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T his is a golden opportunity, Emily.’

Emily bit her lip to stop herself from contradicting her mother. It would only make this lecture take longer than was necessary. But really, calling this afternoon anything other than a visit with her neighbour was over the top.

Her mother straightened Emily’s already perfect neckline, paused and then tugged it down slightly, revealing more flesh.

‘Mother!’ Emily pulled it straight back up.

‘Oh, do not be so prudish, Emily. It is not like there is anything to see here.’

‘But…’

‘If you are going to catch a duke this season, you need to show a bit of skin.’ Her mother tugged on the hem again and this time Emily let her.

She’d adjust it as soon as her mother left for her afternoon engagement.

Emily was not going to change the way she dressed on the off-chance the Duke of Glanmore was being anything more than a grateful gentleman.

The idea that such a man might be interested in her was…

Emily searched around inside herself trying to come up with a positive way to describe the icy numbness creeping through her at the thought.

The duke was the most sought-after bachelor of the season, of every season since he’d come of age.

His title went back to the time of the Normans, he was wealthy and he was in possession of all of his own teeth.

There was no denying he was handsome; all of the Dashworth brothers were, although Emily rather thought Freddie had the edge with his expressive eyes and full mouth, but the duke was certainly not an unattractive man.

He would make a good husband and there was no reason at all to feel a sickening dread at the thought of it.

Besides, he was just being polite with his offer.

Even Freddie had been sweetly grateful for her help.

He may have offered her something had he been in a position to do so.

It was strange how two brothers, with the same parents and similar looks, could be so different.

Both were tall with dark hair, but whereas the duke’s face always looked as if it were sculpted from marble, Freddie’s expression was always moving, laughing or teasing, or in her case mocking.

Although why she was comparing Freddie favourably to the duke, she was not sure.

Neither of them were interested in marrying her or vice versa, so the point was moot.

‘Are you listening to me?’

‘Yes, Mama.’ She wasn’t. She had no idea what her mother had said, but she’d been subjected to many lectures on deportment throughout her life. Enough that she was confident she could tell her mother what she’d said without missing a beat.

Her mother’s lips pursed as she ran a critical eye over Emily’s dress and hair.

Emily held herself still, reminding herself that there was nothing her mother could say that hadn’t been said before.

According to her mother, Emily was not as graceful as her sisters, with her long limbs, not as poised, not as demure; she looked too like her father and lacked certain social graces.

The criticisms had only increased once her two older sisters had left home after making good marriages.

Now getting Emily married was her mother’s constant occupation, even when she lamented that it was impossible given Emily’s lack of figure and her adoration of the written word.

It was why, in her mother’s words, Emily had not received a single marriage proposal after four seasons despite all the money spent on her outfits.

‘Now then, what should you do when talking to the duke?’ asked her mother as she moved around Emily, inspecting the outfit from all angles.

‘Wait for him to introduce a topic and ask him questions pertinent to it.’

‘But not too many questions, you do not want to appear a half-wit.’

‘Yes, Mama.’ Emily had been following her mother’s rules for all the seasons she’d been out and she had not yet attracted a suitor.

Perhaps because she was so busy worrying about the rules that she became tongue-tied around men.

Not around Freddie, of course, which didn’t count, because the two of them generally sniped at each other and she wasn’t going to marry him.

Books had saved Emily; escaping to fictional worlds had helped her when she couldn’t understand why her mother didn’t love her as much as her other daughters.

It wasn’t until she was twenty that Emily had realised the truth of the situation.

Emily was her parents’ last-ditch attempt to have a son.

There had been no more children after her and with only three daughters there was no one to carry on the family name apart from a despised nephew.

There was nothing Emily could do to make up for that disappointment to her parents.

She could not be a son or, it appeared, the daughter her mother desperately wanted her to be.

Except perhaps by marrying a duke. That strange numbness returned as she imagined it.

Could she really make a play for someone as grand as the Duke of Glanmore?

It would be humiliating to fail and yet to enter into wedlock with such a man would finally end years of her mother’s criticism.

‘Emily,’ her mother snapped. ‘You are woolgathering again. You must stop it. It makes you look brainless. ’

There it was; the reason Emily couldn’t win.

Not only had she not been born a boy, she was either too intelligent or without wits.

She kept her mouth shut, even as her mind railed at her to say something back.

It would do no good to argue. Thankfully, her mother’s carriage was brought round by her coachman and Emily was finally, blissfully alone.

A maid scurried out of a room, carrying a few dresses. ‘Here’s some more outfits, Miss Hawkins.’

‘Excellent. Thank you, Anna.’

The maid bobbed a curtsey and then paused. ‘I think you look lovely, Miss.’

Before Emily could comment, Anna was on the move, disappearing down the long corridor to the section of the house where only the servants went.

Emily shifted the dresses in her arms, the fabric crinkling softly.

She wished Anna were coming with her and not her mother’s sour-faced lady’s maid, Diane.

Despite being a servant, Diane had a way of making Emily feel small.

It wasn’t in what she said, she was always careful to be polite, but in the way her lips thinned and her eyes narrowed in an almost perfect imitation of her mother’s disapproving expressions.

No. She wasn’t going to sit in Glanmore House trying to get a girl into an outfit, while avoiding Freddie’s teasing comments and attempting not to shrivel under the duke’s stern gaze all the while with Disappointed Diane.

