Chapter Two
Sophia paused just beyond the ballroom doors, pressing her gloved fingers lightly against her racing pulse.
“Before midnight,” she murmured to herself. “A perfectly reasonable objective. Women accomplish far more difficult things every day.”
None of them, she suspected, involved stealing kisses from strangers.
The music swelled again as she stepped back into the ballroom, the warmth and light rushing to meet her.
Conversation flowed as though nothing had ever happened—as though she had not been the subject of it only moments before.
Sophia lifted her chin, scanning the room with renewed purpose. She spotted her mother, looking around and quickly tucked behind a rather portly Duke. Here, it took only a moment to find him again.
The blonde-haired gentleman was moving now—away from the crowd, toward the quieter corridor just beyond the main hall, where the card rooms and retiring chambers lay. Not fleeing, precisely, but escaping in the same gentle manner with which he seemed to do everything else.
Sophia’s breath caught. “That is providence,” she whispered.
Before she could reconsider, she gathered her skirts and followed.
The corridor was dimmer, the noise of the ballroom softened into a distant hum. A pair of wall sconces flickered along the panelled walls, casting long shadows across the polished floor.
He was just ahead.
It’s now or never.
Sophia drew in a breath, quickened her pace, and misstepped.
“Oh—!”
The stumble was convincing enough, even to herself.
Her slipper slid just slightly, her balance tipped, then steadied.
A hand caught her arm. “Miss—are you quite all right?”
Sophia looked up. “Yes,” she said quickly, allowing just the right amount of breathlessness into her voice. “I—how foolish of me. I did not see—”
“No harm done,” he said, smiling with easy reassurance. “These corridors are treacherous things.”
“Clearly,” Sophia replied, letting out a small, self-conscious laugh. “I am most grateful you were here to rescue me from complete disgrace.”
“I assure you,” he said lightly, “it would have taken far more than a misstep to accomplish that.”
Sophia tilted her head. “You are very kind, sir.”
“And you are very fortunate,” he returned, “that I possess excellent reflexes.”
She smiled at that. He was warm, agreeable, and exactly as expected.
“Yes,” she said. “I begin to see that.”
There was a brief pause, the sort that invited introduction.
“Sir Edward Langley,” he said, bowing slightly. “At your service.”
“Miss Sophia Everly.”
If he recognised the name, he gave no sign of it.
“A pleasure,” he said simply.
Sophia studied him for a moment, at his open expression and steady gaze
“Well, Mr Langley,” she said, “I find myself in your debt. It seems only proper that I attempt to repay it.”
“I cannot imagine how.”
“Conversation, at the very least,” she said. “Unless you are in great haste to escape me.”
“On the contrary,” he replied. “I was merely seeking a moment’s quiet. Though I suspect I have found something far more agreeable.”
Sophia smiled again. “Yes,” she said. “I am told I can be very agreeable.”
He laughed.
“So tell me,” Sophia said. “Do you reside in London?”
“No,” he replied. “I only just arrived this morning. The roads were in dreadful condition—mud nearly to the wheels in some places—but well worth the journey, I think. London always has a certain energy this time of year, does it not?”
“It does,” Sophia said.
“And the season promises to be a lively one. I understand there is to be a riding exhibition next week—have you any interest in sport, Lady Everly?”
“I possess an abiding admiration,” she said smoothly. “Particularly when I am not required to participate.”
“Quite right,” he said. “Though I confess, I have always found a good ride to be the finest cure for any number of troubles.”
“I shall keep that in mind.”
He continued, pleasantly, earnestly, on horses, on hunting, on the merits of one estate over another. His voice was warm, his manner unassuming.
Sophia nodded at all the appropriate moments. But as the conversation wore on it was abundantly clear that they possessed no spark or quickening. There was not a flicker of anything beyond polite attention.
It is like speaking to a well-written letter. She thought to herself. Perfectly composed and entirely without surprise.
Sophia tilted her head slightly, studying him as he spoke.
He was kind, undeniably so, and yet, she found her attention drifting toward the distant glow of the ballroom.
“So, you see,” Mr Langley was saying, “the difficulty lies not in the horse itself, but in the rider’s understanding of it.”
“Of course,” Sophia said.
He continued on, and Sophia drew in a quiet breath, her fingers tightening slightly around her fan.
