Her family raised her to remain invisible—then the feared Duke crossed an entire ballroom for the woman he’d been searching for since childhood

Chapter 2

Thursday arrived draped in cold, persistent drizzle, the kind of rain that seeped into the bones and made the world feel gray and muffled. The FitzWilliam musical was a more intimate affair than the grand ball, but the stakes felt infinitely higher. True to my mother’s command, I was seated on a small, uncomfortable chair behind a pillar in the music room, my view of the performers partially obstructed by a massive arrangement of hothouse flowers that smelled cloyingly sweet.

Cordelia, a vision in rose pink, was positioned perfectly in the front row, her profile angled to catch the light. She was beautiful, there was no denying it. But as I watched her, I felt no jealousy — only a familiar, hollow ache that had lived in my chest for as long as I could remember. She was the sun, warm and radiant, and I was the forgotten moon, existing only to reflect her light.

I closed my eyes as the first notes of a somber sonata filled the room, letting the melancholy chords wash over me. I tried to lose myself in the music, to let the aching beauty of the composition carry me away from the stifling room and my own anxious thoughts. I did not want to hope. Hope was a fragile, dangerous thing, and mine had been broken too many times to count.

But when I opened my eyes halfway through the performance, I found him.