SHE CAUGHT THE FALLING CHILD FROM THE COLLAPSING BALCONY—UNAWARE THE DUKE SAW EVERYTHING

Chapter 9

He rode north again, alone, without servants, in the same plain black coat he had worn to Northumberland the first time. The wind was bitter, and the roads were hard with frost, and he arrived at Hesper’s house on the afternoon of Christmas Eve with his ears red and his hands stiff from the cold.

He brought Hesper a book — a history of England before 1600, which he had chosen with some care. Hesper took it, turned it over in her thin hands, and said, “You have done your research, Your Grace.”

“I have tried to, madam.”

He brought Viven a small box. Inside lay a brooch — a simple thing, silver and pale blue enamel, shaped like a small flower. Nothing that would embarrass her cousin. Nothing that would embarrass her.

“It was my mother’s,” he said, when she opened it. “She was not unlike you, I think. She spent a great deal of her life being overlooked. She would have wanted you to have it.”

Viven looked at the brooch in her palm. The silver caught the firelight. She thought about his mother, a woman she would never know, and about the Duke standing before her with his cold-reddened hands and his steady eyes.

“Thank you,” she said. It was not enough, but it was all she had.

The evening was quiet. Hesper retired early, claiming fatigue, though Viven suspected she was being deliberately absent. They sat by the fire in the small parlor, the Duke in the armchair, Viven on the settee. The wind pressed against the windows. The fire crackled and settled.

They talked. They talked as they had in their letters, but better, because there was no distance between them now. He told her about his childhood — a cold house, a colder father, a mother who had died when he was sixteen and had left him with nothing but a small box of jewelry and the memory of her quiet voice. She told him about her father — a kind man who had loved books and debts in equal measure, who had died believing he had left her provided for, not knowing that his brother’s widow would take everything and leave her nothing but a place at the edge of the table.

“It is strange,” he said, “to find someone who understands what it is to be alone in a house full of people.”

“It is strange,” she agreed, “to find someone who sees you when you have spent your whole life being invisible.”

He reached across the space between them. He did not take her hand. He simply laid his hand on the cushion beside hers, palm up, an offering.

She looked at it. She looked at him.

She placed her hand in his.

His fingers closed around hers, warm and steady. They sat like that for a long time, watching the fire, saying nothing. The clock on the mantel ticked. The wind howled and fell and rose again.

“I have not changed my mind,” he said quietly.

“Nor have I.”

“Will you give me your answer now?”

She turned to look at him. His face was half in shadow, half in firelight. His eyes were dark and serious and hopeful in a way she had not seen before.

“Yes,” she said.

He waited.

“Yes, I will marry you. In time, as you said. When we know each other better. When we have learned how to be together in the ordinary days, not just the extraordinary ones. But yes.”

He did not smile. He did something better. He lifted her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to her knuckles, and his eyes closed for just a moment, as if he were saying a prayer.

“Thank you,” he said. “For catching the child. For not looking away. For being exactly who you are.”

She laughed — a small, surprised sound. “I did not catch the child on purpose to impress you.”

“I know. That is what makes it matter.”

Outside, the wind carried the sound of church bells from the village across the moors. Christmas Eve. The first of many, she thought.

She did not know what the future held. She knew only that she was no longer a shadow at the edge of someone else’s room. She was standing in the center of her own life at last.