I’m Only Wicked with You by Julie Anne Long

Hugh Cassidy had arrived two minutes before curfew the previous night, when everyone was already tucked into bed—he knew and respected, nay, cherished the rules at The Grand Palace on the Thames—and up well before dawn, shaved, dressed, and seated at the little writing desk thoughtfully provided to every guest, because he was no damned coward and he was determined to get what was bound to be the worst part of his day over with first and fast.

He pulled the foolscap toward him. Dipped the quill.

Paused.

Hell’s teeth. What to say?

He’d never had a formal education, but he’d happily go toe to toe with any of those bloods whose intellects had been incubated at Eton or Oxford. More than they ever could, he appreciated the power and magic inherent in words—to charm, to open doors, to strategize, to seduce. History, economics, politics, natural sciences, newspapers, pamphlets—in exchange for labor, he’d been set free in Mr. Woodley’s vast library and he’d methodically absorbed the precise things he needed to know. For Hugh had a plan. Hugh’s father had been the best man he’d ever known, but his struggles to rise in life had essentially shown Hugh the way. It was all in the tools. Words were the tools.

But as far as he was concerned, the point of the written word was delivery and consumption of information (with the possible exception of the thrill that was Robinson Crusoe). He recognized the difference between his own courtly manners—instilled by his parents and rooted in respect for the dignity of all men and women—and the filigreed, rapier elegance of Lord Bolt’s, for instance, or of the more typical English aristocrats, the ones marinated in privilege. They used words as playthings. Hugh knew too well the value of everything—and that included ink, paper, and quill—so he was disinclined to waste them on an attempt at eloquence.

But that wasn’t the only reason he kept his missives short.

Dear Mr. Woodley,

I hope this letter finds you well. I have returned from a fortnight’s worth of making the discreet inquiries in Dover as I described to you in my last letter. I made the acquaintance of a Clay family, who, alas, have never visited New York. I have been directed to another family by the name of Clay in Surrey, just outside of London. I will visit and report apace.

I thank you again for the introduction to Sir Bentley Tigmont. He was kind enough to invite me to tea and he is as genial and interesting as you described. We enjoyed our conversation and I like to think I now count him as a friend.

I will not return without your daughter.

I remain as ever,

Hugh Cassidy

He released the breath he hadn’t fully realized he’d been holding. He’d felt nearly every scratch of that sharpened quill right across his heart.

Your daughter.With each letter he sent to Mr. Woodley, he found himself more and more reluctant to write her name.

A few months ago, the comely, demure young Miss Woodley had shocked everyone by slipping away from her New York home and boarding a ship bound for London. Hugh had offered to pursue her across the Atlantic as a favor to her frantic father; he’d gone as soon as he could get passage. Still, she had six weeks’ lead on him and he only had one clue: she had allegedly run off with the visiting Clay family—their daughter Kathryn had become her friend. No one knew from which part of England the Clays hailed.

He’d meant it when he’d written “discreet”; honor was the pivot around which all of his actions and decisions turned. He’d followed leads and written letters; he knew how to ease into inquiries without making them sound like inquisitions. In pubs and churches and shops, people were usually happy to talk to him. “Back in New York, I’ve friends by the name of Woodley, who hoped to visit Dover. They’re friendly with a family called Clay. Perhaps your paths have crossed.” That sort of thing.

Woodley’s daughter’s honor deserved protecting, regardless of what she’d done. If she was still alive, she’d need it.

Was she well? In danger? Having simply a wonderful time?

Sometimes he wondered if he’d get further, faster, in his inquiries if he’d said, “Her eyes are the color of a sky on a spring day. Her hair never can stay in its ribbons. The top of her head reaches about to my collarbone. And if you make her laugh, it’ll likely be the best thing to happen to you that day.”

Words might be magic, but he’d learned they hadn’t invented the ones that could adequately breathe life into people who were gone. It almost seemed a disservice to try.

He pushed his hair back and blew out a breath and read the letter again. It was notable for what it didn’t convey: his impatience to be home, so he could unleash his ambitions and build the life—the empire—he’d long envisioned. The methodical, needle-in-a-haystack nature of the search and its urgency. The infuriating mystery of it all: why the devil did she do it?

He allowed himself a few minutes of wild conjecture about all of that before sleep, and no more. Nobody was more dogged. He would find her.

But now he had a new problem: his conscience.

A fortnight ago, Miss Woodley was his first thought in the morning and the last at night. A fortnight ago, he’d met another woman.

Their encounter had lasted all of three minutes.

It had been sifting down around him like ash from a forest fire ever since.

