My Deal with the Wrong Duke (The Art of Falling for a Duke #1)

Chapter 1

“You are staring again.”

Louisa Fairchild tore her gaze from the far side of the ballroom so quickly that the lemonade in her glass lurched against the rim. A drop escaped, landing on her glove. She rubbed at it with her thumb and did not look up.

“I was not staring.”

“You absolutely were.” Eleanor Whitmore appeared at her elbow, champagne in hand, eyes bright with the unmistakable satisfaction of catching a friend in an obvious lie. “You have been watching Lord Langley for the better part of twenty minutes. I counted.”

“You counted?”

Eleanor shrugged, a small smile playing around her lips.

“I had nothing better to do. My dance card is tragically empty, and the lemonade is vile.” Eleanor took a sip of champagne instead, her gaze following the direction Louisa had been so determinedly not looking.

“He does look rather dashing this evening, I’ll grant you that. New coat, I believe. Navy suits him.”

Louisa pressed her lips together. Across the ballroom, Frederick Langley stood among a cluster of gentlemen near the orchestra, his dark head inclined toward Lord Williston, his laugh carrying across the crowd in warm, easy waves.

The candlelight from the Bancroft chandeliers caught the silver threads in his waistcoat.

He looked composed. Confident. Entirely unaware that anyone was watching him at all.

Which, of course, was precisely the problem.

“Go and speak with him,” Eleanor encouraged animatedly.

“No.”

“Louisa.”

“Absolutely not.” She adjusted her grip on the glass and focused very hard on the refreshment table across the room.

The floral arrangements had seen better evenings.

Roses were wilting in the heat, petals curling at the edges.

She sympathized. “I spoke with him at Lady Booth’s musicale last month. It was a disaster.”

“It was not a disaster.”

“I told him I enjoyed the weather.”

Eleanor paused. “Well.”

“And then I told him again. Twice. In the span of four minutes.” Louisa’s fingers tightened around the glass.

“He smiled very politely and excused himself to speak with Miss Drummond, who I am quite certain has never once discussed the weather with any man, ever, in the whole of her charmed existence.”

The heat of the ballroom pressed close. Five hundred candles, three hundred guests, and the cloying weight of perfume and beeswax hanging in the air.

The Season’s opening ball at the Bancroft residence drew the full force of London’s ambition every spring, and tonight was no exception.

Silk rustled against silk, jewels caught the light and threw it back in fractured arcs.

The orchestra played a country dance that made the floor tremble beneath two hundred feet, and the laughter rose and fell in waves that sounded, if one listened too closely, slightly frantic.

Louisa had attended four of these now. Four Seasons of standing precisely where she stood tonight: at the edge of the crowd, close enough to see the spectacle, too far to be part of it.

“He would be lucky to have you,” Eleanor said, and the fierceness in her voice was real, which made it worse.

“You are my dearest friend and therefore obligated to say that.”

“I am your dearest friend and therefore the only person willing to tell you that you are wasting your evening pining at a man from across a ballroom when you could simply walk over and speak to him.”

“I am not pining.”

Eleanor raised one brow.

“I am observing. There is a distinction.”

“The distinction being that pining involves sighing, and you have not yet sighed. Give it ten minutes.” Eleanor finished her champagne and set the empty glass on a passing footman’s tray with practiced ease.

“I am going to dance with Mr. Haversham before his mother reclaims him. When I return, I expect you to have moved from this spot. Preferably in the direction of Lord Langley. If not, I shall drag you there myself and the scandal will be entirely your fault.”

She disappeared into the crowd before Louisa could protest.

The music swelled. Another dance formed. Louisa watched couples pair and separate across the polished floor and felt the familiar hollow settle beneath her ribs. Not envy, precisely. Weariness, perhaps. The quiet exhaustion of wanting and pretending that the wanting did not bother her.

She glanced at Frederick one final time.

He was speaking with Miss Cavendish now, his smile warm, his attention complete.

Miss Cavendish was laughing. Miss Cavendish was always laughing.

She had the sort of effortless beauty that made rooms reorganize themselves around her, as though the candlelight had been informed in advance where to fall.

Louisa looked away, her throat tight.

Enough.

She turned toward the refreshment table because it was the only destination that required no courage and no pretense of enjoying the evening.

