"Teach me then," Darius said.
Beatrice blinked. "I beg your pardon?"
"Teach me to be wallpaper." Darius stepped away from the bookshelf, walked slowly to the small table between them, and set his glass down. He wasn't mocking her; his face was entirely serious. "How do you do it? How do you sit in a room with sixty people and remain entirely unseen?"
Beatrice looked at him. She saw the heavy exhaustion under his eyes, the rigid tension in his jaw. She realized, with a pang of unexpected empathy, that his wealth was a cage just as much as her poverty was.
"You can never be unseen, Your Grace," she said softly. "You take up too much space. You have too much power. People will always look at you."
"Then what do I do?"
"You stop looking back." Beatrice leaned forward slightly. "You don't engage. When they speak, you look at their left ear, not their eyes. When they ask a question, you give an answer that is polite but entirely devoid of substance. You become a mirror. You reflect what they want to see, and you keep yourself hidden entirely behind it."
Darius stood in the quiet dark, letting her words wash over him. You stop looking back.
He looked at Beatrice Ashdown—her sharp cheekbones, her steady dark eyes, the defiant tilt of her chin.
"I think," Darius said, his voice dropping low, rich, and dangerous in the quiet room, "that would be a tragic waste of time."
Beatrice's breath hitched. For a second, the heavy, dusty air of the library felt electrically charged. She felt the sudden, terrifying weight of his undivided attention. It was heavy enough to crush her.
She stood up abruptly, her bare foot hitting the cold floorboards. "I should return. If my aunt notices my absence, she will send a footman."
Darius didn't move to block her path, but he didn't step back either. "Miss Ashdown."
She paused at the door, her hand gripping the brass knob tightly.
"For what it is worth," Darius said, his tone entirely grounded, stripped of all aristocratic pretense, "you make terrible wallpaper. You are the most distinct thing in this house."
Beatrice didn't look back. She opened the door and fled into the light of the hallway, her heart pounding a frantic, terrifying rhythm against her ribs.
The Fitzroy morning room was a battlefield of floral chintz and misplaced anxiety. It was 11:00 the following morning. Aunt Agatha was pacing the length of the Persian rug, her heavy silk skirts rustling violently with every turn. Caroline was seated on the yellow velvet settee, alternating between fanning herself rapidly and biting her thumbnail.
"He did not say he would call," Aunt Agatha muttered, gnawing on her lower lip. "But he lingered near the carriage when we departed. Did you see him linger, Caroline?"
"He was looking directly at me, Mama," Caroline insisted, her voice tight with desperate hope. "I am sure of it. He has forgiven the water glass incident. Men appreciate a woman with a delicate constitution who requires comfort after a shock."
Beatrice sat in the far corner of the room, near the window overlooking the street. She was violently stabbing a needle through a pile of torn silk ribbons, attempting to mend Caroline's discarded accessories. She hadn't slept a wink. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the dark, quiet intensity of the Duke's stare in the library.
You make terrible wallpaper.
She dragged the needle through the silk, wincing as she pricked her thumb. It was a ridiculous thought. Men like the Duke of Westmorland did not dally with poor relations. They had brief, amusing conversations in dark rooms, and then they married heiresses. To think anything else was dangerous; it was exactly the kind of romantic delusion she despised.
"Beatrice!" Aunt Agatha snapped, halting her pacing. "Stop that infernal scratching with the needle. If His Grace arrives, you are to immediately excuse yourself. I will not have you sitting there in that dreary wool gown, making the room look like a workhouse."
"Yes, Aunt Agatha," Beatrice murmured, keeping her head down.
"And fix your hair," Caroline added petulantly. "It looks entirely flat."
Before Beatrice could reply, the heavy thud of the brass knocker echoed through the front hall. The morning room froze. Aunt Agatha stopped breathing. Caroline threw her fan onto the table and sat up rigidly, pinching her cheeks to bring color to them. Beatrice quietly set her sewing basket down and prepared to slide out the side door.
Heavy footsteps crossed the marble foyer. The morning room doors opened, and the Fitzroys' aging butler stepped in, looking slightly dazed.
"His Grace, the Duke of Westmorland," the butler announced.