Page 2 of The Etiquette of Love (The Academy of Love #7)

Twelve Years Later

The Duchess of Chorley’s Ballroom

London

I want her.

The rogue thought shook Wyndham Fairchild, the Duke of Plimpton, to the core of his generally unshakeable being. It was not the thought itself that stunned him—he had, after all, been interested in the widowed Countess of Sedgewick for several years now—but the fervor of his desire that left him thunderstruck.

If somebody had asked him whether he was even capable of experiencing such fierce emotion—other than pride and duty, of course—he would have scoffed.

And yet there Plimpton stood, in the middle of the Duchess of Chorley’s ballroom, lusting ferociously for a woman for the first time in decades.

How…piquant.

It was not hubris to say that he never did the pursuing; women always pursued him.

Cecily did not pursue you…

That was true. Cecily was the one and only time Plimpton had lost his sense over a woman. But he had been a lad back then—an utterly different person. A far younger and more trusting person.

In all the years of Plimpton’s disastrous marriage—and the few after his wife’s death—he had rarely felt more than a spark of interest in any woman. Nothing even approaching the blinding desire that was currently roaring though his body.

He had taken lovers of course, going through the motions and picking and choosing between the numerous feminine lures thrown out to him, but he had only engaged in affairs to satisfy bodily hungers, never any emotional need. Some small part of him had never been able to stop wondering if there was any woman in England who could stir more than a brief lust inside him.

He was not opposed to falling in love—or even falling in lust—he was just incapable of feeling such emotion. Love, at least the sort a man felt for a woman, no longer had any place in his heart. And like a long dead plant, there was no possibility of it ever taking root again.

Twenty years of marriage had seen to that.

The initial, killing frost had been Cecily’s loathing for him. His wife’s hatred had been sufficient to blacken the stem and leaves, nearly finishing off his ability to love for good.

Then hope, in the form of a child, had revivified it. But watching three children die, one after the other, had not just ripped the fragile plant out by the roots, it had left his heart a wasteland, the soil salted and barren.

Amusement flickered through Plimpton at the dramatic mixed metaphor he had constructed. Or was it a simile? Damned if he knew. He should have paid more attention to his studies when he’d been a schoolboy.

In any case, his thinking—dramatic or not—was off the mark. What he was currently feeling for Lady Winifred Sedgewick was not love or even affection. He wanted, in the crudest and most direct parlance, to lay her out on a bed, strip her bare, and fuck her until her cool, detached assurance burnt away and revealed the sensual creature who dwelt behind her mask.

Why Plimpton believed she was capable of such passion, he did not know. Probably just wishful thinking on his part.

“—up for auction this week, Plimpton. Will you make an offer?”

At the sound of his name, Plimpton reluctantly pulled his gaze from Winifred and turned to Baron Creighton. The other man was staring at him with a questioning look in his protuberant brown eyes.

“Perhaps,” Plimpton said evasively, having no clue what Creighton had just asked.

The baron grunted and nodded. “Yes, I suppose the last thing you need is another pair given your famous grays. They came from your brother, did they not?”

“Yes,” he said, vaguely annoyed that he was forced to converse about his brother Simon’s bloodstock when all he wanted to do was ponder the sudden flare of emotion that he had just experienced. And the woman who had elicited it. Why the devil was he suddenly so interested in Winifred after all these years?

“But I thought he only set up his stud a few years ago?” Creighton asked.

“That is true. This pair is from my own stables and are among the very first who came from Charger, some years ago.”

“Damned fine animal was Charger! No longer studding him, what?”

“No.” Simon’s oldest stallion was nearing twenty years of age and spent his days grazing and lazing in splendor. Plimpton would not mind such a future, himself.

“Shame, that,” Creighton tiresomely maundered. “I offered a fortune for Loki a few months ago, but Simon wouldn’t take it.”

