Page 30 of The Duke's Promise to Her Child
“I have also heard it is very scandalous. Not even Lord Byron will dance it.”
He smiled. “Byron has other problems, besides what dance is proper these days. However, that you should appear alarmed is a very good tactic. A gentleman likes a modest lady.”
“I am genuinely alarmed,” she said. “I did not know that was what was being danced in ballrooms these days. It has been some years since I last attended any assemblies or balls of any kind.”
“Oh,” he said. “Well, that we shall have to fix. I did not realize. Did Lord Vale not take you to any ball?”
“No,” she said and looked away. “Huxley and I did not attend balls together.” He had attended balls on his own, of course. He had done a lot of things on his own. But she wasn’t going to tell Gideon that. She wasn’t going to tell him anything about Huxley he did not need to know.
It was better that way. For both of them.
“Well, more is the pity. He certainly ought to have. If I had a wife as fair as you I would…” he waved a hand. “Never mind. There were no private assemblies you went to together?”
“We went nowhere together,” she said, the coldness creeping into her voice so suddenly she could not control it.
“I see.”
He stopped moving and simply looked at her. Her outburst warranted an explanation, she knew this.
“It was not a happy marriage, Gideon,” she said. “I have not shed any tears over him.”
She saw his Adam’s apple move.
“I suppose that makes me a terrible person. One ought to grieve one’s husband. But why grieve?”
“One ought. But only if the husband was worth grieving over. There are some who enter our lives with the ability to blind us to who they really are — and then when we are with them it becomes painful to see the truth. As though one had entered the courtship in darkness, and then a candle was lit. And suddenly one saw who one had really married.”
He was not talking about Huxley. He did not know him nor did he know anything about their marriage beyond what she had revealed, which was little.
He was talking about his own wife. It was very clear. She wanted to ask him about her. Ask him what had really happened. How a man as perceptive and sharp-witted as he was could have found himself so thoroughly deceived. But she did not ask.
They were closer now — much closer than she had ever thought they might be — but that was a step too far.
“It can be a blessing, to see people for who they truly are,” she said instead. “It may be painful at the time, but it teaches one a lesson. A lesson in what one will tolerate from another person. You might think me formidable, but I simply know what it is I need and want now. Especially now that I have a daughter. That is why I must take great care in whom I wed for he will be a father to her.”
He nodded. “I can understand that. The relationship between a father and child can be a difficult one. Mine suffered too. My father often wanted me to be someone I was not — more serious, more dedicated to my studies, more like him. We had a falling out over it. Your father was the one who helped me.”
“Was he?” she said. She always loved hearing stories about her father that cast him in a good light.
“Yes. I had hinted to him once that my father and I did not get along, and he encouraged me to tell him why. Eventually he made me see that it would be far better to sit with my father and speak honestly about the troubles between us, rather than allow the distance to deepen. I was grateful for it as it allowed me to reconcile with my father. Our last few years together were considerably more warm than they would have otherwise been. Your father was a wonderful man.”
Her eyes watered immediately and her lip quivered. She stepped back, dropping her hands.
“Thank you for the lessons today,” she said. “They were valuable. But I feel rather unwell. Would you mind terribly if we finished for now?”
“Not at all,” he said. “Please do. I shall collect you tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” she said, still willing the tears to stay where they were.
“Yes. Now that you have told me you have not danced in public for some time, we must remedy that. I will take you to Almack’s.”
“Almack’s,” she said, with a laugh that now overpowered her urge to cry. “I have not been there in so long I wonder if they will let me through the door. I haven’t a voucher.”
“I know one of the lady patronesses. We will get in.”
With that, he bowed in the drawing room and departed. Leaving her perplexed in more ways than one once more.
CHAPTER 13