Still clutching the dresses, she hurried after Anna, managing to catch up with her before she disappeared into the servants’ quarters. ‘Anna, will you come with me?’

Anna’s eyes widened. ‘Are you sure, Miss?’

‘Yes, come. We must hurry.’ Fortunately, Anna didn’t pause to ask questions, only quickly following Emily back down the corridor. Emily stopped briefly to explain to the family’s butler, speaking faster than normal so they could make their escape before Diane emerged in the hallway.

They burst out into the sunshine and hurried down the steps, Anna seeming to be as swept up in the excitement as Emily was.

She’d made it: escaped from her mother and done something slightly rebellious.

A heady rush of pleasure surged through her from achieving the almost impossible: defying her mother.

She may pay for it later, but it was worth it for an afternoon of freedom.

She was almost skipping by the time she knocked on the door of Glanmore House.

The door swung open and instead of the Dashworths’ butler, Freddie answered, his dark hair rumpled as if he’d been shoving his hands through it constantly since she’d last seen him. It was irritating how the untidiness looked good on him, whereas it would look scruffy on another man.

‘You look…’ he squinted at her ‘…different.’

‘Why thank you, Mr Dashworth. That is precisely the compliment every lady wants to hear.’

His lips twitched and something stirred in the pit of her stomach.

Irritation obviously, because it couldn’t be anything else.

This was Freddie. Her perennial enemy. She was often the brunt of his amused glances and this should feel no different.

It didn’t. Although her stomach had never fluttered before when talking to him; a strange development, but perhaps it was down to something she’d eaten or nerves at having to spend more time with the duke.

‘Do come in.’

Freddie held the door open further to allow them to step into the house and they began to head down the long corridor to the back sitting room.

‘Thank you again for what you did this morning. We were at our wits’ end trying to work out what was causing Charlotte such distress. ’

Emily wasn’t used to Freddie being so… amenable. ‘It was nothing. Having experienced a painful hairstyle on a daily basis, I know exactly how she feels.’

Freddie frowned. ‘Why would you wear your hair in a certain style if it was uncomfortable?’

Emily paused. Nobody had ever asked such an obvious question; she’d not even asked it of herself.

Why did she wear her hair in ways that hurt and why had she never protested?

Was she really that pathetic? She didn’t want to answer that question because she feared the answer was yes.

She’d spent so long being browbeaten by her mother, accepting what the woman who’d birthed her said, that she wore things that hurt her without complaint.

How strange that it should be Freddie of all people who should make this point obvious to her.

‘Well?’

Emily jumped. She had forgotten where she was for a moment. Freddie was peering down at her, a slight frown marring his forehead.

‘Because it looks good.’ It was a weak response and she knew it, could see he thought so too in the slight downturn of his lips.

She didn’t want to justify why she had never protested against the pain of uncomfortable hairstyles, especially not to Freddie Dashworth. She resumed walking again. ‘Is Lotte looking forward to trying on the dresses?’

‘We…’ he ran a hand through his dark hair, tufting the long strands into spikes ‘…think she is looking forward to seeing you.’

‘What do you mean by “we think”?’

‘She hasn’t spoken since she arrived to stay with us.

’ Freddie sounded so bleak, Emily almost reached out a sympathetic hand.

She managed to stop herself before she touched him.

‘Aside from when she spoke to you earlier, she’s been entirely mute.

But,’ he said brightly, ‘she keeps pointing to the chair you were sitting on together and when I said you were coming she took her thumb out of her mouth and went to stand by it with her doll so…’

Emily’s heart cracked a little at the thought of the little girl waiting for her and probably not understanding why it was taking so long. She picked up the pace, hurrying to get to the child.

‘There’s no need to run,’ Freddie muttered.

‘You need to do more exercise if you think this is running.’ It was good to be sparring with him again. She would rather their relationship stayed on familiar ground; she did not want to feel sorry for him. Letting her guard down around him was not an option.

‘I am always busy.’

‘Continually walking up and down the stairs at your club does not count.’

‘Why am I going up and down? Why am I not enjoying myself like everyone else?’

‘How am I to know what you get up to?’

‘Well, it is not traipsing along corridors for no reason.’

‘It shows with your lack of ability to keep up.’

He snorted but made no further comment, which was just as well because with his long legs he could far outstrip her, but that wasn’t the point of their encounters.

They traded insults, soft insults that mostly didn’t hurt, but insults nonetheless.

They’d been doing it for years. It hadn’t been so bad when they were children, although she’d never understood why he kept getting sent down from Eton.

If she’d been given the opportunity to learn in the same way Freddie had, she would not have thrown it away for anything.

He’d had the option to learn at that historic establishment and he’d treated it with a callousness that still surprised her.

Perhaps that was when the tension between them had started.

Maybe she should have done a better job of hiding her disappointment in his behaviour; he was not hers to disapprove of and, even if he had been, he made his own decisions about his future.

Inside the sitting room Charlotte was perched in front of the long chair they’d been on earlier, a doll clutched in her hand.

A maid was watching over her, but otherwise she was alone.

When she caught sight of Emily, Charlotte jumped up and ran to her as fast as her tiny legs could manage.

Nobody had ever been so pleased to see Emily and it was natural to pick the little girl up and hug her tightly.

This was only her second encounter with Lotte, but Emily already knew that she adored her.