Her cheeks colored further. “I am well.”
James’s brows knit faintly. “You are not convincing.”
Eleanor’s lips parted, then closed again. She swallowed. “I… I am only flushed.”
“That does not explain–”
“I was thinking,” she interrupted, quickly. “About the ball.”
James paused, sensing the deliberate shift in subject. “Yes?”
Her gaze dropped to her hands, and she drew a slow breath. “You had intended to invite me?”
James inclined his head. “Well, Iaminviting you, but it is more than that. It is an opportunity.”
She did not respond at once.
He waited.
“Opportunity?”
“As society has not fully returned to theton, and you are its newest addition to the gentry,andwe live so close… my aunt suggested that we host the start of season ball.”
Instead of the simple acceptance he had expected, Eleanor looked up at him with an expression that was uncertain, almost tentative.
“May I ask something?” she said.
He nodded. “Of course.”
“Will you invite Arabella?” she asked, quickly enough that it nearly tripped over itself. “She will not come if she thinks she is imposing.”
The question struck him oddly, not for its content but for the way she asked it – quietly, carefully, as though she feared the answer.
“You do not need to ask me that,” James said at once.
Her brows drew together. “I do not?”
“You are the Duchess of Langford,” he replied. “You may invite your sister whenever you wish. You do not need a ball as an excuse to do so.”
Her eyes widened slightly. “I may?”
“Yes.”
Eleanor seemed to absorb this slowly, as though it were a truth she had not yet been allowed to consider.
“I forget,” she said, then stopped. Her fingers twisted in the coverlet as though she had said too much. “I mean – no one ever told me what that includes.”
James’s jaw tightened.
He hesitated, then asked, “But will you consider hosting the ball with me, wife?”
The word felt heavier than he expected when he spoke it.
Eleanor’s breath caught.
He watched the color rise in her cheeks, spill down her neck like the slow bloom of a bruise beneath pale skin. Her lashes lowered, her posture folding inward just slightly.
“Yes,” she whispered. “I think it will be a lot, but I think I can handle it. We should do it.”
