Her cheeks burned at the thought. Shehadimagined it. She had imagined what it would be like if she could spend her life with the duke, if she could spend her time talking and laughing with him, dancing at every ball as they had danced that one dance. The images that filled her mind were beautiful ones, joyful and innocent.
Tears ran down her cheeks again and she did not try to stop them.
She tensed. A sound had disturbed her—a noise that was louder than her own tears; something like a footfall on the leaves in the corner of the terrace. Her back went stiff, her arms locking where she gripped the railing.
“Miss? Miss Brooke?”
“Your Grace?” Sarah spun round, recognizing the low, resonant voice instantly. She gaped up at the duke’s face as he stood beside her. His face was shadowed in the half-darkness of the terrace, painted in a tapestry of gray and inky blue-black shadow. He was wearing a white shirt with a high collar, anelaborate cravat. She could not see the color of his breeches since it was lost in the obscuring darkness. She stared up at his face. She saw his lips lift in an uncertain smile, and then he frowned.
“You’re crying.”
“It is...nothing,” Sarah whispered. She did not want to tell him what had happened, what she had overheard. She felt deep shame at his mother’s words and she was sure that they were true.
“No,” the duke said insistently. “It is not nothing. You’re crying. Here,” he added, and she frowned as his hand moved to his side. He reached out a hand, holding something out to her.
“Thank you,” she said, giggling despite her sorrow as her fingers closed on a square of cloth.
“It’s a fresh one,” he said with a lift of his lips. “Word of honour.”
Sarah laughed and dabbed at her cheeks. His caring, his kindness, had taken the sting out of his mother’s cruel words. Whatever she and her friend thought, her son did not appear to see it that way. She folded the handkerchief, and her fingers closed over it, holding it tight against her palm. It was his. It was precious to her.
“What troubles you?” the duke asked after a long moment.
Sarah let out a sigh, leaning against the rails. It was cold in the darkness, but it felt good—clean and healing after the stuffy oppressiveness of the ballroom.
“Nothing,” she said softly.
He continued staring at her, his gaze boring into her as if to say that he did not believe her, that he expected a reply. She chuckled.
“Do you insist?” she asked him.
“Mm.”
She smiled up at him and he looked down at her, his gaze tender in the half-light. She could see his eyes better where he stood with his elbows on the railings. They were gentle.
“I suppose I was thinking how uncomfortable I feel here,” she said, deciding to tell him the truth without mentioning his mother and her friend. “I mean, I suppose I’m nobody.” She gave a small laugh to try and hide the sadness in her words.
“Nobody is nobody,” the duke said softly.
Sarah gazed up at him. He was a duke. He outranked all the peers: everyone, except the Regent and the King, were of a lesser rank than himself. And yet he said that.
“I suppose,” she said quietly.
“Iknow,” he said firmly.
Sarah looked up at him. His long, slim face was still, and she gazed into his eyes. She wished she could ask him the story of why he said that; what gave him such certainty where anyone else of his rank might simply believe the opposite.
“You are right,” she said quietly. “But it is hard to believe that sometimes.” She let out a sigh. Her fingers laced through each other, and she stared down at them, gazing at the grayish paleness of her fingers against the black stone in the darkness. “Everyone here outranks me.”
“That’s not true, for a start,” the duke said firmly. “Miss Halston is also the daughter of a baron, and Lord Elwood was recently the son of a baron, or he wouldn’t be one now.”
Sarah sighed. “I suppose that is true,” she admitted. “But everyone else here has been part of society before. I really am nobody. I went to three balls in London. That was my Season. My debut. Nobody has ever even seen me before.”
The duke gazed at her. “I imagine that circumstances were difficult,” he said after a long moment.
Sarah nodded. “Yes,” she said softly. “Yes, they were. Not financially—I mean, Wakeford is not an excessively rich barony,but nor is it a poor one. We did not want for money for my debut. It was not that.”
The duke said nothing, only watched her in the darkness and she drew a deep breath. She could sense that he was waiting. The story had weighed on her for so long and she had never realized it before. Hearing the two women discussing her so mercilessly had made her realize what a burden that obscurity was; how it drove her further and further away from everyone. She wanted to tell someone.
