Chapter 7
“You are glowing, Lady Lily.” Lady Whitmore pressed Lily’s hands between her own and beamed with the intensity of a hostess who had just realized her ball would be the one people remembered this Season.
“You are too kind, Lady Whitmore.”
“Not at all. The Duke is a fortunate man. I said as much to Lord Whitmore just this morning.” She leaned closer, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial hush.
“Between us, my dear, I always thought Thornwaite would never settle down. His mother’s passing, that dreadful business with the family, it marked him.
But love has a way of mending what grief has broken, does it not? ”
Lily kept her smile in place. “Indeed, it does.”
Lady Whitmore squeezed her hands once more and swept away to intercept a newly arrived couple, leaving Lily standing beside a potted fern with a question lodged in her chest like a splinter.
His mother’s passing. That dreadful business with the family.
She filed it away and moved through the room.
The Duke was across the ballroom, deep in conversation with a group of gentlemen who laughed at something he said with the easy, overloud amusement of men in the presence of a Duke.
He looked relaxed, his champagne glass resting loosely in his fingers, his posture open, his smile carrying the careless warmth that Lily recognized as his most effective mask.
The man who stood among those gentlemen bore no resemblance to the man who had touched her chin in the alcove twenty minutes ago and made her forget how to breathe.
She turned away before he could catch her watching.
Sophia appeared at her elbow with two glasses of lemonade and the steady, assessing gaze that meant she had been observing for some time.
“You managed that well,” Sophia said, handing her a glass. “Lady Whitmore is the worst kind of gossip. She wraps her cruelty in compliments, and if you react to either one, she will dine out on it for weeks.”
“I am learning.” Lily took a sip. The lemonade was too sweet. Everything at these events was too sweet, as if the hosts believed that enough sugar could mask the sourness underneath. “Hugo has decided to teach me.”
Sophia’s brow lifted a fraction. “Hugo. Not His Grace.”
Lily’s cheeks warmed. “He is my fiancé. Temporary or not, first names are appropriate.”
“Mm.” Sophia drank her lemonade and said nothing further, which was worse than anything she could have said aloud.
They stood in silence for a moment, watching the ballroom turn. Near the refreshment table, Miss Stapleton stood beside Lord Wilfrey with a posture of such careful, calculated softness that Lily recognized the technique immediately.
Shoulders relaxed. Head tilted. Voice low enough to draw the listener closer.
Miss Stapleton was doing exactly what Hugo had just taught Lily to do, and she was doing it to the man Lily intended to marry.
“Do not stare,” Sophia murmured.
“I am not staring.”
“You are cataloging. It is the same thing with better posture.” Sophia touched her arm. “Miss Stapleton is not your enemy, sister.”
“I did not say she was.”
“You did not have to. Your jaw is doing the talking for you.”
Lily unclenched her teeth and took another sip of lemonade.
A low, warm voice materialized at her shoulder. “The musicians are preparing a waltz.”
Hugo stood beside her, his hand extended. The champagne was gone, and something sharper lived behind his eyes now, something attentive and purposeful that the gentlemen across the room would never have noticed beneath the easy charm.
Lily set down her glass and placed her hand in his.
He led her to the floor. The music began, and his hand settled at her waist with a steadiness that anchored her in place. She rested her fingers on his shoulder, and they moved into the first turn.
“You are tense,” he said.
“I am waltzing. It requires concentration.”
“It requires the opposite of concentration. It requires surrender.” His thumb shifted against her waist, a movement so slight it could have been accidental. It was not accidental. “Stop thinking about your feet. They know what to do.”
She forced herself to loosen her grip on his shoulder. The second turn came easier, and by the third, she had settled into the rhythm of his lead, her body responding to the pressure of his hand before her mind had time to intervene.
“Better,” he murmured.
“I was already competent.”
“You were already precise. Competence and precision are not the same as grace.” His gaze dropped to hers. “A waltz is a conversation, Lily. You are treating it like a debate.”
“I treat everything like a debate.”
“I have noticed.”
She almost smiled. She caught it in time and redirected her attention to a point over his shoulder, where the candlelight blurred the faces of the onlookers into a wash of pale skin and bright silk.
“Lady Whitmore said something to me earlier,” she said. “About your mother.”
Hugo’s hand tightened at her waist. The movement was involuntary, a single contraction of his fingers that lasted less than a second before he smoothed it away. If she had not been pressed close enough to feel the shift in his breathing, she would have missed it entirely.
“Lady Whitmore says many things.” His voice carried the same pleasant warmth, but something beneath it had cooled. “Most of them are not worth repeating.”
“She mentioned a tragedy. She said it marked you.”
Hugo guided her through the next turn. His steps did not falter. His expression did not change. But the ease had gone out of his shoulders, and the hand at her waist held her with a firmness that felt less like a dance and more like a man bracing himself against something.
“My m-mother died when I was young.” A stammer surfaced and vanished in the space of a syllable, so quickly that anyone else might have mistaken it for a catch in his breath.
