Page 17 of The Duke’s Defiant Love

"You did not enjoy yourself?"

"I did. I argued with the Duke of Ravensmere."

Mary's eyebrows rose slowly, delight spreading across her face by degrees. "The Duke of Ravensmere. Sebastian Percy. The one Lady Fenwick called the most eligible recluse in London not a fortnight ago, entirely to Mama's despair that he never attends anything."

"That would be the one, yes."

"And you argued with him."

"He was standing with his friends, quite loudly, informing anyone within earshot that women's natural sensibilities render them unsuited to rigorous scholarship. I happened to be within earshot." Amelia pulled her knees up, unconsciously mirroring Mary's, and began unpinning her hair with more force than the task required, buying herself a moment to arrange the story into something she could bear to tell aloud. "I could hardly be expected to simply walk past such lazy reasoning and pretend I hadn't heard it."

"You could have. Most people would have." Mary's mouth was already twitching toward a grin she wasn't bothering to suppress. "You, on the other hand, apparently could not, which does not surprise me in the slightest, and is precisely why I love you best of anyone in this family."

"You love me best because I once let you copy my French exercises."

"That too. Go on. What did he say?"

"He asked my name. I told him a man who believes women incapable of intellectual achievement has not earned the right to know it." Amelia said it lightly, the way she'd rehearsed on the stairs, aiming for the sort of amused detachment that made the whole evening sound like an anecdote rather than the thing it had actually felt like standing in that ballroom with a dozen eyes suddenly fixed on her.

Mary stared at her. Then she laughed.

"Amelia!"

"What?"

"You actually said that?"

"I did. It was entirely justified."

"To the Duke of Ravensmere?"

"Yes."

Mary covered her mouth, though it did very little to hide her delight.

"Oh, I wish I had been there."

"You would have enjoyed it far too much."

"I am enjoying it now."

Amelia set a pin down with rather more care than the first several had received. "He was arrogant beyond anything I have encountered, Mary. Utterly convinced of his own correctness, and completely unable to bear being told otherwise by anyone, let alone a woman he had never been introduced to."

"That sounds dreadful." Mary was watching her far too closely for someone who was meant to be reacting to a dreadful story. "Truly. What an insufferable man."

"He was."

"Mm." Mary tilted her head, the same assessing tilt their mother used when totaling household accounts that didn't quite balance. "And that is the whole of it? You argued, he was insufferable, you came home?"

"That is the whole of it."

"Amelia." Mary said her name the exact way she'd said it since they were children, the tone that meant I know you are lying and I am giving you one polite opportunity to stop before I say so directly. "You have been picking at the same loose thread on your sleeve since you sat down, and you have gone a color I have only ever seen you go around Mr. Ashworth's youngest son, which I distinctly recall you claiming meant absolutely nothing either."

"That did mean nothing. Mr. Ashworth's son has the conversational range of a hat stand."

"You are changing the subject."

"I am not changing the subject. There is no subject to change. Papa sent me home because half the ballroom had begun discussing me rather more than was comfortable, so I came home. And now I am sitting here being interrogated by my own sister at an hour when any reasonable person would be asleep."