SHE WORE NO JEWELS TO THE BALL—UNAWARE EVERY NOBLEMAN THERE HAD COME FOR HER

Chapter 2

He was looking down at her. His eyes were a strange color — gray-green, like the sea on a cloudy day. He did not smile. He did not bow. He stood very still, and he watched her in a way that no one in this house had ever watched her before. As if she were not a piece of the furniture. As if she were a thing that had just walked through a door.

Around them, the room was not silent, but it was listening.

“You have not danced,” he said. His voice was low. It did not carry, but somehow she felt that everyone heard it. “Not once. I have watched.”

Clara set her empty glass down on the small table beside her. She did it slowly, because her hand had begun to tremble and she did not want him to see it.

“Your grace must forgive me,” she said. Her voice was steady. She was grateful for that. “I do not dance.”

“You do not, or you have not been asked?”

She looked at him for a long moment. He was not playing a game. There was no smile hiding beneath his mouth. He had asked a real question, and he was waiting for a real answer.

“Both,” she said.