The carriage ride back to her residence was silent, but Eleanor's mind was anything but still.
Her hands trembled slightly in her lap, her gloves wrinkling beneath her fingers as she clutched them too tightly. The cold night air seeped through the thin fabric of her gown, but it wasn't the chill that sent shivers down her spine. It was fear—not for herself, but for what Lady Seraphine's words could do.
She shouldn't have gone to the ball.
"This is a mistake. I shouldn't have come here," Eleanor murmured, regret weighing heavily on her chest.
No matter how much she tried to assure herself that she had done nothing wrong, the weight of courtly judgment pressed down on her. In the eyes of the nobility, appearances mattered more than truth. It didn't matter that she and Duke Victor had only spoken. What mattered was that they had been alone, away from prying eyes, in the darkness. And Lady Seraphine had seen them.
She swallowed hard.
