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Phillipa said nothing.

“And I’m sure he loves you too,” Augusta went on, unprompted. “I can sense it between the two of you.”

Phillipa looked away. The thought had been lingering in her mind for a while.

Does he love me? It would make things so much simpler, and so much more complicated at the same time.

“We haven’t…” she cleared her throat. “Well, we haven’t admitted anything of the sort to each other.”

“Maybe he will tell you after the ball,” Augusta teased. “When the two of you get a moment alone with each other. I’m sure it must be on his mind, too.”

Phillipa liked the thought of that more than she liked to admit. But at the same time, she knew that thinking about it now would only cause her trouble.

That night, Phillipa went up to bed early, worn through with the last of the preparations, and found a box waiting on her coverlet that had not been there when she left the room that morning.

She lifted the lid slowly and beneath layers of tissue paper found a gown in deep blue silk with a trim of silver thread at the hem that caught the candle flame and scattered it.

It was, without question, the finest thing she had ever owned, finer even than the dress she had been married in.

“Where did this come from?” she asked out loud.

Tucked beneath the folded sleeve was a small card, in handwriting she had come, these past months, to know very well.

From G.

That was all, nothing beyond those two letters and a full stop.

Phillipa found that she had to sit down rather suddenly on the edge of the bed, the box held against her chest.

She thought of the modiste’s shop he must have gone to, the measurements he must have asked for without telling her why, the care that must have gone into choosing a color that would, she realized only now, match almost exactly the blue of his own eyes.

He thought of this before any of it went wrong, she thought. Before Dornet, before any of it. He thought of me, and he never once mentioned it.

She did not know, lying awake long after the candle had burned down, whether to be more frightened of tomorrow, or of what she was beginning, helplessly, to feel.

CHAPTER 24

“You are a vision,” said Gregory. “I am not certain the house can hold all of this, tonight.”

He was waiting for her at the foot of the stairs when she came down, and the look on his face when he saw her made every hour she had spent being pinned and powdered and fussed over feel suddenly, entirely worth it.

He wore black and silver, and for a moment, Phillipa allowed herself to simply enjoy being looked at by him.

“You chose well,” she said, coming the rest of the way down and letting her hand rest, briefly, against the deep blue silk at her waist. “How did you know the color?”

“I did not know it. I simply thought of you, and this was the color that came to mind.” He took her hand as she reached the last step, and did not let it go.

“I guess I can say that you have a good choice, then.”

“I ought to,” he muttered under his breath. “I married you, after all.”

She blushed deeply at his words. She had been so nervous, for many reasons.

The most obvious being that she wanted everything to go well tonight.

But then, a strange sense of nervousness regarding if he would like her in the dress that he had chosen for her. That nervousness eased, thank goodness.

“I should probably shop for you more often,” he continued on, still staring at her.