I do not claim that I know you, I am certain that this is not the way you wish to be married. You wanted a love match, if I recall correctly. Like Alistair.” He paused.
“So I will ask you again. Why did you really come here?”
Emily swallowed. She held his gaze for precisely two seconds, and then she stopped dancing, slipped her hand from his grip, and turned to walk away.
In the middle of the dance floor.
His hand found her waist before he had consciously decided to move.
It was smooth enough, a natural continuation of the dance to anyone watching, just a gentleman guiding his partner through the turn, nothing more.
But his grip was firm, and she was drawn back to him in one swift move, and for a moment they were closer than they had been all evening, closer than was strictly necessary.
Emily gasped, the sound lost in the swell of the violins. Caught off balance, she instinctively slammed her palms against his chest to steady herself. Her fingers curled into the fine black wool of his evening coat. For a heartbeat, a single, suspended second, neither of them breathed.
He felt the warmth of it through his coat. The slight pressure of her fingers, there and deliberate and then gone, as she removed her hand, pretending something had not just happened.
He said nothing about it.
“That...” he spoke first instead, quietly, his eyes on hers. “...would have been extraordinarily rude.”
“I was warm,” she said. “I needed air.”
“You were three steps from causing a scene.”
“I was not.”
“Tell me what you are hiding, Emily.”
She looked at him for a long moment, and he waited with a patience he did not usually possess, because something told him that whatever was coming was worth the wait.
“I have a child,” she said. Quietly. Just for him to hear.
Theodore went still.
She did not elaborate. She did not explain, soften, or surround it with detail. She simply let it sit there between them and held his gaze, waiting to see what he did with it.
He watched the careful blankness of her expression, the way she had locked every door and shuttered every window, giving him the bare fact of it and nothing more. Not enough to draw conclusions from. Not enough to answer the obvious question that was already forming in his mind.
She had done that deliberately. He was certain of it.
He felt the corner of his mouth move.
A child. Emily Pierce, the Diamond of the First Water, the most composed and correct woman he had encountered in three Seasons, was standing on his godmother's dance floor with a secret she had just placed, very precisely and very carefully, into his hands.
Julia, he thought, had absolutely no idea.
His plan, the one he had constructed on the terrace with such satisfaction, the worst possible candidate, the most catastrophic choice, the name that would make Julia set down her tea and reconsider everything, shifted in his mind. Rearranged itself. Settled into something new.
This, he thought, studying Emily's face, was considerably better.
“Now that,” he said softly. “...Will do.”
Emily frowned. “What do you mean?”
“That is what makes you the perfect candidate.”
She stared at him. “You spent the last ten minutes rejecting me.”
“I have reconsidered.”
The music drew to its close around them, the final notes settling softly over the room, and the dancers slowed and stilled.
Theodore released her waist. He took her hand instead, bowed over it, and pressed his lips to her gloved knuckles with a deliberateness that was a beat slower than the occasion strictly called for.
He straightened. His eyes found hers.
“Dance with me again,” he said.
She looked at him. At his hand, still holding hers. “What?” was all she could say.
“A second dance.” He said. “Dance with me again, Lady Emily.”