He had looked into the barrel of enemy rifles, the slavering jaws of a furious bear, the lifeless faces of his father and brother. He could build a home from the stripped timbers on up, shoot to kill nearly anything, expertly hold a newborn baby. He figured he’d been tested in more ways than Hercules, and in the end he supposed he was grateful that the war had sorted the entirety of life into two categories for him: what was worth living for, what was worth dying for. And now he had land, some money, plans, and fierce ambition. If the devastation of the past eight years left one gift, it was the confidence that he didn’t have a single weakness left. The world was his to conquer.

But when Lady Lillias Vaughn had emerged into view from the dusty twilight of an unfinished part of the Annex at The Grand Palace on the Thames, he’d been struck dumb. Like the child he’d been when his father had pointed up and shown him Polaris, hanging up there like a diamond pin holding the black, black sky in place.

He’d never seen anything so beautiful.

Or so clearly out of reach.

She’d been, improbably, smoking a cheroot.

She’d assessed him with a swift, expert glance. Having reached her conclusion—American, possibly a peasant, despite that, good looking—her voice was all refined velvet and bored, amused disdain when she spoke.

“Well? Aren’t you going to bow to the daughter of an earl?”

Underestimating him was tantamount to handing him a weapon.

He’d disarmed her instantly with silky, ruthless directness. “Why waste a second doing that, when I can remain upright admiring you?”

He’d had the pleasure of seeing her blink. And then he’d assessed her with a glance more swift and expert than hers. The lines of her body seemed expressly designed to shorten a man’s breath.

He’d become aware of a very low, simmering anger that had nothing and yet everything to do with the girl.

He’d learned over the years that anger often masqueraded as fear. After the events of the past few years, surely he wasn’t afraid of a damned thing. Particularly not a woman.

And just before he’d plucked that cheroot from her fingers and crushed it beneath his boot, he’d seen the pulse beating in her throat, the fine strands of hair fluttering near her parted lips. He’d seen himself reflected in the velvety dark of her pupils. Her silvery eyes had gone nearly black.

He’d never so profoundly disliked a woman while simultaneously wanting to take her up against a wall.

He wasn’t proud of it. He had all the skills but none of the inclination to be a first class rogue. He was practical. He was disinterested in being encumbered by its consequences.

With any luck, that earl’s daughter had learned a valuable lesson. The thing that made her pupils go the size of dimes and her breath go short . . . it didn’t give a damn who had a title and who didn’t. It alone dictated who was at its mercy.

And yet.

He couldn’t fight it. The need to prove to himself that he wasn’t at anyone’s or anything’s mercy had driven him back to London.

He sprinkled sand over the message. He’d have it posted, then spend the day making inquiries, be back in time to join everyone in the little drawing room. While he waited for the ink to dry, he stared wonderingly at the leaping fire, the little vase with a bud in it next to his well-worn precious copy of Robinson Crusoe, a gift from his Uncle Liam, who was even now on a ship heading for English shores from China. At the crumbs remaining of the two glorious scones the maid had brought up to him this morning. All of those things lifted his mood. He still wasn’t fully accustomed to being waited upon. The sheer luxury of his shirts being mended (and even laundered if he paid a little more), a maid to poke up the fire and bring in his coffee and maybe even return with an additional scone. He could do all of that himself, and had for years.

He reached for his hat, jammed it on, and grinned to his reflection.

But the maids seemed to enjoy it so very much.

Lady Lillias Vaughn looked out of the window of the dungeon to which she’d been consigned for the past week (a pretty, bright suite at The Grand Palace on the Thames Annex; her little room featured a rose-colored counterpane and a blossom in a vase). Two sketchbooks sat beside her, one full but quite ruined. One new and blank. She’d gotten her paints out.

She hadn’t so much as made a twitch toward them since she’d arrived at The Grand Palace on the Thames.

Her current view offered rooftops and distantly, like hairline cracks in the blue sky, the masts of ships with furled sails going anywhere and everywhere from the East India docks. Dover. China. America, from whence her new nemesis—that bloody American—had come. He was the reason she was confined to the room.

The nerve of him, looming up out of the dark like a cliff, the sort ships founder on in storms. Shoulders blocking the light, the shadows clinging to the valleys created by his cheekbones and jaw sculpting him rather starkly, and when he’d come closer—she perhaps should not have allowed him to get so close, but then, he’d felt like a dare from nearly the moment he appeared, and frankly, once she began looking at him it had been strangely difficult to stop—she discovered his eyes were not as she’d expected. Somewhere between blue and gray.

Alas, he in fact proved to be not at all what she’d expected.

But was she to blame for that? It had, after all, begun with him staring as if she were a genie he’d accidentally summoned from a lamp.

