No one else seemed to notice. William regaled the table with an amusing anecdote about Parliament, Lady Hammond flirted outrageously with the gentleman on her left, and the conversation flowed around the Duke’s unusual quietness like water around stone.
But Penelope noticed.
She watched the way his jaw tightened when Mrs. Russell asked after his recent travels. Observed how his fingers gripped his wine glass with unnecessary force when Lady Hammond made some coy remark about his reputation. Noted the shadows beneath his eyes that suggested sleep had been as elusive for him as it had been for her.
Something was wrong.
She could feel the certainty of it in her chest, heavy and insistent. Whatever distance he had placed between them, whatever had changed since last evening’s ball—it was not deliberate cruelty or calculated indifference.
He was troubled.
And despite every rational argument to the contrary, despite the voice in her head insisting she should remain uninvolved, Penelope found she could not simply ignore it.
When the ladies withdrew to the drawing room after dinner, leaving the gentlemen to their port and cigars, she made her excuses as quickly as propriety allowed. Caroline raised a questioning brow, but Penelope merely claimed a need for fresh air and slipped from the room before her sister could insist upon accompanying her.
The corridor leading back toward the dining room was blessedly empty, though she could hear masculine laughter echoing from behind the closed door. She hesitated, uncertainty warring with determination. This was improper. Seeking him out, approaching him privately—it violated every rule of decorum she had spent a lifetime observing.
Yet the memory of his face across the dinner table—drawn, distant, somehow diminished—propelled her forward.
The gentlemen were beginning to emerge, moving toward the drawing room where card tables had been arranged. Penelope pressed herself into the shadows of a recessed doorway, heart hammering as she waited. William passed first, deep in conversation with the baronet. Then Lord Hammond, already slightly foxed if his unsteady gait was any indication.
Finally, the Duke appeared.
He walked alone, his expression carved from granite, his eyes fixed on some point in the middle distance. He looked, Penelope thought with sudden clarity, like a man walking toward his own execution.
“Your Grace.”
He stopped so abruptly she thought he might stumble. His head turned toward her hiding place, and for a heartbeat his guard dropped entirely. She saw shock, just visible for a few seconds before it disappeared.
“Miss Hartwell.” His voice carried none of its customary warmth. “You should not be here.”
“I might say the same of you.” She stepped from the shadows, keeping a respectable distance between them. “The others have gone to the drawing room.”
“I am aware.”
The silence stretched uncomfortably. Penelope found herself cataloguing details she had no business noticing—the slight disarray of his cravat, as though he had tugged at it repeatedly; the faint tremor in his hands before he clasped them behind his back; the muscle jumping in his jaw.
“Are you quite all right?” The question was asked before she could reconsider it.
His laugh held no humour. “Perfectly well, I assure you.”
“You are lying.”
The words hung between them, too blunt for politeness, too true for denial. The Duke’s eyes finally met hers properly for the first time that evening, and what she saw there stole her breath—anguish, barely restrained, churning beneath a surface of forced composure.
“Miss Hartwell?—”
“You have barely spoken all evening,” she continued, her voice low but insistent. “You ate nothing, drank too much, and looked as though you wished to be anywhere but here. So I ask you again: are you quite all right?”
For a second, the surprise was evident in his features. Then it was gone, replaced by a weariness that aged him beyond his years.
“I need to speak with you,” he said quietly. “Not here. Not like this.”
Her pulse quickened. “About what?”
“I cannot explain. Not now.” He glanced toward the drawing room, where laughter floated down the corridor. “Come to my house tomorrow. Please.”
The request landed like a stone in still water, sending ripples of alarm through her carefully maintained composure.