Page 59 of Earl, Enemy, Husband?

What a lot of nonsense she was talking.

‘I have a wife now.’

‘Florence,’ she said.

‘Indeed, Florence.’

She gave a little grimace. ‘Everyone knows it is a marriage of convenience.’

He frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘That you married her to settle some old debt or other. Anyway, what does that matter, now that you are back and we are friends again? I need your help.’

What the devil? ‘What sort of help?’

Hurt filled her expression. ‘In the old days you would have said you would do anything to help me, no matter what.’

The hairs on the back of his neck began to rise. ‘What sort of trouble are you in, Eloise? I will help if I can.’ For old times’ sake; nothing more.

Where was Florence? She was no longer on the dance floor.

He caught a glimpse of her leaving the ballroom by way of the French doors. She was hanging on that fellow’s arm as if her life depended on it.

‘I cannot talk about it here,’ Eloise said softly, appealingly. ‘Will you call on me tomorrow?’

He looked down at her. She looked genuinely troubled. ‘Very well.’

‘Come at ten. My sister has an appointment at the mantua makers. Come through the mews. I will be watching for you.’

‘What sort of trouble have you got yourself into, Eloise?’

She smiled sweetly up at him. ‘I will tell you tomorrow. Dear George said you would be bound to help.’

Did George know about this?

‘You won’t let me down, will you, Gray? Please, promise you will come.’

The look on her face, the soft pleading gaze, weakened all his defences. One did not turn one’s back on an old friend. How could he tell her no? ‘I promise.’

A smile broke out on her face, but the light in those eyes seemed almost hard.

He had a strong feeling he had been manipulated, or she thought he had. He didn’t like it one bit.

More importantly, what was Florence doing out in the garden with a strange man?

Champagne glass in one hand and clutching Viscount Olden’s arm with the other, Florence picked her way carefully across the lawn beyond the terrace. Olden was the Duke of Fanshaw’s oldest son and doing the pretty with all the ladies, he had told her sweetly when Aldrich had introduced them. Hence, she had agreed to waltz with him.

It hadn’t taken long, during their dance, for Mr Aldrich to tell her about her husband and Lady Standish—about his apparently unrequited love. Seeing them waltz together while engaged in such deep conversation had almost been more than she could bear.

Olden must have sensed her disquiet and put it down to the heat in the room. She had been glad to agree when Olden suggested they go into the garden, where it would be cooler. Olden stopped when they came to a row of bushes she could scarcely make out in the gloom. He’d made Florence promise not to look back until he gave her permission.

He turned her around. She gasped at the beautiful array of lanterns strung around the lawn and framing the house. ‘Oh, how lovely.’

‘Isn’t it? I spent hours with the gardeners getting it right. But you can really only see it to its best advantage from this end of the lawn.’

She squashed the urge to chuckle at his earnestness. He was a sweet young man. A close friend of Mr Aldrich’s, she had gathered when they were introduced.

‘Then I am one of the fortunate ones to see it in all its glory,’ she said.