“Do not.” Her voice was a thread. “If you say one more word, I will not be able to walk out of this room.”
He closed his eyes. His hand pressed flat against her back, holding her against him, and for a moment that lasted three heartbeats they were not in a ballroom, they were not surrounded by the ton, they were not two people at the end of an arrangement. They were the man and the woman who had rebuilt an orphanage and named it after a constellation and taught children that magic was real.
The music slowed. The last notes stretched and faded into silence.
They stood together for three seconds after the music ended. He counted them as he had counted their fingers entwined, her quiet breaths, as he would count the empty moments to come.
Then Elinor stepped back, her hand falling away. The space between them opened like a wound.
“Thank you for the dance, Your Grace,” she said, and the formality of the title told him everything.
She was rebuilding the wall, one brick at a time, because tomorrow she would need it.
He bowed. She curtsied.
Annabelle found Elinor and took her arm, chattering about something Lucien could not hear over the roaring in his ears. Rebecca collected her daughters. Joanna caught Elinor’s hand and squeezed it as they passed through the entrance hall.
The Morland party left. The door closed. Lucien stood in Lord Haverford’s emptying ballroom and looked at the dance floor where they had stood, and the space she had occupied was just space now, and the absence of her was a physical thing that pressed against his ribs and would not ease.
Dominic appeared beside him. He said nothing. He stood there, a glass in each hand, and offered one to Lucien.
Lucien took it. They drank in silence.
“When you are ready to tell me,” Dominic said, “I will be here.”
Lucien nodded. The ballroom emptied around them. The candles guttered and died.
And the Season, like everything else, came to its end.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“Your Grace, what an unexpected pleasure. Do come in,” Rebecca’s voice carried the warm, practiced cadence she reserved for Lucien, her expression arranged into something like maternal fondness.
She stood in the entrance hall of Morland House in lavender silk, hand extended as though greeting a dignitary rather than the man who had come to secure her family’s advantage.
Elinor stood behind her. She had known this was coming. They had agreed to it in the garden, confirmed it across the ballroom, sealed it in the three seconds after the music stopped when neither of them could let go. That morning she had dressed in gray, pinned her hair without care, and waited with Newton in her lap in the parlor chair her stepmother favored.
Now Lucien stepped inside, and the sight of him cracked something she had spent two days holding shut.
He looked composed. His coat was pressed, his cravat precisely tied, every inch the Duke of Fairmont. But his eyes found hers across the hall, and what lived in them was not composure. It was the look of a man walking toward something he did not want to do, bound by the only thing he had left to give her, his word.
“Please, Your Grace, let us sit in the parlor,” Rebecca continued, her smile widening. “I shall have tea brought. Belinda, fetch Joanna. His Grace should not be kept waiting.”
Belinda, who had appeared on the staircase with the instinct of a woman who could sense an audience, descended with a curtsey that dipped lower than necessary. “Your Grace. How lovely to see you. I was just telling Mama that I hoped you would call again soon.”
Lucien inclined his head. “Lady Belinda.”
They moved to the parlor. Rebecca arranged herself in the chair beside the fireplace. Belinda perched on the settee. Joanna arrived a moment later, her gaze moving between Elinor and Lucien.
“Lady Morland.” He stood near the window, his hands clasped behind his back. His voice carried the even, respectful tone of a man delivering news he had rehearsed. “I have come to inform you that Lady Elinor and I have reached a mutual decision to dissolve our engagement.”
The room held its breath.
Rebecca’s smile did not fall. It froze in place, the muscles of her face holding the shape while her eyes recalculated. For three full seconds, she said nothing. Elinor watched her stepmother cycle through shock, fury, and the rapid assessment of how this reflected upon her household.
What emerged was a performance so polished it could have graced a stage.
“Oh, Your Grace.” Rebecca pressed a hand to her chest, her voice trembling with concern so convincing that anyone who did not know her would have believed it. “How distressing. I do hope nothing has occurred to cause offense. Elinor can be headstrong, and if she has said or done anything to displease you, I assure you, I will address it!”
