Page 95 of The Duke’s Hidden Duchess

Selina released Nathaniel’s arm at the balustrade and put both hands upon the cold stone. The night was cool after the heat of the ballroom, and it steadied her. She had spent nearly the whole of her composure and had a little left and meant to keep that little for the carriage. For a while she simply looked into the dark and let the roar of her own blood settle.

Nathaniel said nothing. He stood a little apart, giving her the space she had asked for without having to ask for it again.

“You need not stay out here with me,” she said at last. “Half of London is waiting inside to discover that it has always thought very well of us. You ought not miss the spectacle.”

“I think I can bear the loss.”

“I am poor company when I am collecting myself.”

“I know.”

She turned her head. “That was not an invitation to agree with me.”

“No. But we have established that I am occasionally truthful at inconvenient moments.”

That almost made her smile. Nathaniel remained where he was, and for a while the muffled noise from the ballroom washed over them. Then, without hurry, he came to stand beside her at the balustrade and looked out at the same dark.

He was very quiet.

Selina endured it for perhaps a minute. “You have said almost nothing since we came out here.”

“No.”

“A month ago, I should have read the silence as disapproval. I know better now. But I cannot read this particular silence, and I have grown accustomed to reading you.” She glanced at him. “I dislike being at a loss.”

“I am choosing my words.”

“That has never previously required quite so much silence.”

“These matter more.”

Something in his voice made her turn fully towards him. Nathaniel was looking down at his hands.

“There is something I want to say to you,” he said. “I have been assembling it since we came through those doors, and every version appears to become worse the longer I consider it.”

“Then perhaps you should stop considering it.”

He looked at her.

“You are making me nervous, Your Grace,” Selina said.

“Good. Then we are matched. I have not been this nervous since I asked you to marry me, and I did that badly, at dawn, in yesterday’s coat.”

“It answered.”

“Better than I deserved.”

He turned towards her. Selina waited.

“You said in there that, knowing everything, you would choose me again.”

“I would.”

“You defended me.”

“No,” Nathaniel said. “I loved you aloud. There is a difference.”

Selina went very still at the balustrade. He said nothing more. He had put the words down between them and left them there, without reaching after them to make them safer.