Page 1 of My Deal with the Wrong Duke

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.