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

Chapter 3

Something moved at the corner of his eye — not quite a smile, but the trace of one. He held out his hand.

The hand was bare. He had removed his glove.

She did not know what to do with that. A gentleman did not remove his glove to ask a woman to dance. A gentleman kept his glove on. A gentleman bowed first. He had done neither.

“Then both will end tonight,” he said.

She did not move. Behind him, somewhere across the room, she heard her aunt make a small, sharp sound — like a person who had bitten her tongue. She heard Lydia whisper something to another girl. She heard the violins begin a new tune, slower than before. And she heard the rain still tapping at the window. And she heard her own heart, which was beating too fast.

“Your grace,” she said quietly. “I think you have mistaken me for someone else.”

“I have not.”

“I am not — ”

“You are the lady in gray,” he said, “who has counted the windows twice. I watched you do it.”

He paused. His hand did not move. It stayed in the air between them, steady, open.

“I am not in the habit of mistakes.”

She looked at his open hand. It was a wide hand with long fingers and a small white scar across the knuckle of his thumb. It did not shake. It waited.

She thought, very clearly, that if she took it, her life would not be what it had been an hour ago. She did not know how she knew that. She only knew it the way one knows the weather is about to turn.

She put her gloved hand in his bare one.

A breath went out of the room. She heard it. She felt his fingers close, warm and dry, around her cotton-covered ones, and she rose to her feet. The floor felt very far away.

He led her to the center of the room. He did not look around to see who was watching. He did not need to. She felt every eye on her back, sharp as pins. Her aunt’s eyes. Lydia’s. The mothers along the wall who had spent the morning teaching their daughters how to stand. The footmen who had not looked at her in three years and were looking now.

He turned her to face him. His other hand settled at her waist — a light touch, careful, as if he understood she was not used to being touched.

“I do not know the steps,” she said. Her voice was barely a whisper.

“Then follow,” he said. “I will not let you fall.”

The music caught them, and they began to move.

She did not know what she was doing. She knew only that his hand at her waist was steady, and his other hand held hers as though it was something he meant to keep. His eyes did not leave her face, not once. Not when other couples turned past them. Not when the candlelight caught the silver in his coat buttons. Not when she made a small wrong step. His foot moved smoothly to cover hers, and no one in the room could have known.

“Your name,” he said quietly as they turned.

“Clara Ashworth.”

“Ashworth.”

“My father was Sir Thomas Ashworth of Wiltshire. He died when I was thirteen.”

“I knew him.”

She nearly stopped dancing. He felt it and adjusted, his hand pressing gently at her waist to keep her moving.

“You knew my father?”

“A little. He was a good man.” He paused. “I am sorry. No one has told you that, I think. That he was thought of well.”

“No,” she said. Her throat felt tight. “No one has.”

“Then I will tell you again until you have heard it enough times.”

She did not know what to say to that. The music carried them through a slow turn. She caught a glimpse of her aunt across the room. Lady Beatrice’s face was a careful, smooth mask, but her eyes were burning. Lydia stood beside her, clutching her pearl necklace as though it might fly off. The viscount’s son was watching too, his mouth slightly open.

“Your grace,” Clara said.

“Marcus.”

“Pardon me?”

“My name is Marcus. I would rather you used it when no one else can hear.”

“That is not proper.”

“Very little of what I do tonight is proper. I find I am not concerned.”

She almost smiled. She caught herself in time. She did not yet trust that this was happening.

“Your grace,” she said again, firmly. “Why have you done this?”

He was quiet for a moment. The music slowed. They turned. Outside, the rain tapped harder against the window.

“That is a question that deserves a true answer,” he said. “And I will give you one. But not here. Not tonight. Tonight, only dance. Tomorrow I will call at this house, and I will tell you the truth. May I do that?”

She thought of her aunt’s face. She thought of the attic and her father’s books and the string of pearls that had been sold the year she came here.

“Yes,” she said. “You may.”

The waltz came to its end. He bowed to her properly, deeply, like a man bowing to a queen. She did not know how to curtsy to such a bow. She did her best. He took her gloved hand in his bare one and brought it to his mouth. He did not quite kiss it. He held it there against his lips for one moment longer than he needed to.

Then he straightened, and he turned, and he walked from the ballroom without looking at anyone else. As if he had come for one thing, and that one thing was done.

The doors closed behind him.

For one heartbeat the room was completely silent. Even the violins held their note. Even the rain, it seemed, paused.

Then the noise burst out all at once, like a kettle lifted off a fire, and Clara stood alone in the middle of the polished floor, in her plain gray silk, her empty wrists and her bare neck. She felt the eyes of every person in the room on her, and she did not move.

She did not know how to move.

She did not know what had just happened.