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Cordelia’s eyes snapped up.

Still wearing a teasing smile, Michael allowed himself to laugh again. “Not once did I suspect the Ton to be so gullible,” he said. “Perhaps it is good to know, for my own future endeavors.”

Cordelia, much to his surprise, still remained silent. She merely stared, her eyes widening the longer they stayed stuck on him. Slowly, her lips parted before closing again. The words she wanted to stay seemed to hang in the air between them, and Michael never realized how desperate he was to know what they were until that very moment.

“Not a sound out of you,” he murmured. “How peculiar.”

Cordelia blinked a few times, coming out of her reverie. “I-I apologize.”

“Why do you watch me in such a way?”

“In what way?”

“I am not sure I can describe it,” Michael said. “As if you see something for the first time. It is peculiar.”

Cordelia lightly laughed. “I suppose that is exactly right.”

“How so?”

A feverish burn swallowed up her face once more. She watched him through her lashes, pressing her lips tightly together before gathering enough strength and confidence to speak her truth. “You have a charming smile,” she said in a quiet voice. “I cannot recall having the opportunity to see it before.”

Michael gulped loudly. There was a sudden dryness in his throat. He looked away, the space between them feeling like a tangible pressure, a distance he ached to be rid of. Michael shook his head.You are utterly ridiculous.To be so emotional, so windblown by her with only a few words, was the most childish thing he had done in a long time. If his father was still around - well, Michael knew exactly what would be done if the old Duke still walked that earth.

“Have I offended you?” Cordelia asked in a small voice.

Michael frowned. “No,” he blurted, unable to stop himself from snapping out. “Quite the opposite.”

Silence took over them as the music continued on. Dancers positioned all around them never once paid them any mind, too caught up in the orchestra to glance their way. Michael barely heard the music, he realized, barely realized the musicians were still carrying on. Everything else within the ball room quickly faded away, perhaps right when the dancing began. All Michael could focus on was the woman in front of him, and how her simple words managed to pull him into a pensive reverie he had no intention of escaping.

Cordelia breathed in and out slowly, methodically. Her eyes fluttered shut before she nodded to herself.

She acts as if she tries to gather strength,Michael thought to himself. He watched her with a furrowed brow, desperate to know what it was that lied within her.

“I saw you,” she whispered.

Michael frowned. “You see me now, don’t you?”

“No, no,” she murmured. “I meant the day in the bathroom. Isawyou. Your -” Cordelia’s voice lowered, so quiet he barely caught it, “Your scars.”

A chill rippled down Michael’s spine. Instinctively, he wanted to release his hold on her, to reach for his back and run a hand along the grooves and lacerations that permanently scored his skin. It was a feverish need, one that grew outlandishly stronger over the past few years. Doctors claimed it to be a sense of trauma. Once the scars were mentioned, Michael was overcome with the overwhelming need to scratch them, to let himself know that they were, in fact, still there.

Michael bit down harshly on his tongue to keep himself poised in front of his wife. “What of it?” he snapped, the words coming out harsher than he meant them to.

Cordelia flinched almost immediately, her face growing crestfallen. “My apologies, your Grace,” she said. “I overstepped.”

He watched her.

“Please, I -” she froze again and squeezed her eyes shut. “Have I ruined it all?”

“Ruined what?”

She sighed. “The moment, the dance. Your smile. Have I lost it already?”

Michael felt far more pained by her words than he ever wished to be. The girl who opposed him so effortlessly, who led to countless rumors being whispered about his name, who recklessly spent his money and reworked the entire estate to look nothing like what he remembered, was so easily saddened by something entirely out of her hands. Michael sighed, the guilt resting on his chest heavily. What once caused him pain in the past no longer lingered on his shoulders, and should not burden her all the same.

“What do you know of the late Duke of Solshire?” Michael asked.

Cordelia blinked. “The same as the rest of the Ton,” she murmured. “A rich man, a businessman. My father regarded him highly, from what I remember. But nothing more than that.”