Chapter Nine #2
And every question, every single one, had been a trap laid in silk.
“How interesting that your father was in trade—such an honest living, don’t you think?”
“Have you found it difficult to adjust to life above your station?”
“Isn’t it fascinating how swiftly one’s fortunes can change?”
She parried them all. Smoothly. Calmly. A duchess of iron beneath her satin skirts. But it was a performance, and her cheeks were starting to burn from the effort.
She excused herself during a cotillion, slipping out of the orbit of a Lady Something-or-other’s well-meaning critique of modern fabrics and onto the edge of the ballroom.
A footman offered her a chilled glass of punch. She accepted it gratefully and scanned the crowd for Nicholas, but he was nowhere in sight.
Instead, she found Lord Sebastian Greaves.
He was lounging near a marble column, grinning shamelessly at a striking blonde woman who was absolutely not his wife, mostly because she was someone else’s.
“I’d swear,” he was murmuring, “the moonlight is outshone entirely by the glint of your décolletage, Lady Hartfield.”
The woman giggled, then covered it with her fan.
“Lord Greaves,” she said breathily, “you do talk scandal.”
He gave a mock bow. “Scandal is my native tongue.”
Lydia stifled a laugh and stepped closer. “Am I interrupting your linguistic studies?”
Sebastian turned, eyes lighting up. “Ah, Your Grace. Come to rescue me from a fate worse than decorum?”
Lady Hartfield offered Lydia a polite nod, clearly surprised to find herself caught mid-flirtation with a duchess.
“Excuse me,” she said sweetly, before retreating behind a peacock-feather fan.
“Honestly,” Lydia said to Sebastian, “you’re worse than the gossip columns suggest.”
“I aim to exceed expectations,” Sebastian said, watching Lady Hartfield glide away. Then he turned back to Lydia and added more quietly, “You’re handling it well.”
“The ball?”
“The wolves,” he replied. “You haven’t been torn apart once.”
“Yet.”
Sebastian offered her his punch glass in a mock toast.
“Have you seen Nicholas?” she asked.
“Have you tried searching in the shadows?” he asked. “I am sure he is skulking around there somewhere. While I, on the other hand, would never allow a woman such as yourself to face the ton alone.”
Lydia sighed. “Is he always like this? Your friend?”
“Brooding, remote, vaguely tormented?” Sebastian said. “Yes. But you already knew that when you married him.”
She took a sip of her drink. “He says very little.”
“He’s thinking very much.”
“That’s not always comforting.”
“No,” Sebastian agreed, then added more seriously, “But he’s not a fool, and he knew you’d do well. If you keep doing what you’re doing—walking in here like you were born to it—they’ll come around.”
“And if they don’t?”
He shrugged. “Then you’ll outlast them. I’d put money on it.”
Lydia glanced at him sideways. “Truly?”
He grinned again, cocky and light. “I never bet against a woman in steel boning and satin.”
She smiled too.
Just then, the music began again, a waltz, soft and sweeping. And then, a silence fell across the marble floor.
Nicholas appeared suddenly, his face unreadable. “They’ll expect the first dance.”
She hesitated, wondering if she might refuse. After all, he had left her alone all night, and now he expected her to stand to attention?
Still, she was aware of the eyes on them, and so she inclined her head. “Then we’d best give them a performance.”
He offered his hand, and she placed her gloved fingers in his, and, just like that, they stepped into the centre of the room and into the fire.
Their bodies aligned with quiet precision. He guided her with a hand at her back, the contact warm through the thin silk of her gown.
When the music swelled, they began to move around them, and the room faded.
The stares still pressed against her skin, but something had changed.
His grip firmed. His thumb brushed the edge of her waist. It wasn’t possessive. Not quite. But it was… deliberate.
Lydia exhaled slowly. “You’re pressing.”
“I’m supposed to,” he said smoothly. “We’re in love, remember?”
She glanced up at him. “You’ve never touched me like this before.”
His mouth quirked. “Should I stop?”
“No.”
He dipped her slightly, his breath brushing the shell of her ear.
“Careful,” he murmured. “You might enjoy this.”
Lydia felt a laugh rise, unguarded and light. It slipped from her before she could stop it. Not brittle or polite, but real.
Nicholas stilled for a heartbeat, startled by the sound.
Then something in him shifted; she saw it in his eyes.
They moved again, their timing flawless as his fingers grazed the curve of her waist, and she didn’t pull back.
The air between them warmed. Not from the chandeliers, but from something else, something more dangerous.
He leaned in, just enough.
“You’re not like them,” he said.
“And you don’t frighten me,” she answered.
Their eyes locked.
He didn’t smile. She didn’t blush. But their breath mingled and their hands clung.
They weren’t dancing anymore. They were circling.
Testing and daring.
The music slowed, the last notes fading.
He spun her gently, then drew her in close for the final beat. Palm to palm, chest to chest, so near she could smell his cologne, warm and dark, threaded with something uniquely him.
A beat of stillness and then applause.
Nicholas stepped back with practiced grace, and Lydia let her hand fall away.
The crowd watched, satisfied.
The image had been delivered. The duke and his elegant new wife, radiant in their mutual devotion. But as she turned to walk back across the floor, her pulse still humming, Lydia felt it like a pin sliding beneath her ribs.
That hadn’t been pretend. Not entirely.
Something real had pulsed between them. In the heat of his palm, in the ghost of his voice in her ear.
“I need some air,” she said quietly.
Without waiting for a reply, she turned and headed out onto the balcony.
The air outside was cooler than she had expected.
A crisp spring wind danced over the stone balustrade, carrying with it the faint scent of rain and roses blooming somewhere in the gardens below. It kissed her bare shoulders, made the skin at her nape tighten beneath the weight of her curls.
Lydia exhaled and gripped the railing with both gloved hands.
Inside, the music swelled and laughter drifted.
The ballroom spun without her, but her mind, her mind spun faster.
She could still feel it. The brush of Nicholas’s hand at her waist and the weight of his gaze on her face. The heat where his breath had touched her ear.
Her pulse fluttered again. It was absurd.
She squeezed her eyes shut.
It was an act. You were performing and that was the agreement, she told herself. Duchess by name, not by heart.
She straightened.
The ballroom was a pit of wolves, and she’d survived it. Tonight had been about survival, nothing more. Charm them, silence them, control the narrative. That was the plan.
Not this. Warmth. Not… whatever that look had been, in the middle of the waltz, and certainly not the way her body had leaned instinctively into his.
She pressed her palms to her stomach, where something low and unwelcome was beginning to stir.
Don’t get pulled in. she thought. Don’t get seduced by the illusion of affection. This is a transaction.
He wasn’t hers. Not truly, and she would do well to remember that before his hands turned cruel instead of careful. Before his warmth cooled into something distant again. Before she was left holding nothing but her pride.
“Keep your head,” she whispered to herself. “And don’t forget what you came here to do.”
She wasn’t here to be loved.
She was here to build, to reclaim, and to rise.
No matter how soft his voice had gone when he said her name, and no matter how fiercely he’d looked at her like she was his.
She would not fall for a man wearing duty like it was armour.
Especially not one with hands like fire and a heart made of frost.
She took another deep breath and smoothed her skirts, letting the wind settle her.
Then she turned, chin lifted, and stepped back toward the ballroom, every inch the duchess they never expected her to become.