The mothers of London had begun to speak of him the way sailors spoke of a reef they could not chart: beautiful, dangerous, best avoided, and yet endlessly, hopelessly discussed.
Margaret considered retreating back inside. She did not have the energy tonight to navigate the particular exhaustion of making conversation with a duke. But before she could turn, he spoke without turning around.
"If you have come to tell me Lady Featherington is asking after me again, I would rather you pushed me over this railing."
Margaret blinked. "I have not been sent to fetch you for anyone, Your Grace. I came out here because a girl half my age informed the entire refreshment table that my hair is going gray."
That got his attention. He turned.
In the dim light spilling from the ballroom windows, she could see his face properly for the first time. He was handsome in the hard, weathered way of a man who had spent more time thinking than smiling, with a faint white scar along his jaw and eyes the color of storm-dark water.
He studied her for a long moment, and Margaret felt the familiar urge to apologize for taking up space—an urge she ruthlessly suppressed.
"Is it true?" he asked.
"Is what true?"
"The gray."
Margaret's mouth twitched despite herself. "Some of it. I earned every strand."