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"Your aunt saw to a great many things that were not hers to see to."

"I am not polished, Julian. I am not a woman who has spent her Seasons perfecting the art of being observed. I am a woman who knows how to read a soil report and argue about juniper taxonomy." She looked down at her napkin. "I am afraid I will be found wanting."

The words came out smaller than she intended. She had not meant to say them at all. They had been sitting behind her teeth since the invitations arrived, and the quiet of the morning room, the steam from the coffee, and the ordinary intimacy of sharing breakfast with her husband had loosened them without her permission.

Julian set down his toast. He looked at her across the table, and whatever easy warmth had been in his face a moment ago shifted into a deeper, serious focus—the kind of look that made the morning room feel smaller.

"Adelaide."

She raised her eyes to his.

"You are the most brilliant woman I have ever known," he said simply, as though stating a fact about the weather. "No grand title and no shallow opinion of the ton can change that. You are capable, you are sharp, and you are entirely yourself, which is more than half of London's elite can claim."

She opened her mouth, then closed it.

"I would never have you be anyone else," he said. "Not for Lady Calliwell, not for the patronesses of Almack's, not for the entire assembled peerage of England."

Adelaide's fingers released the napkin. It lay crumpled on her lap, and she did not retrieve it.

"You are very certain."

"I am."

"What if they disagree with your assessment?"

"Then they are fools, and I do not trouble myself with the opinions of fools."

A laugh escaped her—small, surprised, and involuntary. "You cannot simply dismiss the entire ton as fools."

"I can, and I frequently do. It is one of the privileges of my rank."

"That is arrogant."

"That is efficient." He picked up his coffee again. "Shall I send our acceptance to Lady Calliwell?"

Adelaide looked at the gilded invitation lying on the table between their plates. The embossed crest gleamed in the morning light: Lady Calliwell's annual fall ball. The event that would place her before every watchful eye in London and declare her the Duchess of Ravensmere for all to see and judge.

She thought of Charlotte's words: Expect something. Anything. Even if it frightens you.

"Yes," she said. "Send the acceptance."

Julian inclined his head. "I shall have Danvers dispatch it this afternoon."

He returned to his correspondence. Adelaide picked up her teacup and drank. The tea had gone lukewarm, but she did not mind; the warmth that spread through her chest owed nothing to the cup.

She looked at Julian across the table. He read his letter, his brow furrowed over some matter of estate business, his coffee growing cold beside his elbow. The morning light fell across his hands, highlighting the thin scars on his right knuckles. She had stopped noticing them as strange; they had become part of his presence, as familiar as the silver at his temples or the way he held his pen.

I would never have you be anyone else.

She turned back to her tea and said nothing more. But the invitation lay on the table between them, gilded and gleaming, and somewhere beyond the morning room windows, London waited.

"What does a duchess wear to her first ball?"

Adelaide stood before the open wardrobe in her dressing room, her fingers trailing along the row of silk and velvet dresses that hung in perfect order. The dressing room smelled of cedar and lavender, and the afternoon light from the tall window caught the fabric in rich folds of color: emerald green, midnight blue, ivory silk with gold thread, and burgundy velvet trimmed with seed pearls along the neckline.

Every dress was exquisite. Every dress felt daunting.

She had counted eleven of them—eleven dresses, all commissioned from London's premier dressmakers on Julian's private order before she had even arrived at Ravensmere House. She had not selected a single one, nor had she been consulted on fabric, cut, or trimming. They had simply appeared in her wardrobe the day after her arrival, hung in rows like soldiers awaiting inspection, each more magnificent than the last.