“And you are a very presumptuous teacher.”
“Guilty.” He offered her his arm. “Shall we return to the party before someone notices we have been whispering in an alcove?”
She placed her hand on his arm, in the exact, perfect, subtle way she should. But when her fingers settled against his sleeve, they trembled.
Hugo pretended not to notice.
He was getting particularly good at pretending not to notice things about Lily Readthorpe. The way her laughter sounded across a crowded room. The way she smelled of rosewater and old books. The way her pulse raced when he stood too close, and the way his own matched it beat for beat.
He was getting incredibly good at pretending and unbelievably bad at believing the deception.
CHAPTER 7
“You are glowing, Lady Lily.” Lady Whitmore pressed Lily’s hands between her own and beamed with the intensity of a hostess who had just realized her ball would be the one people remembered this Season.
“You are too kind, Lady Whitmore.”
“Not at all. The Duke is a fortunate man. I said as much to Lord Whitmore just this morning.” She leaned closer, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial hush. “Between us, my dear, I always thought Thornwaite would never settle down. His mother’s passing, that dreadful business with the family, it marked him. But love has a way of mending what grief has broken, does it not?”
Lily kept her smile in place. “Indeed, it does.”
Lady Whitmore squeezed her hands once more and swept away to intercept a newly arrived couple, leaving Lily standing beside a potted fern with a question lodged in her chest like a splinter.
His mother’s passing. That dreadful business with the family.
She filed it away and moved through the room.
The Duke was across the ballroom, deep in conversation with a group of gentlemen who laughed at something he said with the easy, overloud amusement of men in the presence of a Duke. He looked relaxed, his champagne glass resting loosely in his fingers, his posture open, his smile carrying the careless warmth that Lily recognized as his most effective mask. The man who stood among those gentlemen bore no resemblance to the man who had touched her chin in the alcove twenty minutes ago and made her forget how to breathe.
She turned away before he could catch her watching.
Sophia appeared at her elbow with two glasses of lemonade and the steady, assessing gaze that meant she had been observing for some time.
“You managed that well,” Sophia said, handing her a glass. “Lady Whitmore is the worst kind of gossip. She wraps her cruelty in compliments, and if you react to either one, she will dine out on it for weeks.”
“I am learning.” Lily took a sip. The lemonade was too sweet. Everything at these events was too sweet, as if the hosts believed that enough sugar could mask the sourness underneath. “Hugo has decided to teach me.”
Sophia’s brow lifted a fraction. “Hugo. Not His Grace.”
Lily’s cheeks warmed. “He is my fiancé. Temporary or not, first names are appropriate.”
“Mm.” Sophia drank her lemonade and said nothing further, which was worse than anything she could have said aloud.
They stood in silence for a moment, watching the ballroom turn. Near the refreshment table, Miss Stapleton stood beside Lord Wilfrey with a posture of such careful, calculated softness that Lily recognized the technique immediately.
Shoulders relaxed. Head tilted. Voice low enough to draw the listener closer.
Miss Stapleton was doing exactly what Hugo had just taught Lily to do, and she was doing it to the man Lily intended to marry.
“Do not stare,” Sophia murmured.
“I am not staring.”
“You are cataloging. It is the same thing with better posture.” Sophia touched her arm. “Miss Stapleton is not your enemy, sister.”
“I did not say she was.”
“You did not have to. Your jaw is doing the talking for you.”
