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A ll around her people were talking, the background babble making it impossible to discern individual words.

The meal was delayed due to the late arrival of the guest now sitting next to her, but the wine had been served prior to his arrival and guests had made good inroads into it until the dinner was finally served.

‘The land was getting boggy, you see.’

Emily nodded as the man, whose name had escaped her and who was seated to her right, as he kept talking. She was sure he didn’t require her to actually answer his question. She couldn’t even if she wanted to; she had no idea to what land he was referring.

‘I could not let the situation continue, you understand?’

Emily half nodded, half shook her head, unsure of the correct response.

Although she’d forgotten the man’s name, she knew he was a baron and he was unmarried—the two most pertinent facts, according to her mother.

Emily needed to marry. Not only was the life of a spinster about as appealing as drinking water straight from the River Thames, but Emily could not countenance another year of living with her mother.

Not if she wanted to keep some semblance of her dignity intact .

‘And then, Burbidge suggested tiles.’ The baron laughed. ‘I can see you are as surprised as I am. Who would have thought of such a thing in a field?’

She widened her eyes to show that she was indeed very surprised by this turn of events.

The baron seemed pleased with her response and carried on this one-sided conversation, leaving Emily to mull over her options.

Somewhere, deep down, her mother probably loved her, but her love was so deep down Emily would probably have to employ miners to extract it.

In the guise of getting Emily ready for the marriage mart, her mother ran an almost constant litany of criticism on everything from Emily’s height, ‘you are too tall,’ and her bust, ‘you do not have one,’ to Emily’s love of learning, ‘no man wants a clever wife,’ and Emily’s conversational skills, ‘you do not have any.’

Emily had to find a husband this season and she was trying, despite what her mother thought, but it was far harder than anyone had ever made out to make a flirtatious comment when the man with whom you were supposed to be engaged in conversation kept talking about something which you had no ideas about at all.

The baron was of an appropriate age for her, and had his own hair and teeth.

The title wasn’t a prerequisite for Emily, but she knew it was something that had eluded their family up until now and to marry into one should make her mother happy.

She tried to keep an interest in him, she really did, but her attention kept snagging on the delicate gold candle that rested on the table in front of her.

The artist who had made it had wound intricate leaves around the base that glittered as the light flickered above it.

It reminded Emily of the way leaves danced in the wind and how much she loved to sit in the duke’s garden and watch the way the trees gently rustled as a breeze brushed through them .

Looking at the candle and the patterns it made was preferable to giving her attention to the man seated on her left. The man she was concentrating on ignoring so much that her neck hurt.

She’d already taken her place at the dining table and was being talked at by Baron Drainage when she’d been made aware of the latecomer moving towards the vacant seat next to her.

She’d been ready with her polite, societal smile tilted towards the man and then she’d realised who it was.

She’d been glad that there were no mirrors around, because her face had felt frozen into what was surely a ghoulish expression.

Frederick Dashworth had been all smiles for the other guests, but the congeniality in his eyes had died the moment he had caught sight of her looking up at him.

They were in polite society, where they would be easily heard by other diners and so they could not trade insults, but they were way past trading platitudes too.

‘Good evening, Miss Hawkins,’ he’d murmured, as he’d taken his seat before promptly turning to talk to the lady sitting on his other side.

Even though Emily was ignoring him with every fibre of her being, he appeared to be emitting heat.

There was no other way to explain how she could sense him whenever he lifted his glass to take a sip or when his knife moved across his plate.

Whatever he was discussing with his dining partner must have been highly amusing because not a moment had gone by without her tinkling laugh ringing out over the general chatter in the room.

The noise was grating against Emily’s skin as surely as Baron Drainage’s conversation.

At some point, etiquette would dictate that she and Freddie would have to talk to one another while their current companions turned to their other side, but for now, she would live in denial.

‘But, of course, no one would want that, would they?’ Baron Drainage laughed .

Emily forced a smile while praying that the baron wasn’t truly asking her to comment because she had now completely lost the thread of the conversation.

Fortunately, he wasn’t and the conversation moved on, or rather, it carried on without any input from her before he turned to the person on his right and began again with the same story.

She held her breath.

To the left of her Freddie continued his conversation with the laughing lady.

Freddie had no shortage of admirers despite never showing any signs of committing to one in particular and she had no doubt this woman would be as enamoured with him as the rest before the evening was out; she probably already was.

Emily stabbed her beautifully cooked chicken.

Freddie never flirted with her. Not that she would want him to.

It was just that Society was so unfair. Freddie, who had squandered his education, could breeze through life, remaining unmarried until he found someone he liked above all others.

At the rate Emily was going, she would have to accept the first man who asked, if she even got that lucky.

As the son of a duke, Freddie had no money problems and was free to live independently.

Emily would never have that luxury. Yet the cosmos had seen fit to bless him with the looks and the charm and not her, who needed them so much more.

‘You managed to avoid that nicely.’

Emily cut a slice of chicken, moved it from one side of her plate to another and then put her fork down.

She glanced at Freddie, hoping that his last comment had not been for her, but she found him gazing back at her, his eyes sparkling with a peculiar type of mischief he seemed to reserve just for tormenting her.

‘Avoid what exactly?’

‘Whether or not tile drainage was worth the cost. I could see you were hanging on Baron Mothchild’s every word regarding the development of farming at his estate, but perhaps your mind wandered when he discussed the merits of tile over clay.

’ Freddie’s smirk showed he knew exactly how involved in the conversation she’d been, but she would never give him the satisfaction of admitting she hadn’t been enthralled by Baron Mothchild or that now, thanks to Freddie, she knew the man’s name.

