She folded her arms. “Wallflower. Wanton Wallflower.”
The air changed. Just slightly. Enough to make her consider backing away—but then again, she had never been wise about personal safety.
“Where is your chaperone, Miss Wallflower?” He raised a single, terrifyingly judgmental finger. “And a chicken does not count as a chaperone.”
“Really, sir, are you quite done? Because I came here to relax, not to be disapproved at by a steam-drenched aristocrat with tragic trust issues.”
He blinked once. Slowly. Like a glacier considering murder.
"I believe," he said, voice velvet wrapped around gravel, "you're in my chair."
Wanton lifted her chin with the courage of a woman who had once stared down a medieval tribunal armed only with a bonnet pin and a strong opinion. "Is that so? I didn't see your name on it."
He gestured to the plaque on the armrest.
She leaned forward and read it aloud. "His Grace, the Duke of Arsbury."
This could not be the same Duke fromThe Lady’s Guide to Not Getting Ravished. That Duke had been described as statuesque, with the backside of a Greek god and the moral flexibility of a toasted crumpet.
This one?
This one clearly exercised for judgmentalism. His glutes had to be tragically… raisinous. Flattened by propriety. Dehydrated by duty. Shriveled by a life spent clenching in disapproval.
“How unfortunate, Your Grace. I’ve already warmed it. You’ll have to sit on the floor.”
Silence.
His expression froze. The frost was so intense, she felt the tip of her nose congeal. A hush fell over the steam, the tile, the very molecules in the room—each one holding its breath in anticipation.
Then, he lifted his left eyebrow.
She knew, intellectually, that it was merely a strip of keratinized filament raised by the frontalis muscle, a primitive reflex intended—according to paleoanthropological consensus—for early hominids to convey dominance across savannahs and poorly ventilated caves.
But this was no Neanderthal twitch.
This was a ducal elevation. The arch was refined. Lethal. It crept up his forehead like a very posh condemnation.
Wanton blinked. She’d read about expressions like this in Miss Primrose’s Illustrated Guide to Men Who Should Be Fled Immediately. It was the sort of brow that could halt a duel mid-draw. That made governesses drop teacups. That, according to the guide, had caused a visiting duchess to spontaneously confess her affair with a stableboy and the duke’s tailor. Wanton had just never expected to encounter one so… arched. So geometrically unkind.
A ghostly twinge echoed through her backside—the exact spot still recovering from a medieval misadventure involving a joust, a misfired theory about saddle physics, and a knight named Sir Baldwin the Obvious.
She resisted the flight-or-pretend-dead impulse. No man had the right to wield eyebrow authority like that. Certainly notone who smelled faintly of bergamot, ancient bloodlines, and personal disappointment.
Still, her stubborn glute clenched in something perilously close to obedience. Somewhere between her pride and her petticoats, a command had been issued. And her body, that treacherous collection of frilled rebellion, wanted to obey...
And then—oh no—the eyebrow climbed higher. Just a notch.
It was too much. Her body responded before her brain could object.
She shot to her feet like a scandal launched from a catapult.
THUMP.
Unfortunately, she stood so abruptly that the top of her head made aggressive acquaintance with the Duke’s chest. There was a grunt—his. Possibly hers. Possibly Henrietta’s, rustling in her basket like a feathered alarm bell.
The Duke’s neatly pressed copy of The Times took flight—pages scattering through the steam like startled, center-right pigeons clutching monocles and muttering about the decline of empire.
Wanton pretended nothing had happened and glanced at the ceiling with the scholarly interest of someone desperately pretending not to have headbutted a nobleman’s sternum.
