Page 2 of Duke with a Debt (Wicked Dukes Society #2)

CHAPTER 2

“ F or you, Your Grace.”

Stuart accepted the correspondence from his butler, Fleetwood, his gut tightening at the familiar scrawl on the missive atop the proffered silver salver.

Another one.

He was careful to keep even a hint of his concern from showing on his face. “Thank you, Fleetwood. Has Lord Wesley come home yet this afternoon?”

“His Lordship has not,” his butler said, confirming Stuart’s suspicions.

Curse him. It would seem Stuart had no means of keeping his brother from ruining him, save locking the bastard in a room, and he had already made unsuccessful use of that tactic. Wesley had climbed out the bloody window.

He forced a polite smile for Fleetwood’s benefit, but he knew damned well he wasn’t fooling the shrewd old retainer. “I trust you will notify me if he does?”

The butler sketched a bow. “Of course, Your Grace.”

He nodded. “Thank you. That will be all.”

As Fleetwood disappeared with a discreet snick of the door closing once more, Stuart ground his molars and hissed out a frustrated breath from between clamped teeth.

“Fucking damn it,” he muttered, then raked his fingers through his hair, no doubt leaving it unkempt.

But there was no one to impress in the hollow, painfully bare confines of the study that had once been his father’s, and, before that, his grandfather’s, now his. The dark squares and rectangles on the ancient damask wall coverings mocked him. These were spaces where priceless paintings had hung, long since removed and sold off in an attempt to ameliorate his father’s mounting debts.

Wishing for a whisky—or better yet, one of his old chum King’s infamous concoctions designed to numb the mind—he forced himself to read the latest letter. All the spirits were gone anyhow.

To His Grace, the Duke of Camden,

Five thousand pounds shall be delivered to Messrs. Dolan and Rowe by the end of the month or a letter concerning all pertinent information will be delivered to The Times.

An icy tendril of dread licked down his spine at the threat. The bastard was growing bolder.

The end of the month.

He had mere weeks to gather up a small fortune and deliver it, just as he had for the past few months. The initial letter had spelled out, in intricate detail, what the sender knew and what he was willing to do unless his demands for payment were met. Stuart’s initial shock had given way to rage and a determination to do something, anything, to keep this unknown monster from revealing the truth. Only to realize that his hands were tied. He had no recourse. He couldn’t go to Scotland Yard or anyone else with the threats because that would reveal the reason for the blackmail, and while Stuart could weather any scandal, Mother could not.

And so, he answered every letter with the required payment, draining his already scanty funds as surely as Wesley did and their father before him.

Stuart didn’t have five thousand pounds, of course. He’d scarcely summoned the three thousand pounds for the last request. Damn Wesley for putting them in this tenuous circumstance.

And curse Miss Rosamund Payne for refusing his proposal. It had, perhaps, not been one of Stuart’s finer ideas. But when one needed enough funds to rival Croesus himself, one had few options. Rosamund’s wealth was tremendous. It would have been the solution to his problems, a means of relieving himself from the burden of debts, mortal and otherwise, that Wesley and their father had amassed.

Oh, there was another solution, to be sure. But Stuart hadn’t the stomach for murder. There was also a problem with such a tactic. He didn’t know who was behind the blackmailing.

But he hadn’t the time to agonize over the letter or the threats at the moment. He had a ball to attend. Because that was how utterly ridiculous his life had become. Fending off creditors and blackmailers in the morning and afternoon, then feigning a smile and waltzing by the evening.

Gritting another foul curse, Stuart rose from his desk, crumpling the letter in his fist as he did so. No need to preserve the words; they were tattooed upon his very brain. Grimly, he stalked across the room to the low fire burning in the grate and pitched the balled missive within. Flames took a moment to lick at the paper before engulfing it, the entire thing diminishing to ash in seconds.

If only he could apply the same hasty banishment to his unknown foe.

Until that day came, he had no recourse, save trying to persuade Miss Rosamund Payne to change her mind.

Stuart passed the next two hours in the prodigiously painful preparations. His valet, Sharpe, fretted over his evening finery with the fastidious devotion of a true dandy. In the end, it was formal blacks with a white necktie, but the first waistcoat he’d donned had been dismissed by Sharpe.

“Too garish, Your Grace, if you will forgive me for saying so.”

Stuart had glanced bemusedly down at himself, thinking the waistcoat perfectly suitable.

“And a wrinkle,” Sharpe worried. “It must be pressed anew, I fear.”