Midnight was approaching, and she had yet to steal anything at all.
In fact, she wasn’t certain she could steal anything from Sir Langley, who gave no indication that he wished the conversation about horses to stop long enough for a kiss.
***
Tristan Mortimer, Duke of Nightvale, arrived precisely when he was expected and not a moment sooner.
Obligation, he had long since learned, was best handled efficiently.
The ballroom unfolded before him in predictable splendour: chandeliers blazing with relentless brilliance, conversation flowing in careful, well-rehearsed currents, ambition and calculation dressed elegantly in silk and civility, every movement measured, every smile curated for effect.
It differed little from the dozen others he had attended already this season—nor, he suspected, from the dozen more he had yet to endure before it finally came to a close.
He had been presented, assessed, and quietly pursued in drawing rooms, at musicales, at dinners where conversation held all the warmth of a negotiation, and on polished dance floors where introductions were less about acquaintance than evaluation.
Everywhere he went, he was received with the same polished interest—the subtle shift in tone when his title was announced, the careful brightening of mamas’ expressions, the calculated charm of daughters suddenly encouraged to distinguish themselves.
It was, in every sense, a marketplace.
And he, whether he liked it or not, was one of its most valuable commodities.
He could feel it in the way conversations adjusted to accommodate him, in the way invitations had multiplied with almost comical urgency, in the way every interaction seemed to carry an undercurrent of quiet expectation.
By now, it had ceased to irritate him. It had become something far more tedious than that—predictable.
And he was expected to choose a wife.
The terms shifted depending on who spoke of it, but the substance remained unchanged: he was to choose wisely, advantageously, and without unnecessary delay.
The season was waning, patience thinning, speculation increasing.
A man in his position could not attend so many gatherings, entertain so many introductions, and yet leave without making his intentions known—not without inviting scrutiny he had no desire to indulge.
And yet, standing there beneath the glittering weight of expectation, Tristan found he could summon no real interest in any of it.
It was not reluctance that held him back, nor even indecision, but something far more inconvenient—a complete and persistent absence of care.
The thought sat heavily, like a contract already signed but not yet fulfilled.
“You are late.”
Tristan did not turn. “I am punctual. Society simply insists on beginning before I arrive.”
His cousin, Charlotte Crowther, stepped beside him, her expression composed but her eyes far too perceptive. “You cannot avoid it indefinitely.”
“I do not intend to avoid it,” he said. “Only to endure it.”
“That is not how marriages are meant to be entered.”
“It is precisely how most of them are entered.”
Charlotte studied him. “You require more than a ledger balanced, Tristan.”
“I require stability,” he corrected. “The rest is irrelevant.”
“How very romantic of you.”
“I have never claimed to be so.”
A gentleman approached then—eager, verbose, and immediately tiresome. Within moments, Tristan found himself subjected to an enthusiastic discourse on land yields and hunting prospects, delivered with all the subtlety of a sermon.
He endured it for precisely as long as politeness required, and then he took his leave.
“If you will excuse me.”
He did not wait for a response.
The corridor beyond the ballroom was a relief—cooler, quieter, untouched by performance. His steps were measured, his expression once more composed as he turned toward the retiring rooms.
And then he heard it. The sound of laughter was bright, unrestrained, and gratingly familiar.
Tristan’s jaw tightened.
Of all the sounds in that house, it was the one he least wished to encounter—and the one most capable of finding him regardless.
He should have ignored it, but he did not.
The sound came again, softer now but no less distinct, drawing him down the dim corridor toward a shadowed alcove just beyond the main passage.
And then he stopped.
Miss Sophia Everly was standing there—standing far too close to a gentleman he did not recognise.
Even before the full clarity of her features settled into view, there was no mistaking her, not in a room, not in a crowd, not anywhere she chose to exist with such determined disregard for subtlety.
While every other lady of the evening had taken pains to blend in with soft palettes and careful elegance, Sophia stood in defiance of it, her gown a vivid shade of rose that caught the candlelight too boldly, as though it refused to be ignored.
Sophia Everly did not require attention; she drew it, effortlessly and often unwisely.
She was turned slightly toward the gentleman now, her posture open, her expression animated in a way that would have seemed entirely appropriate—had she not been standing alone with him, unchaperoned, in a shadowed corridor.
