“There,” she said softly after a moment. “I believe it will hold.”
“Very good,” he replied.
He stepped back at once, allowing the coat to fall open, then immediately drew it more properly around her shoulders, offering it as a shield rather than a screen.
“You may keep it on until you reach assistance,” he urged. “There is no need to risk further damage.”
She looked at him with open relief. “You are exceedingly kind, Your Grace. I do not know what I should have done otherwise.”
He inclined his head. “I am glad I could be of help.”
He did not see her linger a moment longer, nor did he think to look back toward the far edge of the terrace. If he had, he might have understood how easily kindness could be mistaken for something else entirely.
“Is that… Greyson on the terrace?”
Hazel stopped so abruptly that Chastity nearly walked into her. The gravel crunched beneath their slippers as Hazel lifted her gaze toward the pale stone beyond the garden path.
Chastity squinted. “Where? I can’t see very well from here.”
“There, by the balustrade.” Hazel did not look away. She could not. “That man.”
He stood with his back to them, half in shadow, bending slightly as though intent upon something just out of view. The lantern light from the terrace caught the broad line of his shoulders and the familiar slope of his neck.
Chastity tilted her head. “It might be. There are several gentlemen out tonight.”
“No,” Hazel said quietly. “It’s him.”
“How can you be sure?”
She recognized the shirt. He wore ivory linen, finely pressed but softened with wear, the collar open just enough to abandon stiffness. She had noticed it earlier, how it brightened his face. She remembered, absurdly, the way the candlelight had caught along the seam of his sleeve as he lifted her hand during the dance.
“He’s bending over something,” Chastity murmured. “Or someone?”
From their angle, the coatless figure appeared too close to another shape partially obscured by shadow. There was movement: his arm lifting, his body angling inward. Something dark enveloped the smaller figure, as though he were wrapping it around her.
Chastity frowned. “Hazel… what is he doing?”
“I don’t know,” Hazel replied, though her voice sounded distant even to her own ears.
They stood there, suspended in a moment that stretched thin and sharp. The figure shifted, straightening at last, and then he turned. The light caught his face. Hazel’s breath left her in a single, stunned exhale.
Itwashim.
There was no mistaking the sharp planes of his features, the unmistakable set of his mouth and the silver of his eyes as he looked down at the woman before him… a woman standing wrapped inhiscoat.
Hazel could not look away. The sight before her rearranged itself into meaning with brutal speed, each thought striking harder than the last: the coat, the closeness, the quiet attention with which he regarded the woman before him. It was all suddenly, horribly clear.
She had been a fool… a romantic, foolish, utterly unguarded fool.
Somewhere between their wedding and the stars and his careful hands at her waist, she had crossed a line she had sworn never to approach. She had let herself believe that this might be something more than arrangement and obligation, that perhaps, quietly and against all sense, she had begun to hope.
And now she saw the truth of it.
Their marriagewasa convenience. It had always been. And she, who had so prided herself on her practicality and caution, had mistaken attention for affection, kindness for constancy.
He had her now. Her affection was entirely secured. Why should she remain interesting?
The sharpest pain of all came with the realization that she wanted what she had once denied herself the right to want: ahusband in more than name, a family, a life shared not merely by contract, but by choice. She had broken every vow she had made to herself. And for what?