He would have argued that no one would spy the wrinkle as it would be hidden well beneath his coat, but Stuart held his tongue. He knew there was no winning a battle with his determined valet.

“So much lint,” Sharpe had proclaimed at the replacement, his worries no more assuaged as he shook his head and all but wrung his hands in despair. “I fail to see where it all has come from. No, no, no. This one shan’t do, Your Grace.”

A third had finally passed muster, and now, Stuart prowled the absolute crush of Brandon’s ball, overheated, annoyed, and desperately in need of a drink. Anything to bring him oblivion. Only, he couldn’t imbibe. Not now, not yet. He had a plan of battle to attend.

And fortunately, his quarry stood just on the periphery of the dance floor, conferring with the widowed Countess of Grenfell, whose fiery tresses made her stand out in any crowd. How fortunate.

The air was scented with a cloying blend of sweat, hair grease, champagne, and perfume, the gas lamps blazing hot as Hades overhead. But as he drew nearer to Miss Payne, those unfortunate details concerned him significantly less. She was smiling at something Lady Grenfell had said, and it was genuine rather than feigned, unguarded and guileless. It was decidedly not how she had looked at him during their meeting.

There had been pistols at dawn in her eyes. Her smiles had been small, tight, and forced. Her posture had been that of a soldier about to march into battle, tense and poised, ready for action. She saw him as her enemy, and he couldn’t blame her for that.

In a way, he was. What he wanted from her was what most men wanted from her, what Wesley had wanted from her—her fortune. She hadn’t minced words. And, as always, he’d been impressed by her. Miss Rosamund Payne was stronger and far more confident than she’d been three years ago. She was harder too. Where once she’d worn her softness with na?ve unawareness, now she had donned her armor. He hated how poorly Wesley had treated her during their doomed betrothal, but he was also glad that she’d taken up the cudgels for herself.

By the time he reached Rosamund, Lady Grenfell had conveniently ventured elsewhere, leaving Rosamund alone. Her dark eyes widened at his approach, and he forced a smile of his own, bowing.

“Miss Payne.”

She offered him a punctuated curtsy in return. “Duke.”

A painfully polite silence descended. His fault. All the practiced flattery in his head had vanished the second he was in proximity. Thank Christ she didn’t have the parrot with her. He had half expected to find the rude little creature perched on her shoulder, glaring at him with smug, silvery eyes as it called him a gormless shite.

A small victory.

The orchestra struck up a cotillion, prodding him into action.

“Would you do me the honor of dancing with me?” he asked, feeling like a nervous suitor courting his first debutante. This sort of nonsense wasn’t his preference at all.

“I don’t dance.”

He knew that for a lie. He’d seen her dance with Wesley on numerous occasions, and she’d been elegantly graceful.

Stuart raised a brow. “Then why attend a ball?”

She pursed her lips, thinking for a moment before responding. “Boredom, I suppose. And the opportunity to wear a new gown.”

Those notions didn’t persuade him any more than her assertion she didn’t dance had.

Stuart shook his head, absurdly amused. “Those reasons seem painfully vacuous for a woman of your intelligence, Miss Payne.”

And Rosamund Payne was nothing if not a clever woman. One conversation with her, and it was clear. How she had fallen prey to Wesley remained a mystery he wasn’t certain he would ever solve. But she wasn’t alone in her plight.

Her eyes narrowed. “Must I have a reason to attend a ball, Your Grace?”

There was her fighting spirit, in full renaissance. He couldn’t deny it; there was something undeniably alluring about her when she was determined, her jaw clenched, her shoulders drawn back in a pugnacious stance. She was a woman who had learned how to defend herself, to fight her own battles.

Stuart tilted his head in acknowledgment. “One must always have a reason for everything one undertakes in life. Even if it’s not a good one.”

Her chin went up. “Oh? And what is yours, then, for approaching me this evening?”

She had him there, but he wasn’t ready to admit defeat.

He summoned the charm that he had once possessed and smiled as if he hadn’t a care. “To dance with you, of course.”

She laughed at him. The utter daring, to laugh at him, the Duke of Camden, in the midst of a crowded ballroom.

“If you expect me to believe that rot, then you must think me every bit as foolish as I was three years ago,” she said, her tone rather biting.

He clenched his jaw. “Brandon is my friend, of course. I would attend regardless of your presence here, but I’m being honest when I tell you that there is not another soul in this ballroom I would dance with other than yourself.”