Plimpton, who had heard all Creighton’s grumblings on the subject of Simon’s horses before, merely nodded. His younger brother had bred horses for years before joining the army and had resumed the hobby as soon as he had recovered from his war injuries. Since setting up his stud operation two years before Simon had quadrupled the size of his stables. Breeding horses was what made Simon’s life worth living.

Or at least it had been until he’d married the widely renown portrait painter, Honoria Keyes. What had begun as a marriage of convenience—orchestrated by Plimpton and rather against the couple’s will—had rapidly grown into a love match.

Now that Simon’s wife had assured the dukedom’s future by providing a son, Plimpton no longer took issue with his brother’s time-consuming and expensive hobby. Indeed, he was pleased that Simon appeared to have quit railing against his future as Plimpton’s heir and had settled into the life of a happily married country squire.

Plimpton had no intention of dying any time soon, despite his brush with death barely two years before, but he had not been able to rest until he had assured the succession.

He always assumed that when he’d settled that matter, he could finally begin living his own life. But then Plimpton had made a shocking discovery: he had no life. At least none outside of the dukedom. He was nothing but a collection of duties and responsibilities.

A duke was what he was. All he was.

Oh, he had his family—his mother, his daughter Rebecca, Simon and Honoria and their son Robert—but aside from the Earl of Wareham, Plimpton could claim very few real friends. He had numerous acquaintances and there was his mistress, although he had begun to tire of Evangeline’s incessant hints about marriage and would need to end the affair soon, a prospect that did not fill him with any particular regret.

He hunted, boxed, fenced, attended his clubs when in London, and socialized at the requisite number of functions, but he took less and less pleasure from all those activities. They were, he realized unhappily, merely ways to fill his time until something better and more fulfilling came along.

Plimpton smiled faintly; evidently lusting over the widowed Countess of Sedgewick was how he was planning to spend his spare time.

Creighton began to yammer about his younger son’s latest exploits at Eton and Plimpton allowed his gaze to wander back to Lady Sedgewick.

Sedgewick. Plimpton frowned at the name. Truth be told, he could never think of her by any name other than Winifred , his friend Wareham’s little sister. He certainly did not care to think of the beautiful woman across the ballroom as the wife of that bloody pervert Sedgewick. The man’s death must have been a godsend to her, and Plimpton could comprehend why she had never remarried.

Her brother, however, was not nearly so understanding.

“All I want is for Winny to remarry,” Wareham had whined to Plimpton on more than one occasion. “It’s just not natural for a woman to live on her own.”

Well, his friend would be delighted when he discovered Plimpton’s intentions toward Winifred. Although Wareham would probably punch Plimpton in the face if he could see the things that he was imagining doing to his sister right now.

Plimpton knew his behavior was unseemly and probably attracting unwanted notice, but he could not wrench his gaze away from Winifred. It had been a long, long time since he had truly wanted anything or anyone this badly.

Not since Cecily, the tiresome voice in his head pointed out.

My ancient calf-love for Cecily and my present desire for Winifred are not at all the same.

Indeed, while his ardor for the cool countess ran surprisingly hot, it was not underpinned by the childish infatuation—fine, obsession —he had felt for Cecily.

The fact that his feelings for Winifred were so different than what he had once felt for Cecily was not unusual. After all, a man of twenty-one and a man of two-and-forty were so unalike as to be different creatures entirely. Or at least they were in Plimpton’s case. Twenty odd years of marriage to a woman who’d hated him was enough to change any man.

He thrust away the unpleasant thought and turned his attention back to Winifred.

And looked right into her eyes. He could not see their color from this distance, but he knew they were a magnificent silvery shade.

Her shapely lips pulled down at the corners and she immediately turned away from him.

Plimpton almost smiled.

She hates you.

Hate was too strong. He thought dislike—with hefty dashes of fear and suspicion—was closer to the truth. Winifred linked Plimpton with her brother, and that was not a positive association given that she hadn’t spoken to Wareham in almost eight years.

