She drew in a breath, steadied herself, and started reading again.
Oscar watched her, his own chest tight. He could not recall the last time he had shown anyone his unfinished self. With Nancy, it felt almost bearable. He watched as she devoured the words, sometimes going back to reread a line, sometimes shaking her head as if to clear it. When she finished, she laid the last letter atop the stack with ceremonial precision.
“I am proud of you, Oscar.”
The world stopped. “Why?”
She gestured at the papers. “For this. For saying the things that hurt.”
He had never understood how praise could be so painful. He wanted to retreat, to find solace in sarcasm, but her sincerity pinned him in place.
She stood, closing the distance between them.
“You are not your father,” Nancy said. “You are not even the man you were yesterday. You are the only man I have ever met who could put a piece of his heart in an envelope and leave it for someone else to find.”
Oscar stared at her, stunned.
“I don’t know if I can ever do the same,” she continued. “But if you want me to try, I will.”
She reached for his hand. He let her take it.
They stood like that, joined and wordless. Time, for once, did not matter.
He wanted to say everything—how she was the storm and the harbor, how he had not known what love was until it arrived, unbidden and unstoppable, in the shape of a red-hairedbluestocking who did not care for Society’s rules. He wanted to say he was sorry for every day he’d wasted pretending he could live without her.
Instead, he said, “Thank you.”
It was the most honest thing he had ever said.
She smiled, watery and bright. “You’re welcome, Duke.”
He grinned. “You are the only person who can make that word sound like a dare.”
“Perhaps it is,” Nancy replied.
They stood a moment longer, joined by the fragile thread of mutual undoing.
Then a memory surfaced—Adrian, at the ball, the warning in his eyes, the certainty that someone would try to steal Nancy away. The world’s old anxieties returned, angry and sharp.
He tightened his grip on Nancy’s hand. “There is something I must do,” he said abruptly.
She looked startled, then nodded. “Will you come back?”
“I always do,” he replied.
But he lingered at the door, memorizing the way she stood in the light, the letters gathered at her chest like a shield. He wanted to kiss her again, but it was too much. He settled for a last, long look.
Oscar strode from the room, his step lighter than it had been in years.
He passed through the entrance hall and out onto the drive. The afternoon sun was fierce, the air heavy with the scent of late roses. He climbed onto his horse, not even pausing for the groom, and urged it toward London.
He did not know if Adrian would be at White’s or the gambling house. He did not care. He would find Adrian. And he would ensure, once and for all, that nothing—not scandal, not envy, not even the endless malice of theton—would ever threaten what he had found with Nancy.
She was his, and he would never let her go.
Oscar found White’s surprisingly empty for a Tuesday. He took a table near the window, where he could survey the entrance. Adrian would arrive soon; the man never missed his afternoon rounds.
Oscar rehearsed, silently, the words he would use to eviscerate his rival, but his mind kept wandering back to Nancy: her handswrapped around the letters, her eyes red from reading, the way she’d saidI am proud of you, Oscarwith a conviction that would have floored a lesser man.
