"Don't show her."

"We have to show her, the wedding is in one week."

"Sssh, she can hear you."

"I can most definitely hear both of you." Miss Grace Hale chuckled as her friends approached with whispered titters like swallows signalling springtime. Grace tucked back the book she was reading behind a palm tree. Sir Robert Hart's 'These from Land of Sinim - Essays on the Chinese question' would have to wait until she could find alternative and more appropriate foliage.

"What do you have there?" Grace turned her attention to her friends.

"Nothing!" Rosalind exclaimed.

"It's a wedding invitation," Beatrice confessed and pulled the envelope from between the other girl's clutched fingers.

"Whose is it?" Grace questioned as she opened the ivory sheets. Her eyes settled upon the beautiful sloping strokes of the happy couple's names.

You are invited to the wedding of

Lady Elizabeth Kent

and

the Viscount of Caversham

on

Friday, the seventh of August

Eighteen hundred and seventy six

at eleven a.m.

St Barnabas Church

She folded the invitation and handed it back to her friend. "I don't see what the fuss is about. Really ladies, I was trying to read the latest dissertation on the Orient."

"What is your obsession with the Orient?" Rosalind rolled her eyes.

"You know who will be at the wedding, don't you? Beatrice hesitated.

"The Marquis of Kent," Rosalind answered prematurely. "He is, after all, the brother of the bride."

Grace ceased breathing for a painful moment as the realisation dawned on her, and then exhaled in a whoosh of air. "I am going to China. Yes." She nodded resolutely to herself. "That is where I am going."

"Oh, come on now." Beatrice nudged her gently. "It won't be that bad."

"How could it not be that bad?" Grace exclaimed a touch too loudly so that gatherers at the nearby punch table winced at the shrill edge to voice. "Let me remind you that we are talking about a man who broke my heart."

"I hardly think he broke your heart, Grace. There it goes beating in your chest, bump bump, bump bump." Rosalind tapped on the left side of friend's torso with the tip of her fan.

"Could you not do that in public? People will think we are touched in the head."

"Mmph." Rosalind shrugged. "We probably are."

"Listen." Beatrice hastened them closer. "I have an idea. Why don't we all leave town early this Season. Come back to York with me. We can make a girls trip of it."

"No," Grace announced as she spotted a silent figure hovering in the shadows of the ballroom's edge. "I am tired of being the one to feel ashamed. I am sick of never going back home to Kent just so that I can avoid someone who chose to love someone else."

Grace snapped her own fan shut with alacrity and left her position among the wallflowers.

"Wait, where are you going?" Beatrice called out after her with a flicker of concern.

"The Chinese people have a name for what I am about to do- it's called saving face."

Technically Hart reported such a situation as 'losing face', but if it could be lost, then surely it could be saved. While there was still fire in her belly Grace skirted the twirling couple of Lady Elizabeth and her soon to be husband on the dance floor and passed the solitary solemn figure of the Duke of Huntley close enough that her skirts brushed against the shiny tips of his boots.

With a delicate cough she dropped a handkerchief at his feet and proceeded through the nearby patio doors that opened onto the cool night air of the garden. Her heart beat furiously in her chest and if she hadn't been filled with a rage at all the injustices of unrequited love in the world, she would not have dared to throw away all semblance of propriety.

In a few moments the Duke of Huntley strolled onto the deck as if he had not just followed a trail of breadcrumbs made from the scattered remnants of Miss Grace Hale's dignity. He walked with ease to the marble bannister and took a deep breath as he gazed at the stars beyond London's thin veil of smog.

It dawned on Grace as she hovered near a wall latticed with vines that she had never truly considered how beautiful this man was. Of course she knew that he was handsome in an abstract, uninterested way. He was the ever unattainable rake of the ton, but she had always been in love with the Marquis' sun-kissed golden looks. The Duke of Huntley, however was an intoxicating blend of danger and dark's embrace.

"Well, isn't this an interesting turn of events." The Duke of Huntley smirked into the shadows. "I would never thought that prim Miss Grace Hale who can usually be found reading political treatise at the fringes of the ballroom would ever deign to undertake an assignation."

Grace pursed her lips with annoyance and stepped forward. "It is not what you think, Your Grace. I have a proposition for you."

"I am most keen to hear it." The Duke turned to her with a wolf's grin.

"Typical." Grace resisted the urge to roll her eyes. "Lady Elizabeth is set to marry the Viscount of Caversham in less than a week and although I am usually the last one to hear of any gossip, even I am aware that you and she were once betrothed."

"How kind of you to bring that up." The duke's gaze hardened like flints of metal sparking to an anvil's steady beat.

"All I am saying is that you will undoubtedly be required to attend, seeing that you are still close friends with the family."

"What is your point, Miss Hale?"

