Page 85 of A Virgin to Tempt the Duke

She thought about a young man who had learned to keep things together while everything was falling apart. She thought about a man who had kissed her in a carriage as though she were the only thing in the world worth reaching for, and then apologized for it. She realized in that moment it wasn’t that he didn’t care for her. It was that he did not know how to want things for himself. Her chest ached for Frederick, past and present.

“Anna,” Thomas’s voice was gentle. “For what it’s worth, I think you already know him better than most people ever will. He simply hasn’t realized it all yet. Or can’t let himself.”

“Thank you, Thomas,” she said, and meant it, and raised her glass toward Rachel, who was laughing now at somethingFrederick had said, radiant in the glow of a perfect party. “For tonight. And for the rest of it.”

Thomas raised his own glass. “He will get there,” he said, quietly, to the room rather than to her. “He’s stubborn, not a lost cause.”

Anna watched Frederick across the crowded, candlelit room. She saw the man who had taken composure as a shield before he was old enough to know he would need one. She finished her champagne. Around her, the party carried on, warm and bright, full of the happiness of people celebrating something real. Anna stood in the middle of it and ached for a man across the room who was not looking at her, and told herself that this, too, she would endure.

CHAPTER 31

Frederick saw them before they saw him.

He had come to the park for fresh air and the quiet relief of walking somewhere that was not his study. He had spent the better part of three days locked in there, not working and resenting himself for it. He had turned onto the main path and had managed four minutes of genuine solitude before he rounded the curve of the path near the ornamental pond. There in front of him was Anna walking thirty yards ahead of him, with Lord Wexford at her side. His godmother trailed a few steps behind as chaperone.

Of all the paths in all the parks in London, they had to choose this one.

She was laughing at something, and it sounded sweet to his ears, despite the sour in his stomach at the sight. It was not the full one that came from the belly, though, not the unguarded version he secretly craved. Wexford walked with his hands claspedbehind his back and an expression of earnest attention that Frederick found, unreasonably and immediately, infuriating.

I should turn around. Turning around is the rational, appropriate course of action available to a man of my position and composure.

He did not turn around. He reasoned it was the direction of the path that kept him on their heels, that the gravel walk narrowed here. He told himself there was nowhere else to go without cutting across the grass like a man fleeing a debt collector. The path and his pace carried him close enough that their voices reached him in fragments, twisted by the wind.

“…cannot possibly mean that you have never…” Wexford was saying.

“…I did not say never. I said not since I was eleven, and in my own defense, the pond in question was frozen solid!”

“And did it hold?”

“For my friend, yes. Rather less so for me.”

Wexford laughed easily and said something further that the wind swallowed before it reached Frederick. He saw Anna laugh again, that same bright, ordinary laugh, and Frederick found himself craving it anyway.

I should move on.

He walked faster instead at a sideways pace, close enough to make out the green shade of the ribbon that tied Anna’s bonnet.

This is simply the shortest way to the exit, he lied to himself.

The continued trouble with Lord Wexford… is that there is nothing specifically wrong with him.

This was also the trouble with Lord Wexford as a conversational partner, and as a prospective husband, and as a companion on a promenade. In every conversation, she did the heavy lifting. He was pleasant in a way that offered no substance. And she found herself bored.

“I have always admired the park at this hour,” he was saying as they neared the end of their walk.

“It is very pleasant,” Anna agreed.

Lady Oldbarrow had accompanied them and walked on Anna’s other side, parasol and ears undoubtedly open.

“Do you ride often, Lady Birchall?” Lord Wexford asked.

“When I have the opportunity, which has not been often this season. It is a pleasant diversion.”

“I confess I find a great many things more pleasant than I once did,” he said, “when there is pleasant company to share them with.”

It was neatly done. It was the sort of thing that could be acknowledged or overlooked according to the lady’s preference, which was thoughtful of him, she supposed.

She had begun to formulate a reply that was neither encouraging nor dismissive when Lady Oldbarrow spoke.