She knew the duke would not pretend nothing had changed. He didn’t say frivolous things; he was not a flirt. Like the duke chess piece she’d imagined, she knew he would only make forward moves. She knew she could not use that expression she’d seen on him yesterday as a crystal ball to predict her future.
She tried very hard not to want anything at all, and instead focused on the things she knew would happen. She completed the work he’d asked her todo. She had a good look at the dress she’d decided she would wear for the Night of the Nightingale, reviewing the nacre-colored satin for stains or tears. The hem needed some delicate sponging. She would wear her hair down, she’d decided. Like a nymph the audience had stumbled upon out in the dark woods.
She did, however, imagine the letter she might write to her mother, if she dared.
Dear Mama,
I hope this finds you well.
I think my life will change today.
At five minutes until three, she was moving down the hall to the anteroom, feeling much the way she did before she walked out onstage, emerging from the dark into the light.
She paused in the doorway.
She was surprised to find him standing behind the table, rather than sitting. All six feet infinity of him.
“Buonasera, Your Grace.”
“Buonasera,” he said politely. “Miss Wylde, upon reflection, I’ve decided that my time here at The Grand Palace on the Thames would be better served by working to complete my memoirs. I should think any debt to you incurred by my previous thoughtlessness has been satisfied, so I am drawing our Italian lessons to a conclusion. I wish you good luck. Good day.”
A few numbed seconds elapsed during which it felt as though her spirit had been neatly bisected from her body. As if with aspada.
She could not move, or breathe or speak.
She stared across at him from the doorway. He seemed to pulse, somehow, before her vision.
He was watching her, expression inscrutable. Posture erect.
Or, if she was not mistaken, braced.
He did not seem to be breathing, either.
You coward.
He was hardly, of course, a coward.
But she supposed some things were more terrifying even than staring down the French.
She opened her mouth to say something clever or cutting. Or perhaps gracious. A “thank you for your time, Your Grace, I understand.” Something that would impress him, and that he would not ever forget.
And then the pain set in with a shocking totality.
She said, “I hate you.”
It was appalling. Her voice was low and sincere and faintly surprised. It trembled, which she regretted. She would have liked to have sounded emotionless.
The violence of her own emotion embarrassed her. But she decided she didn’t mind. She instead felt a peculiar, dark exhilaration. She so seldom said precisely what she felt, and this was her purest truth in the moment.
She watched those words enter him like a dart. The tensing of his features, the tightening of knuckles on the quill he held. The shadow of pain about his eyes.
But he said nothing.
She supposed he was not the sort of man a woman like her could ever hope to really hurt.
She turned and departed with dignity, closing the always-open door quietly behind her.
James stared at the smooth, blank white door long after she’d departed. It suddenly bore a disorienting resemblance to the lid of a coffin.
