Chapter 14
The following evening, Elizabeth stood before a floor-length bevel mirror as maids bustled about her chambers and helped prepare her for the ball.
Half of her curls had been upswept, held in place by gleaming butterfly combs, while the other strands had been left loose about her shoulders.
She cocked her head, hardly recognizing herself.
For in this instance, she could almost believe she was beautiful.
“There is no one more magnificent than you, Elizabeth. In mind, spirit, and beauty.”
Her body warmed in remembrance of the words he’d rasped against her, a flush stealing over her pale skin.
Crispin’s embrace had shown her that she was beautiful. That he desired her.
Three servants came rushing over, a satin sapphire gown held out between them, pulling her back from her wicked thoughts.
“Here we are, Your Grace,” Calista, the cheerful young girl who’d been assigned the role of lady’s maid, announced.
Elizabeth lifted her arms up, and they drew the article into place, knocking her glasses forward on her nose. The satin settled about her ankles in a noisy whir and a remarkable fit.
As the other maids rushed off, Calista hummed the haunting melody of Scarborough Fair and made quick work of the pearl buttons down the back of the gown.
Elizabeth pushed her spectacles back into place.
And then froze.
“Oh, my,” she whispered, her voice breathless.
Butterflies made of diamonds adorned each softly puffed sleeve of her gown. The crystalline creatures had been intermittently affixed along the pleated skirts of the satin masterpiece. The delicate creations glimmered in the candle’s glow, casting a prism of rainbow light off the satin wallpaper.
With reverent fingers, Elizabeth grazed the lone butterfly along the deep, lace-trimmed bodice.
“Beautiful, is it not?” Calista remarked. Her eyes twinkling, she leaned forward, holding Elizabeth’s gaze in the mirror. “His Grace had it commissioned himself. He brought in only the best modiste and instructed her on how the gown must be designed. Insisted on butterflies.”
Emotion wadded in her throat. “It is beautiful,” she agreed, a sheen of tears glossing her eyes. All these years, she’d believed she hadn’t mattered to Crispin. That he hadn’t remembered the memories they’d shared and had instead replaced them with newer ones, with newer women. And he’d remembered… everything.
“There has only ever been you.”
A lone tear wound a trail down her cheek. All the gossip, all the stories, had been just that, nothing more than stories.
Calista’s smile slipped, and she paused in midbuttoning. “Here, Your Grace. None of that,” she chided. “Can’t have you marring the kohl under your eyes.” Humming a more cheerful tune, she resumed buttoning the back of Elizabeth’s gown. “There,” Calista announced and backed away, beaming like a proud mama. “You are ready.”
There were never less-true words spoken than those three. A village merchant’s daughter-turned-finishing school instructor, she was more suited to serve trays to the assembled guests than welcome them as their hostess.
Elizabeth eyed herself in the crystal mirror, angling her head sideways as she considered her reflection.
And yet… with the Ferguson diamonds heavy about her neck and the ethereal masterpiece Crispin had designed, she might as well have been any other debutante who’d left Mrs. Belden’s Finishing School groomed for the role of duchess.
It was something that, as a girl of seven and ten, she’d never fully considered the implications of.
But with Crispin at your side, and you both happy, filling each other’s lives with love, your future can be anything you wish it to be.
“I swear I’m going to marry you one day, Elizabeth Brightly.”
Laughing, Elizabeth didn’t pick her gaze up from the lone ant carrying a crumb larger than his own size. “You’re silly, Crispin Ferguson,” she murmured, pressing her face closer to the earth. “You cannot marry me.”
“And why not?” he demanded, the affront in his four-and-ten-year-old voice bringing her gaze up. “I can marry whomever I wish.”
Elizabeth rolled her eyes. “No, you cannot. Your mother wouldn’t let you. You have to marry a fancy lady like Lady Dorinda, who curtsies real nicely and doesn’t track mud through your halls.”
“We shall see, Elizabeth Brightly.”
In the end, the child she’d been had also seen the impossibility of what he’d ventured. But why had it been impossible? She stood stock-still, unbreathing, unmoving, as she confronted her own cowardice. For she had allowed the duchess to dictate their future. Elizabeth had been told her worth was nothing, and Crispin’s future and happiness had been hung upon her shoulders. But ultimately, Elizabeth had left. Ultimately, she’d made a decision, for them both, that had affected both their futures. Oh, all these years, she’d assumed the role of the wounded party because of what she’d overheard… and the threat made by the then duchess.
But that did not take away from the truth—she had run.
All the air left her on a dizzying whoosh, and she briefly closed her eyes and fought for her bearing.
Crispin had been correct. They had been husband and wife and friends. And as such, she should have communicated to him what she’d heard so they could decide on their future—together.
