“I’m glad.” His smile held a quiet intimacy, something just for her. “You make the evening infinitely more bearable.”
Louise felt a warmth bloom in her chest. “The feeling is mutual.”
For a moment, the ballroom faded to a softer blur around them, until propriety gently tugged them apart.
Louise wanted to respond, but Lady Merrow appeared beside them with timing that suggested she had been watching for the dance to end.
“Aaron, dear, Lord Pemberton is asking about your thoughts on the new banking regulations. Louise, come help me convince Agnes that she cannot adopt a peacock for her garden.”
They were separated by social obligation, but Louise felt Aaron’s gaze following her across the room.
When she glanced back, he raised his glass slightly in a private toast, his expression promising that their conversation was far from finished.
Lady Tupperton spent the rest of the evening regaling anyone who would listen with details of her dance with the duke. The gossip about George faded to whispers, then to nothing.
But Louise barely noticed the social victory, for she was in terrible trouble.
The kind that had nothing to do with missing brothers or social ruin, and everything to do with the way her heart raced every time the Duke of Calborough entered a room.
CHAPTER 29
“But why couldn’t the knight marry the princess?” Emily’s voice carried through the partially open door, followed by the rustle of bedcovers as she presumably burrowed deeper into her pillows.
Aaron stood in the shadowed hallway, knowing he should move on but unable to resist the domestic intimacy of the scene.
“Because he was only a knight, and she was a princess.” Louise’s voice held infinite patience despite this being clearly the third or fourth such question. “Their worlds were too different.”
“That’s silly,” Emily pronounced judgment with six-year-old certainty. “If they love each other, nothing else should matter.”
Aaron pressed his palm against the doorframe, the wood cool beneath his touch. Through the gap, he could see Louise perched on the edge of Emily’s bed, her copper hair loose around her shoulders, catching the candlelight like spun gold.
“The world doesn’t always work that way, darling.” Louise smoothed the blankets with gentle fingers. “Sometimes love isn’t enough to overcome circumstances.”
“Then the world is wrong.” Emily sat up, her small face fierce with conviction. “When I grow up, I’m going to marry whoever I want, and if anyone says I can’t, I’ll tell them they’re being stupid.”
Louise laughed, the sound soft as summer rain. “I hope you do exactly that.”
“And I hope you marry someone you love, Louise,” Emily settled back against her pillows, but Aaron could see her fighting sleep, trying to extend this precious time with her sister.
Louise went still. When she spoke, her voice carried a weight that made Aaron’s chest tighten. “I don’t know if that’s in my future, sweetheart.”
“Why not? You’re pretty, and kind, and you smell nice. Any man would want to marry you.”
“You’re biased because you love me.”
“His Grace thinks you’re pretty too.” Emily yawned widely. “He watches you all the time when he thinks no one’s looking. Like Papa used to watch Mama’s portrait.”
Aaron felt the heat climb his neck. The child saw far too much.
“Shall we finish the story?” Louise’s voice had gone slightly breathless. “The princess is about to make her choice.”
“I bet she chooses love.” Emily’s words slurred with approaching sleep. “Smart princesses always choose love.”
Louise continued reading, her voice taking on the hypnotic rhythm designed to lull a child to sleep.
Aaron knew the story, remembered his mother reading it to him before everything changed. Before she died, before his father’s grief turned to poison, before love became synonymous with destruction in this household.
The princess in the story would indeed choose love and would abandon her crown for the knight who had saved her. It was a lie, of course. Pretty words to help children sleep while the real world waited with its harsh truths about duty and station and the impossibility of crossing certain boundaries.
