The hallway was lit with fewer candles than the drawing room, which was precisely its appeal. He stood by the window at the far end, looking out at the square below, grateful for 30 seconds of silence. He heard her before he saw her.
A small sound, not quite a gasp, more like the sound a person makes when they’ve been caught doing something they knew perfectly well they shouldn’t be doing. He turned. She was standing at the top of the servants’ staircase, half in shadow, clearly having descended from the floor above where the children had presumably been put to bed hours ago.
She was perhaps 10 years old, dressed in a white nightgown with her dark hair loose around her shoulders, and she was looking at him with an expression of such complete calm that it immediately distinguished her from anyone else he’d encountered that evening. Most children, caught out of bed in a house full of adults, would have fled or burst into tears.
This one simply looked at him, assessed him the way a serious person assesses a problem they have just discovered, and then walked forward into the candlelight as though she had every right to be there. You’re the Duke. Not a question, a categorization.
He found, to his mild surprise, that he was not annoyed. I am, and you are very much not supposed to be down here. I couldn’t sleep. With the simple authority of someone stating a fact that required no apology.
The candles smell different when there are this many of them. Waxy. It comes up through the floor. He regarded her. She regarded him back without the flutter or the performance that every other person in that house had offered him that evening.
There was something quietly restoring about it. Well, what is your name? Ada Pemberton. Lady Whitmore is my aunt.
A pause, precise and considered. My mother says you are the most eligible man in London. Your mother is not the first person to say so. She also says you’ll never marry because you’re too proud to be happy.
Ada tilted her head slightly, not unkindly, as though she were delivering this information as a service rather than an insult. A sound escaped him. Something he hadn’t produced in quite some time. A genuine laugh, brief, surprised, real.
She may be right. Ada considered this for a moment, then, with the utter sincerity that only children and the very old seem capable of sustaining, she looked up at him and said, When I grow up, I’m going to marry you.