Page 42 of My Deal with the Wrong Duke

“Only from reading. I recall a mention in one of my father’s almanacs.” She did not add that the almanac had been wedged between a volume of Restoration comedy and a veterinary guide, read during the years when her education had been whatever she could reach from the library shelves. Follow his answers. Let him feel the conversation is a bridge.

“How remarkable. Most women would not have the faintest idea what galena contains.” He said it warmly, as though he were praising a child who had managed long division. “Buckland spoke for nearly two hours. Two hours, Miss Fairchild, and I could have listened for two more. He described the way the limestone fractures along the bedding planes, the manner in which water has carved channels through rock that was laid down before any creature walked the earth. It makes one feel rather insignificant.”

“Or rather connected,” she said. “To be standing on ground that old.”

Frederick paused. He looked at her as though she had said something he had not expected, and for a moment she thought he might ask what she meant. Instead he smiled and continued walking.

“I intend to visit the Lake District this autumn. Buckland has offered to guide a small party to the Borrowdale deposits. I should like to see the formations for myself.” He clasped his hands behind his back. “My mother thinks it a peculiar hobby for a gentleman. She would prefer I took up hunting.”

“And what did you tell her?”

“That hunting requires one to wake before dawn and associate with dogs. Geology merely requires a hammer and sturdy boots.”

She laughed, but she was aware, beneath the ease of the conversation, of the architecture holding it up. Every question she asked had been placed like a rung on a ladder, each one built from his last answer, each one designed to keep him climbing. She was not talking. She was conducting. Guiding him through his own enthusiasm with the quiet precision Oliver had drilled into her on a bench beside the Serpentine.

Frederick had not asked her a single question.

He had not noticed.

“I have given some thought to the country this autumn,” she offered. “There is a cottage near Farnham that my mother has considered. Quieter. More affordable.”

She had not meant to say the last word. It slipped out, bare and honest, and she felt the heat rise in her cheeks.

Frederick’s expression shifted. A flicker of discomfort crossed his features, there and gone, the look of someone who preferred not to acknowledge that some families counted their pennies.

“The countryside is lovely in autumn,” he said. “I am sure you will find it restorative.”

He had not heard her. Not truly. He had heard the word affordable and stepped around it the way one stepped around a puddle on a pavement. Politely. Completely.

“Excuse me,” she said. “I believe I see Mrs. Waverly near the fountain. I promised her I would say hello.”

She stood. She crossed the lawn. She did not look back, though she was aware of Frederick’s gaze following her until another guest claimed his attention.

Mrs. Waverly was not near the fountain. But the two ladies on the bench were.

Louisa heard them before she reached the gravel path that ran behind the fountain.

“Well, I never thought I would see the day.” The voice was light, carrying the musical cadence of someone accustomed to being overheard. “Plain little Louisa Fairchild, of all people. A duke. Can you imagine?”

“She must be cleverer than she looks. Though I suppose she would have to be.”

Laughter. Not cruel, precisely. Worse than cruel. Amused.

“Her mother must be in raptures. The Fairchilds have been scraping along for years. A match like Ashford would solve everything. The house, the debts, the younger cousins who need placing. One well-married daughter can rescue an entire family.”

“If he marries her. I am not convinced.”

“He danced with her at Thornbury. He walked with her at Hartfield. He was at her side for the entire evening at Mrs. Alderton’s musicale. That is three events in a row. For a man who has avoided courtship for the better part of a decade, three events is practically a proposal.”

“Still. She is so very... ordinary. And rather plump.”

“Perhaps that is the appeal. After years of being chased by every ambitious mother in London, perhaps he wants someone who will not exhaust him.”

Louisa stopped walking. She stood on the gravel path with the champagne glass pressed against her breast, her fingers white around the stem. The words hummed through her like a plucked string, vibrating in the spaces between her ribs.

Ordinary.

She had heard the word before. She had thought it herself, in darker moments, standing at the edges of ballrooms watching other girls shine. But hearing it spoken aloud, spoken casually, spoken by women who did not know or care that she was close enough to hear, had a different quality entirely. It settled into her bones.