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The door opened, and Phillipa came in.

Whatever dry remark he had been assembling about the state of siege his study seemed permanently to be under died somewhere in his throat.

She was flushed, properly flushed, color high in her cheeks and her bonnet ribbons still loose at her throat, as though she had untied them in the carriage and not troubled to finish the job before coming to find him. A few strands of hair had escaped their pins at her temple. Her eyes were very bright. In all the months he had known her, through a scandal and a hasty wedding and a fortnight of his own inexcusable avoidance and everything that had come since, he did not think he had ever once seen her look anything but composed. That particular, practiced composure she wore the way other women wore jewelry, an ornament put on each morning and rarely, if ever, removed in company. He had admired it, in his way. He found, watching her now, standing in his doorway with her breath still coming quick from whatever haste had brought her there, that he admired this rather more.

He was aware, distantly and with some irritation at himself, that he was staring.

“Are you quite well?” he asked, getting to his feet. “You look as though you have run the length of Mayfair.”

“I am perfectly well.” She pressed a hand briefly to her chest, as though to prove the point, though the breathlessness in her voice rather undercut the claim. “I am sorry to burst in on you without warning. I did try to compose myself in the carriage, but I find I have not managed it in the least.”

“I was not aware composure was required before entering my own study.”

“It generally is not, but I have something to ask you, and I find that when I have something important to ask, I prefer to at least attempt to appear reasonable while asking it, rather than arriving looking as though I have been chased down the street by something.” A small, self deprecating smile flickered across her face, there and gone. “I am failing rather badly at the attempt, as you can see.”

“I find I do not mind the failure.” He came around the desk, curiosity thoroughly outweighing whatever remained of his correspondence. “What is it?”

She drew a breath, visibly gathering herself, and when she spoke again it came out in something of a rush, the words tumbling over one another in her eagerness to get them out before her own nerve could catch up and slow her down.

“I shall need the house,” she said. “And a good deal of money. And your permission, though I hope very much you will give it, because I do not think I could bear it if you did not, now that I have thought of the whole scheme and cannot seem to think of anything else.”

Gregory blinked. “That is a formidable opening. You have not yet told me what the scheme is.”

“No. Forgive me. I am doing this very badly.” She laughed, a short, breathless sound, and pressed her fingers briefly to her temple as though to steady her own thoughts by force. “I was at St. Anthony’s this morning. The wagon had only just finished unloading, and I was going through the accounts with Mrs. Fairley, and she was telling me how much the household has grown these past two months. Eleven new children since Michaelmas alone, Gregory, sent to us because their own houses cannot keep them any longer. There is a place in Southwark she fears may close its doors entirely before spring, and if it does, every child in it will need somewhere else to go, and there are not so very many somewheres left.” Her voice had gathered speed and certainty as she spoke, the nervous rush of a moment ago giving way to something steadier, more purposeful. “And I was standing in the middle of it all, looking at a room full of borrowed cots, thinking how very much St. Anthony’s has changed because of what you have already given it, and thinking, too, of your ballroom, sitting empty under dust sheets not three streets away, and it struck me, all at once, really, though I suppose it had been building for some while without my noticing, that a Duchess is permitted to hold a ball. And that a ball, properly managed, might raise a very great deal more than any single donation ever could. Not only for St. Anthony’s. For every crowded, cold, forgotten house in London that we might reach.”

She stopped, finally, and drew a proper breath, and Gregory found himself smiling before he had entirely decided to.

“A charity ball,” he said.

“Yes. Here, if you will permit it. I know it is a great deal to ask, the expense, the disruption to the household, the whole business of engaging musicians and caterers and seeing that the ballroom is fit to be seen after standing empty so long, and I have not even begun to think properly about the guest list, though I confess I already have several ideas about who among London’s more fashionable idlers might be shamed into generosity by the presence of their rivals.”

She was gathering speed again, Gregory noted, and something in her posture had begun, almost imperceptibly, to straighten. Her shoulders coming back, her chin lifting a fraction, the loose, unguarded eagerness of a moment ago folding itself away by careful degrees into something more composed, more rehearsed. He recognized the shift for what it was. He had watched her do it before, in other rooms, with other people: the particular discipline of a woman bracing herself to make a case she expected to have to fight for.

“And I am aware that it will cost a very great deal, and that I am asking you to bear the whole of that cost on behalf of children who are, when it comes down to it, no relation of yours at all, and so I do want you to know that I have thought very carefully about whether this is a fair thing to ask, and I would entirely understand if.”

“Phillipa.”

She stopped.

“This is your home,” he said, quietly. “As much as it is mine. You do not require my permission to hold a ball in it, any more than I would require yours to invite Ronan for a fencing match. You need only tell me it is what you want, and it is done.”

She stared at him, and for a moment something in her face went very still, caught somewhere between surprise and a kind of wariness he did not entirely understand, as though she had braced herself so thoroughly for an argument that its sudden absence left her unsteady on her feet.

“You have not even asked the cost,” she said.

“I am confident I can bear it.”

“You have not asked how many guests, or what the musicians will cost, or whether I have any notion at all of how such a thing is properly arranged.”

“I am confident you will manage all of it a great deal better than I would,” Gregory said, “and I find, watching you just now, that I have very little interest in making you argue a case that does not require arguing. You want to hold a ball to raise money for children who have no one else to raise it for them. I cannot think of a single reason on this earth to say no to that, and I do not intend to invent one merely for the pleasure of hearing you talk me out of it, satisfying as I am sure that performance would be.”

Something in her face changed at that, not quite a smile, not yet, but the wariness easing by degrees into something softer, more bewildered.

“You are not going to make this difficult,” she said, slowly, as though testing the sentence for some trick she had not yet located.

“I had not planned to, no.”

“I had rather braced myself for difficult.”