Page 19 of My Deal with the Wrong Duke

“Yesterday. My mother nearly wept. We have never been invited before.”

“You will be invited to everything now. That is what happens when a duke singles you out.” Eleanor sipped her tea. “Will Lady Tyndale’s be one of the selected events?”

“I believe so. Everybody knows how important her events are. Oliver… His Grace… He had a whole list of events.” Louisa shook her head. “He treats the social calendar the way a general treats a battlefield.”

“Most ambitious men do.”

“He is not ambitious. He is strategic. There is a difference.” Louisa paused, her cup halfway to her mouth. “He told me this morning that the primary qualification for a seat in the House of Lords is the ability to split hairs.”

She smiled.

It was brief. Half a breath, gone before she registered it properly, pulled loose by the memory of Oliver’s face when he said it, perfectly serious, as though he were delivering parliamentary testimony rather than strolling through Hyde Park with a woman he had known for three days.

Eleanor’s cup stilled against her lips.

“What?” Louisa asked.

“Nothing.” Eleanor drank. Set her cup down. “You were saying. Lady Tyndale’s ball.”

“Oh, yes. Frederick is certain to attend, and if the arrangement is visible enough by then, it should prompt him to act more decisively.”

“Then let us hope Lady Tyndale’s refreshments are better than the Bancrofts’. I cannot endure another evening of warm lemonade.”

Louisa laughed. The conversation moved on. Eleanor’s opinions about muslin prices. Whether ivory or cream flattered better for evening wear. The comfortable territory of friendship that required no defending.

When Louisa rose to leave, she kissed Eleanor’s cheek at the door and promised to call again on Thursday.

“Enjoy your Tuesday visit from the Duke,” Eleanor said, leaning against the doorframe.

“It is a social call, Eleanor. Not an event.”

“Of course. Merely a duke, calling upon you three times a week, as part of your perfectly sensible business arrangement.” Eleanor smiled, though it did not quite reach its usual brightness. “Be well, Louisa.”

The Fairchild carriage was waiting at the curb. Louisa climbed in, settled against the worn upholstery, and watched the Whitmore house recede through the window as the horses pulled away.

Eleanor worried too much. She always had. It was the tax one paid for a friend who loved fiercely enough to see danger in everything.

But the arrangement was sound. Frederick was noticing her. The plan was working.

Louisa closed her eyes, leaned her head against the carriage wall, and let herself imagine Frederick’s face when he next saw her at a ball, standing beside the duke, drawing the kind of attention she had never drawn before. She imagined his smile widening. His steps turning in her direction. A conversation that might follow, easy this time, unburdened by the old suffocating nervousness.

She held the picture in her mind, bright, precious, two years in the making, and let it carry her all the way home.

CHAPTER 6

“You look entirely too pleased with yourself for a Tuesday.”

Sebastian Hawthorne did not glance up from the racing journal spread across his knee. He sat in the same leather chair he had claimed every afternoon at White’s for the past six years. His boots were crossed at the ankle. His expression carried deliberate calm, the look of someone who had long ago decided that urgency was beneath him.

Oliver lowered himself into the opposite chair. Around them, the quiet murmur of the club carried on in its usual fashion: the rustle of newspapers, the occasional burst of laughter from the billiards room, the discreet clink of crystal as a footman replaced decanters. The air smelled of tobacco, old wood, brandy that had been poured into the same glasses for decades.

“I am not pleased,” Oliver said. “I am composed.”

Sebastian turned a page. “When you are composed, your left eyebrow does not lift. At present, it is halfway to your hairline.” He looked up. His dark eyes, sharp beneath an expression of theatrical boredom, scanned Oliver’s face with practiced efficiency. He had been reading Oliver’s moods since Eton. “What have you done?”

“I have done nothing. I am merely enjoying a productive start to the Season.”

“You loathe the Season. You have loathed every Season since your twenty-first year. Last April you told me, in this exact chair, that you would rather be trampled by your own horses than attend another musicale or garden party.”