Page 54 of The Duke’s Hidden Runaway Bride

“Ophelia,” he said hesitantly.

She turned towards him.

“I have no right to give permission,” he said. “I understand that now. But if you still want your father’s blessing, you have it. For what it is worth, and without condition.”

Nothing between them was mended, not yet, and no promise had been made that it ever fully would be. Still, she thought, a beginning was no small thing.

“I want it,” she said.

Her father bent and kissed her forehead. When he straightened, he offered his hand to Adrian, who freed one to shake it. “Honour her.”

“I will.”

Ophelia tightened her hold upon Adrian’s other hand.

“And listen to her,” Josiah added.

Adrian’s crooked smile appeared. “She generally makes that unavoidable.”

Lady Daventry reached them next. The crowd watched her almost as closely as they had watched the proposal.

“My party appears to have improved itself beyond anything I planned,” she said.

Adrian kissed her cheek. “You always said I lacked ambition.”

“I did not mean you to display it all in one evening.”

She looked at Ophelia. For an instant uncertainty passed between them, the memory of every cost Lady Daventry had named.

Then the Marchioness held out both hands.

“Welcome to the family, my dear.”

Ophelia accepted them.

Lady Daventry kissed her cheek before turning to the company.

“I cannot imagine why the musicians have stopped. We have an engagement to celebrate and a Twelfth Night cake to cut.”

The words gave the room its instructions. Conversation rose at once, laughter tangling with congratulations while fashionable opinion quietly rearranged itself. Those who had arrived eager to witness Ophelia’s humiliation now came forward to admire her courage, her gown, and, most of all, her bangles.

Miss Pettibone emerged from the company in tears and caught both Ophelia and Adrian in an indiscriminate embrace.

“I knew it,” she declared. “From the very first. The moment His Grace became entangled in the wool.”

“You said it was the holly,” Adrian reminded her.

“The wool came before the holly. I knew it twice.”

Sir Hugh rescued her before she could explain further. Lady Elise remained a few paces away, one hand pressed to her mouth and tears bright in her sharp eyes.

Ophelia went to her. “You were right,” she said. “That the door would open.”

Elise drew her into an embrace. “Your mother knew it would. I wish she was here to see you, dearest girl. Shirin would have been so very proud.”

For a little while, Ophelia allowed the room to claim her. She accepted congratulations, endured the transparent revisions of former critics, and related the history and provenance of her mother’s bangles to a covetous duchess who all but ordered her long-suffering husband to set sail for India immediately to source some for her.

Adrian stayed near without hovering. Whenever she looked for him, she found him watching, but he did not rescue her from conversations she could now manage herself.