"My point, Your Grace is that you have not found your own Duchess yet when you are still so clearly pining after the golden goddess that is twirling on the arms of her fiancé in there." Grace brandished a finger in the direction of the waltzing couples. "Surely you wish to create at least the façade that you retain some small measure of respect and reticence."

"Be careful with your words," he cautioned.

"I am tired of being careful, Your Grace. It is up to you now to decide if you feel the same. I know that I am not exactly a diamond of the first water, but I am offering you the opportunity to feign a courtship with me so that when you attend this infernal wedding you are not also offered the pitying looks of every woman and man inside that church."

"And what would you get out of this magnanimous endeavour?" The duke stalked forward to meet her in the shadows and suddenly the night air seemed positively warm.

"Well, uh, I," she stammered.

"Yes." The duke pressed as he loomed above her trying to intimidate her with his presence, but Grace was well passed being made to feel small.

"You are not the only one who has loved and lost. The Marquis of Kent will be coming to London for his sister's wedding and I doubt he will attend without his fiancé Lady Genevieve by his side. If I am to also go, I could use a friend at my side."

"Are we to be friends then," the duke whispered into the soft undulating breeze that curled into the tendrils of her chestnut hair.

Grace paused for a moment and in the infinitesimal space between two seconds and two hearts she found something in this man's obsidian eyes that told her he was more than what he seemed. "Yes, Your Grace. I believe we are."

"Aren't I lucky?" The duke raised a brow.

"Yes, you are." Grace grinned and for the first time she believed it.

-----

Blake did not know what whimsy convinced him to go along with her plans. Maybe it was the determination in her eyes or the hope for a future unshackled by the past that seized his spirits. Either way he found himself spending almost every waking minute in the company of the insufferable wench for the week. They had walked in Hyde Park, rode through Rotten Row, attended musicales and danced together twice at every ball.

The mild mannered missish Miss Hale was being courted by the most renowned rake London had likely ever seen. The ton was shocked and yet he was far more surprised. She possessed a wit and ingenuity that called to him. She made him laugh and he had not done so in a long while. He stood at their usual spot on the edge of the Serpentine in quiet meditation. It felt good to be with Grace. Behind the books she was a creature of light and laughter and it felt right. Perhaps that was the most concerning thing, because it had never been this way with Elizabeth. Never been this easy.

"Miss me?" A chuckle burst unexpectedly at his shoulder followed by a congenial prod.

If Blake hadn't been mid step or quite at the edge of the lake he might have recovered, but he was and so he didn't. To Grace's horror the Duke of Huntley fell into the chilly waters with a splash. Without thinking she grabbed onto his outstretched hand and promptly followed him into the less than pristine depths.

She felt herself go under before a vice grip surrounded her waist and she was dragged from the water and hauled onto the banks with sodden skirts and lungs full of pond water.

The Duke lay next to her, his arms still wrapped tightly about her body as she coughed and spluttered. "What on Earth did you think you were doing?

"I was trying to help. It didn't much occur to me that I can't swim."

"You could have drowned!" The duke gripped her shoulders furiously.

"Maybe, but I guess we'll never know now." Grace offered him a watery grin. "Can't get out of this pretend courtship that easily."

"Grace," the duke uttered her name as soft as a prayer.

"Blake," she whispered before he cupped her face in full view of the gaping ton and brushed his lips with hers.

-----

"You came." Blake turned to her on the steps of the church.

"Of course, I came. But first let me say something. I want to give what we have a try but not because we have no choice after that kiss. It's because with you I have been more myself than I have ever been. It took the prospect of public mortification to move me. The night I approached you in the shadows was the night I stopped letting my fears dictate my future. I had condemned myself to a lifetime of pain for not being what Andrew needed but I never gave a thought to what I need." Grace took a deep breath as the orchestra within slowly strummed to life with the first refrains of the Wedding March.

"And what do you need?" Blake asked quietly in her ear.

"I think... I need you," she whispered into the morning light.

His fingers entwined with hers.

"What a co-incidence, because I think I need you too."

Blake tucked her hand in the crook of his elbow as they walked into the chapel and Grace marvelled at their reflection in the stained glass window.

Yin and Yang.

Light and Dark.

That was her and Blake.

Andrew could never have taught her the beauty of the night and it no longer mattered if he knew that fact or not.

So, perhaps it wasn't about winning or losing, or saving face the way it was written in books. Maybe it was about learning to love her own face in her reflection every day. In the end she had saved herself, and it felt rather like winning too.

Glossary:

In 1876, the consular official Sir Robert Hart published a series of essays - These from Land of Sinim - Essays on the Chinese question, which referred to the concept of 'losing face' as a translation of the Chinese phrase 'tiu lien' meaning to be disgraced in public.