“The small ones. In the left drawer.”
“Your Grace?” Bessie’s voice came from a great distance. “You are crying.”
Violet stood. “I need to see His Grace.”
It had been six weeks since the arsenic poisoning, and Henry had lost more than a stone, and the waistcoat had been taken in twice by a tailor who had the good sense not to comment. But the sapphire pin was in its place, and his jaw was set with stubbornness.
“You do not have to do this,” she said from the doorway.
“I am aware.”
“Dr Bainbridge said—”
“Dr Bainbridge gets paid generously to say many things. I do not owe him my obedience.” He straightened and released the bureau. He did not tilt. She watched for it. “I am giving your sister a proper come out, and I am doing it on my feet.”
She crossed the room and adjusted his cravat, which did not need adjusting. “If you fall down in the middle of the ballroom, I will leave you on the floor.”
“Noted.”
“I will step over you and continue the evening.”
“I would expect nothing less.”
She looked up at him. His gaze went to the pin in her hair.
“You look beautiful,” he said.
“Thank you. For the pearl pin. For Primrose. For all of it.”
He covered her hand with his. “It is the least a duke can do for his wife who saved his life and gave him everything he could possibly want.”
“Everything?”
“Everything.”
He then turned to the bureau and picked up a box she had not noticed—long, narrow, covered in dark velvet with shiny hinges. He held it out to her.
She looked at him. He smiled at her. His eyes held warmth she never tired of.
Violet opened the box. Inside, against a bed of ivory silk, lay a necklace of seed pearls set in fine gold, each pearl matched to the next in size and lustre, the clasp worked into the shape of a small flower. It was the twin of the strand in her hair. A set.
“Henry.”
“Turn around.”
She turned. His fingers found the clasp at the back of her neck. They were not steady, the arsenic had taken the sureness from his hands, but they were warm, and when the pearls settled against her collarbone, she felt the weight of them.
She faced him again. “It is beautiful.”
He bent down and kissed her lips lightly. “You, my duchess, make them beautiful.”
The ballroom at Iredell House had not been opened since Margaret’s last evening, and the servants had worked tirelessly to bring it back to life. The chandeliers blazed. The orchestra was tuning in the gallery. The flowers—roses, white and pale pink, because Violet had forbidden foxglove—spilled from every surface. She had chosen each arrangement herself, standing in the flower market at dawn with Bessie holding the basket, because she was not yet ready to let another woman’s hands choose what went into the rooms of this house.
The guests had already begun to arrive when they descended the staircase together. Henry’s hand was at the small of her back.His pace was measured. She matched it without appearing to, close enough to catch him, far enough to preserve his pride.
She felt the whispers before she heard them. They moved through the room the way draughts move through old houses, touching everything. She had been the subject of whispers since the night Trowbridge had ruined her, and she had learned to carry them as she would a stone in her pocket. But tonight they were not only about her. They were about Henry who had not known a maid in his household had been the murderer.
Henry did not give them long. “Ladies and gentlemen.” His voice carried across the room with an authority that made her heart fill with pride. “Her Grace and I are delighted to welcome you this evening. It is my honour to present Miss Primrose Linton, who makes her formal entrance into Society under the patronage of the Duchess of Iredell.”
