One Unashamed Night by Sophia James

polished floor beneath her feet. Her palms, where she held her hands like fists, were damp with nervousness, though she made herself smile.
    ‘If you will excuse me…’
    She turned and walked through the crowd, the music of Mozart softening the hard cracks of anger that she felt boiling up in herself.
    ‘Tell no one… ‘
    Her mantra for the past decade as life had flung crisis after crisis her way, the little difficulties escalating into bigger ones, and all eminently unrectifiable.
    Loud giggles from the group at the top of the room pierced her bewilderment, and she could not think what exactly to do next, though a balcony provided a way out and she slipped on to it, wiping the tears she felt pooling in her eyes as she tried to take stock of the situation.
    She was twenty-eight years old and any histrionics on her part would be reprehensible and overblown, an aged woman who should have been well past undisciplined and unbecoming emotion.
    The sheer and utter hopelessness of it all left her gasping and she placed her hands upon her chest, barely breathing, the silence of just standing there bringing a measure of control.
    And then the door opened and Taris Wellingham came towards her, his hands around the silver ball on his ebony cane.
    ‘My sister-in-law informed me that you wished to see me.’
    He sounded nothing like the man who had walked with her earlier in the afternoon, but all imperious and lofty.
    ‘I did, my lord. I came tonight to tell you that I do not quite know what came over me today and that I would like to thank you.’ Her voice was pulled from embarrassment, barely audible.
    ‘Thank me?’ His words were brittle. Almost harsh.
    ‘Thank you for entrusting me with your secret…’ She faltered and as he turned away she tried anew. ‘I would also like to say that your affliction of poor eyesight is infinitely more appealing to me than the other option of drunkenness.’
    Unexpectedly he turned back and smiled, though as the silence lengthened between them she simply could not think of one other thing to say.
    ‘My sister-in-law tells me you have discussions on “matters of importance” at your residence.’ He looked exactly at her tonight, amber magnified through the thick spectacles.
    ‘Put like that, it all seems rather absurd,’ she returned.
    ‘She tells me that you are a woman of strong opinion and that your eyes are green. Leaf green,’ he amended when she did not say anything. ‘She also tells me that you worry a lot.’
    ‘She could see that?’
    ‘In the line on your brow.’
    ‘An unbecoming feature, then,’ Beatrice said, all her hackles rising. What else had Emerald Wellingham related to him? ‘I am a plain woman, my lord.’
    ‘Plain is an adjective that has many different interpretations. A carp in a river can be plain to the eyes of one who does not fish, yet vibrant to an angler. A deer in the forest can look insignificant amidst a band of sun-speckled trees and magnificent away from them. Which plain are you?’
    ‘The type that recognises the truth despite any amount of flowery rhetoric.’
    He laughed.
    ‘Describe yourself to me, then.’
    She hesitated. ‘You can see nothing at all?’
    ‘With my glasses on I know that you are not a large woman. I know too that your hair is long and thick and that you have dimples in your cheeks.’ He held out his hands. ‘From touch,’ he qualified. ‘There is a lot to be learned in touch. On a good day I can see more.’
    ‘I am five feet two inches tall and some may call me…thin.’
    ‘Some?’
    ‘My husband always did. He thought that if I ate more I should appeal to him better, but no matter how much I tried—’ She stopped, horrified as to what she had just confided in him, when for all the years of her marriage she had told every other soul nothing.
    ‘Pride can be a dangerous thing, Beatrice-Maude.’
    She pretended not to understand what he meant. But she knew exactly the tack that he was following because