Ducis Glacialis

The wallflower row at Lady Marchwood's is the best seat in London, and nobody knows it but you.

From here, behind a potted orange tree and three chaperones asleep in their turbans, you can see the whole ballroom: the chandeliers blazing for the peace, the new French silks, the officers home from Spain with their sunburned faces and their borrowed swagger. Bonaparte abdicated a week ago. Mayfair has decided to celebrate by drinking everything in it.

You have a dance card on your wrist. It has no names on it.

It has, in very small pencil, two hundred words of Saturday's column.

Specimen the Fourth. Militaris redux, the Returning Hero. Plumage: scarlet, regardless of regiment. Call: a long anecdote about Salamanca, repeated at intervals. Observed tonight in his natural habitat, the punch bowl, explaining a battle to a lady who was, in fact, at it.

You bite back a smile and keep writing. Your left hand moves fast. Your glove hides the ink on your middle finger. Two years of 'Notes from a Naturalist' in The Looking-Glass, every Saturday, and not one person in this room has looked twice at the plain Miss Linley in the corner.

That's the trick. Nobody watches the watcher.

"Miss Linley." Your mother's friend Mrs. Pumphrey leans over, smelling of violets and port. "You might stand up, dear. Smile. You're not dead."

"I'm resting, ma'am."

"You've been resting for three Seasons."

Then the room changes.

You feel it before you see it, the way you feel a door open in winter. Conversations dip. Fans stop. A girl in white muslin, Lady Marchwood's niece, is standing in the middle of the floor with her hand still half-raised, and the man she asked to dance is walking away from her.

The Duke of Severn does not dance. Everyone knows this. Apparently Lady Marchwood's niece did not.

He crosses the ballroom like a blade crossing paper. He is, and there is no polite way to put it, the most beautiful man in England: tall, long-legged, black hair cut close, a face so cleanly made it looks designed by someone with a ruler and a grudge. Dark blue coat. No jewels but a ring. Eyes a pale clear green, like river ice in March. Women turn as he passes, then pretend they were looking at the candles.

You know his habits the way a naturalist knows a heron's. You've written about him nine times.

Ducis glacialis, the Frost Duke. Habitat: the edges of rooms. Call: none recorded. Feeds on silence, which he produces himself.

He is coming this way.

You lower your pencil. He can't be. There's nothing at this end of the room but chaperones and the orange tree and you.

He sits down in the empty gilt chair beside you.

The whole ballroom forgets to breathe. Mrs. Pumphrey wakes up, looks, and goes back to sleep in self-defense.

The duke doesn't look at you. He looks at the dancers, the way a man looks at weather.

"Mrs. Vayle," he says, "is coming this way. I'm hiding. Don't give me up."

His voice is low, with a slight care to it, as if every word were set down on a table one by one.

You glance across the room. Mrs. Araminta Vayle, the dazzling widow in bronze silk, is indeed cutting through the crowd, smiling at everyone, looking for one man.

"Your Grace," you say, "you're six feet tall, a duke, and the only man here in dark blue. You're the worst-hidden man in London."

Something happens at the corner of his mouth. You'll spend a week deciding what to call it.

"The orange tree helps," he says.

"The orange tree is doing its best."

"Mm." He watches Mrs. Vayle stop, scan the room, and turn toward the card room instead. His shoulders lower by perhaps a quarter inch. "There. Saved by citrus."

You don't laugh. You will not laugh at the Frost Duke. You write a very small note on your dance card instead: Specimen capable of jokes. Investigate.

He looks down at your wrist. You turn the card over before he can read it.

"No partners," he observes.

"I'm resting."

"For how long?"

"Three Seasons."

He doesn't laugh, exactly. He breathes out through his nose, and his eyes, for one moment, go warm.

Then a gentleman passes with a copy of Saturday's Looking-Glass folded under his arm, and the warmth goes out like a snuffed candle.

"Have you read it?" the duke says.

Your heart does something inconvenient. "Read what, Your Grace?"

"The Naturalist." He says it the way some men say the French. "Every drawing room in London reads it aloud on Saturday. I assume yours does too."

"My sister reads it at breakfast," you say, which is true. Minnie does all the voices.

"Then you know what she calls me."

"She?"

He doesn't answer that. He quotes, instead, quietly and exactly: "'Ducis glacialis, the Frost Duke. Habitat: the edges of rooms. Feeds on silence, which he produces himself.'"

He has it word for word. Your own sentence, in his mouth, in that careful voice. You feel it all the way down to your slippers.

"It's very rude," you manage.

"It's very good," he says. "That's what's unforgivable." He turns the signet ring on his finger once. "Whoever writes it sits in rooms like this. Sees everything. Says it from behind a pen name. A coward with a good ear."

You should let it go. A sensible wallflower would let it go.

"Or," you say, "someone who'd be ignored if she said it to your face."

The duke turns his head and looks at you properly for the first time.

It's like stepping out of shade into sun. He has a way of looking that takes inventory: your dark blond hair that refuses to curl, your plain blue gown, your gray-blue eyes, the stubborn set of your chin. You feel catalogued. You feel, for one ridiculous second, what your specimens must feel.

"Miss Linley," he says. He knows your name. Why does he know your name? "Are you defending her?"

"I'm defending the orange tree's right to an opinion."

That does it. A real sound, short and startled, almost a laugh, and three heads turn to see what could possibly have made the Duke of Severn make a noise.

He stands up at once, as if he's been caught at something.

"Thank you for the shelter," he says, and bows, and is gone into the crowd before Mrs. Vayle can come back from the card room.

You sit very still. Then you turn your dance card over and write, fast and small, the best line you've written all Season.

You get home at two, still pleased with yourself.

Your mother and Minnie go up first, yawning. You stay in the hall to take off your gloves and look at the ink on your finger and smile at nothing.

Then you see your brother on the stairs.

Perry is sitting on the fourth step in his evening clothes, his golden head in his hands. Perry, who has never sat on a stair in his life. When he looks up his face is the color of writing paper.

"Ava," he says. "Don't scream."

"Why would I scream?"

He swallows. "I lost at Sarre's tonight."

"How much?"

He says a number. You don't understand it. He says it again.

Nine thousand pounds.

The house is worth perhaps four. Your mother's jointure, nothing. Minnie's Season is being paid for with your column, a guinea at a time.

"Perry." Your voice comes out very calm. "What did you sign?"

He doesn't answer. He looks past you, at the drawing-room door, which is open an inch. There's a candle burning inside. You didn't leave one burning.

"He followed me home," your brother whispers. "Sarre. He's in there, Ava. He's been waiting for you."