"I'd like to call on you properly," Rhys said. "Not at midnight, and not to retrieve a burned invitation. I'd like to court you, Lady Avalene, in the ordinary way, if you'll allow it."
Avalene felt something unfold in her chest: warm and unfamiliar and entirely welcome. "I think I'd like that very much."
"Then I'll call on Thursday," he said. "And every Thursday after until you tire of me."
"I don't think that's likely to happen soon."
He smiled then fully—the kind of smile that reached his eyes and softened every guarded edge she'd noticed in him since the moment he'd first appeared in her front hall. He lifted her hand and pressed a kiss to her knuckles, brief and warm.
"Until Thursday, then."
True to his word, Rhys arrived at the house three days later: not at midnight this time, but in the golden light of early afternoon, driving his own carriage rather than sending a servant ahead, dressed simply enough that he might have passed at a glance for an ordinary gentleman rather than a duke.
Her stepmother, forced by circumstance and reputation alike to receive him with something resembling grace, hovered nervously in the parlor doorway while he sat with Avalene in the garden, the late summer light filtering warm through the leaves above them.
"I have to admit," Avalene said, watching him carefully, "I keep waiting for some catch. Some reason this can't possibly be as straightforward as it seems."
"There's no catch," Rhys said. "Only a man who recognized something rare and had no intention of letting it slip past him simply because circumstance had made it difficult to reach."
"My stepmother will make this difficult regardless."