"Lady Avalene."
The Duke stood at the top of the entrance stairs, having apparently abandoned whatever conversation he'd been engaged in the moment he caught sight of her. He came down to meet her himself, ignoring the startled looks of the guests around him, and offered his arm as though escorting her inside were the most natural thing in the world.
"You came," he said, and there was something almost like relief threaded through the words.
"I said I would."
"Your stepmother didn't seem to think that promise would hold."
"My stepmother," Avalene said, "has been wrong about a great many things."
Something flickered across his face: amusement, admiration, perhaps both at once. And he led her up the stairs and into the ballroom, where the crowd's noise dimmed by fractions as heads began to turn, as whispers began to spread, as the room slowly absorbed the reality of the Duke of Ashcombe escorting an unknown woman in an unfashionable but undeniably striking gown directly to the center of the floor.
Avalene felt the weight of every eye in the room, and for the first time in longer than she could remember, did not shrink beneath it.
The first dance passed in something like a dream. The Duke, whose given name she learned was Rhys—though he insisted she use it only when they were sufficiently removed from listening ears—moved with the unhurried confidence of a man who had never once in his life doubted his welcome anywhere. And yet he held her as though she were something rare, rather than something merely convenient to be seen with.
"You've been the subject of considerable speculation this past hour," he said as they turned through the steps.
"I imagine I have."