Chapter 22 #2
He turned her, and the chandeliers wheeled overhead, and for a moment the crowd blurred into a wash of colour and light. “You unsettle me,” he said. “It seems only fair.”
She did not answer. Her hand tightened on his shoulder, and he felt the pressure of her fingers through the wool of his coat, and the waltz carried them across the floor in a silence that was louder than the orchestra.
Then she said, very quietly, “What have you heard?”
“About the Observer?”
“About anything.”
He considered the question. He considered how much to tell her, and how much to withhold, and whether honesty was a kindness or a cruelty in a room full of people who would happily tear her apart for sport.
“Lord Hargrave has begun to speculate about the author’s identity.
He has not named you, but he is thinking in your direction.
Lady Margaret Harrow is spreading a theory about a governess, which is nonsense but useful nonsense, it draws attention away from the more plausible candidates.
And my mother—” He paused. “My mother is watching you more closely than usual, which means she has noticed something.”
Sophia’s face did not change. Her steps did not falter. But her hand, the one resting in his, went from cold to freezing.
“I see,” she said.
“Sophia—”
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t use my Christian name. Don’t look at me like that. Don’t pretend that this is something other than what it is.”
“And what is it?”
“A waltz. At a ball. Between two people whose families have spent generations trying to destroy each other.” She met his eyes, and her gaze was steady, and terrible, and full of something that looked very much like grief.
“You cannot protect me from this, Lord Alistair. You cannot dance me out of the path of a scandal. The essays exist. People are talking. And if, when, the truth comes out, no amount of waltzing will save me.”
The music swelled toward its conclusion. Alistair pulled her a fraction closer, not enough to be improper, not enough to be noticed, but enough that she would feel the shift, enough that she would understand that he was not letting go.
“What if I could?” he said.
“What if you could what?”
“Protect you.”
She stared at him. “You cannot.”
“I have resources. Connections. A name that carries weight, whatever else it carries. I could—”
“Could what? Marry me?” The words came out sharp, almost a laugh, almost a sob. “Offer me the protection of your name in exchange for, what, exactly? My gratitude? My obedience? My silence?”
“That is not what I meant.”
“It is what it sounded like.”
“Then you were not listening.”
The waltz ended. The dancers around them slowed, separated, applauded. Alistair and Sophia stood frozen in the centre of the floor, still holding each other, still locked in a conversation that had nothing to do with the music and everything to do with the chasm that had opened between them.
“I was listening,” Sophia said. Her voice was low, and fierce, and shaking at the edges.
“I heard a man offer me a practical solution to an inconvenient problem. I heard a man suggest that an advantageous alliance might shield me from the consequences of my own choices. I heard—” She stopped.
Swallowed. “I heard my mother’s voice, coming out of your mouth. ”
Alistair flinched. He could not help it. The blow landed exactly where she had aimed it, and she saw it land, and something in her face flickered, regret, perhaps, or satisfaction, or both.
“Miss Ainsworth,” he began.
“No.” She pulled her hand from his. “No. I will not be managed. I will not be rescued. I will not trade one cage for another, no matter how gilded the bars.”
“That is not—”
“Lord Alistair.” The voice came from behind him, cool and clipped and carrying the weight of absolute authority. “I believe the next set is forming.”
Lady Beatrice Cavendish stood at the edge of the dance floor, resplendent in silver-grey silk, her coiffure immaculate, her expression one of polite inquiry that did not quite mask the steel beneath. She was looking at Sophia the way a cat looks at a bird that has wandered too far from the hedge.
“Lady Beatrice,” Sophia said. Her voice was perfectly even. Her curtsy was perfectly correct. Only someone who had been watching her as closely as Alistair had been watching her would have noticed the tremor in her hands, the way she tucked them into the folds of her skirt to hide the shaking.
“Miss Ainsworth. How delightful to see you again.” Lady Beatrice’s smile was a masterpiece of social warfare, warm enough to pass for courtesy, cold enough to draw blood. “I trust you are enjoying the ball?”
“Very much.”
“I am so glad. It is such a pity when these grand affairs are marred by unpleasantness.” Lady Beatrice’s gaze drifted toward the crowd, then back to Sophia, and her smile sharpened by a fraction of a degree.
“One hears such distressing things, these days. Scandalous scribblings, anonymous attacks on respectable families. It quite turns the stomach, does it not?”
Sophia did not move. She did not blink. She stood very still, her hands hidden in her skirt, her face a mask of polite attention, and Alistair watched the colour drain from her cheeks one degree at a time.
“I am sure I do not know what you mean,” Sophia said.
“No? How fortunate. I had thought, perhaps, that a young lady of your intellectual inclinations might have some insight into the matter. You do have intellectual inclinations, do you not? I recall our conversation in the gallery with great clarity. You have such a distinctive way of expressing yourself.”
The threat was veiled, but barely. A single layer of gauze over a blade. Alistair stepped forward, placing himself between his mother and Sophia with a deliberateness that he knew Lady Beatrice would not miss.
“Mother,” he said. “Lady Hargrave is signalling to you from the card room. I believe she requires a fourth for whist.”
Lady Beatrice’s eyes flicked to him. For a long moment, mother and son regarded each other in a silence that was thick with everything they had not said for twenty-eight years. Then Lady Beatrice smiled again, and it was the smile of a woman who had won a battle she had not yet finished fighting.
“Of course,” she said. “Miss Ainsworth. A pleasure, as always.”
She turned and moved away through the crowd, and the crowd parted for her the way it always did, and Alistair watched her go with a feeling in his chest that was equal parts fury and despair.
Behind him, Sophia made a sound, a small, choked thing, barely audible over the noise of the ballroom.
He turned. She was still standing, still composed, still holding herself together with an effort that was visible only in the whiteness of her knuckles and the rapid flutter of her pulse at her throat.
“I need air,” she said.
“I will come with you.”
“No.” She shook her head, and the movement was jerky, unsteady. “No. I need, I need a moment. Alone. Please.”
She did not wait for his answer. She turned and walked toward the terrace doors, her steps quick and precise and utterly controlled, and Alistair stood in the centre of the ballroom and watched her go, and felt something in his chest crack open like a log splitting in a fire.
He had offered her a practical solution. He had offered her protection, security, the weight of his name and his resources and his position. He had offered her everything he had, and she had looked at him as if he had tried to put a collar around her neck.