“Harrowmere!” Harrison slurred, clearly deep in his cups. “And the lovely Miss Whitcombe. Taking the air?”
“The salon was rather close,” the Duke said coolly. “Miss Whitcombe felt faint.”
“Of course, of course.” Harrison’s leer suggested he didn’t believe a word of it. “Though perhaps she should return inside. The night air can be... dangerous for young ladies.”
“Indeed,” the Duke said, his voice carrying just enough edge to make Harrison step back. “Which is why I was just escorting Miss Whitcombe back to her mother.”
He offered his arm again, and Marianne took it, allowing him to guide her past the leering lords and back toward the house. But just before they reached the doors, he drew her into another shadowed alcove.
“This isn’t finished,” he said, his voice rough with suppressed want. “You know that, don’t you?”
“I know nothing of the sort.”
“Liar.” He pressed something into her hand—a calling card, she realised. “My direction. When you’re ready to stop pretending, you know where to find me.”
“I won’t come.”
“Yes,” he said with absolute certainty, “you will.”
Then he was gone, striding back into the salon and leaving her alone in the shadows, her heart racing and her skin aflame.
She looked down at the card in her hand. Just his name and address—nothing more. Such a simple thing, yet it felt like holding a lit match over gunpowder.
When she finally returned to the salon, her mother took one look at her and went pale.
“We’re leaving,” she announced, gathering their things with unprecedented haste.
Marianne didn’t argue. She couldn’t have sat through another moment of Mrs Fortescue’s torture, not with her blood still singing from Adrian’s touch, his words echoing in her mind.
As their carriage pulled away, she caught a glimpse of him through the salon windows. He stood alone despite the crowd around him—a dark figure among the glittering throng. As if sensing her gaze, he turned, and even from that distance, she felt the weight of his attention.
“You’re playing with fire,” her mother said quietly.
“I know.”
“He’ll ruin you.”
“Perhaps.”
“Marianne—”
“I know, Mama.” She clutched his card tighter, feeling the edges bite into her palm. “I know exactly what he is, what he represents, what he could do to me.”
“And yet?”
Marianne thought of dark eyes and dangerous promises, of a thumb against her pulse and lips against her ear. Of a man who saw through her composure to the wildness beneath, who made her feel alive in a way she never had before.
“And yet,” she said softly, watching the city blur past the window, “I can’t seem to care.”
Her mother sighed, the sound heavy with resignation. “Your father’s letter went out this morning—an invitation to dine with the Duke. He insisted on extending it to him after the… incident at the opera.”
Marianne turned sharply. “And did he accept?”
“Within the hour.”
Something in Marianne’s chest tightened with anticipation and fear. Adrian Blackwell at her father’s table, in her home,surrounded by her family’s merchant practicality. It would be a disaster.
She could hardly wait.