Plimpton suspected that Winifred would ignore him entirely if not for the fact that his brother Simon had married her good friend and former roommate, Honoria. Only because of that tenuous connection did Winifred tolerated him. Barely.

Her public mask was firmly in place, but Plimpton, also a person who held the world at arms’ length, could read her thoughts almost as easily as his own.

Could she see his thoughts just as clearly? Was that why she avoided him as if he were a plague-spreading rat? Did she suspect his desire for her and the plans that had rapidly grown out of that desire?

Oh, he would never harm her, of course. But she had certainly been unfortunate when it came to attracting his interest, an interest that went well beyond taking her for a lover. No, whether or not Winifred wished to marry again, she would do so.

She simply did not know it yet.

The fact that she had never given Sedgewick an heir did not matter one whit to Plimpton. He had spent the first two decades of his adult life consumed with the business of an heir. The matter was now settled to his satisfaction.

This time, he would marry to please himself, not because his father had selected his bride and not because he had to get an heir on his wife as quickly as possible. And this time he would get to know his future wife rather than merely worshipping her lovely appearance from afar, as he had done with Cecily.

Not that he didn’t intend to enjoy Winifred’s beautiful face and body, too.

While Creighton continued to babble and Winifred looked anywhere but at Plimpton, he permitted himself the luxury of enjoying his future wife’s person.

She was slightly above average in height and built upon slender rather than Junoesque lines, her bearing as rigidly proud as a queen’s. Her face was a delicate oval with even features that were as close to perfection as any he had ever seen. Her stunning visage was crowned by ash blonde hair that had been brutally subdued into a tidy, almost Puritanical, coronet. It was clear from the thickness of the glossy coils that it would reach her hips when unbound.

She was pale—so pale he knew the faint blue veins would be visible beneath the thin skin of her temples if he stood close enough. Such light hair and skin should have been insipid, but she was saved from that by coral pink lips, the upper one so teasingly kittenish that his own mouth watered to nip and suck and kiss it.

That mouth—her upper lip alone—would have been sufficient to fire his erotic imagination, but her unusual silvery-gray eyes put the final seal on his fascination.

Plimpton’s attraction to her had been instantaneous at the Earl of Avington’s betrothal ball almost two years ago and it had intensified each and every time he had seen her since. It had been bubbling beneath the surface for months. And tonight, it was boiling over with a vengeance.

The last time Plimpton had seen her before Avington’s ball had been more than a decade ago, when he had gone to a house party Wareham and his wife had given at their country home, Torrance Park. Plimpton had not visited his friend often after his marriage because he’d actively disliked Lady Wareham, who’d been a manipulative, sly woman.

At the time, Winifred had been home from school and could not have been more than thirteen or fourteen, still a child. She had always been on the periphery of Wareham’s life, his nosy, worshipful, pest of a little sister who followed Wareham about like an eager puppy.

At least she had until that last time. Plimpton had been startled by the change in the girl. She had looked nothing like her former ebullient, happy self. She had been…subdued and repressed. Ten minutes in her presence—along with Lady Wareham—had shown him the reason for Winifred’s drastic change in personality: the Countess of Wareham did not like her husband’s little sister.

Unfortunately, Wareham had been so enamored of his wife that he simply did not notice how matters stood between the countess and Winifred.

It had not been Plimpton’s affair, so he had kept his mouth shut. Even now, years later, he did not regret keeping mum. Wareham had been wild about his wife back then and if Plimpton had said anything even slightly critical of the woman that would have marked the end of their friendship. Not until much, much later did Wareham finally understand what he had in his wife. By that time, it had been far too late for him to rescue his relationship with Winifred.

Not surprisingly, the beautiful girl had blossomed into a surpassingly lovely woman, age adding interesting and mysterious shadows and depth to her ravishing features.

Plimpton could not deny that it had first been her stunning appearance that had all but seized him by the throat. But it had been her quiet, dignified reserve that held his attention.

