You do not need to excuse yourself to me, Your Grace, she said softly. I have watched you watching her. I am not blind.
Her gaze flicked to Helena, and for the first time there was no trace of rivalry in it, only an aching honesty.
It startled me. It stung, she admitted. But I think perhaps I am also a little relieved to know that whatever happens to me, it will be because someone wanted me for myself, not because I was simply where everyone expected me to be.
Helena's throat closed.
Alicia, her cousin, gave a watery half-smile.
Do not look at me as though I were a tragic heroine. I am two and twenty, not a relic.
Sir Thomas Hargate has already called twice, you know.
Her cheeks colored faintly.
He speaks very earnestly about horses.
Then he is vastly to be preferred to a duke who speaks earnestly about seating arrangements, Adrien said dryly.
A breath of strained laughter broke the tension.
Lady Ashford pressed a handkerchief to her eyes.
I had always imagined, she confessed, voice wobbling between hope and disbelief, that if such an honor ever came to this family, it would be through Alicia. She is so very suitable.
I am not asking for suitability, Adrien replied. I have had that offered to me at every turn.
I am asking for Helena.
He turned fully to her again, and the room seemed to shrink until there was only the two of them.
A duke eternally expected at the head of the table, and a woman who had spent half her life learning to stand by the wall.
Miss Helena, he said more quietly than before. You asked in the conservatory where I would choose to sit, if it were not required that I always be at the center.
I did not answer then. Allow me to answer now.
He took a single step nearer.
He did not touch her. He did not need to.
If I must sit at the head, he said, then I will only do so with the woman beside me who reminds me that corners exist.
Who knows the worth of quiet and kindness and listening.
Who will look past my title and see the man who longs sometimes to escape his own place card and walk into the shadows.
His voice gentled even further, an intimacy that wrapped around her like warm cloth.
I choose you, Helena Ashford. Not because you fill a number. Not because you are convenient.
But because when you left that table and the world did not notice, I did.
And I have not stopped noticing you since.
The tears came then, hot and unchecked, though she tried to blink them back.
You do me too much honor, she whispered.
I do you not nearly enough, he answered.
She looked at her aunt, at Alicia, at the expectations that had shaped her whole existence.
Then she looked back at him, at the man who had found her empty chair and refused to leave it that way.
Will you have regrets? she asked, voice barely audible. When people question your choice, when they wonder why you did not take the blossom most in view—
He smiled, slow and certain, as though the question relieved him.
Every day of my life, he said, people have praised me for decisions that were not truly mine.
This at least will be one I chose with my eyes open.
If there is to be gossip, let it be about a duke foolish enough to fall in love with the woman everyone else forgot to see.
The word hung there.
Love.
Soft and astonishing.
Helena's heart seemed to expand, pressing painfully against her ribs.
Something inside her, long curled in on itself, unfurled like a leaf toward light.
She rose slowly, her knees unsteady but her gaze steady.
Then I have a choice as well, she murmured.
All my life I have accepted the chairs others left for me.
It seems only fair that for once I should decide where I sit.
She drew in a breath that felt like the first she had taken entirely for herself.
If you are quite certain, Your Grace, she said, and a small incredulous smile trembled at the corner of her mouth, then yes.
I will be your wife.
Lady Ashford broke into muffled sobs, half joy, half disbelief.
Alicia laughed through her own tears and reached for her hand.
Adrien exhaled, a sound that was almost a prayer of relief.
For the first time, his composure cracked.
His eyes shone. His jaw worked as he took her hand very gently in his.
Then, he said, voice roughened, every table I sit at from this day forward will be properly set at last.
Months later at Evermeir, Helena would walk into a great dining room hung with portraits and lit with a hundred candles.
At the head of the table, two chairs waited. Equal. Side by side.
And as she took her place there, with Adrien's hand steady and warm in hers, she would feel every empty seat of her past fall away like old shadows.
She was no longer a number.
No longer a gap to be filled.
She was at last exactly where she belonged.
And the most eligible duke in England sat proudly, contentedly, in the seat that had once been hers alone, beside the woman the world had invited only to fill the table, never realizing she was the one who made it whole.