Her lips parted, and for a moment, she stared at him, her gaze searching, and it was in that same breath that he noticed she had depths of honeyed amber in her dark-brown eyes. But then she clamped her lips into a tight line, and she stiffened her spine.

“You want to dance with me because you need my fortune,” she countered, her voice hushed. “Do not pretend to court me like a lovestruck swain. It only makes me long to punch you in the nose.”

He had no doubt that she would do it too.

Stuart was bemused by this new Rosamund. He hated that his brother’s betrayal was the cause of it. But he also heartily approved of her unfailing confidence, which had been previously lacking. Even if she’d been forced to acquire it through her own heartbreak. Stuart was quite familiar with that sort of pain, which was why his own heart was cold and dead. Lady Flora Seaton had seen to that.

“I would prefer not to go about the ball with a bloodied nose, if you don’t mind,” he told Rosamund, keeping his tone mild. “But perhaps we might take a walk in the gardens and talk privately, without fear of our conversation being overheard.”

He knew the confines of Brandon’s town house—inside and out—quite well. They’d been chums since their Eton days. But more than that, they were also clandestine business partners, along with four other friends. He had no doubt that the others—the Dukes of Kingham, Whitby, Riverdale, and Richford, in no particular order—were mingling somewhere in the throng as well.

Her eyebrows rose at his suggestion—a bold one, he knew. “Have we not said everything there is to say?”

She would give him no quarter. Of course not.

“Must I prostrate myself before you to persuade you to lend me a few more moments of your time?” he asked.

Between the letters, the threats, Wesley’s profligate gambling, and his ever-growing mountain of debt, Stuart had no remaining pride. He would likely kiss Miss Rosamund Payne’s hems if she demanded it of him, with the entire ballroom as witness too.

The burden of duty was oft a suffocating, humiliating one.

She hesitated in her response, and he seized his opportunity.

“Oh, look,” he said lightly, looking over her shoulder as if he spied someone approaching. “Here comes the Marchioness of Seabury headed in this direction. The august lady looks as if she is in desperate need of a tender listening ear. I trust you can provide her with one.”

Rosamund’s brows crashed inward in a sudden frown. “Not Lady Seabury. The last time she cornered me at a ball, I couldn’t rid myself of her for a full hour.”

He remembered, because it had happened when he had hosted the ball in honor of Rosamund and Wesley’s betrothal. He felt slightly guilty at using Lady Seabury in his effort to further his campaign, for she had recently met an untimely end. But Rosamund didn’t appear to know that salient fact, and he was shamelessly using it to his advantage.

“Fine,” she growled. “Take me outside if you must. Anything to listening to her opine on the finest feathers for adorning a hat. I have no wish to make a row with her today.”

Among her faults, Lady Seabury had been dreadfully loquacious, with a tendency to force anyone she could to listen to her sermons on fashion.

He offered Rosamund his arm. “Allow me to save you, dear lady.”

She hesitated, eyeing him sternly for a heartbeat, her hand outstretched, before she settled it in the crook of his elbow. “Do kick your noble steed into a gallop, sir. I have no wish to spend the rest of my evening trying not to take note when Lady Seabury breaks wind.”

Her declaration startled a laugh from him. “I knew she was notorious for her lengthy discussions, but I hadn’t quite heard that before.”

A becoming flush tinged Rosamund’s cheeks. “I suppose that was badly done of me.”

Not as badly done as him lying about a dead woman approaching them just so he could get Rosamund alone.

Stuart gave the hand resting on his arm a serene pat. “Never mind that, my dear. I’m happy to be of service.”

Hellfire. He was no better than his scoundrel brother.

The night air was cool as it kissed Rosamund’s cheeks, which was just as well because the combination of the ball’s crush, the blazing chandeliers, and the Duke of Camden’s sudden appearance at her side had rendered her thoroughly overheated. Likely, venturing outside with him had been a mistake. But it was one she couldn’t rectify, now that she walked with him on the gravel path beneath the silvery glow of a watchful moon.

A heavy silence had descended between them as Camden had expertly weaved them through the throng of fellow revelers and out the door into the gardens, punctuated by the gurgling of a small fountain. He brought them to a pause before it, the Roman goddess of the hunt presiding over them, reaching for her quiver.

“Ah, Diana,” Camden drawled. “Goddess of wild beasts. Rather an appropriate place for our discussion, I think.”

“Which one of us is the wild beast, Your Grace?” she couldn’t help asking.

