Page 85 of A Highly Unlikely Duchess
"You are being territorial," she said.
"I am being clear," he repeated and shrugged. "Also territorial. Both things are true."
Emily felt a flush of warmth at his defense, her heart fluttering at the sheer softness in his tone. She tilted her head back to look at him, her lips curving into a soft, playful smile.
“While I appreciate the vote of confidence, Theo,” she said gently, then turned to Julia. "I would not mind some advice, Lady Birks," she said. "Genuinely. I have been learning as I go, and there are gaps in my knowledge that I am aware of and would rather fill properly than stumble into publicly. I do like the idea of hosting a ball.”
“Then it is settled,” Julia declared, her eyes shining with the first flicker of genuine joy Emily had seen in them all morning. “I shall place every resource, every contact, and every ounce ofmy experience at your disposal. We shall host a ball that will be spoken of for years, Emily. I promise you that.”
Theodore started to speak, letting out a witty retort about Julia’s intensity, but he was interrupted by the sound of small, quick footsteps in the hallway. The door pushed open, and Frederick stepped inside, led by Peggy. He looked small but sturdy, his dark hair neatly brushed, though his eyes still held a lingering touch of shyness as he surveyed the room.
"You must be Frederick," Emily said to him with an endearing smile.
"Yes," Frederick said.
"I am Lady Julia Birks," she said. "I am Theodore's godmother. I have known him since he was considerably smaller than he is now, which is difficult to imagine, I know, but I assure you it is true."
Watching them, Emily leaned back into Theodore’s chest, feeling the beating of his heart against her shoulder. A profound sense of peace settled over her, a realization that the jagged edges of their lives had finally smoothed into something whole.
Nothing could be more perfect than this. They were a family. She thought of the nights they had begun to spend together... the whispered conversations in the dark, and the way he held her as if she were his entire world. It was a physical and emotional intimacy that surprised her every single day.
She had walked into this marriage expecting a cold, sterile arrangement, a sacrifice for her family's name. Instead, she had found a love that was fierce, protective, and overwhelmingly beautiful. As she watched Julia and Frederick begin to talk about the wooden horse in his hand, Emily felt a swell of joy. She had been searching for a way to give Frederick a home, only to realize that, with Theodore by her side, she had finally found one for herself.
EPILOGUE
"Emily," Euphemia said, standing in the entrance of the Carrowell ballroom and turning very slowly on the spot. “I truly believe if the heavens were to host a party, they would find it difficult to compete with this. It is the biggest, grandest, most beautiful ball I have ever seen in my life!"
“You exaggerate, Effie.” Emily giggled.
Emily stood beside her and looked at what Julia Birks had done to her ballroom and thought that beautiful was perhaps an insufficient word.
The room had been transformed. Years of disuse had been erased, replaced with something that felt less like a decorated room and more like a world unto itself. The ceilings were draped in deep blue silk that caught the light from the chandeliers and threw it back in waves... Those chandeliers, all seven of them, had been fitted with candles of a particular white that burned cleaner and brighter than anything Emily had seen outside of achurch, and the effect of them against the blue was something between midnight and dawn, that impossible hour when the sky could not decide what it was.
Silver ran through everything. In the ribbons wound around the pillars that lined the room. In the garlands of white and pale blue flowers that had been threaded with silver wire until they caught and held the light like something alive. In the tablecloths on the supper tables set along the far wall, deep blue beneath, and silver runners laid across them.
The floor had been polished to a mirror. Emily could see the reflection of the chandeliers in it, wavering slightly, like light on water.
“But I cannot possibly take all the credit,” Emily said. “Julia was a huge help. The decor is all her. She really went out of her way.”
“It shows,” Euphemia said and then turned to Emily. “You look incredibly beautiful.”
Emily was in deep blue silk, the color of the room, a suggestion from Julia that Emily had initially resisted on the grounds that a hostess should not disappear into her own décor. But she had eventually conceded, when she put the gown on and understood what Julia had meant: not that she would disappear, but that she would belong to the room, that she would look as though Carrowell had been made for her specifically and she for it.
The gown was simple in its cut and extraordinary in its fabric, the silk catching the light the same way the silver in the flowerscaught it, differently at every angle. Peggy had dressed her hair with small white flowers threaded through it and a single strand of pearls that had belonged to Theodore's grandmother and which he had left on her dressing table that morning with a beautiful note.
She touched them now, briefly, at her throat.
"The whole of London is going to talk about this for a year," Euphemia added.
"That..." Emily said, giggling. "...is rather the point."
She patted Euphemia’s hand and began to navigate the edge of the ballroom. The air was thick with the scent of expensive powder and the hum of a hundred different conversations, and Emily felt she needed a moment to breathe and a glass of cool punch to soothe her parched throat. She made her way toward the refreshment table, weaving through the crowd, nodding graciously to the guests who parted like the Red Sea at the sight of their hostess.
She had just reached the crystal punch bowl when a familiar voice cut through the music.
"Emily."
She turned.
