Frederica rose first, steadying herself with one hand on the arm of the settee. Her face was drawn, but there was something in her posture that had not been there before — not strength, exactly, but the ghost of it, the first trembling sketch of what strength might look like when it returned in full. She crossed to the door, paused, and looked back at them.
“I should like to rest now,” she said quietly. “But Hampshire — you will tell me what is required of me for the ball? I will not attend, as you said, but I should like to know the plan. All of it. I am tired of being the one who is protected without knowing from what.”
Hampshire held her gaze and nodded. “You will know everything, Frederica. I give you my word.”
She left. Lord Broadford, with the tact of a man who had read the room before anyone else, muttered something about reviewing the footman arrangements and followed her out, pulling the door closed behind him with a quiet click.
And then they were alone.
The silence that settled was unlike any that had come before it. It was not heavy with things unsaid, nor taut with the effort of restraint. It was open — wide and clear and almost bewildering in its newness, the way a room feels when heavy curtains have been drawn back from a window and the light floods in all at once.
Nora looked at David. He looked at her.
“Is it truly done?” she whispered.
He rose from his chair and crossed the distance between them in three strides. He did not take her hands, did not pull her into his arms — not yet. He simply stood before her, close enough that she could see the sheen in his eyes, the faint tremor in the set of his jaw.
“It is done,” he said, and his voice cracked on the second word.
She pressed her hand to her mouth. A sound escaped her that was half laugh, half sob — the kind of sound that comes when grief and joy arrive at the same moment, and the body does not know which to express first. Her vision blurred, and she blinked, sending two tears tracking down her cheeks in quick succession.
He caught them both with his thumb, his hand cupping her face with such aching tenderness that she closed her eyes and leaned into it.
“I have imagined this,” he admitted, and his voice was rough and low. “Every night for a year, I have imagined being free to stand before you and simply — be yours.”
She opened her eyes. His face was very close, close enough that the gold flecks in his hazel eyes had returned — or perhaps she had simply not been able to see them before, through all the shadow. She placed her hand flat against his chest, feeling the strong, steady beat of his heart beneath her palm.
“Then be mine,” she said.
He exhaled — a long, shaking breath that seemed to carry the weight of the entire year with it — and drew her into his arms. He held her tightly, his chin resting against her temple, and neither of them spoke. The clock on the mantelpiece ticked. The fire crackled softly. From somewhere in the house came the distant sound of a door closing, then footsteps, then nothing.
They stood like that for a long time, simply breathing together, simply being, while the afternoon light moved slowly across the floor and the world, at last, was still.
20
The clasp was impossibly small.
Nora stood before the mirror in Hampshire’s drawing room — the one with the gilt frame that had been his mother’s — and held the necklace at her throat, the two ends of the clasp refusing to meet. From the adjoining room came the low murmur of her mother’s voice, in conversation with Lord Somerset. Her fingers were trembling, which did not help, and the delicate hook required a steadiness she could not summon.
“Here.” His voice came from behind her, closer than she had expected. “Allow me.”
She lowered her hands and felt his step into the space behind her, the warmth of him arriving before his touch did. His fingers found the clasp — careful, precise, his movements constrained to the minimum necessary — but his knuckles brushed the nape of her neck and a shiver ran down her spine that had nothing to do with the evening air.
“Hold still,” he murmured, and she could feel his breath against her hair.
She watched him in the mirror. His face was set with concentration, his brow furrowed slightly, the line between his eyes deepening as he worked the tiny hook. He was dressed for the ball — dark coat, white cravat, waistcoat of deep blue silk — and the sight of him in the mirror, his hands at her throat, his face above her shoulder, created an intimacy so vivid it stole her breath.
“There.” The clasp caught. His hands lingered a moment at her shoulders before falling away, but he did not step back. In the mirror, their eyes met.
“You are shaking,” he said, quietly.
“I am nervous.”
“About Rathbone?”
She turned to face him. The distance between them was nothing — six inches, perhaps less — and she could see the pulse at his throat, the faint shadow of fatigue beneath his eyes, the careful way he held himself, as if he too were fighting the pull of their proximity.
“About everything.” She reached up and touched the knot of his cravat. It was slightly uneven, the left side a fraction higher than the right. She smoothed it, her fingers adjusting the folds of linen with a competence her mother would have approved of. “I am nervous about what he might do. I am nervous that something will go wrong. I am nervous that—” She stopped. Her hand flattened against his chest, feeling the steady, strong beat of his heart beneath her palm.
