A Lady for a Duke

by Alexis Hall

“If putting pictures on cloth was the province of men, you may be quite sure it would be hailed as the miracle of the age.”

“What other options? Men and women are permitted to interact in three ways: marriage, ruination, and polite indifference.”

It was, she reflected, slightly horrible to be so noticed. And also… wonderful. Except it wasn’t her he was noticing. It was some other woman. A woman he’d never known, who’d never hurt him.

“He was the joy of my life.”

Because now she was trapped. Trapped between the lie her past had forced her to live and the lie that had made her future possible.

He would have given her anything. Everything. For nothing but the light in her velvet eyes.

I do not see how anyone, man or woman, with whom you had shared such a bond, could look on you now or ever with anything but… but love. And that is how your friend would think of you now were—were things other than they are. I am sure of it.”

Please don’t think I put him on a pedestal. I saw him as well as he saw me. He just… helped me live, when nobody had let me before. And you are helping me remember.”

It had never occurred to him to question beauty before. He’d always assumed it was obvious, fine eyes or a trim figure, rosebud lips or hair of whatever colour was currently fashionable. But it wasn’t. It was details. The way you could wait forever for the dimple to appear beside someone’s mouth, unable to imagine ever growing tired of seeing it.

Tell me you feel nothing for me, and I will honour it without question. But I will not yield to less.”

A word from you, a glance, and I would lay all I have—all I am, or at the very least what’s left of me—at your feet.

“Forgive my language, but”—his eyes were as steady on hers as the clasp upon her wrist, his mouth suddenly full of smiles—“fuck the world. I will change it for you if I have to.”

“Sometimes it is the most vital thing in the world to be selfish.”

“I am not sure love unshown is really love at all. What good does caring for a person do if you’re never there when they need you?”

So instead let me simply tell you that I love you. I love you with the unfading flame of my friendship. With every drop of ardour in my blood. I love you with my soul, as some reserve their faith for absent gods. I love you as I believe in what is right and hope for what is good. I love you with everything I am and ever was—and if you will only let me, with every day that comes, and every self that I could ever be.”

“I love you. I have, in some form, for as long as I’ve known you. You are my joy and my truth and my heart and my dreams. You are the best of me.”

“We are the best of each other.”