Chapter 9 #2
“Let them.” His voice was low, for her alone. “They have spoken since the will was read. Avoiding this moment would not stop them.”
Her eyes searched his, but the line between her brows softened. “You have a keen sense of society and its ways, I think.”
“I have.” He grimaced. “I have never been its subject, I confess, but I have always disliked the whispering at the heart of the ton. It is needless, and it can do real harm.”
Her expression softened further, her lips curving. “I am told society spoke poorly of my father when he first lost his wealth,” she said, not looking away, as if she had decided she might speak plainly with him. “This is the first time it has spoken of me.”
“It is unpleasant. But you must not let it push you into the shadows.” His voice was firm. “You have your place in the ton, Miss Trent. There is no need to shy from it.”
The figures parted them then — she away down the line of ladies, he down the gentlemen — and Julian discovered that a country dance was a long series of small losses.
Each time the pattern returned her, her hand came back to his as though it had never been away.
Each time it took her again, he marked the measures till it gave her back.
Once, somewhere down the set, a stout gentleman turned left where the dance went right, and when she came back to Julian she was biting down on a laugh, her eyes brimming with it, and looked up at him to share it before she had thought whether she ought.
He kept that look. He could not have said why, only that he put it away somewhere careful.
Her smile this time was warm, and it sent a dart of awareness clean into his chest. The longer they danced, the more aware of her he grew — even the warmth of her hand through her glove each time he took it.
When the dance ended, he found a strange reluctance in himself to release her fingers and let her step away.
The brief while in her company had been far too short to satisfy him.
“Would you permit me a turn about the room?” he asked, and her eyes widened, a soft pink in her cheeks. “It will give the gossips more to chew upon — but at least they will not have to invent it.”
For a heartbeat she looked at him uncertainly. Then she smiled and nodded, the blush deepening as she took his offered arm. “If you insist upon feeding the whispers, I suppose I must submit to it.”
A quiet, unmistakable pleasure bloomed in him, and he smiled as they began their slow circuit of the room.
He kept the talk light and easy — of her sister and her sister’s husband, of how often they met when she was at home.
She answered, her words coming more freely the longer they walked, until she seemed to forget how many watched and wondered at them.
They had made half the circuit when a lady detached herself from a knot of matrons and bore down upon them with the cheerful, unstoppable sweep of a ship under full sail.
“Miss Trent! There you are — I have been laying siege to three separate card tables trying to reach you.” Lady Cordelia Asher.
Julian knew her as one knew everyone: a duke’s daughter who had married her plain Mr. Asher and told the world, gaily and often, that she had got much the best of the bargain.
She pressed Miss Trent’s free hand in both her own as though they were the oldest of friends.
“You danced! I saw every moment of it, and so did every mama in the room — they will all be re-drawing their lists tonight.” Her eyes went to Julian, bright with mischief, and she dipped him exactly as much curtsy as the moment required.
“Lord Carrington. How good of you to be useful.”
“Lady Cordelia.” He bowed, biting down on a smile. “I do my poor best.”
“You must both come to me on Thursday — a small supper, nothing grand, only the people worth feeding.” She said it to them together, easily, as though pairing their names cost nothing, and Julian watched the kindness of it land: not the invitation itself, but the plain, public fact of a duke’s daughter standing with her hand through Miss Trent’s arm in the sight of the whole room.
“And you are not to answer now, Miss Trent, because you will only think of reasons to refuse. I shall call on you and extract it properly.”
She swept off as she had come. Miss Trent watched her go with a look Julian was learning to read — surprise, still, that anyone should trouble themselves on her account, chased by a warmth that had nowhere yet to put itself.
“She called on me at Stoneleigh,” she said, half to herself. “I had thought it only politeness.”
“Lady Cordelia has never in her life called on anyone from politeness.” Julian said it with perfect confidence, and was rewarded with her laugh — low and quick, gone almost before it sounded, and his to keep all the same.
She had a champion now, chosen freely and freely choosing, who owed nothing to family duty or a dead woman’s will.
He found the thought sat very well with him.
His heart thudded as he understood, all at once, that he was enjoying her company rather than enduring it for duty’s sake.
To his astonishment, this small thing, to walk with Miss Trent on his arm, left him happier by the minute.
The house was nowhere in his thoughts. The frustration and confusion of the past weeks had gone clean out of him.
In their place was only a slowly rising joy, and that, Julian feared, might be more dangerous than anything he had felt yet.