She looked around the room. The whispers. The awe in the eyes of the young and the old alike.
Maybe he was right.
She was no longer the girl pressed into a corset of expectations and duty.
She was something else now. A woman in control of her own destiny.
And the ton could either catch up—or be left behind.
The moment came just before supper, when Lady Brunsford tapped her glass and called the room to attention.
“My lords and ladies,” she announced, “in honor of our most notable returnees, the Duke and Duchess of Hargate, I have asked His Grace to offer a toast.”
Every head turned.
Johnathan did not even blink.
He stepped forward, taking the offered glass of champagne, and looked at Frances first. Only her. Only ever her.
Then he turned to the room.
“I will not speak long,” he began, and the room chuckled lightly—because everyone knew he had a gift for words.
“But I will say this… It is easy to judge what you do not understand. It is even easier to cling to the rules that keep you comfortable. I have lived among those rules for years. I have broken more than my share. And I have seen what happens when they crush people beneath them.”
He lifted his glass.
“I married a woman who refused to be crushed.”
Frances felt her throat tighten.
“She is not a scandal,” he continued. “She is not a mistake. She is not a lesson to be whispered about. She is the bravest person I have ever known. And I am honored—beyond honored—to be her husband.”
Then—quietly, steadily—applause broke out.
A slow ripple that grew and grew until the room filled with it.
As the applause faded and glasses were raised in earnest, the ballroom once again hummed with voices. But the tone had changed. There was less speculation now and more reluctant admiration.
Frances moved among them with practiced ease, her hand resting lightly on Johnathan’s arm as they made their way through the crush.
“They say Cranford’s in Italy,” a woman whispered behind her fan as Frances passed. “Could not stomach the stares after that duel. Something about rest and warmer weather—but everyone knows he fled.”
Frances kept her expression smooth, but her mouth curled slightly at the corners.
Johnathan leaned close, his breath warm at her ear. “You see? I only ever wound their pride.”
She lifted her glass in silent acknowledgment. One less shadow to haunt their steps.
Frances met his gaze. And in that moment, she knew?—
They had won.
The party had thinned by midnight.
Lady Brunsford had retreated to a corner with her closest sycophants, already composing tomorrow’s retelling. Frances had spent the last hour gently outwitting every snide question and sideways comment, lobbed her way—and still somehow looked as though she had enjoyed herself.
Johnathan, however, needed air.
