Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
“Your Grace, the last of the guests have arrived.” Mr. Clarke stood beside him as he spoke.
“Thank you, Mr. Clarke. Make certain they are well taken care of.” His butler nodded firmly and briskly walked into the ballroom.
Hector had not intended to make a spectacle of his generosity.
That was what he told himself as he stood at the edge of the ballroom, one hand resting over the head of his cane, listening to the first uncertain murmur of surprise ripple through the room.
The gathering was small by any reasonable measure.
He made certain that it was a private ball and not a declaration to London.
There was no crush of strangers or suffocating procession of names he would be expected to remember while pretending the light did not trouble him and the shifting shapes at the edge of his vision were more than shadows.
He invited only family, and a few trusted friends. The Duke and Duchess of Pridewell were spending their final evening beneath his roof, and he thought the ball was a fine way to bid them farewell.
“Great ball, Sterling.” Jasper, who had invited himself with the sort of good humor that made refusal seem petty, slapped him on his back. “Now, when will you introduce me to that wife of yours?”
Hector looked around until he spotted her shape. She stood across the room. He knew that was her before her voice rose warmly.
“Ah,” his friend said beside him. “Now it all makes sense.”
Hector was about to retort when Poppy and her sister approached him.
“Oh, Hector.” Poppy breathed, and just those two words gave him a sense of peace that this was the right decision.
He inclined his head as if he had done nothing remarkable. “It seemed a suitable way to conclude your sister’s visit.”
Julia laughed beside Poppy. “Suitable? You have hidden an entire ball from us.”
“Not an entire ball,” he said. “A modest one.”
“Only a duke would call this modest,” Leander observed.
Hector let the remark pass.
“This is my good friend, the Duke of Berkshire.” He introduced Jasper to the group without removing his gaze from Poppy.
Hector left them to speak as his mind spiraled out of control. Poppy looked breathtaking in the deep burgundy ballgown, with her curls half pinned and half let down. He wished then that he could see the color of her eyes again, just to complete the entire picture of her.
I should ask her to dance. She stopped close enough that her scent reached him clearly beneath the wax and flowers and warmed air of the ballroom. And Hector noticed the blush rise in her skin as he drank her in.
He gave her a faint, formal smile as he gestured toward the ballroom. “I hope it pleases you.”
“It does,” she said eagerly, and the simple sincerity of it reached him with more force than any practiced compliment. “Very much so.”
He nearly said something foolish then. Something about how he had wanted to see her happy, though seeing was the wrong word and wanting was worse. Fortunately, Jasper chose that moment to enter the conversation like a man stepping through an unlocked door.
“At last,” Jasper said. “Are you going to hide your duchess from me forever, or is this the night I am permitted an introduction?”
Hector turned toward him with no attempt to disguise his irritation. Jasper sounded amused already, which meant the evening was about to become less manageable.
Poppy shifted beside him. “Your Grace, it is nice to meet my husband’s good friend.”
“Only friend. And you must be the reason Sterling has become even more impossible to visit than usual.” Jasper bowed over her hand with an ease that had undone far more guarded women than Poppy. “Your Grace, I am devastated to discover that every rumor understated you.”
Poppy laughed, not coquettishly, but with startled pleasure. “That is a very practiced compliment.”
“Only because I have spent years waiting to use it on someone deserving.”
“Berkshire,” Hector warned.
Jasper straightened. “There he is.”
Julia, who had remained nearby with obvious interest, made no attempt to rescue anyone.
“I would have come sooner,” Jasper said, “but Sterling guards his treasures with a dragon’s disposition.”
“I do not guard her,” Hector said defensively.
“No? Then why are you right beside my elbow like a jealous husband?”
The words landed lightly, and Poppy made a small sound of laughter. Hector felt the back of his neck tighten.
“I am standing in my own ballroom; it is not my fault that you take up so much space beside me,” he said.
“Are you saying that I am rotund?” Jasper replied, feigning surprise. “I simply wanted to greet Her Grace and admire her.”
“Admire?” Hector growled.
Poppy turned toward Hector then. He could not see her expression clearly, but he knew she wanted to laugh at their friendly banter.
The slight tilt of her face and the way her breath shortened when she was torn between laughter and uncertainty made him want to reach for her right there and then.
He had learned her without meaning to. From every sound she made before contradicting him to the soft stillness that came over her when the children were not around.
He knew, too, what she expected now.
A ball had its customs, and a husband had his duties.
She had turned toward him in that expectant way, allowing the moment to open between them.
Had he been another man, he would have offered his hand.
Had he been the man she deserved, he would have led her onto the floor without hesitation and made the evening even more special.
Instead, he stood as uncertainty surrounded him.
Perhaps he should allow Jasper to dance with her.
The thought made him instantly jealous. The dance floor was not treacherous to others, but to him, it was full of moving bodies, sound displaced by music, and distances that altered with every step.
He could move through his own house without assistance.
But dancing required confidence in space he no longer possessed. It required leading.
With Poppy in his arms, one misjudged turn would not be a private humiliation. It would be hers as well.
Jasper, damn him, understood his sudden silence.
“In the interest of my own continued health,” he said cheerfully, “I shall not ask Her Grace to dance.”
Poppy’s attention remained on Hector a moment longer.
Ask me, her silence said.
But he did not, and the change in her was minute. She released her breath too carefully and did not reproach him. Which made it worse.
Hector was grateful when Leander stepped in. “Poppy, will you do me the honor?”
She turned at once, gracious as ever, but her smile did not reach her eyes. “Of course.”
Hector listened as his wife moved away with another man, and the music began.
He stood at the perimeter of the room beside Jasper and told himself he had done the sensible thing.
Poppy would enjoy the dance, and Leander would not stumble.
