It was not, she told herself, so very remarkable a thing. A lady had misheard; another lady had corrected her. It happened a dozen times a night. Nobody but the Duke would know that there had been anything to correct, and the Duke would be grateful, or affronted, or both, and would avoid her for the rest of the Season out of embarrassment, as gentlemen did. That was perfectly satisfactory. She had not done it to be thanked. She had done it because she had once watched a dancing master at Bath shout a question at the back of Piers's head and then laugh, with the whole class, when Piers did not answer; and because she had been twelve years old then and had done nothing, and had promised herself afterward, in the way twelve-year-olds make promises, that she would never do nothing again.
The music ended. The set broke up into its separate couples and drifted. Lady Ivers had noticed nothing; she was explaining to Lady Cressingham's sister that Theodora was very fond of the country. Theodora looked at her own gloved hands and began, despite herself, to pick at the darn.
"Miss Ivers."
She looked up. He was standing in front of her chair. He had crossed the floor while she was not watching, which was a thing that almost never happened to her, and he was standing exactly where the light from the nearest girandole fell full upon her face, so that he could see it. She understood, with a curious drop in her stomach, that he had chosen the spot.
"Your Grace."
"I have not been introduced to you," he said. His voice was low and slightly too even, a voice that had learned to manage itself without being sure of how it sounded. "Lady Cressingham will be scandalised. I find I don't much care. I came to ask whether you are engaged for the next dance."
Down the row of chairs, Theodora heard her mother stop speaking in the middle of a word.
"I am not engaged for any dance," Theodora said. "I am very seldom engaged. You need not feel obliged, your Grace. Truly. It was nothing, and nobody saw, and I would much rather you did not make it into something by dancing with me out of gratitude. People will only wonder."
"Let them."
"I didn't do it to be thanked," she said.
"I know you didn't." For the first time something moved at the corner of his mouth, not quite a smile; the ghost of a smile, walking past a window. "That is precisely why I am asking. Miss Ivers, I am not offering out of gratitude. I am offering because you are the first person in a twelvemonth who has spoken to me as if she wanted me to understand her." He held out his gloved hand, palm up, and kept it there, steady as a sentry. "Will you stand up with me? I would be honored."