A Lady for a Duke

by Alexis Hall

“My dear, an accomplishment is inventing the hydraulic press or investigating the properties of nitrous oxide. It is not making a picture of a willow tree on cloth.” “Don’t you think that’s rather a matter of perspective?”

“The truth is, outside of sentimental novels, nobody looks at a lady’s companion at all.”

“A child who can’t even make it past the age of seven without drowning itself in some brook or other,” she would have said, “is likely to make a very annoying adult.”

“You are familiar with Latin, unafraid of guns, and unafraid of me. Are these usual qualities in a lady’s companion?” The look she cast him at that was oddly defiant. “I am also quite proficient at needlepoint.”

“In point of fact,” he went on, “I came rather to regret my stubbornness. But when one has made it to the halfway point of a spiral staircase, going on and going back become interchangeably unappealing.”

It was, she reflected, slightly horrible to be so noticed. And also… wonderful.

“Indeed. I am the worst of hosts. Can’t shoot my guests. Can’t swear at them properly.”

Oh God, this was a torment. Wanting so terribly to be seen, and terrified of what it might mean if she was.

It had to be loneliness. Or opium. Or some delirious combination of the two.

That was always the problem: Whatever you did, or did not do, whether it was just or the reverse, no matter how necessary it felt, life moved mercilessly forward.

“Yes,” returned Miss Carroll with a kind of dogged patience, “she’s doing something I understand to be fairly common when it comes to seventeen-year-olds and their guardians. She’s lying to you.”

And, oh God, she was close—he could have counted the shadows between her lashes, the tiny curls that clustered at her brow, the freckles across the bridge of her nose only half-concealed beneath a dusting of powder.

He liked her. He thought she was—what was it—quick and kind and bold. He thought she was beautiful. And… he wanted to kiss her. He wanted to kiss her.

“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.”

A subtle motion, but certain too, changing the alignment of their pressed-together bodies just enough that the fresh places of their touching lit up like undreamed constellations.

He gazed at her, the sky in his eyes—grey and grey and grey forever.

Was it not enough to let me believe you dead? Why would you come back? How many times must I mourn you?”

“And now you would reprimand me? For grieving you? For loving you in the first place? For beginning to love you again?”

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

If only he had trusted her. And listened to his heart, instead of to his hurt.

There is more between us than the rudiments of worldly expectation. My soul calls to yours and yours to mine, and that will never change.”

“Please don’t leave me again,” he whispered. “I think I could learn to live without you, but I have no wish to.”

Badger cleared his throat. “Darling Loubear, saying may I ask doesn’t always make something sound polite.”

“Novels.” Somehow Lady Marleigh contrived to make the word sound deeply ominous. “They teach us to make heroes from villains.”

“I… I don’t want to hurt you.” “Gracewood”—she could not help the sharpness of her tone—“we used to wrestle and fight with swords. You think because I’m a woman I am suddenly weak?”

“It’s nothing I haven’t seen before. You were sick on my boots once.” “Yes, but I didn’t know then.” “Know what?” “Who you were. How I felt about you.”

“Suffering isn’t something we earn, Gracewood. It’s something we bear.”

“I’ve had a very difficult evening. It is unfair of you to try and use logic against me.”

“As far as I’m concerned, depravity applies only to acts committed without consent or without care.”

“This body can fight. And ride. And sew. And play the pianoforte badly. It is mine. It deserves any carnal acts I want to indulge with it. And if you want to find it beautiful, Gracewood, I will let you. Because I don’t see why it can’t be.”

“What do you want to hear? That I’ve imagined it? Countless times? You beneath me, with your legs around me, wearing nothing but your pretty shoes?”

“I die for your freckles,” he murmured.

There you were with your wild hair, and your beloved eyes, and I thought, here is a woman I could be obsessed with until the end of my days.

But still. What a marvel it was. What freedom. To be a woman unabashedly in love beneath a multitude of stars.

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.”