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CHAPTER ONE

“I cannot believe you are doing this.”

Lady Daisy Lovenight’s scalp prickled with anticipation. “You’d best believe it, Mer,” she told her closest friend in the world, Lady Meredith Starvale. “You know what to do, right?”

“Of course.”

Tonight, at this lively country ball at the Duke of Frosthaven’s estate, she was being bold. Daring even. Very much unlike the self the world thought her to be.

But she didn’t have much of a choice.

She was Daisy Lovenight. The quiet one. The predictable one. The “Oh, I didn’t see you there, Miss.”

Everyone called her a wallflower. The term had become synonymous with her name.

Daisy Lovenight, the wallflower. And strictly speaking, she supposed she was, but truthfully—she was one by design.

One that had served her well when she first debuted and caught the attention of the diamond’s suitor—only to find herself the target of needless ridicule from that girl’s circle of friends.

The ‘Lovenight,’ one. The wallflower who’d survived three seasons by the grace of potted palms and the cover of the wallflower row.

But also, one that didn’t suit her anymore because now, a part of her felt like a moth trapped in the brightness of the ballroom while another part was desperate to break free.

She hadn’t been born a wallflower.

Which was why she found herself in a bit of a predicament—she didn’t know how to pursue the man she had set her sights on.

The Duke of Frosthaven.

However, she had a plan.

And that plan was packaged as the angelic and infamously wicked rake—Rhys Elliot. He made women blush, men swear, and grandmothers cross themselves.

Also, a brother’s worst nightmare.

Sorry, James.

“However,” Meredith suddenly said. “Your brother might see straight through the plan.”

“Just flutter your lashes a bit,” Daisy said. “He won’t think about anything else then.”

“I’m glad you believe so,” her friend muttered. “There must be a better way to catch the attention of your duke.”

If there was, she hadn’t quite caught on to it yet. But her plan contained great risks, of that, there was no doubt—she was going to get Rhys Elliot, the Earl of Nightingale, to teach her the art of seduction.

He owed her.

She spotted the man in question across the room, and a thrill burst through her.

He stood like a god among men, charming yet infuriatingly aloof.

It was his smile. That smile devastated the women of London.

Which was rather something, since he didn’t smile at anything and everything.

In fact, he didn’t smile a lot. But when he did…

She’d been subjected to that smile once.

And once had been enough.

Perhaps that was why it proved so devastating.

Admittedly, she couldn’t say if she would regret her decision, but one thing she was certain about—Rhys Elliot had a code.

And she, a ‘wallflower’, was part of it.

He didn’t touch wallflowers. She discovered this when she saved him from a marriage trap, and he declared she needn’t worry when they found themselves alone in the garden.

He would never touch a wallflower. So, by that standard, or code, she was safe.

Meredith had spotted him too, for she said, “What are you waiting for, Dais? Stars to fall from the sky?”

“Perhaps that is exactly what I’m waiting for.”

But it was time to shed this title of hers once and for all so that she might gain the attention of her possible future husband. How hard could it be?

“I cannot believe I am entertaining this,” Rhys Elliot, Earl of Nightingale muttered to himself as his gaze surveyed the ballroom of his grandmother’s friend, the Duchess of Frosthaven, who had apparently held this weeklong country event for her son to hopefully find a wife.

Which had given his grandmother damn annoying ideas.

Thank God he’d miss the masquerade from a few nights ago.

But to make matters plummet into a veritable nightmare, the duke in question was conspicuously missing, leaving all the women at the party turning their gazes to the remaining gentlemen, and they were in short supply. Rhys couldn’t help but feel like a slab of meat in a butcher’s shop on exhibit.

Damn him for allowing his grandmother to guilt him into this horror. But this was about as far as he would indulge her nagging. She thought he would find a bride here, but he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he would never, ever, find one here.

He was not the marrying sort.

Let his cousin sire some children and have them inherit the title.

Duty was not something that his father could ever manage to drill into him.

How could he? He’d nearly ruined their estate with his whoremongering.

His mother, too. The definition of the same ilk, those two.

And Rhys would rather perish than marrying a woman like him, and he certainly could not subject an innocent one with his whoremongering.

Yes. He was not delusional enough to think he could ever change.

His gaze met a familiar set of eyes across the room.

Daisy Lovenight.

Christ.

What was she doing here?

Just what he needed. Trapped with the woman he’d lusted after—and resisted—for years at a party he couldn’t escape. Fortunately, he had his code. Did not converse with wallflowers. Didn’t even look at them. He certainly did not touch them.

They were just too hopeful.

Rhys didn’t do hope.

Granted, he’d violated all three with her once.

All damn accidentally.

The third rule, on the other hand, could that even be called a rule anymore?

But it had been enough to know he could never do it again.

Speaking of which, was her brother, the Earl of Claire, here too?

God, he hoped not. The man found perverse joy in subjecting him to disdainful looks and vexing remarks.

But then, he had stolen away a few of his lady-pursuits in the past. Openly. Honestly. And rather cockily.

Which made Daisy Lovenight even more of an ultimate taboo.