“There is one within us all, at least to a certain extent. Would you not agree?”

His voice was low, and although he hadn’t said a suggestive word, something within her quickened. The Duke of Camden possessed a pleasant, deep voice that slid over her senses like a silken caress.

“Perhaps,” she allowed, mindful that every minute she spent alone in his presence in the moonlight was fraught with danger. “But I do think it would be prudent to save such debates and to talk about what you wished to discuss with me instead. Our time here in the gardens must be limited.”

“Good of you to remind me.” His tone was wry as he turned to face her instead of the fountain, forcing her hand from its resting place on his arm. “As you might have guessed, I wished to speak with you about my offer.”

His proposal of marriage, he meant. And she couldn’t deny it—she remained cautiously intrigued by the prospect, for two very private, wholly different reasons. The old dream she’d once had of a family, children of her own, had reemerged like a perennial bursting through the crust of winter’s soil to sprout anew. At thirty, she had quite surrendered that dream and her shattered heart. But now, the lure was there, the opportunity to seize what had been denied her.

And then there was the other potent temptation, not nearly as noble—gaining her revenge upon the man who had once brought her to her knees. But as much as she loathed Lord Wesley Gilden for his lies and betrayal, she could not, even in her weakest moments when the need for vengeance burned hottest, reconcile sacrificing the rest of her life to obtain it. Nor was she certain that she would wish to have children with the Duke of Camden, of all men. It was foolishness to hope, and she recognized that weakness in herself that made such a union seem possible.

There was only one sound response to give him.

“I’m afraid my answer must remain the same, regardless of whatever you would impart,” she told him quietly.

“A chance,” he said. “A few moments of your time to explain myself. That is all I ask of you now.”

When he phrased it thus, she felt a curmudgeon for denying him. The yearning within her roared back into a flame from a tiny ember.

Rosamund inclined her head. “If you must, but I can assure you, there’s nothing you can say that will alter my mind.”

He caught her hand in his suddenly, his grasp gentle and yet shocking, the urgency and intimacy sending a dark thrill through her when she least wanted it.

“Please, Rosamund.”

He was being far too familiar with her. She shouldn’t like it, and yet some perverse part of her did. She would be lying if she said she had never taken note of her former betrothed’s handsome older brother. But she had been in love with Wesley, loyal to him, and her admiration had never gone further than a frank intellectual acknowledgment that the Duke of Camden was a handsome man.

She forced out a sigh, vexed as much with herself as with him. “If you insist.”

“I do.” He gave her fingers a tender squeeze. “Thank you. I understand your feelings where Wesley is concerned. My brother is in the mold of my father. A wastrel, who was a wastrel before him.”

His candor took her by surprise.

“That is unkind of you to say,” she observed nonetheless, although without bite.

Behind them, the din of the ball was faded and yet an omnipresent reminder that they weren’t far from a room filled with lords and ladies. The Duke of Camden was still holding her hand in his, and she was oddly reluctant to sever the connection. Perhaps she had consumed too much champagne.

“The truth is not often kind,” Camden said, his voice stern, with a harsh edge that she knew wasn’t reserved for her. “He’s also a liar, a reprobate, and a terrible gambler as well, but I was aiming to be politic.”

“If so, I do believe you fell short of the mark.” She raised a brow at him, even if he couldn’t see her in the moon’s pale illumination. “Not that I mind, of course. My own opinion of your brother is anything but polite, as you no doubt are already aware.”

“And you have every reason to feel so. What he did to you was unconscionable.”

Something occurred to her then, which had not in the gloomy days of despair when she had first learned of Wesley’s perfidy. “You knew what he was doing, didn’t you? You knew he had no desire to marry me at all, that he only wanted my fortune and he was willing to lie to me and use any means possible to persuade me to wed him.”

“Any means?” A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Surely he did not coerce you into anything…untoward?”

“If you are wondering whether your brother forced me, the answer is no. He did not.” She summoned a smile that she knew was bitter, filled with fury for Lord Wesley’s careless manipulations and how effortlessly she had been his dupe. “He wouldn’t have done, or so he told me in his own words. He isn’t partial to plain, big-nosed spinsters.”

The duke muttered an oath. “Your nose isn’t overly large.”

Camden’s firm pronouncement took her off guard, as did the anger lacing his voice. It was almost as if he were furious on her behalf. But that made no sense. He was Lord Wesley’s brother. Surely his loyalty lay firmly with his own family.