No one would whisper that the Duke of Sterling could not guide his own wife across a floor he had ordered cleared and polished for her pleasure.
“That,” Jasper said after a time, “was painful to witness.”
Hector’s hand tightened on the cane. “If you have come only to be irritating, you may leave.”
“I did come partly for that. But not only.”
“I am relieved,” Hector said drily.
“You are a fool, Hector.”
He turned his head slightly. The shapes on the floor moved in pale and dark currents. He could distinguish Leander’s height and the lighter form of Poppy beside him, but little else. “You mistake prudence for folly.”
“No. I know prudence. I have avoided three duels and at least two engagements by prudence. That was folly.” He motioned toward Poppy and Leander.
“She wanted to dance.”
“Yes. With you.”
Hector said nothing as the music drew the dancers around the room. Poppy passed at some distance; he knew by the faint trace of her scent and by the lift in Leander’s voice as he said something that made her laugh. Hector was glad she laughed. He was glad and resentful, and ashamed of both.
Jasper’s tone softened, though not enough to become sentimental. “Would you like to know how she truly looks?”
“No.” But every part of him screamed yes.
“Her hair is dark blonde,” Jasper said, ignoring his words but not his mind. “Somewhere between gold and brown, but warmer when she turns beneath the candles. She has it arranged simply tonight. It suits her better than all those architectural constructions women put upon their heads.”
Hector kept himself still as he listened.
“Her eyes are blue,” Jasper continued. “A clear blue. Not the pale or dull kind. When she looks at someone, she looks as though she is actually listening, which is rare in a woman nowadays.”
“I know the color of my wife’s eyes.” He gritted.
“Do you know how they change when she smiles?” Jasper retorted.
Hector’s jaw set.
“They narrow slightly,” Jasper continued.
“In a warm sort of way, and her entire face participates. Some beauties smile only with the mouth, but your duchess does not. Her cheeks lift, and there is a small line here—” Hector slapped his hand away as Jasper tried to indicate by pointing at his face.
“Beside the mouth. It is very slight, and it appears and vanishes.”
Hector wished, with sudden violence, that Jasper would stop. He wished more fiercely that he would not.
The music continued, and Poppy moved through it somewhere beyond him, slender and bright and indistinct.
Hector could see color when the light permitted, and it remained long enough for him to make meaning of it.
But he could not see the small line beside her mouth.
He could not know how her smile altered her eyes.
He could not gather the features of her face into certainty.
His own wife remained, in some essential way, unknown to him.
“She is of medium height,” Jasper said, quieter now. “Slender. Graceful without appearing aware of it. Her face is not the sort one forgets. There is patience in it, which is not the same as softness. And when she glances this way, as she has done three times in as many minutes, she looks…”
He paused.
Hector turned toward him. “She has looked this way?”
Jasper’s smile was audible. “Ah.”
“Answer me.”
“Yes. Frequently enough to make your refusal to dance in the comfort of your own home even more idiotic.”
Hector looked back toward the moving blur of dancing bodies. “What did you mean, she looks like what?”
“Like a woman waiting for her husband to stop punishing himself.” Jasper sounded exasperated.
“You just met her. You do not know her.” Hector gritted his teeth.
“No,” Jasper said. “But I know you. And I know longing when it stands beside me pretending to be moral restraint.”
Hector’s throat felt tight. The cane under his hand was solid and familiar, in a way people rarely were. Taking it away from him would unbalance him. He found it funny that he felt the same way when Leander took Poppy away from him.
“I made her a promise,” he said.
“What promise?” Jasper asked curiously.
“That I would not demand what she did not offer.”
“Dancing with your wife is a demand?”
Hector hated that he asked in such a sarcastic way.
“It is not a trivial request.”
“No,” Jasper agreed. “But if you long to see all of her, then perhaps you should ask her if you could touch her face?”
Hector froze at that. He had never thought of it before. “That is an intimate request.”
Jasper laughed. “Fortunate, then, that you are married.”
Hector gave a sharp breath that was nearly a laugh and nearly a cough. “I cannot simply ask her if I may touch her face so that I can see it better.”
“Why not?”
“Because I am not a character in one of your indecent anecdotes, Jasper.”
“My anecdotes are tastefully indecent, but they work,” he pointed out.
“Jasper,” Hector sighed.
“Very well. Do not ask her because you fear she will pity you. And live the rest of your marriage imagining your wife’s beauty.”
That struck too near to his heart, so Hector said nothing.
Jasper’s voice lost its teasing edge. “Sterling, the woman has spent half the dance looking at you. If you asked with the care of a man who loves her—”
Hector turned on him. “I am not in love.”
His words were low, and Jasper looked at him questioningly.
Love was not a thing Hector permitted into conversation.
It altered the air. It made every silence accountable.
He had built their marriage on terms clear enough to protect them both.
And those terms were: their duty, respect, care where care was needed, and no foolish romantic expectations.
Poppy had agreed. She had wanted safety for the girls, and he had offered it.
But that safety was causing distance between him and his wife.
On the floor, Leander guided Poppy through the final measures.
She moved well; even Hector could tell that.
The outline of her turned, paused, and returned.
A polite and warm applause followed. Finally, the dance ended, and Poppy thanked Leander.
Her voice was bright, but Hector heard the restraint upon it.
She deserved a husband who could dance with her beneath candlelight without making courage seem like a tragic undertaking.
She deserved someone who did not measure every desire against the burden of his own damaged body.
She deserved more than a brooding, half-blind man who knew her by scent and silence but could not bring himself to cross a floor.
“Do not look so noble,” Jasper murmured. “It rarely ends well, and you are convinced your suffering is useful—but it should not be so if you truly care for that woman.”
Hector did not answer his friend. Across the room, Poppy laughed again, and he held himself still as if stillness could keep the sound from entering him.