00:00She told the Duke of Ravenswood, to his face, at the most prestigious ball of the season,
00:06I dare you to ask her to dance.
00:09He laughed.
00:11He should not have laughed.
00:14Vivian Hale was nobody, and she knew it better than anyone in that ballroom.
00:20A lady's companion, three seasons past fashionable,
00:24wearing a dress that had been let out at the seams and re-hemmed twice by her own hand.
00:30She had no dowry, no title, no prospects, and no illusions about any of it.
00:37What she had was a temper she rarely let show, and tonight, it was showing.
00:45Because across the room stood a young widow in unrelieved black,
00:50standing alone by the wall for the third hour running.
00:54Nobody had asked her to dance.
00:57Nobody would.
00:59Vivian had watched her rearrange the same fold of her glove eleven times,
01:04watched her pretend to admire the flower arrangements,
01:08watched the particular stillness of a woman trying very hard not to look as lonely as she felt.
01:16And beside Vivian stood the Duke of Ravenswood,
01:21the coldest, most correct man in London.
01:25Respected,
01:26untouchable,
01:27bored on principle,
01:29the way only a man who has never once needed anyone's approval can afford to be.
01:35Vivian turned to him before she could think better of it.
01:39I dare you to ask her to dance.
01:42He looked at her the way a man looks at an insect that has wandered uninvited onto his dinner plate.
01:48I beg your pardon?
01:51The widow.
01:52Mrs. Ashford.
01:54No one has asked her all night,
01:56and you are standing here doing nothing useful with your evening except judging the orchestra.
02:03He laughed,
02:04a short,
02:05disbelieving sound that turned three heads nearby.
02:08He agreed to the dare,
02:10mostly to watch her flush with embarrassment when he refused to actually do it.
02:15He had underestimated her.
02:18He would keep underestimating her for exactly thirteen more minutes,
02:24and then never again for the rest of his life.
02:28He crossed the ballroom,
02:30and the room noticed.
02:32A Duke does not cross rooms for nobody in particular.
02:37He bowed to Mrs. Ashford with perfect, unhurried correctness.
02:42He asked her to dance.
02:44The orchestra,
02:46sensing drama,
02:48played a little louder.
02:49But halfway through the set,
02:51he found himself looking past his partner's shoulder,
02:55back to where Vivian had been standing,
02:57expecting to catch her smug satisfaction at having won her little game.
03:03She was not watching him at all.
03:07She had already been claimed for the next dance by some unremarkable second son,
03:13laughing at something he'd said,
03:15entirely unconcerned with whether the Duke of Ravenswood had done as he was told or not.
03:22This should not have bothered him in the slightest.
03:26It bothered him considerably,
03:28and he could not for the life of him work out why.
03:32He finished the dance,
03:34returned Mrs. Ashford to her seat with the correct bow,
03:38went to find Vivian.
03:42She was gone.
03:44He spent the next hour looking for her at a ball he had planned to leave an hour ago.
03:51He told himself it was a matter of unfinished manners.
03:55He did not believe himself,
03:57not even a little.
03:59He found her in the garden,
04:00sitting on a stone bench in the dark,
04:03eating a stolen pastry out of a napkin
04:06with no apparent shame whatsoever.
04:09You, he said,
04:11are supposed to be at the ball.
04:14You're supposed to be dancing with someone
04:16who actually wants to dance with you.
04:18We're both disappointing people tonight, Your Grace.
04:21He sat down beside her without invitation.
04:23She did not move away,
04:25which surprised him more than it should have.
04:28Who are you?
04:30he demanded.
04:31Nobody important.
04:33She offered him a piece of the pastry.
04:35He did not take it,
04:37though his eyes lingered on it a beat too long.
04:40Then why the dare?
04:42She considered this properly,
04:45licking a crumb from her thumb before answering.
04:48Because someone was being unkind by doing nothing at all,
04:53and I was tired of watching it happen,
04:56and saying nothing myself.
04:58No one else was going to say anything.
05:01So I did.
05:02He had never once,
05:04in thirty-one years,
05:06met anyone who spoke to him
05:08as though his title were an inconvenient fact
05:11rather than the only fact about him that mattered.
05:15They talked for two hours,
05:18about nothing important.
05:20Her opinions on the orchestra,
05:23his grudging opinion on garden follies,
05:26a genuinely heated argument
05:28over whether pastry was an acceptable substitute for supper.
05:33He did not notice the candles burning low
05:35until a servant came,
05:37apologetically,
05:39to snuff them.
05:40He left that night
05:42without learning her surname,
05:44and it needled him the entire carriage ride home.
05:48He spent three days trying to find her.
05:51No family name recorded anywhere useful.
05:55No address of her own.
05:56Only companion to an unnamed household,
06:00which turned out,
06:02infuriatingly,
06:03to describe half the companions in London.
06:06By the time he found the right house,
06:09she was packing.
06:11Her employer was removing to the countryside for the summer,
06:14and Vivian was going with her,
06:17quietly,
06:18without ceremony,
06:20the way companions always disappeared
06:22once a season ended.
06:24He arrived at the door himself.
06:27No footman announced him.
06:29No card was sent ahead.
06:31He had never in his life
06:33arrived at a door without being announced.
06:36He knocked anyway.
06:38You're here,
06:39she said,
06:40which is either very romantic
06:42or very inconvenient.
06:45I genuinely haven't decided which.
06:48He offered her nothing practical.
06:51No solution to the difference in their stations.
06:54No clever legal arrangement.
06:56No dowry conjured from thin air.
06:59I have not stopped thinking about the woman
07:02who dared me to be decent for one evening.
07:05I came to dare you back.
07:08What's the dare?
07:11Marry me,
07:12and spend the rest of your life
07:14making me better
07:15than I was the night we met.
07:18She looked at him for a long moment,
07:21weighing it,
07:22the way she weighed everything,
07:24without hurry,
07:25without performance.
07:27Then she reached back into the trunk,
07:29retrieved the last of a pastry
07:31she'd wrapped for the journey,
07:32and finished it without rushing.
07:35Yes,
07:36she said,
07:37licking a crumb from her thumb.
07:39Obviously yes.
07:41Yes.
