Chapter 3
“You left the Bancroft ball wearing a duke’s coat, Louisa?”
Her mother stood in the doorway of the breakfast room with the morning post held against her bodice, her reading spectacles perched crookedly on the bridge of her nose.
Louisa set her teacup down. “Good morning, Mama.”
“Mrs. Tyndale writes in considerable detail. The lemonade stain, causing the Duke of Ashford crossing the ballroom to drape his coat around your shoulders.” Her mother sat at the table, poured her chocolate with a hand that was trying very hard to appear casual.
“He was being courteous. A girl collided with me. I had lemonade down my dress. The Duke happened to be standing nearby.”
“Dukes are men, my dear. They tend to be precisely where they intend to be.”
Louisa pressed her thumb into the chip along the rim of her teacup.
The toast on her plate had gone cold. The butter had softened into a formless slick.
She had been sitting here since half seven, replaying the Bancroft ball frame by frame, prodding at every detail the way one prods at a bruise, unable to stop though it ached.
“It meant nothing, Mama.”
“If you say so, dear.” Her mother replaced her spectacles, returned to the post, retreated behind the safe barricade of Mrs. Tyndale’s elaborate penmanship.
Louisa drank her cold tea.
The breakfast room was small, its wallpaper fading where sunlight found the seams. Their rented Mayfair townhouse shrank a little more each Season, the mathematics of her father’s investments working their slow, quiet subtraction. Fewer candles. Plainer gowns. Fewer servants.
I am suggesting we trade.
She pressed the heel of her hand against her eye.
Oliver Sinclair’s voice lived in her skull now, low, stripped of the charm he wore for ballrooms. A duke, proposing they pretend to court so that Frederick Langley might finally see her.
The premise was absurd, manipulative even.
It treated affection as a mechanism to be gamed, jealousy as a lever to be pulled.
She picked at the cold toast. Tore a corner off, set it back down.
Two years she had admired Frederick. Two years of watching him smile at her with the same pleasant warmth he offered every woman at every gathering, his kindness distributed so evenly it never quite landed.
She had rehearsed conversations, planned approaches, chosen gowns with his preferences in mind.
She had done everything except make him see her.
Yet, he never had, and she had often wondered if his affection and attention would one day be aimed at one of the many other ladies who vied for it. One more beautiful. One with a coquettish laugh, a slender figure, an impressive dowry.
Then, last night…
Last night, a duke had given her his coat, walked her through the Bancroft ballroom on his arm, spoken with her in an alcove while the whole of London’s gossip apparatus whirred into motion around them.
Frederick had stood near the marble pillar with his champagne untouched, his gaze fixed on the alcove, wearing an expression she had never once managed to put on his face in two years of patient, invisible devotion.
He cannot stop looking.
The worst part was not that Oliver had been right. The worst part was how quickly it had worked. A single evening. One gesture from the wrong man had accomplished what two years of longing from the right one could not.
“Mama,” she said. “I believe I shall attend Lady Hartley’s supper this evening.”
Her mother glanced up from the post. “Lady Hartley’s? You told me yesterday you would rather organize your cousin’s stamp collection.”
“I have changed my mind.”
Her mother’s mouth curved, just slightly. She had recognized the shape of resolve in her daughter’s voice, however carefully Louisa tried to disguise it.
“Well, my dear… I suppose that a mind is no good if a lady cannot change it. I encourage you to attend and have a marvelous time.”
The hours that followed dragged. Louisa dressed for the evening with more care than she had given a society event in months, choosing the ivory muslin over the safer grey, pinning her hair with the good tortoiseshell combs.
The carriage delivered them to Brook Street at half past eight.
Louisa surrendered her wrap, smoothed her skirt, pressed her gloved fingers against her collarbone where her pulse had begun to misbehave.
She saw him before she had taken four steps into Lady Hartley’s drawing room.
Oliver Sinclair stood near the mantelpiece, a glass of claret in his hand, half-listening to Lord Ashworth discuss what appeared to be either horse breeding or parliamentary reform.
He wore dark blue this evening, and she had to admit that he looked rather dashing.
