Page 48 of My Deal with the Wrong Duke

“Understood.” His voice was quiet. “For the waltz.”

He bowed. He returned to Sebastian’s side near the fireplace. Louisa pressed the card against her skirt with both hands, the paper warm from her grip.

The intervening dances passed in a blur of movement. She was aware of the music, of her partners’ hands, of the swirl of gowns across the polished floor. Frederick watched her from across the room, satisfied, his plans proceeding according to schedule. Oliver stood with Sebastian, his posture easy, his glass in his hand, his profile sharp against the firelight. She caught Sebastian glancing between them, poorly concealing his amusement.

The final waltz was announced.

Oliver crossed the room. The crowd parted for him with the unconscious deference that accompanied a title, a fortune, a face the ton had been watching for years. He stopped before her. He offered his hand.

She took it.

They moved onto the floor. His left hand settled at her waist. Her right hand rested on his shoulder. Their free hands met, fingers lacing together with a familiarity that should not have existed between two people performing a public dance in a room full of witnesses.

The music began. A slow, sweeping melody that the string orchestra played with a tenderness that seemed directed at them alone.

“You are quiet tonight,” she said.

“Am I?”

“You have spent the entire evening beside the fireplace. You have not danced with anyone.”

“I had no desire.”

Louisa smiled. He turned her through the first figure. His hand at her waist was steady, warm through the silk.

“You are angry,” she said.

“I am not angry.”

“Oliver.”

He looked at her. The public face was gone. Beneath it, she saw the crease between his brows, the tension at the corners of his mouth. He was struggling with an emotion he had not expected to feel, wrestling it into submission the way she had watched him do a dozen times in drawing rooms across London.

“I was not angry,” he said, his voice low enough that only she could hear above the strings. “I was irritated. There is a distinction.”

“Irritated by what?”

He pulled her closer through the turn. His chest brushed hers. The contact lasted a second, perhaps two, but her breath caught against her stays.

“By the fact that every gentleman in London appears to have discovered your existence at precisely the same moment I am no longer permitted to do anything about it.”

Her breath stalled. She felt the truth of it in her fingertips where they rested on his shoulder. She felt it in the warm press of his palm against her waist.

“You are not permitted,” she said carefully, “because our arrangement does not require it.”

“No. It does not.”

They moved through the figures. The other couples on the floor blurred at the edges of her vision. The candles burned overhead. The music swelled.

“Frederick mentioned a house party,” she said. “Lord Ashton’s estate.”

Oliver’s hand tightened at her waist. A fractional increase in pressure, gone almost before she registered it. “Did he?”

“He implied I might receive an invitation.”

“You will. Lord Ashton’s wife told Sebastian last week. She has already written the guest list.”

“You knew?”