For years, he had heard the young bucks refer to her as the Ice Countess. He had to admit the disrespectful sobriquet fit her down to the ground. It wasn’t merely her appearance that had earned her that nickname but also the fact that more than a few men had offered for her—not only carte blanches , but marriage—and she had rejected them all. Or at least the offers of marriage. Whether she had taken lovers was another matter. And one he did not like to consider.

Wareham had also been aware of the interest his sister created. He had briefly considered putting his foot down and forcing Winifred to move back under his roof after Sedgewick’s death. “Good Lord, Plimpton! I can hardly let a girl—for that is all Winny is, regardless that she is a widow—live on her own and make her own decisions. She will bring shame to the family name within a fortnight.”

Plimpton had spoken then. “If you force your sister to move back into your home, you will lose her forever, Wareham.” What he had really wanted to say was that Wareham’s shrew of a wife would probably drive Winifred to do something desperate if she were forced to live with them.

The argument that had followed his words had been heated and ugly and convinced him never ever to interfere again.

But Wareham had given Winifred her freedom, so he had obviously seen the merit in Plimpton’s advice, even if he had not liked it. Their friendship had been so strained by the conversation that Wareham had not spoken to him for almost six months afterward.

Wareham might have been furious that his sister had taken up teaching at a girl’s school, but it had not harmed her reputation. Like Plimpton, the Earl of Wareham had a pristine reputation and such a mild scandal had not tarnished it.

Oh, there was that ancient business about Wareham’s illegitimate half-brother Piers Cantrell. But that had occurred so long ago that few people beyond the dozen or so peers who had been at Torrance Park at the time even remembered the scandal.

Plimpton only knew about it because he had been among those who were there. Wareham had long been his closest friend and he had helped him to clean up the mess Cantrell had left behind.

Winny, as Wareham had called his little sister, had been an infant of four or five years at the time. She had been heartbroken when she had learned of Cantrell’s disappearance and had wept. A lot.

He saw very little evidence of that sad little girl in the now-haughty countess.

Plimpton suspected the solid veneer of ice she hid behind had begun accreting even back then. It would have thickened considerably during her unfortunate marriage to Sedgewick.

Sedgewick had been a few years older than Plimpton, but he remembered the man well. Even at the age of seventeen, Sedgewick’s feet had been firmly planted on the road to dissipation and ruin. Plimpton was hardly a prude when it came to sexual matters, but Sedgewick had engaged in the sort of debauchery that was acceptable only to men like the Earl of Barrymore, who had been the leader of the fast set Sedgewick had run with.

Life with such a man, especially for a lady of discernment and sensibility, was probably enough to put a woman off marriage—and men—for life.

It would be Plimpton’s duty to change Winifred’s mind on that matter.

He felt a slight smile pull at his lips. No, not just his duty ; it would also be his pleasure.

***

Winifred gasped when the Duke of Plimpton turned and stared directly at her. She silently cursed herself for even allowing her eyes to wander in his direction.

The blasted man held her gaze like a lodestone and her heart kicked into a gallop before she jerked her eyes away.

Unhappily, her pulse continued to pound even after she broke free. She might have looked away, but the duke had not. She felt his attention even now—the heat that was somehow generated by eyes that were as hard and opaque as granite—her skin uncomfortably hot and prickly beneath her ball gown.

Freddie had been aware of the Duke of Plimpton’s interest in her for some time, now. At first, she had believed it was only her chaperone services for his daughter that he wanted. Because launching the Duke of Plimpton’s daughter would be such a feather in her cap she had—against her better judgment—decided that she would accept his request to sponsor his daughter. And yet, when it had come time to formalize the agreement, Freddie had lied and told the duke that she was already engaged to help another client.

The sense of relief that had flooded her afterward had convinced her she had made the right decision, no matter how financially foolish it might have been.

