Unity balanced her basket on her hip in order to dig a small journal out of her reticule. The coins she had earned from her time at the masquerade clinked in the bottom as she turned to a fresh page in her book.
With a nub of pencil, she jotted down,Determine what show my audience wants and give it to them.A valuable lesson. Her crowd would differ significantly from the duke’s, but the general principle remained the same.
Her lips quirked. Oh, how the rigid Duke of Lambley would rankle if he knew Unity thought him a glorified theatre manager!
He plied his trade on Grosvenor Square rather than Drury Lane, but he alone controlled the set, the casting, the script, and the curtain call. A grand performance every Saturday from ten to six, available only to ticket holders. Please wait at the entrance for the usher to admit you...or to show you out.
She snickered to herself as she added rhubarb and elderflower to her basket and paid the vendors. If she were an artist, how might she design a playbill advertising his masquerades? The duke didn’t just manage the production—he was also the star.
Perhaps the illustration should be of his stern countenance in profile. A forbidding silhouette, to show that this was a serious, intellectual drama, the sort people loved to brag about having attended, in order to prove how sophisticated they were. Or perhaps the playbill should depict the duke in footlights upon the stage, showered in a deluge of falling roses, to highlight the themes of romance and desire. That was universal, wasn’t it? Or perhaps a better idea—
She turned from the chicory vendor and twitched to a halt.
He was here.Here.
Not ten feet from her, haggling over spring onions.
No, no, he couldn’t behaggling. Surely, he wasn’t here at all, and last night’s kiss had turned Unity temporarily mad.
He must have an entire army of maids who came to market carrying rulers and scales, ensuring every gooseberry conformed to exacting standards of perfection before it was allowed into a perfectly engineered basket, to be carried into an equally perfect scullery.
She watched as he tossed a silver crown to the vendor. Enough coin to buy an oxcart of onions. He did not wait for his change.
Definitelynot haggling.
And definitely the Duke of Lambley.
He looked handsome and out-of-place in a well-cut dark blue coat with twin columns of gold buttons, a frothy white neckcloth above a black silk waistcoat, spotless tawny buckskins clinging to powerful thighs, and shiny black Hessian boots, complete with a jaunty tassel just below each knee.
The duke turned away from a particularly insistent flower girl, now holding a newly acquired posy, and met Unity’s amused gaze. His hazel eyes widened for only a moment before he quickly schooled his features into their usual impassive mask of arrogance and ennui.
Unity wasn’t fooled for a second.
He was standing in amarket. And had just been manipulated by a ten-year-old into buying flowers he didn’t want or need. She sauntered up to him without bothering to school her expression.
“Shopping for your next party?” she asked with faux politeness.
“If you must know,” he answered coldly, “indeed I am.”
She wished she could raise a single eyebrow. “Isn’t that a task usually reserved for underlings and dogsbodies?”
The duke had no problem arching a lonesome brow. “A curious statement, consideringyou’rehere shopping as well.”
“I have no servants,” she pointed out dryly.
She should not have done. A frown of confusion marred his handsome face.
To him, she was not Unity Thorne, costume and cosmetics worker, but rather a fashionable courtesan he had never seen wearing anything but a fancy ball gown.
Until today.
She had carefully constructed the impression that she was a demimondaine of the calibre that certainly would have a respectable quantity of servants to attend her every need, only to pop up in the middle of a market wearing a yellow day dress with the elbows worn thin and a straw bonnet whose edges had begun to fray.
“Are you in disguise?” he said doubtfully.
“Some of us don’t limit our role-playing to one night per week,” she replied. There. That was vague and could be interpreted in many different ways. She attempted to guide the conversation in a different direction. “You seem as surprised to see me as I was to see you.”
“I was just thinking about you and there you were,” he murmured.
