“If I Were Younger, I’d Ask You to Dance,” the Duke Teased — “Who Said No?” Replied the 38-Year-Old Woman Everyone Ignored. Then the Duke Who Hadn’t Danced Since Waterloo Took Her Hand, and the Entire Ballroom Fell Silent.

PART 7

That night the storm worsened, wind clawing at the windows, rain coming down in sheets. Sybil lay awake in the vast four-poster bed, the fire burning low, Arthur’s arm heavy across her waist. Neither of them was sleeping, and she suspected the conversation in the library had unsettled something in him too — the deeper waters neither of them had learned to leave still.

“Arthur,” she said into the dark. “Are you awake?”

A pause. “I am now.”

“I have a question, and I want an honest answer. No waltz, no terrace, no whiskey to hide behind.”

He shifted onto his elbow, the firelight carving his face into gold and shadow. “Then ask it.”

“Why did you choose me? Not that night — I understand that night. But after. When you sat in your study seven hours waiting for dawn. When I told you I required no rescue. You could have walked away, Arthur. A few weeks of exile and it would have all blown over.”

He was quiet a long moment. She felt the weight of his gaze in the dark.

“Because I was afraid,” he said finally. “I have been afraid for a very long time.”

“Of what?”

“That I’d spent five years watching you, and the only time I felt like a living man instead of a monument was standing beside you in some drafty corridor, complaining about the weather.” He exhaled slowly. “I was afraid if I let you leave, I’d go back to being stone. And I was afraid that if I told you that, you’d think me a fool.”

Her throat tightened. “I’ve spent twenty years being told I was too old to want anything. I think I convinced myself it was true. I forgot what it felt like to want.”

His hand came up, cupping her face, thumb tracing her cheekbone.

“Then let me remind you. Every day. Until you’re sick of it.”

A soft, broken laugh escaped her. “That could take a very long time.”

“I have a considerable amount of it left,” he said, “and I intend to spend all of it on you.”

He pulled her against his chest, and she went willingly, listening to the steady rhythm of his heart beneath the storm.

This was not the fire they’d walked into on the ballroom floor — that had been a single brilliant flare, a rebellion against a world that tried to erase them. This was different. This was a hearth. Steady. Tended. The kind of fire you did not run from.

She knew, with a certainty that settled deep in her bones, that she would never be cold again.

The summer brought the season back to London, and with it, an invitation Arthur read aloud over breakfast, morning light spilling through windows left cracked for the garden air.

“The Earl and Countess of Rockford request the honor of our presence at a dinner in celebration of their daughter’s betrothal. They note, with particular warmth, that they hope the Duke and Duchess of Westford will attend.”

He set the letter down. “We haven’t set foot in Mayfair since the night we married.”

“There is a reason for that.”

“I thought the reason was that we preferred the quiet.”

“I thought you never intended to wear a cravat again.”

“I do not intend to. But I intend to walk into that room at your side, once, so everyone who whispered behind their fans can see what became of us.” He leaned back. “I want them to see that you chose the fire, and that you were not singed in the least.”

Sybil studied him. He was not trying to win a war. He was trying to close a book.

“Very well,” she said. “But I refuse to wear lavender.”

Arthur grinned, rare and unguarded. “I would not dream of asking you to.”