She tamped down any feelings of gratitude toward the duke for coming to her defense. After all, telling her that her nose wasn’t large was hardly a compliment.

“Thank you, Your Grace. I am unbearably flattered.”

“Christ. That’s not how I meant it.”

She wouldn’t take pity on him; she couldn’t. His rogue of a brother had left her with none.

“Oh?” she asked lightly. “It sounded rather how you meant it to me. But you needn’t feel as if you must pay me false compliments or issue untruthful odes to my beauty. Your brother did all that well enough, and I’m quite inured to it now, I assure you.”

“What I meant,” he said emphatically, giving her fingers another urgent but gentle squeeze, “is that the insults he paid you were untrue. You are a lovely woman in your own right.”

She wasn’t lovely, and Rosamund knew it. Some women were. Her friend Lottie, the Countess of Grenfell, for instance, was beautiful. Rosamund was more than aware of her own appearance, in sharp contrast. Her hair was neither golden nor red but some shade vaguely in between, and it held no natural curl. Her eyes were dark and common as mud, her face unique rather than pretty. That, she blamed on her Payne blood. Her father’s family all possessed sharp, angular features. High foreheads, stern brows, long noses, and rigid jaws.

She had inherited many of their characteristics. She wasn’t a particularly soft and demure woman. She was opinionated, intelligent, and independent. Business thrilled her, not balls. One of her most beloved companions was a parrot with a shockingly vulgar vocabulary. She was only palatable to polite society because of her few, treasured polite society friendships and the fact that she had first possessed a massive dowry and later inherited the remainder of a vast fortune from her father upon his death.

Her allure, in short, was not her looks. It was her funds. Her endless funds. Once, she had been na?ve enough to believe otherwise, persuaded by a handsome man who danced attendance and kisses on her.

Never again.

“Pray don’t insult me with lies, Your Grace. It is beneath the both of us,” she told Camden cooly.

“Paying you insult was not my intent, and let me assure you that I’m not lying.”

She didn’t believe him, of course. But she was growing weary of this game they played, and the longer they lingered in the darkened garden, the greater their chances of being caught became.

Rosamund shook her head. “Regardless, you must understand my hesitancy to remain here with you, when all you have to offer me is false flattery and the concession that your brother is a scoundrel.”

“But I have more to offer you, if you will but listen,” he insisted. “All our lives, my brother has wanted everything that is mine. It started with a set of wooden toy soldiers our father bought me on a whim, and it went on to include the title I was set to inherit and, later, the woman I loved. He has done everything in his power to ruin me.”

The raw bitterness in the duke’s voice was undeniable. Here, in the silvery moonlight, it was as if he had finally taken down the arrogant mask he wore.

“The woman you loved?” she pressed, morbidly curious.

“My brother seduced her and then refused to marry her, all to spite me. He took great enjoyment from my pain.”

The revelation should not shock her; she knew Wesley was capable of anything. And yet, it somehow did.

“Was this before or after our betrothal?” Rosamund asked, wanting to know and yet hating herself for it.

The answer had no bearing upon her. It changed nothing.

“Before.”

She swallowed against an unwanted rush of feeling, hating that after three years, Wesley’s betrayal still affected her. “Still, I fail to see what this has to do with your proposal.”

“Everything. Do you not see? If you marry me, he will covet you. And yet, he will never have you, because you are too wise for his tricks. Seeing you as my duchess will be a constant reminder to him of what he lost through his own ruthless manipulations. It would be the greatest form of revenge he can be dealt.”

For the first time, she understood what the duke offered her, completely and without question. And she couldn’t deny it—there was a certain forbidden allure to the notion.

But Rosamund remained unconvinced that consigning herself to a loveless marriage for the rest of her life all to enact vengeance on Lord Wesley Gilden would be a worthy trade. Even if it would give her the chance for the family she had always longed for.

“Although revenge is tempting,” she said, “I remain a businesswoman, Your Grace. One who cannot see the value of her fortune and freedom equaling mere retribution. You require my fortune. I, however, do not require anything.”

Except children of my own , she thought, but she wisely kept that to herself.

“Do you deny that the thought of holding the purse strings where my brother is concerned is not appealing?” he asked.

“Yes, but I am not the one who would be holding them, would I? If I married you, then you would be in possession of not just my funds, but my independence as well. And I can assure you that my autonomy is worth far more than any amount of gold or petty reprisal.”

“A marriage contract would assuage all your concerns.”

