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CHAPTER ONE

“Do you want to see a dead body?”

Lavinia laughed at Dominic’s question, her body shaking so hard he had to pause in their waltz until she regained control. Her laughter echoed like bells from a church tower, her joy sparkling throughout the ballroom like the light prisming from the crystal chandelier above their heads.

“Working on a medical cadaver isn’t coming across a corpse in a dark alley,” she said when she’d composed herself. “I would pity the first patient I stitched or cut if I had no experience working on actual flesh.”

Dom gave a dramatic shudder and used the move to pull her closer.

Not as close as he wanted, because that would leave her pressed to his chest with his lips buried in her neck.

And that would likely lead him to dragging her out from the party, past gobsmacked guests to the bedchamber where he’d spent a full week of the Earl of Valebrook’s house party ruminating on the right words to tell her the truth.

The truth being, he was in love with Miss Lavinia Fairfax, although he’d never told her. Hell, he hadn’t realized it himself until a week ago, when she’d told him she was bound for Paris, and he faced years of her absence, years without dances and sparkling laughter.

And discussions of human remains. “I volunteer as your test subject,” he said, hoping his smirk was sufficiently rakish to obscure his desperation. Would he roll up his sleeves and let this woman stab him repeatedly with tiny needles? Without hesitation.

Verbalize his feelings? Far more painful.

“Alas…” She pursed her lips in an exaggerated pout. “If you wanted to be my first victim—I mean, patient—” Her wink was wicked. “—you’d have to come to Paris as well.”

A bead of sweat rolled down his spine. She’d laid a perfect opportunity at his feet, and all he needed to do was take it, to say what was long overdue.

Over her shoulder, his three closest friends stood in a line against the wall, studying him like he was a subject under a looking glass.

Kit nodded eagerly while Gideon grinned, but Theo, their resident intellectual, merely raised a brow as if questioning why Dominic hadn’t simply proposed to the girl and gotten it over with.

But before he could speak, the closing notes of the waltz penetrated the buzzing in his ears.

Lavinia flattened her lips as she released his hand and stepped back into a curtsy. “Our dance is over, far too soon.” She lifted her wrist and shook her dance card, nearly every line blank.

He couldn’t decide if he should be relieved or infuriated by the sight. What was wrong with the men of the ton ? How could they overlook such a jewel, a brilliant mind and kind soul standing undiscovered amongst them?

Although—and he hated himself for it—Dominic himself had overlooked her for far too long, and now his time to remedy that fact was nearly up.

She cleared her throat, and when she met his gaze, her eyes were searching. “Unless you wish to ask me to dance again?”

A second dance had never occurred in their two years of shared history.

A second dance in one night would signal to everyone present—all of London society—that Dominic Bailey, one of London’s most disreputable rogues, was considering the unprecedented: courting the clever and incomparable Miss Lavinia Fairfax.

Two years ago, Gideon had begged Dominic to dance with his bookish sister’s friend during the first ball of the season, and he’d relented.

He could sacrifice one waltz at his dear friend’s request, use his charm and good looks to put the young woman at ease before he departed for the far more salacious nightlife the city offered.

Have you read anything interesting lately , he’d asked, hoping to set the bluestocking at ease.

Her eyes, blue like the seas off the coast of Cornwall, lit up. I’ve been reading the case of Phineas Gage, she’d replied.

His hum was noncommittal as he cursed his poor luck. He’d never been fond of mystery novels, but he’d suffer through this conversation as a favor to his friend. Oh? What is it about?

An American railroad worker who was gouged through the head by an iron pole but survived.

By the end of the waltz, Dominic was transfixed.

When he’d come across Miss Fairfax a week later at another event, he’d requested another dance, eager to learn more.

And so it had continued for the rest of the season, Lavinia sharing one medical wonder after another to satisfy his macabre curiosity.

His friends had taunted him relentlessly for his sudden and inexplicable insistence on attending every society event.

He was one of London’s most notorious rakehells, after all, and had no intention of taking a wife for at least a decade, so why would he skip the gambling hells and brothels simply for a dance?

He’d expected Miss Fairfax to marry after her first season; she was fascinating, after all.

Surely someone would notice her and sweep her off her feet.

But she remained unattached the following year, and they’d resumed their single waltzes as though no time had passed between encounters.

He’d learned of her desire to become a physician, and together they’d raged against a system that forced women to study in France instead of gracing the halls of their own hallowed institutions, like his alma mater at Oxford.

Soon Dominic found himself querying friends and society matrons over what events she planned to attend, searching crowded assembly halls for her flaxen hair, even bribing the orchestra to play the longest waltz they knew when it was his opportunity to take her into his arms.

