Page 70 of My Deal with the Wrong Duke

He rose. Louisa sat at the card table with her untouched glass and her losing hand and the fading impression of Oliver’s face in the doorway. For the next week, Louisa waited in vain for Oliver to appear.

He did not. She waited until the following Saturday, when the Whitmore ball arrived.

Louisa dressed with more care than usual. Choosing a blue dress, pinned her curls to her head with more care, and ensured that her cheeks were a lovely shade of pink. She twirled in front of the mirror far too long before finally making her way to the carriage.

Of course, Frederick awaited her as she arrived, and Louisa smiled, more out of habit than anything else.

Frederick claimed the cotillion, the first waltz, and the quadrille. Three dances. Eleanor, standing at Louisa’s shoulder when the card was filled, said nothing, though her brows were lifted.

“Shall we?” Frederick extended his hand as the cotillion struck up.

They moved through the figures. He was a competent dancer, his steps clean, his timing reliable. Between the turns, he spoke.

“I have been thinking about what I should like my life to look like in five years.” He guided her through the promenade. “Not merely the estate, not merely position. I mean the substance of it. Do you understand?”

“I think so.”

“What are your hopes, Louisa? For marriage. For the years that follow.”

He had never asked her this before. He had spoken about his own plans, about Langley Park and the tenants and the south terrace. He had not, until this moment, asked what she wanted.

“I should like children,” she said. “A household that feels alive. Space to read, to walk, to think.” The words came slowly, tested against the air. “I should like to be useful. Not decorative. I should like to be seen as a partner, not merely a companion.”

Frederick nodded. “A sensible wish. I have always valued sensibility in a wife.”

He turned her through the figure. His hand was steady at her waist. His smile was warm. He was offering her, in the crowded noise of the Whitmore ballroom, an opening into the life she had imagined for two years: the house, the children, the quiet respectability she had longed for since her first Season.

She should have been happy.

“And what would you expect of a wife?” she asked. “In that life.”

“Expect?” He looked amused. “I should expect nothing unreasonable. The management of the household, naturally. Hosting when required. The usual obligations of a country wife.” He smiled again. “You would not find it burdensome. You are exceptionally capable.”

Her smile stiffened at the word. Capable. He admired her capability, her composure, her sensibility. He admired the useful parts of her, the parts that ran households and balanced accounts and smiled at dinner guests. He did not know about the parts that stayed up late reading novels, or forged her father’s signature at sixteen, or laughed so hard at Oliver’s jokes that she forgot to breathe.

The music shifted. She looked over Frederick’s shoulder and scanned the ballroom.

Oliver stood at the far wall beside a marble column. He was watching her dance. His glass was untouched in his hand, his body angled away from the crowd, his attention fixed on the floor where she and Frederick moved through the figures. When their eyes met, neither of them looked away. The ballroom noise faded to a hum, and for three full seconds the only real distance in the room was the thirty feet between his column and her place in Frederick’s arms.

He broke first. He turned to Sir William Hatch and spoke a word she could not hear, and his face resumed the easy, charming mask she had learned to recognize as armor.

“Louisa?” Frederick’s voice, patient. “You seem distracted.”

“Forgive me. The room is warm.”

“Shall I fetch you a glass of lemonade after the set?”

“That would be kind.”

The cotillion ended. Frederick led her to the edge of the floor and went to find lemonade. Louisa stood alone near the pillar where Oliver had been. A faint trace of sandalwood hung in the air beside the marble, or she imagined it did. She held her dance card and looked at the names penciled inside it.

Frederick returned seconds later with the lemonade. It was warm.

“Ashton has purchased a colt at Tattersalls,” he said, pressing the glass into her hand. “A bay, sixteen hands. Ashton believes it will take the cup at Newmarket, though I have my doubts about the hindquarters.”

“I see,” Louisa said.

“The sire was Dorimant. Do you know Dorimant?”