In this moment, she acknowledged the truth she’d long denied herself—she’d been afraid. Afraid of what decision he would make, and so leaving had been as much for her as for him.
In her leaving, she’d robbed him of a decision and spared herself the possibility of hearing his rejection.
“Your Grace?” Calista’s hesitant whisper slashed across her musings, bringing Elizabeth’s eyes snapping open. “The duke is ready belowstairs.”
“Of course,” Elizabeth acknowledged, her tongue thick.
She drew in several steadying breaths. The past could not be undone. Only their future remained now, and what came of it was what they would now decide as husband and wife—just as it should have been decided in the past.
After pinching her pale cheeks in a bid to bring color back to them, she smoothed her palms along her skirts. It was time.
A short while later, Elizabeth found her way through the Huntington halls and belowstairs to where Crispin waited.
One hand resting on the stair post, Crispin reclined against it with a regal languidness, his other hand cradling his timepiece.
She paused, and all the earlier pain and frustration eased from her chest.
And how very good it was to again smile without fear of recrimination or scolding for having a smile that was anything but the carefully measured polite one insisted upon by Mrs. Belden.
Crispin looked up. The chain slipped from his fingers and sent the watch fob twisting back and forth, forgotten. “Elizabeth,” he whispered.
Nervously clasping the rail, she glided down the steps, her skin heating several shades as he watched her descend.
How singularly odd to share the most intimate parts of oneself and to lay bare before another, only to find oneself wholly uncertain in the light of a new day. “Crispin,” she greeted when she reached him.
“You are…” His gaze worked a path over her like an intimate touch. “Breathtaking.”
He extended his elbow, and Elizabeth slipped her arm through his, joining them and allowing him to lead her to the ballroom. The crystal chandeliers, all lit with long, tapered candles, illuminated the white Italian marble floors and Doric columns. As they walked, all the fear left her, replaced with a feeling of absolute rightness in being with him.
“My mother is not attending,” he announced in somber tones.
Of course, reality invariably intruded.
Elizabeth stiffened.
“I am sorry,” she said softly as they took their place at the top of the sweeping double staircase that overlooked the ballroom.
“I’m not,” he said simply, drawing her knuckles to his lips, and they tingled under his fleeting caress. “If she cannot accept you as my wife, she has no place here.”
Warmth swept her at that devotion, along with a stinging regret. For she’d never wanted to come between him and his family or his dreams. But she’d also always proven selfish where Crispin was concerned—she loved him and wanted him in her life.
Nearly three hours later, the last of a long line of guests had been received and announced until the once cavernous space was filled to overflowing with satin-clad ladies and elegantly attired gentlemen.
Around the ballroom, wistful ladies covetously eyed Crispin, women of all ages but born to Crispin’s station who’d gladly trade her for the role of duchess.
None had given her the cut direct.
At best, she’d been received warmly by some guests.
At worst, bald curiosity had been her other greeting.
For all intents and purposes, the evening should be… nay, could be considered a success.
And yet…
A frisson rolled along her spine. The unshakable unease had dogged her the moment she’d descended the stairs to find Crispin waiting, replaced only by a brief calm.
Her fingers tightened reflexively upon the crystal flute, and she took a sip of the warm brew.
“You never asked how I found you,” Crispin murmured at her side.
The melodic baritone rose above the din of the orchestra’s lively reel. Blinking slowly, Elizabeth glanced up.
“I figured if you’d truly wished to find me, a runner could have easily managed the task.”
He chuckled. “Is that what you think?” Crispin teased a finger down her jaw. “You underestimate your ability to hide and my ability to find you, madam.”
They held each other’s eyes over her glass.
“I hired runners and private detectives. You were gone without a trace, Elizabeth Ferguson.” His expression darkened. “And you would have remained so had it not been for a chance meeting between myself and a young woman.” Crispin glanced to the front of the ballroom.
Puzzling her brow, Elizabeth followed his stare to the striking couple who wound their way down the stairs and through a throng of guests. Peers and servants melted aside in an indication of the couple’s wealth and power.
Elizabeth squinted, focusing not on the tall, powerful gentleman in full command of the ballroom, but rather, the woman at his side. There was something so very familiar. Something…
She gasped, dimly registering Crispin’s rescue of her champagne flute as the late-to-arrive guests stopped before them.
“Elizabeth, may I present Their Graces, the Duke and Duchess of Hampstead.”
She pressed a hand to her mouth, and with a loss of proper salutations and deference for the distinguished guest that would have given Mrs. Belden a fit of the vapors, Elizabeth fixed on the woman at his side.
