Chapter 3
The ballroom was far louder than Callum remembered.
Music drifted from the musicians’ gallery overhead while conversation swelled beneath it in a constant, shifting hum. Candlelight glittered across crystal chandeliers and polished floors. Everywhere he looked, people seemed to be moving. Dancing. Talking. Laughing.
Observing one another. Judging one another.
The realization arrived within minutes of entering the ballroom.
Callum had not missed any of this.
Seven years earlier, such gatherings had been an ordinary part of life.
Dinners, musicales, house parties, and endless evenings spent circulating through rooms much like this one.
He had attended because it was expected, because it was part of being his father’s son, and because he had never imagined there would come a day when he would simply stop.
Then he had lost his family.
The months that followed blurred together in his memory. There had been condolences, concern, and no shortage of well-meaning advice. Everyone seemed convinced they knew what would help. Everyone seemed to have an opinion on what grief ought to look like and how long it ought to last.
Somewhere during those years, society had continued without him.
Not that anyone had objected particularly loudly. A few relations had attempted interventions. Several old acquaintances had persisted in sending invitations. Eventually even those efforts diminished.
People adapted surprisingly quickly to absence.
Callum had adapted just as readily.
Until a solicitor informed him that Ashvale’s future depended rather inconveniently upon his participation in society once more.
A mother steered her daughter into his path.
Callum recognized the maneuver immediately.
The young lady curtsied. Callum bowed.
Three minutes later he escaped.
A quarter of an hour after that, an elderly gentleman cornered him beside a refreshment table and insisted upon explaining the future of canal transportation.
Callum suspected the future of canal transportation was considerably less promising than the gentleman believed.
By the time he finally extricated himself, he was actively contemplating departure.
Then he spotted Nicholas.
Relief, absurdly enough, followed.
His old friend stood near one of the tall windows overlooking the gardens. The years had changed him less than Callum expected. He was perhaps a little broader through the shoulders now, a little more assured than the young man Callum remembered from Oxford, but otherwise much the same.
Nicholas noticed him at nearly the same moment. His eyes widened before a laugh escaped him. “Good God.”
Callum stopped before him. “Nicholas.”
“I was beginning to think you’d become entirely mythical.”
“I considered it.”
“Clearly, you reconsidered.”
“Against my better judgment.”
A grin spread across Nicholas’s face, familiar enough to stir memories Callum had not expected to find waiting for him here.
Workshops cluttered with tools. Arguments about bridge designs.
Entire afternoons spent dismantling perfectly functional devices simply to discover whether they might be improved.
Two aristocratic young men with interests that had frequently baffled everyone around them.
“You look well,” Nicholas said.
“So do you.”
“You’re lying.”
“Only slightly.”
Nicholas laughed again, and the sound carried above the surrounding hum of conversation. Nearby guests glanced their way before returning to their own discussions.
For the first time since entering the ballroom, Callum found himself relaxing. “Congratulations,” he said after a moment.
Nicholas grimaced.
The reaction was so unexpected that Callum nearly laughed. “That’s an alarming expression for an engaged man.”
“I am happy.”
“You looked as though you were preparing for execution.”
A hand passed briefly across Nicholas’s face. “I am making a complete fool of myself.”
“Almost certainly.”
That earned the faintest hint of a smile.
The orchestra struck up a new dance somewhere behind them. Around the room, couples drifted onto the floor while conversation swelled and ebbed beneath the music. Nicholas appeared entirely oblivious to all of it.
He looked, Callum realized, like a man attempting to solve a problem no one else could see.
Nicholas released a long breath. “I haven’t the faintest idea what I’m doing.”
“That is considerably less reassuring.”
The corner of Nicholas’s mouth twitched.
Callum found himself unexpectedly grateful for the familiarity of the exchange. Oxford suddenly felt much closer than it had a few minutes ago.
“So,” he said, lifting his glass, “what precisely is the problem?”
Nicholas looked genuinely perplexed. “The problem?”
“You are engaged.”
“Yes.”
“You are marrying a lovely woman.”
“Yes.”
“You appear incapable of thinking about anything else.”
Nicholas stared at him for a moment before groaning softly. “That’s exactly the problem.”
Callum waited.
Nicholas glanced across the ballroom once more before lowering his voice. “She doesn’t appear to dislike me.”
“I should hope not.”
