She thought of Lucien’s confession in the apartment, his voice stripped bare, his hands unsteady. Of the slate he had let her read, the single line of handwriting he had not meant for anyone to see:I do not know who I am without the mask.She had not spoken of it since. Neither had he. But the words lived in her now, alongside everything else he had trusted her with, and she understood why he guarded them so fiercely. A man who wrote that was not corrupted. He was lost, and he knew it, and knowing was the first step toward finding his way back.
She thought of the Season ending, the new tutors arriving, the engagement dissolving, and the quiet life that would follow.
She thought of the way he straightened her spectacles, as though they were precious.
The realization did not come like an explosion of light. It settled, like a constellation emerging as the sky darkened, one star at a time, each already there, waiting to be seen.
She loved him.
She loved Lucien Stanton, the Duke of Fairmont, the man who sat on floors with orphaned children and wrote about starlight in blond hair, who carried a wound so deep he had built a life around hiding it. The love was not new. It had been forming since the night he found her in the schoolroom and kept her secret. Since the storm. Since the kiss. Since the moment he named the orphanage for something she had given them.
It had been there all along, growing in the dark, the way stars did.
Newton purred against her hand. Outside, the evening deepened. The Season was winding down, and Elinor could feel the shape of what was coming: the end of the arrangement, the dissolution of the lie, the loss of the man she had agreed to pretend to love and had somehow, against every rational instinct, come to love in truth.
She closed the atlas and held it against her chest.
I love him. And in three weeks, I will have to let him go.
She pressed her face into Newton’s fur and let the tears come.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Two weeks, Fairmont. That is all that remains of the Season, and you have not once spoken to me about what comes after.”
Dominic stood beside him at the edge of Lord Whitfield’s ballroom, returned from his estate business and wasting no time in resuming his favorite occupation: asking Lucien questions he did not wish to answer. His dark hair was swept back, his cravat tied with the casual precision of a man who wanted to look as though he had not tried, and his eyes carried the sharp attention he usually reserved for cards.
“After what?” Lucien asked, though he knew.
“After the engagement concludes. After the wedding. After the rest of your life begins.” Dominic studied him. “You have not set a date. You have not spoken of a venue. You have not mentioned settlements, or the banns, or any of the tedious arrangementsthat men in your position cannot avoid. And I am wondering why.”
Lucien took a drink from his glass and let the brandy sit on his tongue before answering. The ballroom stretched before them, bright and loud with the energy of a Season nearing its end. Guests moved faster, laughed louder, as though trying to compress all remaining pleasure into the weeks that were left.
“There is time,” he said.
“There is not.” Dominic’s voice dropped. “Lucien. I have not pressed you, and I will not pry into whatever it is you are guarding. But I am your friend, and I am telling you that the ton is beginning to notice. People are asking questions. If you do not act soon, the whispers will become something more dangerous.”
Lucien said nothing, because Dominic was right, and the rightness of it pressed against his ribs like a hand closing slowly into a fist.
Dominic followed his gaze across the ballroom to where Annabelle stood beside Elinor near the tall windows. He tilted his head. “Is that your sister? I had hoped to finally make her acquaintance tonight.”
“Another time,” Lucien said. “She is not going anywhere.”
“Unfortunately, I am.” Dominic set his glass on the balustrade. “I promised Lord Hartwell I would look over a contract beforemidnight, and the man keeps earlier hours than a dairy farmer. Give Lady Annabelle my regrets, will you? And think about what I said.”
He clapped Lucien on the shoulder, held his gaze for a beat that carried the weight of genuine concern, and then disappeared into the crowd.
Lucien watched him go, then turned back to the ballroom.
Across the ballroom, Elinor stood beside Annabelle near the tall windows that overlooked the Whitfield gardens. She wore a gown of deep blue that he had not seen before, and her celestial atlas was not with her tonight, but the absence only made him think of it more.
Annabelle was speaking, her hands moving in the animated way she had inherited from their mother, and Elinor was listening with the focused stillness she gave everything that mattered to her.
She looked up. Their eyes met across the room, and the noise of the ballroom dimmed into something distant and irrelevant.
She held his gaze. Not the careful, fleeting glances of their early weeks, stolen and quickly broken. She held it, and something in her expression had changed since the last time he had seen her. A steadiness that had not been there before. A resolve.
He crossed the ballroom floor, aware of the eyes that tracked him, aware of the whispers that followed. Rebecca stood near the refreshments with Gilbert, whose attempts to engage Annabelle in conversation had been politely and thoroughly rebuffed within minutes of their arrival. Belinda was dancing with Lord Alexander, her attention split between her partner and Lucien’s progress across the room.
