Page 62 of My Deal with the Wrong Duke

“How restful.” He turned to Lord Ashton. “As I was saying, the second drive⁠—”

Across the table, Oliver caught her eye. He glanced at the aspic, then at her. One brow lifted. She pressed her napkin to her mouth.

Frederick reached for her hand. “You look well this evening, Miss Fairchild. The country air suits you.”

She turned to him. His smile was warm, sincere, full of a future he was already constructing. She remembered the wildflower behind her ear. She remembered his hand covering hers at breakfast, dry, careful, claiming. She remembered four years of watching him across crowded rooms, hoping he would turn his head. He had turned it. He was looking straight at her.

“Thank you,” she said. “You are very kind.”

“You are quiet this evening,” he said, turning back to her.

“I am enjoying the consommé.”

“It is excellent, is it not? Lord Ashton’s cook trained in Paris.” He rubbed his thumb across her knuckles. “I am glad you are here, Miss Fairchild.”

She smiled at him. He smiled back. Across the table, Oliver was telling Lady Ashton about Mrs. Aldridge’s wooden spoon. Lady Ashton nearly choked on her wine.

Frederick did not notice. He squeezed her hand and returned to Lord Ashton.

Louisa was almost relieved when the ladies withdrew, though she could not explain this for the life of her. She climbed the stairs, her fingers trailing along the banister, and closed her bedroom door behind her. Her maid was waiting. The pins came out one by one. The jasmine from the day before sat in a glass of water on the vanity, its petals soft at the edges, fading.

She picked it up. The scent was still sweet, a little faded, a little tired.

She pressed it to her lips. She set it back down and climbed into bed, closing her eyes.

Frederick had held her hand at breakfast. He had walked with her at the lake. He had tucked a wildflower behind her ear. He was doing all she had ever dreamed of and more.

Her fingers drifted to the inside of her arm, where Oliver had caught her that afternoon. The skin was cool. The ghost of his grip remained beneath it for a while, but it vanished before she was ready for it to go.

CHAPTER 18

“London suits you poorly. You have been scowling since Piccadilly.”

Louisa adjusted her bonnet against the drizzle and did not dignify this with an answer. They had been back in the city for five days. Five days of grey skies after Wiltshire’s open green, five days of smoke and close streets and the relentless clatter of a thousand carriages all trying to occupy the same quarter-mile of road. She had not expected to miss the country. She had not expected to miss the house party at all, and yet on the first morning back in Curzon Street, she had woken to the sound of a coal cart instead of birdsong and felt the loss of it settle across her chest.

Oliver fell into step beside her on the pavement.

“I am not scowling,” Louisa retorted, pretend-haughtily. “I am concentrating.”

“On what?”

“On whether to continue this walk or push you into the gutter.”

He laughed easily. “The gutter is shallow on this side. You would need to cross the street for a satisfying result.” He steered her around a puddle left by the morning’s rain. “Besides, I have brought you a peace offering. It is inside the shop.”

Hatchard’s stood at 187 Piccadilly with its bow windows fogged from the rain. Oliver held the door. The shop smelled of leather dressing, coal smoke, and the dry sweetness of uncut pages. Half of fashionable London appeared to have taken shelter from the weather, and the reading gallery above them creaked under gentlemen who had come for the newspapers and stayed for the warmth.

“This way.” Oliver led her past the front counter, past a display of sermons nobody was buying. He stopped at a table near the back where three slim volumes lay in a stack, their covers unmarked, their spines blank.

Louisa picked up the first volume. She turned it over. No author’s name. No publisher’s flourish. Only a title stamped in plain lettering.

“I have heard of this,” she said. “Eleanor mentioned it. The author is anonymous.”

“The author is anonymous, and the subject is a family of five daughters in the country, which should tell you everything you need to know about the publishing industry’s expectations for the book. Yet Hatchard’s has run through two printings since Easter.”

“Have you read it?”

“I finished the third volume at three o’clock this morning, which is why I look as though I have been dragged behind a horse.”