A hand lifted as she spoke, her movements unrestrained by the careful stillness most women cultivated, her laughter—God, that laughter—still lingering faintly in the air as though it had no intention of obeying the boundaries set for it.
Tristan’s jaw tightened.
He knew her well enough. Not intimately, never that, but sufficiently to recognise the pattern. The brightness that bordered on recklessness. The ease with which she disregarded expectation. The way trouble seemed not merely to follow her, but to anticipate her arrival.
She was Charlotte’s closest friend and a constant source of mild exasperation.
And, more often than not, the subject of precisely this sort of situation.
And yet, his gaze lingered a fraction longer than it should have.
There was something in the way she stood now, unaware, unguarded, that struck him as distinctly at odds with the carefully managed world he had just left behind. As though she belonged neither to the room nor entirely outside it, but somewhere inconveniently in between.
Sophia laughed again, and something in him snapped.
He moved before reason could intervene, and in two strides, he closed the distance.
His hand closed around the gentleman’s arm, firm, unyielding, and yanked him back.
The man staggered. “Sir—!”
“What,” Tristan said, his voice low and edged with steel, “do you imagine you are doing?”
The gentleman blinked, clearly unprepared. “I—I beg your pardon?”
“You should beg hers,” Tristan replied sharply. “Though I doubt you possess the sense to understand why.”
“We were only speaking—”
“Alone. In a dark corridor. Without proper oversight.” Tristan’s grip tightened slightly. “Do you consider that appropriate conduct?”
“I meant no offence!”
“That does not absolve you of it.”
“Sir—”
“That is enough,” Sophia cried. “Release him at once.”
Tristan’s gaze shifted to her.
She stood resolutely, her expression no longer light, no longer amused. There was colour in her cheeks now.
Tristan released the gentleman at once, though he did not step back.
“What,” she demanded, stepping forward, “do you think you are doing?”
“Correcting an error,” he said.
“I was not aware I had requested correction.”
“You placed yourself in a compromising position.”
“I was having a conversation.”
“You were alone.”
“I am capable of standing alone.”
“With a stranger?”
“Yes.”
“In the dark?”
Her eyes flashed. “It is a corridor, not a scandal.”
“It will be, if you persist in behaving without sense.”
The gentleman, clearly eager to escape, took a cautious step back. “Perhaps I should—”
“Yes,” Tristan said without looking at him. “You should.”
The man did not hesitate and within seconds, he was gone.
Sophia turned back to Tristan, her expression blazing now. “You had no right.”
“I had every right,” he replied evenly. “You forget yourself.”
“I forget nothing,” she said sharply. “You, however, seem to have invented authority where none exists.”
“You are a lady of this house—”
“And you are not my keeper.”
Silence fell between them, sharp and immediate. Tristan’s gaze hardened.
“Then perhaps you would care to explain your conduct.”
“My conduct,” she repeated.
“Yes.”
“You truly wish to know?”
“I would not have asked otherwise.”
Sophia held his gaze.
“I was attempting,” she said, her voice perfectly steady, “to steal a kiss.”
Tristan went still.
Of all the explanations he had anticipated, that was not one of them.
“You were what?”
“Steal a kiss,” she repeated. “Before midnight, if possible. Though I see now I may have misjudged the timing.”
His expression did not change—but something in it sharpened.
“You consider that appropriate?”
“I consider it my business.”
“You risk your reputation for—what? Amusement?”
“For a dare.”
“A dare,” he repeated.
“Yes,” she said. “Your cousin, Charlotte, wagered that I should kiss someone before midnight.”
Something cold settled beneath his composure.
“It appears such a wager is a remarkably poor one.”
“And yet,” Sophia said, lifting her chin, “it was mine to accept.”
Tristan stared at her. She had always been careless, reckless…infuriating. Yet, against all reason, she was impossible to ignore.
“You will return to the ballroom,” he said at last, his voice controlled once more, “and conduct yourself with the decorum expected of you.”
Sophia’s lips curved—just slightly. “Or what?”
Tristan held her gaze.
For a fraction of a second, something unspoken passed between them. A moment that was charged and entirely unwelcome.
“Or,” he said quietly, “you will find that not all consequences can be laughed away.”
Sophia did not look away, and neither did he.