Rosamund was about to answer when the cacophony of the ballroom suddenly became louder, punctuated by the tinkling laugh of a woman on the veranda beyond the fountain. Another couple had come into the gardens, presumably for privacy. Perhaps for a tryst. One simply never knew what manner of mischief was afoot at a ball, particularly one hosted by the notorious Duke of Brandon. A masculine voice could be heard, followed by the crunch of gravel on soles.

She inhaled sharply, fear that they would be caught freezing her in place.

But Camden took her hand in his, lacing their fingers together, and tugged her deeper into the shadows. She couldn’t deny the sudden spark of awareness that lit within her at their entwined hands, even as he pulled her rudely down the path. The giggling lady grew louder.

“Who’s there?” asked a male voice.

Panic assailed her. They were about to be caught! She had no wish to be forced into marriage with the Duke of Camden. She would sooner spend the rest of her life in ignominy and disgrace.

Camden startled her by whirling her around and pinning her neatly to the solid stone statue at her back.

“Hush,” he whispered, his head bent toward hers as if he meant to kiss her, his hot breath coasting over her lips in the prelude to something she was sure she should not want.

And yet her pulse leapt. Her nipples went embarrassingly hard beneath the rigid boning of her corset. Deep in her belly, heat blossomed. Everything within her felt as if it were tightened, like the string on an instrument pulled excruciatingly taut. Was it anticipation, fear, or shock that made her feel thus? Or was it the Duke of Camden’s lean, muscled strength crowding her into the marble base of the statue, a wall of cool stone at her back in stark contrast to the warmth blazing from him? His scent curled around her, mingling with the damp night air and the light perfume of blossoming roses—sandalwood and musk.

She inhaled, painfully aware that his mouth was near enough that she could rise on her toes and press her lips there, on that stern line that was so oft unsmiling. Such a strange intimacy, kissing. The sharing of breaths and lips and tongues. Would he kiss her?

Did she want him to?

Yes , answered the whisper of some insidious longing inside her. She did want him to. Very much. She scarcely heard the approaching couple over the relentless pounding of her heart.

“Apologies, old chap,” came the same masculine voice from somewhere in the darkness beyond the wall of Camden’s chest.

He was blocking her from view, she realized.

Protecting her.

The discovery was as shocking as her desire for him was.

Another feminine giggle broke the silence, and then the crunching of gravel signaled that the couple was headed in a different direction, no doubt in search of their own privacy. Camden didn’t immediately move. Instead, he remained as he was, his big body pinning hers to the statue, his hands on the marble at either side of her, keeping her there.

The air between them turned heavy. A frisson of yearning she had no right to feel swept over her. Would he kiss her now?

He lingered, his eyes glittering in the pale light, burning into her, his lips so close. And then, as if a spell had suddenly been broken, he raised his head and stepped away from her, leaving her bereft, the statue keeping her from falling unceremoniously to her rump.

“Consider what I’ve told you before you make your final decision,” he said coolly, as if what had just happened between them had been one-sided. “We should return to the ball now before someone else happens upon us. We were fortunate enough with this interruption.”

He offered his arm to her.

Rosamund shook herself from the grips of whatever delirium had possessed her. “We should go back in alone.”

Camden gestured for her to proceed. “You first, and then I’ll follow you in a few moments.”

She swallowed hard against another rush of unwanted longing. “Good evening, Your Grace.”

As she gathered what remained of her tattered pride and swept past him, she heard him call her name.

“Rosamund.”

She turned back to find him watching her, the moonlight lovingly silhouetting his tall figure.

“You still owe me a dance.”

She didn’t bother to argue, and neither did she answer him. But when Rosamund returned to the ball, she found her mother, who was in her cups and tittering with a pair of dowagers who had similarly enjoyed more than their fair share of champagne.

“I’m calling for the carriage,” she announced.

“Must we go already?” her mother asked, sounding dismayed.

Since Father’s death, Mother relied upon societal diversions to keep her from melancholy.

Rosamund thought of her strange interlude with the Duke of Camden and his determination to dance with her. She didn’t think she could risk being held in his arms. Her ability to remain impervious was in severe jeopardy, as was her rational thinking. Too much champagne and bracing air outdoors. The moonlight had made her maudlin.

“Yes,” she said firmly. “I’m afraid that we must.”

She needed to escape before she did something more foolish than agreeing to wed Lord Wesley Gilden—promising to marry his forbidding older brother.