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“Excuse me?” Everett sputtered, choking on his drink.

“You heard me.”

“Ah, so I was not hallucinating. You did just say that you acquired a bride in a clandestine auction below our very feet. Yes, quite.” He set his glass down with exaggerated care, as though the news required both his hands free to sink in. “Forgive me, but I was under the impression that you came here to find a man.”

“Yes, I came to find Cumberlea. That hasn’t changed.” Nathaniel’s jaw tightened. He had no patience for his friend’s jokes. “But I wasn’t going to stand in that room and watch her be sold off to one of those sleazy cads. You didn’t hear what they said, Everett. The way they circled her. The way the auctioneer spoke of her… spirited, entertaining, the exact words men use when they mean to enjoy breaking something. I’ve heard that tone before.”

“I see,” Everett murmured.

Nathaniel shook his head sharply. “I wasn’t going to let it happen again in front of me when I had the means to stop it.”

“That’s reason enough to bid, I suppose,” Everett conceded. “It isn’t quite reason enough to marry the woman, though. That’s quite a change. I did not think you wished for such things. I thought you were married to your duchy.”

“Iris needs a woman in the house, besides the governess.” Nathaniel’s tone was firm. “It’s done, Everett. The contract’s signed.”

Everett considered him a moment longer, one eyebrow arching.

“As you like,” he said, and picked his glass back up. “Come on, then. Let’s find our way back to a party where the women aren’t purchased and the worst thing anyone’s plotting is who gets the last set with Lady Featherington.”

They stepped back into the warm candlelight and the swelling music, two masked men returning to a party that had no idea what had happened beneath it.

CHAPTER 4

“You might at least try to look pleased,” her father said, glaring at her over the rim of his coffee cup the next morning. “You’ve caught yourself a duke, Laura. Do you have any notion how many debutantes in London would trade places with you this morning? It’s a miracle!”

Laura set down her fork without eating a bite of what was on her plate. She had come down for breakfast half-hoping the events of the previous night would feel less real in the daylight. Instead, the reminder of them sat across the table from her, humming delightedly, setting down his cup and buttering his toast as though nothing at all had happened.

“I didn’t catch anything. You sold me as if I am property. There is a signed contract in this house right now that says precisely that, Father, whatever pretty words you’d rather put to it.”

His good humor vanished at once.

“Mind your tone. You are still under my roof.”

“I will not.” She felt something in her chest unfurl, the last of whatever restraint had held her silent through last night’s carriage ride home. “You dragged me down a staircase without warning. You let a room full of strangers look at me and bid on me like I was livestock. And now, you sit there chomping on toast, and tell me I ought to be pleased. I will not stand for it, Father. It is not right!”

“Remember your place, Laura.” Her father’s voice cracked across the table like a whip. “You dare sit there and lecture me on what I owe you?”

He set his butter knife down hard enough to rattle the plate next to it. “Do you know what I have spent trying to see you settled? Gowns, jewels, season after season of balls you spent making yourself disagreeable to every man who so much as looked your way. I have done my duty by you a hundred times over, and you have thrown it back in my face every single time, all because you are too selfish to think of anyone but yourself!”

“That isn’t true, Father.”

“You have always been that way.”

A maid came into the breakfast room, silently refilled their coffee cups, and left.

“I found you a duke, Laura,” her father said, as soon as she was out of earshot. “A duke! Do you understand what that means for this family, for your own comfort, for everything I have tried to give you these past five years?” His voice dropped, and that was worse, far worse than the shouting. “Your mother must be turning in her grave. After everything her death cost this family, you cannot even manage to be grateful that someone still wants you.”

Laura stood so fast that her chair scraped hard across the floor. She didn’t trust herself to answer him, not without saying something that would cost her more than she had left to lose, so she said nothing at all.

She turned and walked out of the breakfast room, past the startled maid, out into the front hall. She didn’t stop moving until she was out the door and into the cool grey morning, where at least the air didn’t carry the sound of her father’s voice.

She found Kitty exactly where she’d hoped to, seated on their usual bench near the Serpentine.

Her friend had her hair braided, with a bonnet on top. She sat with a book open in her lap, the ribbons of her bonnet fluttering beneath her chin. The wind was pleasant, and the sun was warm.

Laura had never been so happy to be there.

“You look…” Kitty trailed off, taking one look at her face as she approached. “Well, you look like a woman who has either murdered someone or is about to.”