Page 27 of Her Heartless Duke

“I can manage very well on my own, Your Grace. Thank you very much for yourexcessiveconcern.”

As if to prove her point, she even reached out for one of those blueberry tarts she had been eyeing earlier and bit at it delicately. Isaac decided not to mention how he saw her hand trembling as she did so.

“Are you sure you do not need a physician?” he asked her again.

“Positive.”

Isaac was not too convinced, even as he saw color returning to her cheeks. It was unlikely for a person to go as pale and weak as she did merely from getting dizzy, although perhaps young ladies of London were of a weaker constitution and more prone to fainting.

Olivia, however, did not initially strike him as the sort to succumb to the vapors regularly. It would appear that he was mistaken. He would have to watch her more carefully so that she would not overexert herself in the future.

That would be quite a task since she has the tendency to be most stubborn, he thought to himself with a small smile as he allowed himself to relax and take a sip from his tea as well.

He nodded subtly at Horace, who quietly left the ballroom. Isaac knew that he would be close by, however, if the need arose.

"You never told me why you wanted to win this dance contest so badly,” he told her in a conversational tone.

Olivia merely shrugged her shoulders subtly. “Is it not what every young lady wants? To attract the attention of the man she loves and live happily ever after?”

He snorted at that. “Somehow, you do not seem to strike me as the sort of young lady to chase after such notions.”

She laughed at the disbelief in his tone. “Well, it is not exactly that, but my late mother used to tell me stories about how she joined the very same dance contest before I was born.”

Isaac nodded, urging her to continue. He had seldom heard Daniel talk of the late Countess of Lancashire. It did not seem like a topic his friend welcomed and he could very well understand that. Some wounds took a lot longer to heal.

“I only wanted to achieve the same thing she did,” Olivia admitted softly, her eyes bright with something he could not name. “My mother… she died young, you see—much younger than most mothers, but I could always remember her stories of that dance contest…”

He could understand her yearning—his own mother had died when he was a young child. He was rather fortunate that his father had taken it upon himself to raise his young son as best as he could. Most fathers in thetonwould not be so inclined to exert the same amount of effort the previous Duke of Langley did.

“But why does it have to be this year’s dance contest?” he asked her. “Could it not be the next?”

She shook her head. “Lady Willow only holds these contests once every three years.”

“Still. Three years would be time aplenty to hone your dancing skills. Are you afraid that you would already be married by then and your husband would not countenance you joining such a contest?” he teased her.

“I do not think married ladies would be allowed to join,” she smiled feebly at him.

“One would think that finding a husband is the sole pursuit of every young lady in London,” he shook his head. “And here you are, hoping that you would at least be able to win a dance competition before you are most unfortunately happily settled.”

“Unfortunate and happy cannot both be used to describe the same thing, Your Grace,” she laughed. “And it is not that I fear that I should be married by then—it is that I might die before having ever accomplished anything of significance at all.”

She cast her eyes down on her cup and he detected an immeasurable sadness in them. For what, he could not decipher.

However, it felt only right to reach out to her, to clasp her hand in his. She looked up at him in surprise.

“Do you fear death, my Lady?” he asked her softly.

She smiled bitterly at him. “Who does not fear death? Is it not frightening for everything to just end?”

Yet, her tone betrayed that she feared it immensely, in the way most other young ladies her age feared scandal and ruination.

But Isaac had seen death, had felt it hovering at his back, whispering in his ear, taunting him. It was an old friend that always seemed so close, and yet so far.

“I do not fear death, my Lady,” he admitted to her.

“I can see why—you are after all a brave soldier, a hero come home from the Peninsula,” she murmured. “I suppose you have stared death in the face and laughed at it.”

He shook his head. “On the contrary, I see it as a respite of sorts.”