But then she had received a letter from her friend, the former Honoria Keyes, who had married Plimpton’s brother. Honey had begged Freddie to reconsider—as a favor to her—and so, in a moment of weakness, she had agreed to sponsor Lady Rebecca. Which meant she was now forced to deal with Plimpton not only socially, but on a business footing.

She should have known better; she should have never allowed her friend to change her mind. Because something about Plimpton—a man she had known almost all her life, albeit only slightly, had always left her feeling wrong-footed. And the feeling had only become stronger these past few years.

Plimpton had been—and likely still was—her brother Wareham’s closest friend and had been around ever since she could remember. Freddie had vague memories of Plimpton as a quiet and serious boy, but he was so much older than her that he had already been a married man when she was still a schoolgirl.

She had not spoken to him for many years before Honey’s marriage to Simon had thrown them into the same company. The moment she looked into his opaque gray eyes, she remembered how something about his direct, level gaze had always made her feel vulnerable and exposed, as if he were looking into her mind.

That feeling would have been uncomfortable regardless of what she was thinking. But the truth was that her thoughts were almost always about him whenever he was in her vicinity. As much as she hated to admit it, there was something about the blasted man that excited—and yes—aroused her.

Her sexuality was something Freddie had done everything in her power to suppress after her brief, miserable marriage. She had become an expert at stifling even the mildest spark of interest before it could lead her into a situation that might afford temporary pleasure but would end in pain and emptiness.

During her years teaching at the Stefani Academy for Young Ladies Freddie was able to hide away from the ton and avoid male attention. But all that changed after the school closed and she was forced to sponsor young women into society to earn a living. It did not seem to matter that she held herself aloof from flirtation and never encouraged attention from the opposite sex; she still encountered flashes of lust in men’s eyes—married or single—at every ton function.

Lust was not the look she saw in Plimpton’s gaze. Or at least it was not the whole of it. The duke would not be satisfied with a brief bedding. And not just because her brother was his best friend.

Freddie knew, although she could not say how , that lurking behind Plimpton’s cold, implacable facade was the intention to make her his wife.

Intellectually, she cringed from that knowledge. But physically…oh, how her body burned for him.

And that reaction terrified her.

Freddie did not want to remarry. Ever. But if she could be tempted into matrimony again, it would most certainly not be by a man who was cold to his core and interested in her only because of her pedigree.

Somehow, she suspected the duke was not accustomed to being told no .

Freddie smiled grimly. It would be a new experience for him.

She felt a telltale prickle on the side of her face—the one not facing the duke—and surveyed the ballroom for its source. She had not looked long when her eyes locked with a man across the dance floor. She inhaled sharply. It was that odd, uncomfortable man— the one who’d come to the house to collect a valise for Freddie’s roommate, Lorelei Fontenot.

Lorelei was a journalist and was evidently investigating a story that required her to be away for an indeterminate period of time. And this man—Mr. Gregg—had served as Lori’s messenger for some reason. She remembered him quite clearly because his angular face and sharp eyes were not the sort one forgot. Nor was his arrogant attitude and confident swagger.

But there was something else about him, something she could not quite identify…

Freddie shook the thought away, instead focusing on his presence at a duchess’s ball.

It made no sense.

He raised his eyebrows and nodded slightly, his lips curving into a mocking smile, as if he could follow the train of Freddie’s thoughts.

For the second time that evening, she hastily broke eye contact.

Although he was clad just like every other gentleman in the room, he was not a member of the ton. Freddie was certain of that. He must have crashed the function. Should she say something to—

“Good evening, Lady Sedgewick.”

Her head whipped up and she stared at Mr. Gregg in disbelief, giving him her coldest look. “I do not believe we have been introduced.”

“I came to your house to collect Miss Font—”

“I recall the occasion,” she cut in icily, employing the sort of tone that usually depressed pretension and sent the offender scurrying in the other direction.