You might as well stare. They all do. That was the first thing she’d said to him.

If only she’d had the sense to make it the last thing she’d said to him.

Well, it was true. Because most men were exactly what she’d expected.

For instance, there was the “poem” that accompanied a great wad of hothouse flowers some handsome young fool sent to her a fortnight ago.

I took one look at you

and my heart broke in two

Lady Lillias Vaughn’s mere presence could break a heart the way a soprano could shatter glass—or so the bloods of the ton loved to pretend. It had been exhilarating at first, a silly game, typical ton nonsense. She couldn’t quite pinpoint when it had all gotten away from her. She was reminded of that gray mare Giles had begged her not to attempt to ride at Heatherfield when she was twelve years old—which of course had only ensured that she would. Now there were times she felt as though she was standing outside of herself, watching that gray mare with a twelve-year-old girl clinging to its back disappear into the distance.

“Broke in two” made heartbreak sound as simple as treading on a twig—snap! She could now speak with some authority that the sensation in the actual moment—two months and two days ago, to be precise—was less a break and more of a swift harpooning—she had full access to her father’s library and read a good deal; she was good at choosing words. And there was nothing simple about it. It wasn’t just one emotion. A whole flapping Pandora’s box full of them had been released: astonishment, wounded pride, mordant amusement about the wounded pride, mordant amusement about the astonishment, confusion, scalding grief, a flailing loss. They took to tormenting her in turns, until she got used to them. Now their combined efforts only made her numb. It was a testament to how stalwart her pride truly was that not one other soul suspected her condition. Particularly—and most inexplicably and maddeningly—the person who’d unwittingly done the breaking. Her family would have fussed, and she could not have borne their suffering over her. The ton would have whispered and laughed, and that would have been just as bad if not worse.

Restlessly, reflexively, for the thousandth time, she fished from her reticule the little river rock she’d carried about for the last two years. Silvery, etched into little tiers on one side, smooth and speckled with olive green on the other, impulsively given to her during a picnic in Richmond on a gloriously sunny day. It used to reliably bring a jolt of joy; it had felt like a promise. Now she could almost feel it lodged in her chest, cold and angular, like the thing that had cracked her heart instead of the thing that had stolen it.

She rubbed it between her fingers and entertained an impulse to hurl it out the window. At least the rock could be free.

Upon reflection, she put it back into her reticule instead. She was practical enough to consider that she might occasionally need a reminder to never be a sentimental fool again.

If she could at least . . . oh, go for a ride in The Row. Or a long walk, somewhere new. She could do nothing to assuage her own restlessness, and it was because her new nemesis, Mr. Cassidy, had tattled on her for smoking a cheroot.

“Why?”

This was the word—really more of an exasperated sigh—her father had finally produced after he’d fixed her with the stare he usually deployed to elicit babbling admissions of guilt from his children. It was about the cheroot. It was their first night at The Grand Palace on the Thames. St. John and Claire had gone to bed and Lillias had been kept up for castigation purposes.

Her mother sat beside her father. Her expression was awfully similar.

It wasn’t the first time she’d faced a matched set of incredulous parents.

“You . . . never said I couldn’t?” she tried. She could usually make her father laugh with a little cheek.

His face remained stony.

“That’s what you said when we caught you in the garden at midnight in your night rail last month,” her mother replied evenly. “Perhaps try another excuse, if only for the sake of variety.”

She’d been caught in the garden at midnight in only her night rail and a shawl. She’d been outside because she’d suddenly very much needed to know what it would feel like to be in the garden alone at midnight in a night rail and a shawl.

Which was almost the same reason she’d climbed up to the top of the tower of their country church. She’d wanted to. And she’d suddenly, desperately needed to see as far as she could see.

And while up there, she’d rung the bell, because there it was and why not?

And coincidentally it was the reason she’d suddenly torn off on her mare at such a breakneck speed that the startled groom chasing her had taken her bonnet in the face. It had broken free of its pins.

She could not adequately put into words—and normally she could adequately put nearly anything into words—the “why” of these things. Ever since that fateful day two months and two days ago, it was as though she, like paintings in her ruined sketchbook, had blurred and run off the page and continued on and on out of her own sight. She could no longer quite sense the boundaries that once constrained her. Where she began and ended.

“I suppose I was curious. I helped myself to one from your humidor before we arrived here and I found it in my reticule and . . . you said they relax you. The docks are unnerving and . . . smoking a cheroot seemed like just the sort of thing one would do near the docks,” she’d improvised hurriedly and shamelessly.

This was greeted with palpably baffled silence. They both knew little unnerved Lillias.

She took a breath. “I’m sorry . . . Papa.”

