The words settled within Diana with uncomfortable intimacy. They implied something she refused to consider, something her body insisted on imagining anyway.
That he did not merely want her to play a part, but to want him back.
CHAPTER 5
“Itrust London has not grown bored in my absence,” Alexander kept his tone mild as he stepped into the Wetherby ballroom, but he felt the immediate shift around them anyway.
Conversation dipped. Fans paused. A few heads turned too quickly, as though curiosity might be hidden by speed.
He did not need his memories to read a room; the ton sent its message with the same predictability as his dining room.
Diana stood at his side in silver, and the sight of her struck him with the same sharp certainty it had struck him since his return. Her gown was cut to flatter without begging for attention. Yet, it did not matter how restrained she was. Her presence drew attention regardless. Diamonds lay at her throat majestically. Her hair was pinned up in a way that exposed the curve of her neck, and he had to keep his expression steady, because his mind had a habit lately of tracking the line of her skin like a map he was meant to know by heart.
He set his hand at her waist before they had taken three steps farther into the room. It was an open gesture, but it was also a private one. Beneath the silk, she was warm. There was a tension in her that seemed to hum when he touched her, as if she were constantly restraining herself from a reaction she despised.
“You are squeezing me,” she murmured without turning her head.
“I am holding you,” he replied.
He felt a slow, dark pull of amusement in his chest. He liked the way her voice went jagged when he pushed her. He liked the way her breath hitched. He let his gaze drop to her lips, watching the way they trembled with suppressed fury.
“That is not the same thing.”
“It seems the same.”
A small, broken sound escaped her—a soft huff that wasn’t quite a laugh, but it was the first honest thing he’d heard from her all evening. Then her lips curved.
The ice broke. Diana smiled. It was a quick, irrepressible flash of genuine warmth that transformed her face, softening the sharp geometry of her beauty into something devastatingly alive.
It was a victory more intoxicating than any memory he might have lost.
They moved forward under the chandelier light. The music was already in motion, a steady pulse behind the low roar of voices. Everywhere Alexander looked, he saw judgment disguised as politeness. He saw women whose eyes slid to Diana’s ring, to his hand on her waist, to the line of their bodies standing close enough to suggest unity. He saw men who measured him with thin, careful interest, and he knew what they were all thinking. They had had a year to invent stories. He and Diana were now expected to prove or disprove them in a single evening.
Just ahead, a cluster of ladies in over-feathered headdresses and shimmering silks had arranged themselves with the casualness of an army. Their fans fluttered like the wings of nervous birds, but their voices were pitched with a sharp clarity designed to carry over the orchestra.
“They are truly together,” one murmured, her words honed to a fine edge of disbelief. “I had begun to think the Duke of Rosewood was a myth invented by some firm of solicitors.”
“A year is a long time for a man to be traveling,” another added, her eyes raking over Diana with predatory pity. “Do you suppose the Duchess finally grew a spine and demanded her rights? Or did she simply threaten infidelity?”
A third woman laughed, a soft, tittering sound that felt like the scrape of a blade. “Or perhaps the Duke realized a wife is a far more convenient bedfellow than a series of continental mistresses. He’s returned to claim his due without the bother of being asked.”
Alexander’s jaw tightened, the muscles ticking beneath the skin as blood rushed to his head, though he kept his expression as smooth as polished marble. Beside him, Diana’s breath changed with a sharp, shallow hitch that he felt through the silk of her sleeve against his arm.
“You hear them,” she whispered. It was a ghost of a sound, colored by a year’s worth of accumulated shame.
“I hear everything,” he answered, his voice a low rumble that seemed to vibrate through his entire being.
“This is the music I have danced to in your absence.”
She didn’t look at him. Her chin was lifted at a defiant, regal angle, her mouth a frozen line of calm. She looked as though she could burn a path through the crushing crowd by sheer force of will alone.
He watched her, and for the first time, he truly understood the weight of what he had made her endure. He admired the discipline of her performance—the way she refused to give them the satisfaction of a flinch—but he hated it even more because he could feel the frantic tension thrumming through her small frame.
“You will never endure them alone again,” he said.
Her lashes flickered, the dark fans of them casting a brief shadow over her eyes—the only crack in her armor she allowedhim to see. For a second, the Duchess vanished, and he saw the woman beneath, startled by the sudden, heavy weight of a protector she had long ago stopped expecting.
A gentleman approached with the easy confidence of familiarity, smiling broadly. Alexander recognized nothing in him, not even an impression, and yet the man behaved as though they had shared entire seasons of clubrooms and hunting parties.