But Mr. Gregg was made of sterner stuff and was only nonplussed by her coldness for a moment before his smile once again slid across his angular face. “Ah, I see.”

Freddie did not ask him what it was that he saw because she did not care. The only thing she cared about was his immediate departure.

“By introduced you mean something more formal,” he went on, as if she were not ignoring his existence and looking at anything else but him. “I have offended convention, haven’t I?” he persisted. “I’m sorry, I should have remembered that. But it has been a long, long time.”

The nerve of the man to stand there yammering.

Freddie had just decided to make her way to the table of refreshments when Gregg’s gaze flickered to something over her shoulder and his smile shifted into a sneer.

“Good evening, Winifred.”

Freddie’s pulse, which had just stopped pounding, sped up again at the sound of her Christian name on Plimpton’s tongue—as if he had every right to use it.

It took all her self-control not to whip around and point out that she had not given him the right to use her name. But one did not chide a duke, no matter how badly he was behaving.

Unfortunately, one could not ignore a duke, either.

Freddie turned away from one unwanted guest to face another, dropping into a low curtsey before rising to meet Plimpton’s cool gray gaze.

“Good evening, Your Grace.”

“Will you honor me with this dance?” The duke’s eyes flickered over Mr. Gregg—the same look he might give an annoying insect—and then back to her. The gesture, although slight, was so proprietary and insulting—as if Mr. Gregg had just made a low offer on the duke’s horse—that Freddie’s face scalded.

How dare he interfere as if she needed his protection? And as if he had any right to offer it.

Irked, Freddie deliberately turned away from the duke and back to Mr. Gregg.

Rather than appearing offended by the duke’s treatment, Gregg’s dark brown eyes glinted with amusement.

Foolishly, Freddie had no idea what to say to him now that she had turned back to him. Especially since she had done all she could to drive him away only a moment earlier. What was wrong with her? She never behaved so impulsively.

Mr. Gregg dropped a surprisingly graceful bow. “It was good to see you again, my lady.” His eyes briefly moved to the duke and then back. “I will call on you… soon. When I do, we can enjoy a long, private discussion.” And then, to her astonishment, he gave her cheek a light, affectionate flick, as if she were a child.

Freddie stared in disbelieving outrage as he strolled away, not hurrying at all as if he had every right to be in a duchess’s ballroom.

“Winifred?”

Freddie gathered her addled wits and turned back to Plimpton. She was about to remind him that she had never invited his use of her name, but the look in his eyes stopped her.

There was a hardness that had not been there before. It told her that he had seen Mr. Gregg’s affectionate gesture. And he had not liked it. The last thing she needed was for him to go tattling to Wareham.

“I beg your pardon. Did you say something, Your Grace?” she asked him coolly.

“I asked you to dance.”

Oh, yes. That. “You honor me, sir. However,” she gestured to the Conroy twins, her charges, who were seated nearby. “I am here in my capacity as chaperone.”

And we both know you did not come across the room to dance, but to interrupt my conversation with Mr. Gregg.

His harsh expression softened slightly, as if she had spoken the last part aloud. “Your charges are quite safe for the moment.”

Freddie followed his gaze to where the twins sat with their respective betrotheds as well as Mrs. Conroy, their mother, who hovered near the couples, beaming beatifically.

Even an idiot would not believe that Freddie’s presence was necessary. And the duke was no fool.

It surprised her that Plimpton knew whom she was sponsoring, but then he was the sort of man who made it his business to know about, and exert control over, every facet of his world. Freddie had officially become part of that world when she accepted his offer to launch Lady Rebecca.

Lucky, lucky Freddie.

“Come, Winifred.” He held out his hand. “One dance.” Although his voice was almost too quiet to hear over the din of the ballroom, his tone was that of a man accustomed to being obeyed.

Irked that he had left her with no polite retreat, Freddie set her hand on the sleeve of his black evening coat, which hugged his muscular torso like a second skin.

She gave him her frostiest smile. “I would be honored, Your Grace.”

