He took a step closer. The noise of the room seemed to recede around him; she could smell starch and bay rum and, faintly, the wax of the candles. "About me?"
Honora did not answer.
Instead, without meaning to—or perhaps meaning to more than she had meant anything in years—she let her eyes lift past his shoulder, past the gilded capitals of the columns and the slow-turning crystal of the nearest chandelier, to the balcony that ran across the end of the ballroom.
A woman stood there alone, both hands resting on the gilt rail. She wore a gown of deep plum, almost burgundy in that light, cut high and severe; her hair, dark threaded with grey, was put up without ornament. She held herself so straight that she seemed less to be standing than to be enforced, like a column herself. She was looking down at the two of them, and her face was cold with a disapproval so complete it was almost serene.
Augusta Marchbank, Dowager Duchess of Hartsmere.
Twelve years ago, in a drawing room that smelled of beeswax and lilies, that same face had looked down at a girl of ten who was on her knees on the carpet, and had said: Your father made his choice, child. I must make mine.
The smile went out of Honora's face like a candle pinched between two fingers. What was left behind was something quieter and much older than two-and-twenty.
The Duke, following her gaze, turned his head and saw his mother.
II.
"You know my mother," he said.
It was not a question either. Honora brought her eyes down from the balcony. Above them the quartet had finished; there was a patter of gloved applause, and then the master of ceremonies announced a waltz, and a ripple went through the room—half delight, half scandal, since Lady Wexcombe was known to be modern and the dowagers along the walls were known not to be.
"Everyone knows the Duchess of Hartsmere," Honora said.
"That is not what I meant."
"No." She looked at the hand he held out to her, gloved in white kid. Behind him, she was aware of heads turning: the three young men by the card room, the matron in purple feathers, Lavinia beside her mother with her fan stopped in mid-air. She had meant to pass this evening as a shadow passes. She had meant to wait for the Duchess in the supper room, to put the folded card into her hand, to say four sentences she had rehearsed on the Bath road until the words were worn smooth. She had not meant to be seen.
And yet the woman on the balcony had seen her. There was no going back into the shadow now.
Honora laid her hand in his. "One dance, Your Grace."