He stood at the edge of the dance floor, almost hidden by the swirl of dancers as he watched them. Another gentleman stood to his right, speaking into Lord Hampshire’s ear as he nodded slowly. He had not changed, not to her eyes. His dark hair was still swept to one side of his forehead, his shoulders held back as he stood tall, hands clasped behind his back. Nora did not move, hardly able to breathe as the other guests shifted this way and that, permitting her to see him more clearly. Someone drew near, and he turned his head, nodding and smiling at them, only for his gaze to collide with hers – and then to catch and still.
Her world shifted, and Nora tried to stand with strength despite the weakness that overtook her. The smile fell from his face in an instant, the colour draining from beneath his cravat as his gaze fixed on hers. Nora’s heart leapt, foolish with a faint hope that something was still forged between them, pulling at something deep beneath her ribs until she could scarcely draw breath.
Will he come to speak with me?
Lord Hampshire, perhaps sensing her question, turned his head away at the very next moment, speaking again to his friend. As she watched, he turned not only his head but then his shoulders and then his feet, turning his back on her completely.
Her heart shattered all over again, her pain renewed in this one single, deliberate action. The ballroom seemed to contract around her, growing smaller with every strangled breath she took. That turning away had felt deliberate, almost callous. Or perhaps he had done so to spare them both any further agony.
His letter promised me that all he had said to me, all he had professed, was true, she thought to herself, tears stinging at her eyes. At least I can cling to that.
But it was not enough to quieten the silent reverberation of her love, severed so abruptly, but it lingered within her still. Lowering her head, Nora pressed her gloved fingers against her wrist and did her best to steady herself. Their first meeting was at an end, their first connection at a close.
Now all she had to do was forget him.
Two evenings later,the ballroom was a crush. Lady Ashworth’s entertainments were always well-attended, but this evening, it seemed half of London had pressed itself into the gilded space until the very air had grown thick with body heat, perfume, and the warm, waxy exhalation of hundreds of candles. Nora felt the crowd like a physical weight — the rustle of silk against silk, the low hum of a hundred conversations running together until they became a single, continuous vibration she could feel in her breastbone.
She positioned herself near a column, its marble cold through her glove when she rested her fingers against it. Her mother had already drifted into conversation with Lady Trevelyan, and Louisa had been whisked away by a group of young ladies whose laughter rang like silver bells through the din. Nora ought to join them. She ought to smile, anddance, and comment brightly on the new fashions, and accept the attentions of gentlemen who were perfectly pleasant and perfectly meaningless to her. She had done it a dozen times this Season. She could do it again.
A young man — she believed him to be Mr. Carrington — appeared at her side and requested a dance. Nora accepted with a practised smile, setting her hand in his and allowing herself to be led to the floor. He was amiable enough, conversing easily about the weather and the recent racing at Newmarket, his hand polite and correct at her waist. She responded in all the right moments, meeting his eyes, inclining her head, offering a small, encouraging laugh at a remark about a horse named Thunderclap.
She felt nothing.
It was like watching herself from across the room — a mannequin in ivory silk, performing the motions of enjoyment while the real Nora stood somewhere else entirely, somewhere cold and still where no one could reach her.
The set ended. She curtseyed, thanked Mr. Carrington, and was released back to the edge of the room. Her pulse was steady, her breathing even. Nothing had touched her.
And then the crowd shifted.
It was nothing dramatic — a group near the supper room door parted to let a footman through, and in the gap that opened and closed again in the space of a heartbeat, she saw him.
Hampshire.
He stood on the far side of the ballroom with Lord Broadford, a glass in his hand that he was not drinking from. He was thinner than she remembered, the lines of his jaw sharper, the set of his shoulders carrying a tension that had not been there before. He was listening to Broadford but not hearing him — she could tell, even from this distance, by the way his gaze moved restlesslyacross the room, touching faces and dismissing them in quick succession.
She knew the instant he found her. His whole body went still — a sudden, animal stillness, as if every muscle had locked at once. The glass in his hand tilted slightly. He did not correct it.
For three full seconds, neither of them moved. The ballroom noise pressed in around her — laughter, music, the clink of crystal — but it had become distant, muffled, as if someone had draped a cloth over it all. She could hear her own blood beating in her ears.
Then someone stepped between them, and the connection broke. Nora exhaled — she had not realized she had been holding her breath — and turned away, her hand finding the marble column again, gripping it until her knuckles went white beneath her glove.
The fireat White’s had been built high, but still the chill crept in from the windows, from the gaps beneath the doors, from places David could not name. He sat in the leather chair nearest the hearth with his legs stretched before him and a brandy warming between his palms, rolling it back and forth, trying to settle the storm in his chest.
The club was quiet at this hour. Two gentlemen spoke in low tones near the window, their conversation a murmur. David made no effort to hear. The room smelled of tobacco, old port, and the particular leather-and-polish scent that had been embedded in the furniture for decades, absorbed into the very grain of the wood. A clock ticked on the mantelpiece — steady, unhurried, indifferent.
He had seen her.
The brandy was untouched. He raised it to his lips and drank without tasting, the warmth sliding down his throat and settling in his stomach where it did nothing to fill the hollow that had opened there the moment she had looked at him across the ballroom.
“You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.” Lord Broadford lowered himself into the opposite chair, one ankle crossing the other as he regarded David with a steady, assessing gaze that bordered on concern. “Or, more accurately, as if a ghost has seen you.”
“Something of the sort.” David did not meet his eyes. He studied the fire instead — the way the flames peeled themselves from the logs in sheets of gold and orange, curling upward and vanishing.
Broadford was silent for a long moment. He was good at silence, better than most men David knew. He did not fill it with platitudes or questions but simply waited, his own glass resting on the arm of his chair, the amber liquid catching the firelight.
“She was at the ball,” David said, finally. The words felt like pulling a nail from wood — slow, resistant, something that had been hammered in deeply. He looked down at his hands, at the glass between them, at the ring he wore on his smallest finger that had been his father’s. “She looked…” He stopped himself, shaking his head once. “It does not matter.”
“Of course it matters.” Broadford’s voice was low but firm. “It is the very reason you are sitting here in the dark, drinking brandy you are not tasting, rather than going home to bed.”
