Page 37 of My Deal with the Wrong Duke

She smiled. She did not correct him.

Eleanor caught her eye from across the room and raised both eyebrows so high they vanished beneath her hair.

When Frederick finally excused himself to greet his host, Louisa stood alone with her empty wine glass and a breathless, dizzy feeling she had never associated with this man before. He had listened. He had asked questions. He had looked at her as though she were worth the attention.

She turned to find Oliver.

He stood where he had been all evening, near the far wall, his glass half-raised, his eyes already on her. Had been on her, she realized. Had been on her the entire time Frederick stood at her side, tracking the conversation he could not hear, reading the success in the lift of her chin and the steadiness of her voice.

She smiled at him. She could not help it. The triumph was too large and too new to contain, and he was the only person in the room who understood what it meant.

He raised his glass. The private toast again, meant for no one but her.

She raised her empty glass in return. Their eyes held for a beat too long. The crowd moved between them, bodies shifting, the soprano launching into an encore that nobody had requested. Louisa lost sight of him behind a woman’s feathered headdress.

When the crowd cleared, he was gone.

She lowered her glass. The warmth from his smile lingered beneath her ribs, steady, entirely unrelated to Frederick Langley’s compliments or the botanist in Hyde Park.

CHAPTER 11

“You have been steering me toward him for the last forty minutes.”

Oliver’s stride did not falter. He walked beside her across the broad sweep of lawn at Hartfield Park, where Lady Dalton’s annual country picnic sprawled beneath a cloudless June sky. Blankets dotted the grass in a patchwork of tartan and linen. Servants moved between clusters of guests carrying trays of cold meats, strawberries, seed cake. A croquet game had erupted near the ornamental lake, where shouts of triumph carried across the water with the sharpness of a cannon report.

“I have no idea what you mean,” he said.

“You suggested I fetch lemonade at the exact moment Frederick was standing beside the lemonade table. You pointed out the roses along the south terrace where Frederick happened to be admiring the roses along the south terrace. You told me Lady Dalton’s collection of botanical prints was extraordinary, which led me directly to the library, where Frederick was examining Lady Dalton’s collection of botanical prints.”

“What a marvelous coincidence.”

“Oliver.”

He stopped. He turned to face her. The afternoon light fell across his features with the generosity of a season that had not yet tipped into the cruelty of August, catching the bronze in his hair, the fleck of green in his hazel eyes.

“I prefer to think of it as strategy,” he said. “You had a successful conversation with the man two nights ago. He listened. He asked questions. He told you your eye was remarkable. The momentum is there. I am simply ensuring it does not stall.”

She studied him. “You are remarkably invested in another man’s courtship of me.”

“That is precisely the arrangement we made. I am fulfilling my end of it.”

“With suspicious enthusiasm.”

His mouth curved. “Would you prefer I drag my feet? I can look extremely reluctant, if it helps. I have been told my reluctant face is quite convincing.”

“I have never once seen you look reluctant about anything.”

“Then you have not been paying sufficient attention.” He tilted his head toward the ornamental lake, where Frederick stood with Lord Ashton beside the water’s edge. Frederick’s profile was sharp against the glitter of the lake. He was laughing at Lord Ashton’s anecdote, his posture easy, his attention absorbed. “He is alone now. Lord Ashton has been called away by his wife. This is your opportunity.”

Louisa smoothed the front of her dress.

“What do I say?”

“You do not need a script. You proved that two nights ago.”

“That was different. There were walls. There was a soprano providing noise. This is outside, in full sunlight, with half of London watching.”

“Half of London is watching the croquet. Lord Tyndale has just struck his ball into the lake. Nobody will be looking at you.”