Page 44 of My Deal with the Wrong Duke

“You should believe it because it is true. Those ladies by the fountain are the same women who spent the last three Seasons ignoring you, and they will spend the next three envying you, and neither reaction has anything to do with who you actually are.” His voice softened. “You deserve every invitation on that table, Louisa. Every single one. Not because I stood beside you. Because you are worth standing beside.”

The words settled through her. She felt them land in the hollow place behind her ribs where the overheard conversation still echoed, pressing against the bruise of ordinary and plump until the sting began to ease.

She wanted to thank him. She wanted to tell him that no one had ever spoken to her the way he did, with such easy certainty, as though her worth were a settled fact rather than a question still under debate. She wanted to tell him that his good opinion mattered more than Frederick’s attention, more than Lady Tyndale’s invitations, more than every embossed card on every silver tray in London.

She did not say any of it. She picked up the champagne glass. She took a sip. The bubbles were warm and flat.

“Lady Tyndale’s champagne,” she said, “is dreadful.”

Oliver took the glass from her hand. He sniffed it. He winced.

“Good heavens. This is an offence against France.”

“You should write to Napoleon about it.”

“I believe he has other concerns at present.”

She laughed. It came from somewhere genuine, low in her belly, startling in its warmth. Oliver handed the glass back. Their fingers touched around the stem, and the contact moved through her like a current, quick and bright.

She pulled her hand away. She set the glass down.

Across the garden, Frederick’s laughter rose above the murmur of conversation. He had not come looking for her. He had not noticed she was gone.

Oliver had.

“We should return,” she said. “People will wonder.”

“Let them wonder.” But he stood, offering his hand. She took it. His grip was firm, his palm warm against her glove. He pulled her gently to her feet.

He did not release her hand immediately.

She did not ask him to.

“Louisa.” His voice was quieter now, low enough that only the jasmine could hear. “The next time someone calls you ordinary, I want you to remember just how far from true it is.”

He stood then, and turned toward the garden path. She watched him walk away.

She stood alone behind the jasmine trellis with a glass of terrible champagne, and she understood, with a clarity that frightened her, that she was in very serious trouble.

CHAPTER 13

“You have three spaces remaining on your card, Miss Fairchild.”

Eleanor stood beside the pillar nearest the entrance to the ballroom, radiating the intensity of someone delivering intelligence of national importance. Her silver gown caught the candlelight from the chandelier above, a vast crystal constellation that threw prisms across the polished floor. Garlands of white roses climbed every column. A string orchestra played on the raised platform at the far end with the earnest concentration of men whose employment depended on keeping forty of London’s most influential guests in motion.

“I am aware,” Louisa said.

“You have been here for less than an hour. Lord Hathaway claimed the first. Sir John Everett claimed the second. Mr. Fairfax, who has never once asked you to dance in four Seasons, materialized beside the punch bowl as though he had been lying in wait.”

“He was lying in wait. He told me so. He said he had been watching the door.”

“Good heavens.” Eleanor pressed her gloved fingers against her temple. “Louisa, do you understand what is happening?”

“Men are asking me to dance.”

“Men are competing to dance with you.” Eleanor caught her arm. “Frederick claimed two.”

The warmth that spread through Louisa’s chest was familiar: the old, steady glow of being noticed by the man she had admired for years. Frederick had approached her within minutes of her arrival, his manner more assured than she had seen it. He had bowed, complimented her gown, then requested both the cotillion and the quadrille. Two dances. An unmistakable declaration of interest, by any standard of polite society.