Hugo’s jaw tightened with emotion. He guided her through the next turn without missing a step.
“It was a difficult time for my family.”
Lily waited. He offered nothing more.
“I am sorry,” she said. “I did not mean to pry.”
“You meant exactly to pry. It is one of your more endearing qualities.” The warmth returned to his voice, but it sat differently now.
“My family history is not a cheerful subject, Lady Lily. If you are looking for a tragic backstory to explain why I am the way I am, I am afraid you will find it rather more complicated than Lady Whitmore’s parlor version. ”
“I was not looking for an explanation.”
“Were you not?”
The question was quiet enough so that only she could hear it.
She met his eyes and found something there she had not seen before.
Not the charm. Not the teasing. Something guarded and watchful, the look of a man who had learned long ago to keep certain doors locked and was deciding, in this moment, whether the woman in his arms was the kind of person who would try the handle.
“No,” she said. “I was not. But I would like to understand you better. If you would allow it.”
Hugo studied her. The waltz carried them past the windows, and the candlelight caught the amber in his irises and the fine scar along his left brow.
“Perhaps,” he said. “In time.”
The music ended. Hugo released her waist and bowed. She curtsied, and when she straightened, the guarded look was gone, replaced by the familiar, maddening smirk.
“Your waltzing has improved,” he said. “Your interrogation technique remains appalling.”
“I was not interrogating you.”
“You were. But you did it with excellent posture, so I will allow it.”
She pressed her lips together against the laugh that threatened to escape and placed her hand on his offered arm. They returned to the edge of the ballroom, where Sophia and Edward waited with the composed patience of people who had been watching every step.
The evening wound down. Hugo handed Lily into the Brimsey carriage, his fingers lingering against hers for a moment longer than necessity demanded. She did not pull away. She told herself it was for the benefit of anyone who might be watching.
She told herself many things in the carriage ride home. None of them were particularly convincing.
The Heatherwell study smelled of leather and good brandy, and Edward poured two glasses with the unhurried ease of a man settling into a conversation he had been waiting to have.
Hugo accepted his glass and dropped into the chair opposite the desk. He stretched his legs toward the fire and let the silence sit.
Edward never rushed. It was one of the things Hugo valued most about their friendship. Edward would circle a subject three times before approaching it, examining every angle and testing the footing.
“You danced with her tonight,” Edward said.
“I danced with my fiancée. At a ball. Scandalous behavior, I know.”
“You danced with her the way a man dances with a woman he wants, not the way a man dances with an arrangement.”
Hugo swirled his brandy. The firelight caught the amber liquid and threw warm shadows across the rug.
“She is my fiancée, Edward. The performance requires conviction.”
“Is that what this is? Conviction?”
“It is what it needs to be.”
Edward settled into his own chair and crossed one ankle over the other. He regarded Hugo with the patient, unblinking attention of a man who had known him since their years at Eton and could read the difference between his masks the way other men read the morning papers.
“Hugo.”
“Edward.”
“I have known you for fifteen years. I was there when you drank an entire bottle of claret on a dare and climbed the chapel roof at school. I was there when Sebastian…” Edward paused.
The name landed between them like a stone dropped into still water.
“I was there for all of it. You do not need to perform for me.”
Hugo’s jaw tightened. He took a long pull of his brandy and let the burn settle in his chest.
“What do you want me to say?”
“I want you to tell me whether this arrangement is still an arrangement, or whether it has become something else.”
The fire crackled. A log shifted and sent a plume of sparks up the chimney.
“It is an arrangement,” Hugo said. “She wants Wilfrey. I want to find whoever published that forgery and ensure they answer for it. When both objectives are achieved, the engagement dissolves, and we return to our respective lives.”
“And what if she does not want Lord Wilfrey by then?”
“She will. He is everything she thinks she wants. Steady. Intellectual. Safe.” Hugo pronounced the last word as though it tasted like something stale.
“You say that as if safety is a character flaw.”
“I say it as a man who knows the difference between safety and settling.” He met Edward’s gaze.
“Lily is extraordinary. She is sharp, fierce, and brave enough to walk into a rake’s house at midnight and shove a scandal sheet into his chest. A man like Wilfrey would spend thirty years trying to sand those edges down, and she would let him because she believes there is no alternative. ”
Edward watched him for a long moment. The corner of his mouth curved.
“You called her extraordinary.”
“She is extraordinary. That is a statement of fact, not a declaration of intent.”
“Hugo.”
“Edward.”
“You are in trouble.”
Hugo stared at the fire. The flames licked at the fresh log, and the shadows danced across the walls of the study, and the brandy sat warm and useless in his stomach because no amount of it was going to make Edward wrong.
“I know,” he said.
Edward nodded, as if this were the only honest thing Hugo had said all evening. He raised his glass.
“To trouble, then.”
Hugo lifted his own. The crystal rang as their glasses met.
“To trouble.”