Unlike his glittering, glamorous younger brother, Lord Simon—whose guinea gold curls and hyacinth blue eyes slayed hearts even after the horrific scarring he had endured in the War—the duke was attractive in a far more subtle way.

He lacked his brother’s imposing height and was only a few inches above average. His shoulders were pleasingly broad and tapered to trim, powerful hips and he possessed the muscular thighs and calves of an active sportsman. If his legs were too bulky to achieve the lithe silhouette currently fashionable, they were—in Freddie’s opinion—far more attractive and masculine and filled out his black pantaloons quite nicely.

His hair was the sort of middling brown that invited no comparisons to mahogany or chestnut and was liberally dusted with gray at the temples. His face was lean and austere, and his lips were finely shaped but severe in repose, with none of Lord Simon’s sensual fullness.

Plimpton’s most striking feature was his slate-gray eyes. It was not their color that commanded one’s attention, but rather their keen intelligence and supreme self-possession. He was a man who was comfortable with the world around him and assured of his place in it. One would never mistake him for anything other than an aristocrat, and he wore his power and exalted status as easily as he wore his skin.

Unfortunately for Freddie there was something about his piercing eyes and confident authority that upset her equilibrium unlike any other man she had ever met.

And she did not like it. Not at all. Freddie was no na?ve debutante in her first Season; she knew exactly what it was about Plimpton that unnerved her: she was sexually attracted to the duke, regardless of the fact that she mistrusted and disliked him.

The first time she had placed her hand in his and felt his palm rest lightly on her back—at Miles’s wedding ball—she had woken up panting and aroused every night for at least a week afterward, her dreams positively infested with the man.

Plimpton had been a widower of scarcely half-a-year back then and it had surprised Freddie that the duke had attended her friend Miles’s—the Earl of Avington—ball while still in mourning. But then it was well-known that the duke and his duchess had been estranged for years. Plimpton had probably been celebrating his wife’s demise before her body had even been lowered into the ground. Freddie knew that he had not stopped—or even paused—his affair with Viscountess Buckley, his lover at the time.

Lady Buckley, a lovely widow with a lofty pedigree and even loftier expectations, had not been shy about telling all and sundry that Plimpton would marry her when he was out of mourning.

Poor Lady Buckley. Shortly after his wife’s death Plimpton had moved on from her and into the arms of another widow, Mrs. Palfrey.

For all Freddie knew, there might have been others in between the two women; the duke had never stinted himself when it came to sensual pleasure of any sort.

His rampant infidelity was yet another reason to dislike the man, as if the fact that he was her brother’s best friend and likely his spy was not enough already.

The music struck up and the duke smoothly led her into the dance.

After a moment, he said, “I never did thank you for changing your mind about sponsoring Lady Rebecca.”

“The opportunity you have given me is more than sufficient thanks, Your Grace.”

“What was it that made you change your mind?”

As much as she would have liked to stare at his cravat for the entire dance, she forced herself to meet the duke’s gaze. And then she lied. “My client was forced to cancel due to a bereavement in the family.”

“Ah.” The single syllable was enough to let Freddie know that he knew she was not telling the truth but would allow her lie to go unchallenged.

Insufferable man.

“You appeared to be well acquainted with the man you were speaking with a few moments ago.”

So, here was the real reason for this dance. But it did not sound like a question, so Freddie did not answer.

“What is the man’s name?” he asked, undeterred by her silence.

Her jaw flexed with the urge to tell him to take his probing questions and go to the devil. She compromised by lying again. “I do not know.”

“I have seen him several times before, always with Lord Severn.”

“How interesting.”

“Yes,” he agreed, his gaze assessing.

An angry flush spread over her body at his brooding judgment. How was he able to express such disapproval with one quiet syllable? And why did she even care?

Your flush is not borne of anger, and you care a great deal about what this man thinks—especially when it comes to you .

