“His Grace has always been brooding, mind you, but… Well. I am merely asking you to show patience with him,” the marquess said.
“Patience?”
“Yes,” Kenneth said, and suddenly, a dark somber cloud took over his eyes.
“You know, Your Grace, ruin has a way of stripping a man bare—leaving nothing but the raw bones of who he is,” he added.
Genevieve blinked, taken aback by the shift in his cheerful demeanor.
“Your husband… That is where he found me,” he continued, “After my father’s death, I was broken. Our family name had been dragged through the dirt, and our so-called friends? They turned their backs the moment the first scandal broke.”
Genevieve gulped, the familiarity of his situation turning her throat dry.
“I thought the Duke came to gloat—he had every right to, after how much my family had ignored him before,” Kenneth went on, “But instead, he told meKenneth, they broke you because they feared you. Now rise, and let us remind them why. I have been standing at his side ever since.”
Genevieve stared at Kenneth, her brow furrowing as his words settled like stones in her chest.
She felt as though he had cracked open a door she had never noticed before, revealing a truth she wasn’t prepared to see.
“And he saved you,” she said softly, more to herself than to Kenneth. Her gaze dropped to her hands, twisting idly in her lap. “He didn’t have to—but he did.”
Kenneth tilted his head, a glimmer of something unreadable in his sharp eyes.
“No, he didn’t have to. The Duke doesn’t doanythinghe doesn’t want to, I assure you.”
Her lips pressed together as she absorbed this image of Wilhelm—as someone capable of lifting another from despair. Someone who gave his loyalty quietly, perhaps even reluctantly, but without condition once it was earned.
“And yet,” she murmured, looking back up, “he pretends he is nothing more than a shadow at the edge of everyone’s lives.”
Kenneth chuckled, though there was a knowing sadness to it. “Oh, he will always insist he is the villain of this story, but trust me, Your Grace—he is the man who stands in the fire when everyone else runs.”
Her chest tightened, an unfamiliar ache spreading through her.
“I wish…” She paused, as if the words might betray her, but she couldn’t stop them. “I wish he did not carry it all alone.”
Kenneth’s gaze softened. “Then perhaps you are exactly the person he needs, after all.”
The music began to slow, the waltz drawing to a close. Kenneth brought her into a graceful final turn before leading her off the floor, his hand lingering respectfully at her back.
“Thank you,” she said softly, meeting his gaze. “I had almost forgotten what it was like to enjoy a dance.”
“Then I consider my mission a success,” he replied with a grin. “Now, if you will excuse me, I must escape before Lady Granville decides to claim me for herself.”
Genevieve laughed, and Kenneth winked as he disappeared into the crowd, leaving her standing alone for the first time that evening.
Her smile faltered as reality crept back in, the whispers of the ton once again audible on the fringes of her awareness. Yet Kenneth’s words lingered in her mind, offering a small, flickering hope.
Perhaps Wilhelm’s distance was not a rejection of her, but of his own demons.
She glanced toward the ballroom entrance, half-expecting to see Wilhelm striding through it, his familiar dark gaze finding hers.
But he did not come.
“Allow me to say, Your Grace,” a woman with kind eyes and a gentle smile said half an hour later, “I was… apprehensive about approaching you.”
Genevieve tilted her head to the side, a curious glint in her eyes. “Apprehensive in what way, Madam?”
The woman swallowed, her cheeks flushing slightly. “I heard… Well, you know,” she stammered, her gaze darting away momentarily. “The rumors.”