Was he in love with Lavinia Fairfax? Impossible , he’d insisted to his meddling friends. He loved his bachelorhood, his independence. If he were to succumb to the pressure to marry, his bride wouldn’t be an intellectual who could recite every bone in the human body.

But when she’d told him about her acceptance to study at the Sorbonne on the first night of the house party, her eyes glittering and excitement palpable, he’d nearly cast up his accounts.

Either he was suffering from a stomach ailment or hopelessly in love with her. And the only one who could differentiate them was Lavinia herself.

A throat clearing shook him from his thoughts, and Dom realized, with horror, that a cotillion had assembled around them, the dancers glaring in his direction.

Lavinia’s cerulean eyes had shuttered, her full lips digging into her cheeks at the corners as she fought to hold a smile.

“If you need that long to decide,” she said, her voice husky, “I’ll rescind my offer. ”

“Miss Fairfax,” he gasped, his insides threatening to make themselves outsides. “My apologies, I?—”

She held up one hand. “There’s no need to apologize. If you’ll excuse me…” With a hasty curtsy, she spun away in a swirl of silk and weaved through the dancing pairs.

Before he could form the words to call her back, his friends had surrounded him, wearing nearly identical expressions of disappointment and concern.

The unlikely crew had formed in their first days at Eton as the set poised just outside the upper echelons of society.

Dom was the second son of a minor baron who’d inherited nothing but made his fortune in investments, and half a dozen people would need to perish for Gideon Haywood to see the title of duke.

Theo Truman kept his head buried in books to avoid his mother, the Dowager Countess of Kent, and her matchmaking attentions, while Kit Barrington, the bastard son of the Marquess of Dorset, spent his evenings raking about London’s beau monde with Dom at his side.

When Dom explained his conundrum—the first case of heartsickness amongst the set—the men he considered brothers had, as he would expect from them, mocked him mercilessly. However, upon realizing Dom was serious, they’d set about preparing him to declare his love.

Something he’d utterly failed to do at the perfect opportunity.

“I win this one,” Kit said, extending his hand towards his peers. Gideon and Theo scowled, but dug into their pockets to withdraw a handful of coins, then dropped them into Kit’s palm.

“Win what?” Dom asked, more than a bit petulant.

“Kit said you’d muck it up,” Gideon put in, “but Theo and I had faith in you.”

His cheeks heated. “You had to bet on this?” His friends bet on everything, from the color of the host’s cravat at dinner (navy blue) and how many times Lord Billingham would belch during a single conversation (seven, and Dom had won a silver tie pin off Kit for his prediction).

“It was a good bet, and we were bored waiting for you.” Kit shook his head. “Whatever you said to her, it wasn’t the right thing. Did you forget what we practiced?”

Gideon clapped a hand on Dom’s shoulder and sighed. “You gave it your best.”

“Clearly he didn’t.” This from Theo. “As evidenced by the lady in question literally running away from him.”

Dom’s mouth worked for several long moments before he heaved a sigh. “I don’t know what to do.”

Kit pressed his palm to his forehead and sighed. “You go after her, you twit.”

“But what will I say? She’s angry with me now.” This was a disaster, an utter catastrophe, and he had no clue how he’d fix it.

“Why should she stay?” Gideon prompted. “Why is she important to you?”

Dom exhaled in a rush. “When I’m near her, the world makes sense, as does my place in it. I feel like my lungs don’t fill completely when I’m not with her. And if she goes to London, I’ll certainly die, because she won’t be there to heal me.”

His friends stared at him, gobsmacked. “That’ll do,” Theo finally put in.

“But you’d best get to it.” Kit pointed across the ballroom to where Lavinia was slipping through the French doors onto the terrace. “She’s getting away.”

With a grateful nod to his friends, Dom took off running, dodging perturbed debutantes and aghast matrons before flinging himself onto the terrace.

The large space was deserted, but, over the low, rose-covered wall that separated the terrace from the gardens beyond, he caught a flash of teal fabric before it disappeared into the hedgerows.

His heart kicked. Lavinia .

In retrospect, the choice to forego the stairs and instead take a running leap over the wall was driven by a desire to appear the romantic hero, that Lavinia may glimpse him sailing through the air in his desperation to reach her, and she would fall madly in love with him in return.

However, Dom had not considered that the blooms climbing over said wall had to originate somewhere, namely the thicket of rose bushes he was currently hurtling towards.

He landed with a crunch, his ankle exploding in pain as thorns and branches tore at his clothing and flesh. His hands scrambled for purchase amongst the blooms but found none, a forest of leaves and dark-red roses punctuated by the night sky, the last thing he saw before the world went black.