Freddie realized she was scowling and quickly rearranged her features into a bland mask. Already she had attracted more attention than she wanted by dancing with the biggest matrimonial prize of the Season. Marriage-minded mamas would hardly want to engage the services of a woman who threw herself into the path of an eligible bachelor. This single dance with the duke—and Freddie’s high color and obvious excitation—would be causing no small amount of gossip.

Just what she needed.

“Regardless of what his name is, Severn’s underling is not the sort of person you should be seen associating with, Winifred. At least not if you value your reputation.”

“How generous you are to spare such solicitude for me,” Freddie retorted heatedly. “Your condescension humbles and overwhelms me, Your Grace.”

Amusement flickered across his stern features, the expression so brief and slight she would have missed it if she had not been glaring at him.

Freddie could not blame him for finding her childish behavior entertaining. Just what was it about Plimpton that reduced her to an emotional, argumentative girl of seven-and-ten?

“You are the sister of my oldest friend, Winifred. It is both a duty and an honor to offer you guidance in your brother’s absence.”

This time Freddie caught her angry retort. The threat in his words was subtle, but it was there nonetheless: if Freddie misbehaved or attracted negative attention, the duke would inform Wareham.

“I know nothing about that man,” she said, evidently unable to utter anything but lies tonight. “He merely stopped to ask me if I knew where the cardroom was.”

Plimpton’s eyebrows rose a fraction at her blatant untruth.

Freddie wanted to howl when her face, yet again, heated under his level gaze.

“He looks familiar to me,” Plimpton mused a moment later. When Freddie gave no answer, he pinned her with a sharp look. “Does he not look familiar to you, Winifred?”

Just what was the awful man driving at?

“No, he does not look familiar. Why should he?” she could not help asking.

Plimpton did not answer as he guided her into a turn.

Would this dance never end?

Freddie stared fixedly at his cravat and resolved not to speak to him again.

“I remember the first time I saw you, Winifred.”

She instantly looked up. “You do?” she asked, and then was annoyed that she had not managed to quell the question.

“You were at that age when children learn to walk. I had come to stay the Easter holiday with Wareham. Your parents were still alive then.”

Freddie hated how much she wanted to hear more—how hungry she was for information about a past and people she could not remember.

Rather than pepper him with the questions churning inside her, she forced herself to cut him a blasé, mocking look. “I did not realize you spent your holidays at Torrance Park in the nursery.”

Why did she have such an urge to take digs at him? She never behaved this way. And certainly not to a virtual stranger. And never with a man of his rank.

If she had been hoping to snub him, she had failed.

Instead, his stern features softened. “You were not in the nursery, Winifred. You had escaped your minder and crawled down the stairs and across half the house, setting all the servants in an uproar searching for you. You were dirty, and crying, and dispirited by the time you discovered Wareham, me, and your brother Piers in the billiards room. When Wareham went to pick you up, you pushed him away. It was Piers you wanted. And when you saw him, your face transformed, and you promptly struggled to your feet and tottered toward him, as if you had been doing it all your life.”

His words created an image that was so vivid that Freddie would have sworn that she remembered it, but she knew that was just her imagination. Nanny had told her she started walking late—so late the old woman had worried that something was amiss—just shy of two years old. Piers and Wareham, separated by only a year, would have been sixteen and fifteen at the time.

“You cried like you were being murdered when your nurse came to collect you, so Piers carried you back up to the nursery himself.” Plimpton’s lips twisted faintly. “Of course, Wareham and I teased him mercilessly when he returned.”

“Adolescent boys are so beastly to each other,” Freddie said absently, her thoughts on her long-dead brother.

“Yes, that is an excellent word for them.”

“It is hard to believe Piers was only sixteen at the time. He seemed like a god to me.”

When the duke did not respond, she looked up to find him staring in the direction of the French doors that led to the terrace, an arrested look on his face.

But when Freddie turned to see what had attracted his interest, there was no one there.