The crowd parted reluctantly. She navigated past two matrons discussing a scandal she had not heard of, sidestepped a young officer who had consumed too much champagne, and was within four steps of the lemonade when the floor seemed to tilt beneath her.

She collided with a chest.

A broad, unyielding, extremely well-tailored chest.

Her lemonade pitched forward. A hand caught her elbow. Another caught the glass, righting it casually.

“Steady.”

The voice was low, warm, laced with the faintest thread of amusement. Louisa looked up.

The man holding her elbow was tall. That was the first thing.

Tall and broad-shouldered in the way that made the evening coat across his frame seem insufficient to the task of containing him.

Dark blond hair, slightly disordered, as though he had run his fingers through it recently and not bothered to repair the damage.

A strong jaw. An easy, practiced smile that reached his hazel eyes and stopped just short of sincerity.

She knew who he was. Every woman in this ballroom knew who he was.

Oliver Sinclair. The Duke of Ashford.

“I apologize, Your Grace,” Louisa managed, stepping back and nearly colliding with a potted fern. “I was not watching where I was going.”

“Clearly.” He released her elbow, but his fingers lingered on the glass for a moment before surrendering it back to her.

“Though in your defense, the Bancroft ballroom was designed by a man who believed that adequate space between furniture was a sign of moral weakness. One can hardly cross the room without assaulting a fern or a matron.” He paused. “I recommend avoiding both.”

A startled laugh escaped before she could stop it. She pressed her lips together immediately, horrified, but the Duke’s smile widened.

“I really am sorry, Your Grace. I should have been paying attention.” She clutched the lemonade to her bodice. Her pulse was doing an alarming thing against her stays. “If you will excuse me, I was just”

“Fleeing?”

Her eyes widened. “I beg your pardon?”

“You have the look of a woman in full retreat. Trust me, I recognize it. I have perfected it myself on numerous occasions.” He rocked back on his heels, hands clasped behind him, surveying the ballroom with studied ease, as though he belonged everywhere and cared about nothing.

“The trick is to walk slowly. Rushing only draws attention.”

“I was not fleeing. I was going to fetch a drink.”

He glanced at the glass already in her hand.

Louisa felt heat climb her throat. “A fresh one.”

“Ah.” His gaze swept back to her face and held there with an intensity that felt disproportionate to the conversation. “Well, do not let me detain you. The Bancroft lemonade is famously terrible, and no one should be forced to endure it at less than full strength.”

She should have walked away. Every instinct told her to curtsy, murmur a pleasantry, and disappear back into the safety of the crowd.

Dukes did not make conversation with wallflowers at opening balls.

It was not how the evening was arranged.

There were hierarchies, expectations, invisible lines drawn across every ballroom floor that separated people by rank and fortune and the subtle, unspoken currency of social worth.

But his eyes were kind. And his smile, beneath the polish, held the faintest crack of genuineness. And so, she stayed.

“Is the champagne any better?” she asked, blushing immediately at the question.

“Worse. But the glasses are smaller, so you, I do believe, suffer less per serving.” He turned slightly, angling his body toward hers, and she noticed his gaze flicker past her shoulder. Brief. Deliberate. The smile tightened at its edges. “Tell me. Are you enjoying your evening?”

“Immensely,” Louisa said, and his eyes twinkled at the dryness in her voice.

His laugh was genuine this time. Quick and startled out of him. “Good Heavens. Honesty at a society ball. I had heard rumors such things existed but never witnessed one firsthand.”

She felt her face turn rather warm,

“I fear the lemonade has loosened my tongue.”

“Then we must get you more immediately.” He glanced past her shoulder again. This time Louisa’s curiosity was far too strong for her to ignore it. She turned.

Three women advanced toward them across the ballroom with focused, unblinking determination.

Each wore the fixed, brilliant smile of maternal ambition, and each had a young lady trailing in her wake: gowns immaculate, spines rigid, expressions arranged into studied combinations of modesty and availability.

Louisa turned back to the Duke.

His expression had not changed. The smile remained. The posture remained. But his knuckles, she noticed, had gone white where his hands were folded in front of his stomach.

“Your Grace,” she said slowly. “Are you using me as a shield?”

His gaze snapped to hers. For a moment, the mask slipped. Surprise flickered across his features, followed by a swift, grudging respect that looked almost like admiration.

“That,” he said, “is a deeply unflattering accusation.”

“That is not a denial.”