He looked entirely at home beside the fireplace, claiming the space without appearing to try.
His gaze found hers across the assembled guests.
He smiled.
Her stomach dropped. She turned quickly toward the nearest cluster of guests, desperate for cover, but he was already moving, crossing the drawing room with a stride so unhurried it appeared accidental.
“Miss Fairchild.” He arrived at her elbow as though the crowd had parted for him by prior arrangement. “What a pleasure. I was beginning to think you would not attend.”
“Your Grace.” She curtsied. Kept her voice steady. “I must return your coat. I will have it sent to Ashford House in the morning.”
“Keep it. I have many others.” He fell into step beside her, guiding them toward the far end of the room where two chairs stood near the tall windows. “You look well rested.”
“I slept perfectly, thank you.”
“So did I.” The corners of his mouth lifted. “Shall we both stop lying now, or do you prefer another round first?”
She pressed her lips together against the pull at the corners of her own mouth.
He gestured toward the chairs. She sat, because refusing would draw more attention than accepting, because she could feel eyes on them already, because some treacherous instinct in the base of her spine told her she wanted to hear what he would say next.
He settled into the opposite chair, unhurried, as though he expected the conversation to last.
“I have been thinking about your proposal,” Louisa said.
“Have you? I am glad to hear that you are one to honor your promises.”
“I hardly promised,” she insisted. “I merely… mentioned that I would think about it.”
His smile shifted. “Honesty is a quality that I rather admire.”
She held his gaze. “I believe that your proposal will fail.”
“Tell me why.”
“Because London society has spent generations perfecting the detection of false courtships. The matrons, the gossip columnists, the mothers with their calculating eyes. A fabricated attachment would unravel within weeks.”
“Which fabrication did they detect last night?”
She opened her mouth, and closed it quickly again.
“Three hundred people watched me give you my coat,” Oliver said.
He leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees.
The movement brought him closer. She caught the cedar again, faint beneath Lady Hartley’s jasmine.
“Three hundred people drew the same conclusion. Not one questioned the sincerity of it. Do you know why?”
“Because you are a convincing performer.”
“Because I was not performing. I saw you standing in a ballroom with lemonade on your gown, looking as though you wished the floor would open beneath you. I helped. The gesture was genuine. The interpretation belonged entirely to them.” He held her gaze.
“We would not be constructing a falsehood. We would be allowing London to construct one for us.”
“A fine distinction.”
“A crucial one. There is nothing to unravel if we build nothing false. Two people seen together in public. Society writes its own story. It always has.”
She turned the Madeira glass between her fingers, the wine catching the candlelight. “Frederick would see through it.”
“From what I hear, Frederick has had two years to see through a great many things where you are concerned. He has not managed it yet.”
The accuracy of that pressed against her breastbone. She looked toward the window, where the last of the evening light was draining from the sky above Brook Street.
“You watched us speak last night,” she said quietly. “You saw the whole thing.”
“I did, indeed.”
“How do you know…” She blushed. “I suppose you could see it last night, but you… you said two years and…”
“I happen to know things, Miss Fairchild.”
She looked at him with narrowed eyes. “Why do I believe that the statement means you have spoken with a certain friend of mine?”
He laughed softly. “That is neither here nor there. The reality is that I saw you walk across a ballroom toward the man you have admired for two years. I saw you hold a conversation with him while your hands trembled against your glass. That took courage, Miss Fairchild.”
She shook her head and sighed.
“I told him roses were determined.”
His mouth twitched. “I heard.”
“You heard?”
“Sound carries in ballrooms. I was positioned nearby.”
“That is eavesdropping.”
“That is reconnaissance. A distinction that matters.” The smile broke through fully. “For what it is worth, I found it charming.”
“You found it absurd.”
“Charming with undertones of mild absurdity. It was entirely original. Most women would have discussed the weather.”
“I have discussed the weather as well. Far too many times.”
He laughed. The sound was warm, so different from the polished charm she had watched him deploy at the Bancroft ball that it startled her. Several guests glanced their way. She looked at her hands.
“He has been kind to you,” Oliver said, quieter now. “Frederick. I can see that.”
“He has.”