Finally, he found her in the music room, standing alone at the tall window, her hands braced on the sill.
“Iris,” he said.
She did not turn. “I thought you would be approving a marriage contract by now.”
“Your faith in my speed is touching.”
“Your ability to demolish propriety never ceases to amaze.” Her voice wobbled on the word ‘propriety.’ She pressed her lips together, as if she could will them steady.
He crossed the carpet, slowly, giving her room to tell him to leave. She did not speak again until he was only a pace away.
“Do you know what is most intolerable about that girl’s little speech?” she asked. “It is not that she repeated what I already knew. It is that they are not entirely wrong.”
Blaise waited, unsure of what to do or how to comfort her.
Iris drew in a breath. “I did choose to remain at Hentley when you came to London. I knew, of course, that it was improper to share a roof with a man to whom I am not related. But I stayed, and I slept in that house, as though I had any right. Because I could not bear to let it go. Because if I did, then what have the last seven years been for? What have I been for?”
Her voice frayed on the last word. She bit it back with visible effort.
“You have been a woman keeping herself and her household afloat by will and intelligence alone. You have been a daughtershielding her father from the consequences of his naiveté. You have been?—”
“Stop.” She finally turned to face him. Her eyes held some rage within them. “Do not attempt to elevate me into some tragic heroine. It only makes the fall steeper when the world points and says, ‘Look at the widow who clings to a house that is not hers. Look at the woman who shares a roof with a rake and pretends she does it out of duty.’”
He heard it then: beneath the anger, there was a deep-rooted shame.
“Iris,” he said, more roughly than he intended. “I am tired. Very tired. Of hearing you talk of humiliation as if it is the only language you speak.”
Her brows snapped together. “Youare tired?”
“Yes.” Anger gave his words a precise edge. “Every time you take a step toward what you want, you yank yourself back and flog yourself for daring. You live at the mercy of imaginary tribunals in other people’s heads.”
“You heard them. The tribunals are very real, Blaise.”
“They exist,” he said. “But you grant them power, and you could choose otherwise.”
She stared at him, breathing too fast. “Choose what? To be shameless? To become exactly what they say I am?”
He thought, very briefly, of Daniel, of his smug, careful manipulations. Of noblemen hiding their bastards and their sins behind wives of spotless reputation. Of Marcus, hating himself for a stain that was never his.
“No,” Blaise said. “To become something that has nothing to do with them. To live by a code that is yours. To decide that your worth is not bound up in a house, or in whether little girls in rose gowns gasp when they hear you sleep under the same roof as me.”
Her throat moved. “That is very poetic for a man who just humiliated that girl at his own party.”
“She deserved a lesson,” he said without apology. “And so, it seems, do you.”
Her eyes flashed, but she blushed a bright red. “I am not a girl.”
He took a step closer, invading the space she used as armor. “You are something much more dangerous than that.”
He saw the quick drop to his mouth and back, the way color rose in her cheeks even as her spine stayed taut. That dangerousness was not about gossip; it was about the way she reacted when he pushed her. The way a part of her leaned toward the darkness he offered as if it were warmth.
“Come with me,” he said.
She went still. “To where?”
Blaise did not touch her yet. He turned towards the door and walked. After a small infinity of heartbeats, he heard her footsteps behind him.
They walked through the corridors, up the side staircase that avoided the main sweep, until he stopped at a familiar door. Her shoulders tightened almost imperceptibly. Blaise opened the door without saying a word.
