She let go at once and laughed at herself. The circle shifted; laughter rose and fell.
“Careful,” Nicholas called. “You’re near the edge.”
She corrected a step. A palm found her elbow, and heat rushed to her face beneath the scarf.
“Caught,” she said softly, already knowing.
“I would never mistake my wife,” Stephen murmured, low enough for only her.
She tugged the blindfold up and blinked into his nearness. His hand had already fallen away; his mouth held the hint of a smile he wouldn’t show anyone else.
“Unfair,” Nicholas called. “You cheated with marriage.”
“It’s an excellent trick,” Stephen said. “You should try it.”
“I did,” Nicholas shot back, grinning at Violet.
Maria handed the scarf onward and tried to regulate her breathing. Her figure, her laugh, her face, any of those might give her away; she had always believed that was the point of the game: to be revealed by what you couldn’t hide. Stephen had chosen something else.Wifeas answer. She wanted to be irritated, but she failed.
The game went on. Nicholas and Stephen grew competitive.
“You do realize,” Nicholas said after Stephen neatly avoided a collision, “that you are insufferable at children’s games.”
“Only the ones with rules,” Stephen said.
“This one has no rules.”
“Exactly.”
Maria watched with a relief that surprised her. The antagonism that had hummed between them at the wedding shifted into sparring with blunt swords. Nicholas prodded; Stephen parried; neither drew blood. She had space to breathe.
By the time the scarf had gone round twice more, cheeks were pink, boots damp, and a footman was carrying hot wine like a hero. Violet drifted to Maria’s side and bumped her shoulder.
“You looked like you did not hate that,” Violet said.
“I did not,” Maria said. “I didn’t like the part where people tried to touch me to be kind.”
“They’ll learn not to,” Violet said. “You have a husband who can stare instruction into a crowd.”
“I suppose I do,” Maria said, thinking of the hand on her elbow and the sentence that had ruined her composure.
Violet followed her gaze. “So,” she said lightly, “you will come to the ball next week.”
“The ball,” Maria repeated.
“At the same house,” Violet said. “They want to show off their chandeliers and their new harpist. Come. Please. You are a married woman now; it will do you both good to be seen.”
A ball was not a lawn. It was a room full of looking. Compliments that landed like dust; men who asked for dances as if brass tokens had bought them small pieces of her. She had once thought she would never stand in such a room again. Then she had thought she would stand in it only to catch a husband. Now she was a wife, and the room would be different and not different at all.
“I’ll think on it,” she said.
“I accept that as yes,” Violet said.
“Presumptuous,” Maria said.
“Accurate,” Violet returned.
Nicholas came over, scarf around his neck like a trophy. “You survived,” he told Maria. “Verwood survived me. I call this a day.”