“Rowena?” she asked, a question in her own voice as she touched a hand to her breast. She quickly found her footing and dropped a belated curtsy. “Your Grace,” she greeted the chestnut-haired nobleman at her husband’s side.
Lord Hampstead flashed a crooked grin and gave a wave of his hand. “My wife has that effect on people.”
“Elizabeth,” Rowena greeted with the composure of a woman born to her station and not one who just one year ago had toiled alongside Elizabeth at Mrs. Belden’s Finishing School. Rowena looped her arm through Elizabeth’s and then hesitated, casting a glance over at her husband. “Will you gentlemen be all right without us for a bit?” she asked, the teasing in her tone contradicted by the worry in her gaze.
The Duke of Hampstead bowed his head.
As both gentlemen fell into easy discourse, Rowena led Elizabeth off, steering them past nosy guests straining for a glimpse of them.
Rowena steered them to the farthest corner of the room. The floor-length arched windows at her back overlooked the London streets, the pillar a barrier that offered some privacy.
All earlier hint of her smile faded. “I am so sorry,” Rowena whispered, gathering Elizabeth’s hands in her own. “We all have our secrets, and I inadvertently revealed yours to…” The other woman glanced back over her shoulder, peeking around the column in the direction of Crispin and Hampstead. “Your husband.” Her voice faded to a barely there whisper that Elizabeth strained to detect above the noise of the room.
“It is fine,” she assured. Four days earlier, she would have had a very different response to the other woman’s worry. “How…?”
“I accompanied my husband’s ward on a lecture at the Royal Museum given by His Grace. He spoke at length on the domestication of a butterfly.” Rowena wrung her hands together. “Many scoffed at the idea of such a feat.” She held Rowena’s eyes. “But I’d seen it done once before.”
A memory trickled in.
“No!” Elizabeth cried. Rushing through the gardens, she put herself in front of a circle of students. “Do not crush it. The butterfly is quite resilient. He or she can live even outside of their natural habitat…
“Me.”
“You,” Rowena confirmed. “You’d rescued that injured monarch from Mrs. Belden’s gardens and kept the creature in your rooms, under a glass.” The other woman had known that. “After the lecture, when introductions were performed, I mentioned your efforts… and His Grace asked for your name.”
Her heart sped up.
That was what had brought them back together—a matter of chance, and fate. An exchange between two members of the peerage that had come not in a ballroom, but at a lecture hall, when the unlikeliest of presenters, a duke, should be approached by a duchess.
Rowena wetted her lips. “You are… certain you are safe? You wish to be here of your own volition?”
In other words, had Crispin forced her cooperation? “Crispin is never one who’d force any person to do something they do not wish,” she said quietly for the other woman’s benefit. Even as he’d sought her cooperation, he’d not threatened her future to bring about her agreement.
Rowena smiled wistfully. “You love him.”
Elizabeth’s gaze went across the ballroom to where Crispin stood conversing with the Duke of Hampstead. “I do.” She always had.
As if he felt her eyes on him, Crispin looked up. From over the heads of the twirling dance partners, he winked.
She grinned, a giddy lightness suffusing her breast and making her look away. As she returned her attention to the lone friend she’d made at Mrs. Belden’s, a pair at the entrance of the ballroom snagged her notice from the corner of her eye.
All moments of seeming perfection ultimately ended.
Oh, blast.
“The mother?” Rowena murmured.
Elizabeth started, realizing she’d spoken aloud. “You know something of it?” she asked, her stomach churning.
“I know a lot of it,” the other woman confessed. “In my case, ‘the father.’ He… sent me away.” Rowena hugged her arms about her middle.
“Isn’t that the way of it?” Elizabeth murmured. There were expectations for vaunted heirs, and never did the world allow for an interloper.
The dowager duchess swept down the staircase with the regality of a queen gracing the company of her lesser subjects. For the first time, Elizabeth allowed herself to consider the gentleman at the dowager duchess’ side.
“Oh, my God.” It slipped out a strangled prayer. There could be no mistaking the Terry crimson curls, the spectacles, and pale skin. Just as there could be no doubting that the gentleman’s presence on this particular night, of all the nights before it, signified only one thing.
The duchess and her guest reached Crispin and said something.
A moment later, he was following the pair back up the stairs and disappearing from the ballroom.
Unwittingly, she reached out and found purchase in Rowena’s fingers.
“Elizabeth?” her friend urged, squeezing Elizabeth’s suddenly moist hand. “What is it?” The query came as if down a long, empty corridor.
“It is my uncle,” she managed, her voice faint. The absentee guardian, returned from the grave and on the arm of Crispin’s mother, could only ever mean one thing, and that would never be good.
With Rowena calling after her, Elizabeth started quickly across the room, this moment feeling very much like another night nearly ten years ago.