Page 88 of A Virgin to Tempt the Duke

“You mentioned last week,” she said, fishing for something to continue their conversation, “that your sister’s youngest had been unwell. Is she recovered?”

He brightened that she had remembered, which she knew pleased him.

“My niece is quite well, thank you. She still has a bit of coughing, but is expected to be back to normal next week. Thank you so much for asking.”

This is something. This is a man who speaks of his family with warmth. This is not nothing.

She looked at him, and waited for something to happen in her chest. She prayed to Venus for it, and yet nothing happened. The figure in dark red moved through the periphery of her vision, and she looked away from it again. The dance ended.

“Thank you, Lord Wexford,” she said, and he bowed.

Someone she did not recognize claimed him for a conversation, and Anna stood alone for approximately forty-five seconds before a voice came from behind her left shoulder.

“The next dance, Venus?”

She closed her eyes for one breath. Then she turned. Frederick had truly come as Mars.

Upon closer look, the costume was dark red with gold at the cuffs, and the mask only covered the upper part of his face. This rendered his expression somewhat more difficult to read than usual, which was a feat.

“Yes,” she said, because there was no other answer available to her. The word escaped her lips before she thought to say it.

He offered his hand. She took it. The music was a waltz, and there was nothing to be done about that either. She did not look at his face. She looked at his shoulder, which was close enough to her own that she was acutely aware of every inch between them. She leaned into his arms, letting her hands hold onto the muscles beneath.

“Venus,” he said, at last.

“Quite by accident, I’m sure,” she said, which was not true of her own costume but was possibly true of his.

“Entirely.” A brief pause. “Though I understand Mars and Venus have some history.”

“In mythology, yes.” She kept her voice pleasant. “It rarely ended well for either of them.”

“No,” he agreed. “It rarely does.”

The music grew louder, and the room moved around them as couples crowded the lacquered floor. Somewhere in the movements, Anna stopped trying to maintain a careful distance. She simply let herself have this one moment. For two minutes, the warmth of his hand and his presence would be hers and hers alone. She fell into the gravity of being so close to him, feeling things she had pretended for too long not to feel.

I will not feel this again after tonight. After tonight, I will go back to being sensible. I will double my efforts, or accept Lord Wexford, or find some third course of action. But for the length of this waltz, I am Venus, and he is Mars, and the music is doing something quite unfair, and I am powerless against it.

She looked up at him once, near the end. He was looking down at her. Beneath the mask his jaw was set familiarly, and his eyes held something she also knew. She had seen it a few times before, the thing he wouldn’t say. She looked away first because she had to, because the alternative was considerably worse. The music ended. He stepped back and bowed, correct as ever, and she curtsied, and that was that.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Anna—”

“Thank you, Frederick.” She whispered, and made herself smile.

Her heart was breaking, and she let herself be moved away into the crowd. She knew, with complete clarity, that if she stood there one more moment she was going to say something she could not take back.

She had been standing near the far window, composing herself with a glass of punch, when Lord Wexford found her again.

“Lady Birchall. Would you permit me a few minutes of quiet? I find I’ve rather had enough of the noise.”

She followed him to a small alcove off the main ballroom, where the music was muted, and the candlelight didn’t reach as far. She stood beside him and assumed the expression of a woman who was composed, which she was, or would be, momentarily. She took another sip of punch.

“I must say,” Lord Wexford began, and there was something different in his voice, something she identified a second too late. “You look extraordinarily beautiful tonight. Venus was very well chosen.” He smiled. “I have been thinking that the goddess of love at a masquerade is an omen I should not ignore.”

She went very still as stone.

“I have been fortunate,” he said carefully, “to have had the opportunity of your company this Season, and I hope that company has been… That is, I have come to feel, in the course of our acquaintance, that you and I might suit very well. I am a man of settled habits, and I hope of settled character, and I wouldvery much like… If you are willing… I would like to ask you to do me the honor of becoming my wife.”