Read Chapter 12: A Ball and a Blunder

The ballroom was a furnace of gaslight and gossip, the air thick with the scent of hot wax and wilting gardenias. Eleanor had been claimed for three dances in a row by elderly lords with wandering eyes, and her slippers were already pinched with fatigue. She was calculating the precise moment she could plead a headache and retreat when a familiar voice cut through the din.

“Miss Wentworth. I believe this next dance is mine.”

Ashworth stood before her, immaculate in black, his dark hair brushed back from a face that revealed nothing. It was not a question. He extended his gloved hand, and the orchestra, as if on cue, struck up the opening bars of a waltz.

Eleanor’s heart seized. She had avoided him since the library. Since his ledger. Since his terrible, kind eyes had told her he admired her for hiding something. But to refuse a duke in public was a social suicide she could not afford. Not with her mother watching from the chaperones’ row, already beaming at the sight of them together.

She placed her hand in his. “Your Grace.”

His palm was warm through the kid leather, his grip assured as he drew her into the whirl of the floor. They moved in silence for a full circuit, the other dancers a blur of silk and diamonds around them. Eleanor kept her eyes fixed on his cravat pin, a single pearl, and tried to breathe.

“You dance well for a woman who dislikes attention,” he murmured.

“I never said I disliked attention.”

“You didn’t have to. You’ve been scanning the exits since I approached.”

Damn him. He noticed everything. Eleanor forced a smile. “Perhaps I am simply eager for refreshment.”

“Or perhaps you are afraid of what I might ask you.”

The waltz turned, and Eleanor caught a glimpse of Lady Bracknell staring at them with undisguised envy. Mrs. Wentworth, from her post, looked ready to weep with joy. If only they knew. If only any of them knew that she was dancing with the man who kept her name in a ledger of suspects, who had catalogued her secrets like a lepidopterist pinning butterflies to a board.

“I have been reading your column,” he said.

Eleanor’s foot stumbled. She recovered, but not before Ashworth’s hand tightened on her waist.

“I beg your pardon?”

“The Ellery column. I told you I was studying it. I have been very thorough.” His voice was low, almost intimate, pitched for her ears alone. “It is extraordinary, really. The market insight is sharp enough to make a fortune. But the recent piece—the one recommending railway bonds—it was off. Sloppy. As if the author were not writing from conviction but from instruction.”

Eleanor’s blood went cold. “I am afraid I do not follow financial matters, Your Grace.”

“No?” He turned her smoothly, and the chandeliers spun overhead. “Then I suppose you would not know that the Great Northern bonds have collapsed. That a broker named Finch has vanished along with a substantial portion of the investors’ money. That the anonymous Mr. Ellery, whose words urged those investors onward, has become the subject of considerable—shall we say—interest.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I find it curious that on the very day I mentioned Finch to you in my library, you paled as though you had seen a ghost. And because I find it curious that a young American woman, newly arrived in London, should know so much about a railway scandal that has not yet reached the society pages.”

Eleanor’s pulse hammered. The music swelled, and she made a misstep, her heel catching the hem of her gown. She stumbled against him, and the word escaped before she could stop it.

“Your Grace—I mean—Mr. Ashworth.”

His eyes sharpened. The mistake was unforgivable. A debutante, fresh from the colonies, should not have known—should not have needed to know—whether to call him Duke or Lord. She had used his title, his *full* correct title, with the ease of someone who had studied his affairs.

The waltz ended. Ashworth did not release her hand.

“Miss Wentworth,” he said, his voice now carrying a blade beneath its velvet, “I wonder if you might spare me a moment in the adjoining salon.”

It was not a request. He led her through the crowd, past the chaperones, past her mother’s beaming face, into a small antechamber lined with gilded mirrors. He shut the door behind them, and the roar of the ballroom faded to a dull hum.

“Tell me,” he said, turning to face her. “Are you the mysterious Mr. Ellery?”

The words hung in the air like a verdict. Eleanor’s throat closed. She could see the calculation in his eyes, the certainty already hardening behind his questions. He did not believe in coincidences, this duke who kept ledgers of suspects.

“No,” she heard herself say. “I am not.”

“Then why did you call me ‘Your Grace’ with such precise familiarity? You have been in London for weeks. In all that time, I have never once heard you address me correctly. You have pointedly *avoided* my title, in fact, as though it burned you to use it. And tonight, in a moment of distraction, you spoke it perfectly. As if you had reason to know my affairs intimately.”

Eleanor’s mind raced. She could not confess. She could not run. He would not believe a simple denial, and tears would not sway him. She needed a story. A story that explained everything he suspected while directing his attention elsewhere.

She took a breath, and the lie surfaced, slick and ready.

“It is not me,” she said. “It is my brother.”

Ashworth’s brow furrowed. “Your brother?”

“I have a half-brother. He is—he is an invalid. He cannot leave the house, cannot write his own letters, cannot even hold a pen for long. But he is brilliant, Mr. Ashworth. Brilliant beyond imagining. He has been writing the Ellery column for years. I merely act as his hands. I deliver his letters, I read the financial news, I study the markets so I can report back to him. I am his eyes and ears in the world he cannot inhabit.”

The words tumbled out, faster now, building a scaffolding of fiction around the truth. “I know of your affairs because I have studied them. I have studied everything, everyone, so that I might serve him better. That is why I know your title. That is why I know about the bonds. That is why I—that is why I paled when you spoke of Finch. Because I recognised the name. Because I was afraid that my brother’s column had been used to hurt people. Because I love him, and I am terrified that he has been deceived.”

She stopped, breathless. Ashworth stared at her for a long, terrible moment. His face was unreadable, a mask of marble.

“Your brother,” he repeated slowly. “An invalid half-brother. Who has never been seen. Never been mentioned. Who exists only in your words, Miss Wentworth, at a moment when you have been caught in a lie.”

“It is the truth.”

“It is a story,” he said quietly. “And a rather convenient one. But I have spent my life reading men, Miss Wentworth. I have learned to distinguish a confession from a performance.” He stepped closer, and Eleanor’s back met the cool surface of a mirror. “You are not his hands. You are the mind. I have read your column—*seen* it, in my ledger—and I know that no invalid’s ghost wrote those words. You did.”

Eleanor shook her head, but the tears came, unbidden and hot. She fled. She snatched the door handle, wrenched it open, and ran through the ballroom, past the startled faces, past her mother’s cry of her name, past the crashing realisation that she had just given the duke every filament of thread she had spent weeks gathering.

She burst through the terrace doors into the cool night air, and the tears fell freely in the dark.