The absolute cheek.
She swiveled in a flurry of skirts, her ears clouded with a strange sort of fury. Why did she let the man upset her so? It was simply that he was so very rude.
But was it rudeness?
Yes.But something else, too.
Honesty.
She couldn’t understand it. Who ventured into society with honesty?
Everything in her rejected the very idea.
The unstated social contract demanded that thehaute tongather at balls and soirées and musicales and fêtes with smiles on their faces and platitudes on their mouths, and if not platitudes, then gossip. In short, it was all a great big game of pretend and the important thing was that they all agree to play by the rules. But people like the Duke of Ripon and—it had to be admitted—Archie, and sometimes Delilah, acted as if the rules didn’t apply to them.
Rules applied toeveryone, that was what Amelia had learned this last year. Rules didn’t go away because one didn’t like them or chose to ignore them. Instead, they lurked in the shadows and waited patiently for their opportunity to strike and punish when one fell afoul of them.
Amelia snatched a cup of punch off a passing tray and took a cooling sip. The cotton in her ears cleared, and she thought she might’ve heard her name.
She glanced around to find a group of ladies staring at her. She knew a few of them vaguely, but none well. Or not well enough for them to be desirous—a few looked shockinglyeager—for her company.
“Is your brother an intimate of the duke?”
“The duke?” she asked, momentarily flummoxed.
Her audience stared at her as if she was the biggest dolt in this—or any other—room.
“OfRipon.”
Oh,the ox. “I’m not sure.”
“Or areyou,perhaps?” giggled one of the ladies.
Amelia’s cheeks shot into instant flame. “I can most definitely saynoon that point.”
A few of her audience looked disappointed, others plainly curious. “But why would you want to say no?”
Amelia gasped before her mouth snapped shut. Sometimes she forgot she wasn’t in England. In Italy, lovers were allowed, if one stayed discreet. She couldn’t allow such mores to rub off on her, or on Delilah and Juliet. She glanced around. Where were they anyway?
She was about to excuse herself when one of the ladies said, “Didn’t you know his fiancée left him at the altar?”
Amelia’s feet remained exactly where they were.
She shouldn’t listen, but she was,oh, so very curious about the ox. And if knowledge came in the form of unreliable gossip, so be it. After all, where there was smoke, fire often followed.
“What woman would jilt such a man?”
Every eye—including Amelia’s, shamefully—swung toward him. Of a sudden, the path between them and him cleared, allowing an unimpeded view of the Duke of Ripon. He looked every inch the English duke of novels that Amelia only read in the privacy of her bedroom. Thick, tousled sable hair. Gray eyes that pierced. Clean-shaven, square masculine jaw. Purely from an artist’s point of view, the man was devastatingly handsome.
“It is whispered he told his fiancée she could take lovers,” whispered one lady.
“Why would she need to?” asked another.
An appreciative silence followed.
“They say he has no morals.”
“The Dissolute Duke.”
