“Well, you handled that abominably,” Charlotte said. “And you might as well dance. William won’t be here for at least another two hours—not until they’ve stopped announcing guests.”
Two hours. He had to endure another two hours of this. Fiona looked just as weary at the thought. She may have enjoyed herself as Finley; the young Scotsman was the subject of little attention when standing next to the eligible Stirling brothers. But as Fiona, an unknown woman standing next to a duke who had just announced he was no longer looking for a wife? She was suddenly the subject of every single eye.
Which was what they wanted, if their ruse was to succeed, but it did not make her comfortable. She tapped her fingers on her skirts and the smallest of creases had formed between her brows. He wanted to stroke it away. He wanted to take those tapping fingers and enclose them in his so she knew he was in this with her. Neither of those things would help alleviate the cause of her anxiousness.
“Ned, if you cannot pretend that all is well, then I ask that you join the men wherever they disappear to and let Fiona and I be seen.” She gestured toward the increasing crowd of gentlemen hanging at the fringes of their conversation.
He looked at Fiona. He would not leave her if she was not comfortable.
“I’m fine, Ed.”
“All right,” he said. “But once William arrives, we do this quickly.”
***
The next few hours were excruciatingly slow. Charlotte was an absolute darling and didn’t leave Fiona’s side except during a select few dances, where she’d chosen Fi’s partners for her—dull men with few conversation skills whose questions never got more difficult than “It’s fine weather, isn’t it?”
The rest of the time, the two women promenaded, arm in arm. Charlotte commandeered every conversation and by the time the clock struck ten, Fiona had met every person in attendance without divulging a single thing about herself.
And yet somehow, the fragments of conversation she overheard were about how “charming that Scottish girl is.”
“You’re incredible,” she murmured to Charlotte. “They see only what you want them to.”
“Well, I’ve been groomed to play the part of perfect lady all my life. My mother may be many things, but incompetent is not one of them.” Charlotte patted Fiona’s arm.
It’s not just Edward.Charlotte had already moved on to continue chatting when the realization fully hit. Edward was not the only sibling to build their entire identity around their mother’s twisted notions of what was right.
It was remarkable, really, that Charlotte had developed as she had with a mother like the duchess as her role model. She could have turned into someone like Luella. Both girls were conniving, but where Luella’s manipulations were vicious and self-serving, Charlotte’s were a force for good.
Overcome with appreciation, Fiona leaned over and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. “Thank ye,” she whispered.
Charlotte’s eyes crinkled around the edges as she smiled. “Yes, yes. Don’t thank me yet. The hard part is just starting.” She gestured toward the door, where William had just entered. “You’re on your own from here.”
As Charlotte made for one of the side doors, Fiona watched her leave with rising trepidation. From across the room, Edward caught her eye and gave her a nod.
In fifteen minutes, Charlotte would be upstairs on the mezzanine, dressed as Finley. She and William would be obnoxiously loud drunks—too loud not to be noticed, too far away to be seen with any real clarity.
Edward would ask Fiona to dance. Every woman in the ballroom would take note of the Scottish lass the duke chose to dance with. Apparently distracted, Edward would look up, repeatedly, at the scene unfolding above them. His face would darken. He would abruptly leave the moment the music finished, leaving Fiona alone in the middle of the dance floor.
And every person in that room would remember clearly Fiona and Finley in the same place at the same time.
There were so many things that could go wrong. William was absurdly confident that morning when she’d listed them all. “I have it all under control,” he’d said. Only Char’s nodding in the background had provided any comfort.
William and Charlotte entered the mezzanine just as the orchestra played the first strains of a waltz. The show was about to begin. Edward weaved his way through the crowd until he was standing before her. “Ready?”
She nodded yes but the answer was really no. This charade-on-top-of-a-charade was the beginning of the end of her time here in London.
She wasn’t ready to say good-bye to Edward. She wasn’t ready to remove herself from his family, one she had become part of so quickly and easily before she’d even realized it. Her heart already ached at the loss.
She slipped her hand into his and let him guide her to the middle of the dance floor. She put her other hand on his shoulder and shivered as his fingers touched the small of her back.
“You realize this is the first time we’ve danced together,” he said, sweeping her into the first turn.
“I will try to let you lead.”
He smiled. “I’ve given up expecting you to do as others do,” he said quietly, moving them in a way that no other couple could easily overhear them. “Self-determination is your very essence. I wouldn’t change it.”
“Even if it made me the sort of woman ye could wed?” She so wished she was that sort of woman. She wished he wasn’t the duke and she wasn’t a singular creature with an objectionable father and that they were just two people unconnected to an actual time or place as they had been five years ago.
