Page 52 of Rules for a Wicked Wager

“Not me,” he said. “I think you have not had enough.” Then he sighed, and they began walking again. “Why you have locked yourself away? You dress dull, you stifle your laugh, and you think of marrying a man who must get Rossgrove’s approval. Has England gone mad, or is it just you Welsh?”

“Is it mad to think of my future? Is it mad to act in a way that will not incite gossip?”

He grumbled under his breath. They had come to the edge of Hyde Park, where the ton was out enjoying the lovely afternoon. The drive was clogged with carriages, and the pathways were awash in the color of ladies’ gowns and bonnets. “How can you look on that and not laugh?”

She looked where he gestured and saw nothing unusual. The fashionable throng paraded across the grass. “I see nothing amusing—”

“The lady wearing the stuffed swan in her bonnet.”

“Oh, Baroness Burke’s hat. Well, her husband accidentally shot the swan, and since she’d just paid a great deal of money to get it set up on their pond, she said she ought to have some use of it.”

“So she stuffed it and mounted it on her head?” He cast her a look, obviously waiting for her sense of humor to surface.

“Well, yes, I suppose that is rather silly. But no more so than Lord Norman over there, dressing all in white with blue feathers. He trails the things behind him like breadcrumbs. Says it helps people remember where he’s been.”

Lord Whitly chuckled. “It must give the chambermaids fits trying to clean up after him.”

“Oh no,” she answered. “It’s his tailor who curses his name. They quickly ran out of birds with blue feathers and have gone to dying the things. For the first week there were feathers everywhere, but now he’s only got a few pieces that aren’t denuded. See?”

She pointed to where the baron strutted with huge, blue-dyed peacock feathers bobbing from the back of his coat. “He’s very protective of them now.” As they watched, a young woman reached out to touch the things, and the baron jerked away with a glare.

“You don’t find that funny?”

Of course she did. But she hadn’t allowed herself to laugh at it in years. Six years, to be exact. “Young, unmarried ladies aren’t supposed to laugh at their elders.”

“How can you not?” he returned. This time he pointed to a clog of carriages. Three moving one way, a fourth and two riders heading the other. All six were trapped in a jam-up punctuated with “By Jove!” sniffs and “Ridiculous imbecile!” snorts.

Then the servant in the dandy’s curricle—a boy about ten years old—dropped his chin on his fist and rolled his eyes. Lord Whitly snorted. She laughed.

“Dandies should not drive curricles,” he said.

“Not unless his tiger is older and can control his expression.”

“What? Oh Lord, yes, that is funny. I was thinking that the entire mess happened because the dandy was adjusting the fall of the lace over his belly.”

She smiled. “Is that what happened?”

“It is.”

They sidestepped the increasing chaos. Meanwhile, off to the right was a crowd of fashionable people surrounding Lady Illston’s newest victim. Miss Rose May was the poor maiden carrying Greenie’s massive cage.

“Do you wish to greet them?” he asked, pointing to the group.

“God no.” She’d had more than enough of Greenie lately. They turned in the opposite direction, nodding to a separate clutch of people. Everyone was friendlier to him than to her, but she wasn’t snubbed, which was a relief. Mentally, she tallied the women who treated her with warmth. It was a steadily shrinking number.

“What has you sighing so quietly, Miss Powel?” he asked after they had passed through the worst of the congestion.

“Was I sighing?”

“Or your bonnet has sprung a leak.”

She chuckled, and then abruptly quieted. How had this come about? She was on Lord Whitly’s arm and laughing. Or at least smiling. “Miss Green will accidentally forget to invite me to her ball.”

“Who?”

“The girl dressed all in green, my lord. The one who—”

“Kept tittering like a mouse?”