“But that isn’t the same thing.”
Callum said nothing.
For a moment he simply watched his friend. The nervousness. The repeated glances across the room. The expression of a man who seemed far more frightened by his bride than by the prospect of marriage itself.
Then the pieces fell quietly into place.
“You think she doesn’t care for you.”
Nicholas winced.
The expression answered the question before words could.
“It’s an arranged match,” he said quietly. “Her parents approved it. Mine approved it. Everyone approved it except the two people actually expected to live with it.”
“That seems unnecessarily dramatic.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
Nicholas ignored him. “I know she is kind. I know she is gracious. I know she would never intentionally wound anyone.”
His gaze drifted across the ballroom once more.
This time Callum followed it.
A young woman stood near the edge of the dance floor speaking with another guest. Dark hair gleamed beneath the candlelight, and her pale gown caught the gold glow spilling from the chandeliers overhead.
There was nothing particularly dramatic about her appearance.
No dazzling beauty designed to command a room.
Yet there was a gentleness to her that drew the eye all the same.
Even from a distance, she looked slightly overwhelmed by the attention surrounding her.
“Isabella,” Callum said.
Nicholas’s expression softened immediately.
The change was so instinctive that Callum almost smiled.
“I know she accepted the match,” Nicholas continued quietly. “I simply don’t know whether she wanted it.”
The orchestra swelled into the opening strains of another dance. Around them, guests shifted and conversations rose and fell beneath the music, but Nicholas seemed unaware of any of it.
His attention remained fixed on the young woman across the room.
Something in his voice gave Callum pause.
Until that moment, he had assumed Nicholas’s nerves stemmed from the prospect of marriage itself. That would have been understandable enough. Marriage was a permanent arrangement, and permanent arrangements had a way of unsettling even sensible men.
This was different. The uncertainty was not directed toward the future.
It was directed toward Isabella.
Nicholas was not worried that he was making a mistake.
He was worried she had.
The realization surprised Callum more than it should have. For all his talk of arranged matches and parental approval, Nicholas’s fear was remarkably simple.
He cared for her, and he was terrified she did not care for him in return.
Across the room, Isabella was speaking with a young lady and a gentleman near the edge of the dance floor.
The conversation appeared pleasant enough, though Callum paid it little attention.
After a few moments, the small group broke apart.
The gentleman disappeared into the crowd while the young lady gathered her skirts and hurried away with suspicious urgency, as though late for an appointment.
Callum’s attention lingered on her only briefly.
A moment later, Isabella looked up.
Or rather, she looked at Nicholas.
The change in her expression was subtle, but impossible to miss once seen. Some of the uncertainty seemed to leave her. Not all of it. Just enough.
Nicholas had seen it too.
Callum knew because his friend immediately forgot how to behave like a rational human being.
Isabella began making her way toward them.
“Good evening, Lord Ashvale,” she said as she reached them.
“Lady Blackthorne,” Nicholas said automatically.
Isabella looked at him in surprise. A moment later, color rose steadily into her cheeks.
“I am not Lady Blackthorne yet,” she said, unable to suppress a smile. “Just as you are not Lord Blackthorne.”
Nicholas stared at her for a heartbeat before visibly realizing what he had done.
“No,” he said, sounding faintly horrified with himself. “No... of course you are not.”
Callum bit the inside of his cheek.
He had never before witnessed a gentleman accidentally marry himself in the middle of a greeting.
For perhaps the first time in his life, Nicholas appeared uncertain how to recover. “Miss Fairchild,” he amended.
“Thank you,” Isabella said, though amusement now lingered in her voice.
The correction did not seem to improve matters.
If anything, Nicholas looked more embarrassed than before.
Callum found himself unexpectedly entertained.
The pair had somehow managed to become engaged while remaining equally convinced the other was merely tolerating the arrangement.
“You are enjoying this,” Nicholas muttered.
“I am,” Callum admitted. “Immensely.”
Isabella laughed softly.
The sound appeared to improve Nicholas’s condition considerably. “I hope you are enjoying yourself this evening,” he said to her.
“I am.” The answer came quickly enough, though she immediately looked away afterward. “And you?”
Nicholas looked momentarily surprised by the question. “I beg your pardon?”
“This is your evening as much as mine,” Isabella said softly. “Surely I should ask whether you are enjoying yourself.”