Chapter 31
“You are glowing, darling.” Lady Brimsey seized Lily’s hands the moment she stepped into the Heatherwell ballroom and held her at arm’s length, examining her with the thorough delight of a mother inspecting a daughter who had been returned to her in improved condition.
“I am not glowing, Mama. I am warm. The carriage was stuffy.”
“You are glowing.” Lady Brimsey pulled her close and whispered against her ear. “Tell me, has there been any discussion of grandchildren?”
Lily’s stomach dropped. She stepped back and arranged her features into something she hoped resembled composure.
“We have not discussed it.”
“You have not discussed it? Lily, you have been married a fortnight.”
“And in that fortnight, we have been rather occupied with settling into the estate.”
“Settling in is precisely the time to discuss these things.” Lady Brimsey’s eyes glistened with the particular fervor of a woman who had been imagining grandchildren since her daughter’s first Season and who considered every passing month a personal affront.
“Children bring so much joy to a marriage.”
Lily excused herself before the conversation could progress to nursery colors and sought refuge beside Sophia, who stood near the refreshment table with a glass of champagne.
“She asked about grandchildren, didn’t she?” Sophia said.
“Before I had removed my gloves.”
“She asked me about grandchildren at my own wedding breakfast. Between the fish course and the roast.” Sophia sipped her champagne. “You look well, sister. Truly.”
“I feel well.”
“Do you?”
Lily considered the question. Two weeks at Thornwaite Hall.
Two weeks of fencing lessons, card games, swimming in the lake, and falling asleep beside a man who held her as though she were something precious and woke each morning with his arm still around her waist. Two weeks of laughter and desire and the slow, careful excavation of a life shared with someone she had not chosen but who had chosen her.
“I do,” she said. “I feel well.”
Sophia studied her. Whatever she found in Lily’s expression made her smile soften into something warmer.
“Good,” Sophia said. “That is all I needed to hear.”
Edward appeared with Hugo at his side. Hugo looked different. Not in any way Lily could have articulated to a stranger. His coat was the same. His cravat was tied with the same careful precision. His smile carried the same warm charm he deployed at every social event.
But something behind the smile had changed. A loosening. A settling. As though a knot that had been pulled tight for years had eased by a fraction.
“Duchess.” Hugo took her hand and raised it to his lips. The gesture was public, correct, and entirely proper. But the press of his mouth against her gloved fingers sent heat up her arm and into her chest.
“Your Grace.” She held his gaze. Hugo’s mouth curved. He tucked Lily’s hand into the crook of his arm and led her into the ballroom. The ton parted for them with deference and curiosity and the particular, avid attention of people who had been discussing them for months.
Lord Brimsey shook Hugo’s hand and clapped his shoulder.
Aunt Margaret appeared in soft peach and examined Lily through narrowed eyes and pronounced her acceptable, which, from Margaret, constituted rapture.
Oliver, who had been brought along by Sophia for reasons that would become clear when he inevitably climbed something, ran across the ballroom and collided with Hugo’s knees.
“Uncle Hugo, there is a cake table. It has six cakes.”
“That sounds like a strategic opportunity.”
“Can I have one of each?”
“You may have two. Negotiate with your mother for the rest.”
Oliver charged off toward Sophia, who was already shaking her head.
Hugo led Lily onto the floor for a waltz. The orchestra swelled, and Lily settled into his arms with an ease that no longer required thought.
“You are leading,” he murmured.
“You are too slow.”
“I am savoring.”
“You are always savoring. Sometimes a waltz is just a waltz.”
“With you, nothing is just anything.”
She pressed her lips together against the smile and let him lead.
Between dances, Lord Sudberry clasped Hugo’s hand and pumped it with vigor.
“Thornwaite. Congratulations. Married life suits you. You look almost respectable.”
“A temporary condition, I assure you.”
“And your Duchess.” Sudberry turned to Lily and bowed. “Your Grace, you have accomplished what every hostess in London failed to do for a decade. You have domesticated the beast.”
“I have done nothing of the sort, Lord Sudberry. I have simply redirected his energies.”
Lord Sudberry laughed. Hugo looked at Lily with an expression that suggested her choice of the word energies would be discussed later, in private, at length.
“In all seriousness, Thornwaite, your father would be proud. I remember him worrying about you as a boy, that old deficiency of yours. And look at you now. Commanding a room. He would scarcely believe it.”
Hugo’s smile held. His eyes did not. Something behind them cooled and locked, fast as a shutter drawn against a storm.
“My father was rarely proud of anything, Sudberry. But I appreciate the sentiment.”
Sudberry clapped his shoulder and moved on. Hugo reached for his champagne and took a measured sip. Lily felt the arm beneath her hand tighten and not release.
More congratulations drifted their way throughout the evening with no word of the scandal that had almost destroyed her reputation.
Near the terrace doors, Lily overheard a conversation that made her pause.
“Miss Stapleton married Lord Houghton last week,” Lady Hale was telling Mrs. Thorne.
“A fine match. Thirty thousand a year and an estate in Derbyshire. Lady Stapleton looked quite pleased at the ceremony, though I understand they are leaving London afterward. Permanently, according to Lady Fenwick.”
Lily’s hand tightened on Hugo’s arm. He glanced down at her.
“You heard?” she murmured.
“I heard.”
“Miss Stapleton married well.”
“She did. The dowry helped.”
Lily looked up at him. The candlelight caught the amber of his eyes and the fine scar above his brow, and she thought about two thousand pounds given to a woman who had tried to destroy her, not out of kindness toward the mother but out of decency toward the daughter. A familiar ache settled in her chest.
“You are a better man than you pretend to be,” she said.
“Do not tell anyone. It would ruin my reputation.”
She pressed her lips together against the smile and looked away.
The evening wound down. Hugo handed Lily into their carriage, and the door closed. Then the noise of the ballroom faded into the quiet of the London night.
“My mother asked about children,” she said.
Hugo’s hand, which had been resting on his knee, stilled.
“We have not discussed it.”
“No. We have not.”
Silence filled the carriage. The wheels turned on the cobblestones. The lamplight from the street flickered across Hugo’s face, and Lily watched the thought move behind his eyes.
“There is time,” he said. “For that conversation.”
“There is.”
“When you are ready.”
“When we are both ready.”
He turned his head and looked at her.
She saw him.
Not the Duke. Not the rake.
Just Hugo.
He reached for her hand. She gave it to him. His thumb traced a slow circle against her palm, the same gesture he had made at the altar, private and hidden and meant for no one but her.
She leaned her head against his shoulder. He rested his cheek against her hair.
The carriage carried them home through the London dark, and neither of them spoke. The silence between them was no longer empty.