“I am most well, cousin, thank you for asking. It is nasty business, all these rumours surrounding your marriage. I must admit I observed you both at the Kensington garden party, and there were sparks. Heavens, you could not keep your eyes off one another! Graham, does your wife know you weremostjealous of Her Grace speaking with Lord Ambrose?”
He let out a loud, rolling laugh, and Graham looked away, shifting, suddenly tense once again.
There was a gleam in Percival’s eyes that he no longer liked as he stirred up trouble, yet Amelia looked happy, a subtle smile playing on her lips.
“Was he now?” she asked, laughing. “That is news to me.”
“Perhaps we should leave before my cousin delivers more news.”
“Oh, and Her Grace was most inattentive to Lord Ambrose. In fact, he grumbled greatly about it after the party, that he tried to speak with her but her eyes kept finding yours, cousin.”
Amelia blushed deeply, and toyed with her white-colored gloves. Graham was piqued at that, not daring to meet her eye, head-on.
“Ah, I see Lord Ambrose now. I shall see you both later. Do enjoy the soiree, family.”
Family, Graham thought. He loathed being related to someone he found as unpleasant as Percival. Yet he turned to Amelia properly, offering his hand.
“I wish to take you away from the crowds and invite you to the dance floor, Duchess,” he murmured, feeling softer after the revelation that they had searched for one another. Amelia looked at him, those hazel-green eyes meeting his with muted surprise.
“You wish to dance?”
“It shall be our first as a married couple,” he said, “it only seems right to see it through.”
She hesitated, nodding, as she took his offered hand. He led her to the dance floor as the next song began. On the other side of the dance floor, he watched as Owen led Lady Eleanor, their attention not at all broken from one another, as though some unseen force guided them back together.
Graham focused back on his wife, taking her hand, and pulling her closer. “A waltz, as was our first dance together,” he noted.
Amelia looked bewitched as they began to dance, taking small, tentative steps around the floor, in time with the other couples. As they moved through the routine, he could not help but feel as though none of this scandal business had ever happened. He was simply a duke, and she was simply the daughter of Baron Hawthorne, and he had collided with her by a garden terrace.
He had not been careless with her reputation and forced her to marry him to save herself, and he had not deprived her of the romance every girl wished for. The hope was too great, and his heart swelled with grief for what he had done.
Yet Amelia looked as though right there, in his arms, was the only place she wished to be, and Graham could not fathom out why.
As he spun Amelia, his body somehow knowing how to dance with her, yet not always speak to her, he caught sight of Lady Cassandra, her narrowed eyes on the pair. The moment she noticed him looking at her, she schooled her features into one of neutrality.
He still could not shake off the strangeness of her behavior. That day at the maze, how had she known where to find Amelia? And why had she claimed he was Lord Ambrose before she had even rounded the corner properly?
Nothing made sense but he quickly returned his attention back to his wife.
Like this, he thought,I can pretend that I might one day make her happy.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Following the post-dancing parting of the men and women, Amelia was back at Graham’s side.
He leaned in to her as they walked out of the foyer and to the top of the outside stairs to access their carriage.
“How terrible was it in the drawing room?” he asked her, and there was a tightness in his eyes that hadn’t been there before he was pulled to the parlor with the rest of the men.
“As much as I feared,” she admitted. “I suspect that Lady Cassandra bears ill will towards me. It is not unfounded, for I did unwittingly turn the occasion of her parents’ garden party into the backdrop for our scandal. However, I daresay she harbours a particular affection for you.”
“She was rather persistent at the party.” He grimaced. “But I would rather think a marquess’s daughter as cunning as she appears to be would revel in the talk surrounding an event she hosted.”
Amelia laughed bitterly. “Unfortunately not. She was trying to appear sweet but a lady’s gift is to know when another lady is being rather snide.”
“I think that sounds much worse, that game of guessing, than the men’s outright insults. They accused me of several awful things.Rakewas not the worst of them. I believe that the consensus was that I have ruined you in… well, in unspeakable ways.”
The meaning trickled into Amelia’s expression, her realization dawning slowly, until he wished he had not said it at all.
