Page 11 of The Duke’s Defiant Love

She looked back over her shoulder.

"Why?"

He could have supplied a dozen reasonable answers.

Courtesy. Curiosity.

The simple propriety of knowing the name of a woman with whom he had just spent several minutes in conversation.

None of them seemed entirely honest.

"Because," he said slowly, "I find myself unwilling to let you remain a stranger."

Her expression changed then—only slightly, but enough that he noticed.

"That," she said, "is a considerably better argument than all your previous ones."

And then, before he could decide whether he had won anything at all, with a small, entirely unapologetic incline of her head to all four of them, she turned and walked back into the crowd, leaving Sebastian standing exactly where she had found him, glass in hand, argument in ruins, and a single unwelcome thought taking root somewhere beneath his irritation—a thought he had no intention, tonight or ever, of examining too closely.

CHAPTER THREE

"Did you hear what she said to him?"

"I heard she called him lazy. To his face. In front of the other three."

"I heard he asked her name and she refused him outright."

Amelia kept her chin level and her pace unhurried as she crossed toward the refreshment table, though every word of it reached her perfectly well, the way gossip in a crowded ballroom always found its target no matter how quietly it was spoken. Three young ladies she barely recognized stood clustered by the lemonade, fans fluttering furiously, eyes darting toward her and away again with the guilty speed of women who had been caught discussing exactly the person now walking past them.

"Miss Hartwell, is it?"

Amelia turned to find a young woman she did not recognize, golden-haired and glittering with a fortune's worth of pearls, watching her with an expression of frank, unhurried delight, entirely unbothered by the fact that she had been one of the whisperers not thirty seconds prior.

"It is."

"How marvelous." The woman's smile widened, all teeth, no warmth. "I confess I did not think anyone was still capable of surprising a ballroom this deep into the Season, and yet here you are, having reduced the Duke of Ravensmere to silence within minutes. My mother has been attempting the same feat since his christening, without success."

"I did not set out to surprise anyone. I merely disagreed with him."

"Oh, I am certain that is precisely how it began." The woman's eyes glittered with poorly concealed amusement, her fan snapping open with a flourish. "Do tell me, is it customary now for young ladies to argue with dukes at the refreshment table, or ought I make a special study of you before I attempt it myself? I should so hate to embarrass myself the way you have not, apparently, embarrassed yourself at all."

"I have found," Amelia said, keeping her voice perfectly even, "that it requires no special study. Merely the willingness to say a true thing aloud when a false one has gone unchallenged for rather too long."

"How very bracing." The woman dropped a shallow, mocking curtsy, fan fluttering shut again. "I do hope you have written your will, Miss Hartwell. Ravensmere is said to hold a grudge with the same discipline he holds his scholarship, and you have just handed him a very public reason to hold one against you."

She swept off toward her cluster of friends before Amelia could think of a reply sharp enough to satisfy her, already leaning in to report the exchange with visible relish, and Amelia was left standing alone by the lemonade with her face warm and her pulse considerably less steady than she would have liked to admit.

Let them talk. She had done nothing wrong. She had corrected an argument that deserved correcting, from a man who ought to have been grateful someone finally took the trouble to do it properly. That was all. That the man in question happened to be a duke, and that half the ballroom now seemed to know her by sight without knowing her name, was simply an inconvenient consequence of being a woman and in the right whilst also being in public.

"Miss Hartwell." Her father's voice, close behind her, carried none of its usual warmth. She turned to find him already at her elbow, his face carrying a gray, stricken look he reserved for moments when the whole of the ton seemed poised to judge him through his daughter. "A word, if you would."

"Papa, I only⁠—"

"Not here." He took her arm, not roughly, but with a firmness that brooked no argument, steering her toward the relative quiet of the terrace doors. Behind them, she caught another fragment of murmured conversation, someone's low, delighted laugh, the words Ravensmere and extraordinary drifting past in the same breath, and felt her stomach turn over despite herself.

Once they had gained a measure of privacy near the doors, her father released her arm and studied her for a long moment, saying nothing, which was somehow worse than if he had simply scolded her outright.

"You corrected the Duke of Ravensmere," he said finally.