It was him, the Duke of Aldridge. Up close, the shadows under his eyes were darker, bruised with exhaustion. He brought his glass to his lips, swallowed the remaining liquor in a single hard gulp, and lowered the glass. He turned his head and finally noticed he was not alone.
He didn't flinch. He didn't gasp. He just stared at her in the dim light filtering through the fabric. He looked from her face down to her ill-fitting dress, and finally to the single bare foot resting on top of her other shoe.
"Well," Nathaniel Reed said, his voice a low, dry gravel. "This alcove is remarkably crowded for a place designed to fit precisely no one."
For a terrifying second, Nora considered apologizing, curtsying, and throwing herself back into the suffocating heat of the drawing room. It was what Rosalind would do. It was what any sane, desperate woman with a mortgage hanging over her head would do. But her corset was biting into her ribs, her heel was bleeding, and she was simply too tired to play the game.
"It was vacant when I claimed it," Nora said, keeping her voice flat. She didn't move. She didn't lower her eyes.
The Duke raised an eyebrow. The faint light caught the harsh angle of his jaw. "Claimed it? Are we planting flags now? I must inform my steward that a portion of the east wing has been annexed by..." He trailed off, waiting.
"Nobody," Nora provided. "I am nobody of consequence. Just a casualty of the evening."
He let out a short, sudden sound, a laugh completely devoid of humor. "A casualty? I like that. Who wounded you?"
"The Dowager Countess of Grantham. Her breath is known to strip paint from the walls. My corset, actually," Nora said.
The words slipped out before she could catch them. The sheer inappropriate honesty of it hung in the small space between them. A lady did not mention her undergarments to a man. She certainly didn't mention them to a duke. She braced herself for his disgust.
Instead, Nathaniel leaned heavily against the window frame opposite her. He looked out into the pitch-black night, resting the side of his head against the glass, just as she had done moments before.
"If it is any consolation," he murmured, his voice drained of the polite aristocracy he had been wielding out there, "My cravat is currently attempting to strangle me. I give it 10 minutes before it succeeds."
Nora studied him. He wasn't looking at her like she was a prize mare. He wasn't assessing her hips or her teeth. He was just a man hiding behind a curtain, treating her like a fellow inmate in a very expensive asylum.
"Why are you hiding?" Nora asked. "It's your house. You could simply ask them all to leave."
"I could," he agreed quietly. He turned the empty glass in his hands, watching the dim light catch the crystal. "But I invited them. Or rather, my solicitor invited them. He informed me that I am 30. I am unmarried, and if I break my neck jumping a horse next week without an heir, the estate goes to a cousin in Bath, who breeds ornamental pugs."
Nora couldn't stop the small snort of laughter that escaped her. She quickly clamped a hand over her mouth.
Nathaniel's eyes flicked to her. A genuine spark of amusement broke through the exhausted haze in his expression. "It is not a laughing matter. The pugs are vicious. I couldn't subject my tenants to that kind of tyranny."
"So you decided to subject yourself to a cattle auction instead," Nora said softly.
He held her gaze. The silence in the alcove stretched, thick and heavy, but entirely devoid of the anxiety that plagued the room beyond the curtain. The muffled sounds of the piano and polite laughter felt miles away.
"A cattle auction," Nathaniel repeated. He tilted his head. "Is that how it feels on your side of the curtain?"
"How else should it feel?" Nora looked away, staring at her bare foot. The cynical armor she usually wore felt thin in the dark. "We are scrubbed, polished, dressed in silks we cannot afford, and paraded into your home so you might point a finger at the one with the shiniest hair and the widest hips. It is humiliating for everyone involved."
She expected him to defend the system. He was the one holding all the cards after all. He held the title, the money, the power to save her family or doom them.
"It is," Nathaniel said simply.
Nora looked back up at him in surprise.
"I have stood by that fireplace for 2 hours," he continued, his voice barely more than a rough whisper. "I have had 15 women tell me I have a beautiful home. 10 have lied and said they enjoy hunting. Five have conveniently tripped in front of me, requiring me to catch them."
Nora winced. Celia.
"They look at me," Nathaniel said, "and they don't see a man. They see a ledger. They see a title, a carriage, a vault of gold. They smile with their mouths, but their eyes are doing arithmetic." He looked directly at Nora, his gaze piercing through the gloom. "But you aren't doing arithmetic, are you?"
"I am terrible at mathematics," Nora admitted flatly.