Chapter 3 #2
“Kindness is a fine quality. It is also the quality that allows a man to spend two years treating a woman exactly the same as every other woman in the room without ever realizing she wants to be treated differently.” He paused.
“You have been so constant, so reliably present, that he has stopped seeing you at all. You are there at every gathering, every supper, always pleasant, always accommodating. He does not notice you because he has never had to. You have never given him a reason to look twice.”
Her fingers tightened around the stem of the glass.
“Your proposal would give him that reason.”
“My proposal would give you that reason. To stop standing in corners. To stop making yourself invisible because you are afraid of what happens when people actually look.” His voice dropped.
“You are clever, Miss Fairchild, though you seem determined to hide it. You are funny when you forget to be careful. Frederick Langley should have noticed that years ago. I noticed it in five minutes.”
She looked away, toward the window, where the evening pressed dark against the glass.
Heat climbed her throat, her cheeks. She pressed her thumbnail into the pad of her finger beneath her glove, hard, until the sting of it steadied her.
“What do you gain?” she asked. “Truly. I must admit that being left alone by insistent matrons and daughters seems as though you are giving far more than you are receiving.”
The laughter left his face.
“Every Season since I inherited my title has been an exercise in endurance,” he said.
“I attend a ball. Within the hour, I am surrounded. Mothers who have calculated my income to the last penny. Young women coached on my preferences, my estates, my habits. None of which they actually care about.” He turned the claret glass slowly.
“If society believes I am already engaged in a courtship, the siege lifts. The mothers redirect. I am permitted to exist in a room without being appraised. None of it… is about who I am. It is all about the title, the thought… and I… do not wish to be married off.”
She frowned. “I must admit that this is a rather cold arrangement.”
“A practical one. You are a practical woman, Miss Fairchild. I suspect practicality appeals to you more than you would ever admit.”
She studied his face. His eyes held hers with a directness that made her breath go shallow. No charm deployed as armor. No amusement held up for the room. He watched her as though her answer carried genuine weight.
“One Season,” he said. “I will call on you. I will escort you at selected gatherings. I will dance with you often enough for the gossip columns to take notice. In return, you allow society to draw its own conclusions. Frederick’s curiosity becomes interest. My peace is restored.
At the end of the Season, we part amicably. Your reputation untouched.”
“You would teach me.” She heard the hesitation in her own voice. “Confidence. How to walk into a room without wishing to walk out of it again.”
“I would remind you to stop hiding. The rest you already have.”
The drawing room doors opened. A footman announced new arrivals. Louisa’s gaze shifted toward the entrance out of the habit built across four Seasons of scanning doorways for one face.
Frederick Langley stepped into the room.
He bowed to Lady Hartley with the easy warmth Louisa had catalogued from a hundred evenings. He accepted champagne. Surveyed the room.
His gaze swept the guests, passed the mantelpiece, reached the window alcove where Louisa sat beside the Duke of Ashford.
He paused.
She watched the shift cross his features. The slight draw between his brows. The champagne glass lowering an inch. He was looking at her the way he had looked at her at the Bancroft ball: puzzled, as though seeing her clearly for the first time.
“He sees you,” Oliver murmured.
Her heartbeat hammered against the boning of her stays. She could feel it in her wrists, in the hollow of her throat.
“He is merely surprised to find me sitting with you,” she whispered.
“He is surprised to discover that the woman he overlooked is being sought by someone else entirely.” Oliver’s voice dropped further.
She had to lean closer to hear him, which, she realized too late, would look to every observer in the room precisely as intimate as a duke whispering to his intended.
“In two years, has Frederick Langley ever looked at you the way he is looking at you right now?”
She had no answer. The truth of it pressed behind her ribs.
Frederick held her gaze a moment longer. Then he turned to Lord Williston, who had appeared at his side. But his chin angled back toward their alcove twice in the space of a minute.
Oliver extended his hand.
“One Season,” he said.
The drawing room glittered. Lady Hartley’s laughter rang from the pianoforte. Forty guests carried on their conversations, oblivious to the quiet negotiation beside the tall windows.
Louisa looked at Oliver’s hand. She looked at Frederick, who was watching them from across the candlelit room with the expression she had spent two years praying for.
She placed her hand in his.
His fingers closed around hers, warm, steadier than her own. His palm was rougher than she expected, callused at the edges. He held her gaze.
“Very well,” she said.
Oliver smiled. The real one, the one that cracked through the polish.
“Deal.”
He released her hand. The warmth of his grip lingered against her glove, stubborn, impossible to ignore.