‘Yes, Baron Mothchild is a very interesting gentleman.’

Freddie’s dark eyes glimmered. ‘Oh, indeed.’

‘And I was listening to his fascinating discourse. There is a lot to be learned from someone who knows what they are talking about.’ As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she wanted to cram them back in.

She’d given Freddie an easy opening to discover that she was lying.

She would be able to answer a question about what Freddie had been talking about to his dinner companion over anything Baron Mothchild had said for the entirety of the evening.

‘Ah.’ For a moment, she thought Freddie was going to let her off. She watched as his long fingers traced a pattern on the tablecloth. ‘So, what is your opinion on the best way to drain a field?’

‘Clay obviously.’ She had no idea.

He nodded sagely. ‘Slow to make though, wouldn’t you agree?’

Emily had once heard two women discussing how kissable Freddie’s lips looked.

Although she would rather run naked around this very dining room than admit it, they did look very full and soft.

She could almost feel them brushing against the length of her neck.

She took her hand from the stem of her wine glass as ice flooded through her.

She must be deep in her cups if the idea of kissing Freddie was entering her mind.

She straightened, resting her hands in her lap to stop them from reaching for her wine once more.

‘Of course they are, but anything worth doing should take time, as I am sure you would agree. ’

‘On that I am afraid I would not, not having spent a long time doing anything very much at all and yet somehow managing to find plenty of things of worth to fill my time.’

Emily didn’t know what to say to that. She had no idea how Freddie spent his life.

She could well imagine him doing very little aside from enjoying himself with his many friends.

‘What is it that you do all day?’ she blurted out before clapping her hand over her mouth.

‘I do apologise. That was incredibly intrusive of me. Please forget I asked.’

Freddie leaned his forearms onto the table, tilting himself slightly so that he was mostly turned towards her.

Over his shoulder, Emily noticed the slight pout of the woman seated to his left at this gesture.

‘You do not need to watch your words with me, Miss Hawkins. We are old friends.’ She raised her eyebrow and he surprised her by chuckling. ‘You dispute that we are friends?’

‘To be so, I think we need to be consistently civil with one another.’

He shook his head, his dark hair falling over one eye. He pushed it away from his forehead impatiently. ‘On the contrary, the better one knows someone, the less polite one has to be.’

‘Then you are right, we must be the best of friends.’

Freddie flung back his head and laughed and something fizzy erupted in Emily’s stomach, spreading quickly through her body as if a champagne bottle had been opened within her and all the joy of the bubbles was racing through her.

Heads turned towards them and a few eyebrows were raised.

Emily guessed that they were surprised that a woman such as herself had made Freddie Dashworth, darling charmer of Society, laugh that hard.

She caught a glimpse of her mother’s faint frown.

She didn’t need to presume what she was thinking.

Her mother had made her thoughts on the Dashworth family very clear.

The Duke of Glanmore was a prize: the ultimate marital one.

In the unlikely event that any member of the Hawkins family found themselves in the vicinity of him they were to do everything in their power to engage him in conversation.

Mrs Hawkins did not believe that her youngest daughter possessed any qualities that would entice such an eminent husband, but she would give her left arm for the merest hint of a possibility.

In her mother’s opinion, the younger Dashworth brothers were interesting to her in terms of their wealth, but their reputations as men whose prime concern in life seemed to be enjoying themselves made them unsuitable in her opinion.

Her mother disliked Freddie most of all, mainly because he gave off the air that he found nothing serious.

Although Emily thought it was more to do with the fact that Freddie didn’t bow down to her mother enough.

The Hawkins may not have a title, but they were an eminent family with centuries of wealth behind them and most people treated her parents with the respect and deference that Mrs Hawkins thought was their due. Freddie did not.

Emily didn’t want to admire Freddie for anything but she did for that. And perhaps for the shape of his hands, but that was something she would not admit even if her life depended on it, which it never would.

‘I do enjoy sparring with you, Miss Hawkins,’ said Freddie, his laughter quieting. ‘You always seem to know exactly what to say.’

She contradicted him with complete silence, not knowing how to respond to such a surprising statement. It was the closest thing to a compliment he had ever given her.

‘And of course—’ he added, leaning closer so that she caught a whiff of his cologne.

The delicious scent muddled her mind and for a moment, she leaned towards him too.

The sounds of the dining room seemed to fade into the background as she gazed at the length of his jaw.

She wondered whether the skin there would be soft to the touch or whether the shaved hairs would prickle under her fingertips.

She was so entranced with her thought that she almost missed the end of his sentence ‘—friends also have shared secrets.’

She reeled backwards, her blood turning to ice.

‘We agreed never to talk of that again.’ She glanced around at those sitting around them, but nobody appeared to be paying them any attention.

‘I knew you would. I should never have trusted you.’ If anyone thought that there was more to her and Freddie’s relationship, then it had the potential to be ruinous.

Emily knew what happened to women if their reputation was besmirched.

It didn’t have to be ruined to damage a woman’s marital prospects.

‘I do apologise, Miss Hawkins. I did not mean to upset you.’ Freddie sounded contrite, but one never knew when it came to him.

Of all the Dashworth brothers with whom she could have got caught doing something improper, Freddie was the worst. He cared about nothing other than his own enjoyment and if he ruined her, he would merely move on to the next source of entertainment.

He turned back to his companion on his left and soon the woman’s tinkling laughter rang out once more. It should have made her feel better that he had gone back to ignoring her, but for some reason, it didn’t.