The word “Papa” usually made the thunderous crease between her father’s brows disappear.

This time it deepened to a trench.

He allowed Lillias to look at this trench for a full thirty seconds.

“You’ll ruin your looks if you smoke cheroots,” her mother finally said.

“Yes, dear. That’s why she shouldn’t smoke cheroots,” her father said dryly. “Her looks.”

“Would it matter so very much if it did ruin them?” she said, a little desperately. Not entirely joking.

Her parents swiftly exchanged the kind of glance that contained entire paragraphs worth of that silent language married people seemed to share. She could almost hear them discussing whether she ought to be tucked into bed with a foul tisane and a hot water bottle. Perhaps the doctor ought to be called for. Perhaps some leeches or trepanning would suit.

“Go ahead then, and ruin your looks. I’m an earl. I can buy you a husband if it comes down to that,” her father said finally.

He was only half jesting. But it was the beginning of a thaw.

“We’re very fortunate that pleasant young American man was so very discreet. He understood immediately how horrified and concerned I would be if I’d known you were off smoking a cheroot. He has a sister, he told me, and his conscience wouldn’t let him leave you out there. He had a sense of the dangers you might encounter in an unfamiliar place, a young woman, all alone.”

The dangers she might encounter! That was almost funny. She ought to tell them she’d seen her own riveted expression in the American’s pupils, because that’s how close he’d been. That she could have reached out and touched her finger to the tiny crescent-shaped scar next to his bottom lip.

“And what would the proprietresses of The Grand Palace on the Thames think of us if they learned the oldest daughter of the Earl of Vaughn was wandering off alone to smoke a cheroot in a dangerous area under construction, full of nails and loose boards and whatnot? We’ve our family’s reputation to uphold. It’s been unassailable since the Conqueror.”

This was a bit much.

“To be clear, you’re concerned about impressing the proprietresses of an inn by the docks, where we’ve been compelled to relocate in part because Father shot at an escaped poisonous snake that St. John won in a bet and inadvisably brought home. And is nobody concerned that the word ‘rogue’ is very faintly visible on the sign in the front, and that the pub nearest seems to be called ‘The Wolf and’? The Wolf and what?”

Lillias said all of this slowly. The unspoken words were, “. . . and you think I’m the looby.”

Her parents were subdued for a moment. “It could happen to anybody,” her father said finally. “Shooting at a snake.”

Lillias couldn’t help it. She laughed.

Her father’s face finally relaxed into something like its usual content lines. He loved her laughter and cleverness and loathed being upset with her as much as she usually loathed upsetting him. “Come now, Mrs. Hardy and Mrs. Durand are everything that’s kind and genteel and charming, and they run a tight ship and it’s clear the staff is happy and well-trained. The place is spotless, the food is wonderful, and I feel safe and very much at home already.” The earl gave the settee he sat upon a happy thump, as though it were a beloved pet. “And frankly, the lemon seed cakes we were greeted with were like the food of angels. Angels!”

Lillias said nothing. The place—a shining white building tucked into a somewhat notorious and begrimed if essential part of London near the East India docks—was frankly a fever dream. The formerly notorious Lord Bolt—Lucien Durand, the bastard son of a duke, former denizen of the broadsheets, back from the presumed dead—roamed the halls because he was married to one of the proprietresses; the other proprietress had once been a countess, allegedly, and apparently the king himself had recently sat on a worn pink satin settee in one of the parlors. And God only knew what Delacorte was, apart from somewhat loud and somewhat egg-shaped.

“But . . . those rules. And . . . and Mr. Delacorte.”

Mr. Delacorte (as he’d informed the earl) imported medicines comprised of things like the horns and testicles of exotic animals, herbs and flowers, and other interesting things crushed into teas, powders, and pills, and sold them to apothecaries and surgeons up and down the British coast. He carried them about in a case of samples. He’d said “bollocks” out loud in the parlor after Lord Bolt had made a skillful chess move.

This gave her mother a bit of pause. Then she brightened. “He’s a bit like a character in a pantomime, isn’t he, Mr. Delacorte? You like pantomimes! We can all play our part. It will only be for a short time. We shall endure.” She said this firmly. This “endurance” was clearly an order. “And it’s absurd to think any of this should drive one into smoking cheroots.”

“And a list of rules won’t do you any harm, Lillias,” her father added, “given that you are either forgetting or disregarding the ones you were raised with.”

Don’t say it. Don’t say it, Lillias.

“Disregarding,” she clarified. Gently.

It was almost funny when her parents’ eyebrows dove in perfect unison, like birds of prey.

Their mutual scowl held for about three seconds. Then suddenly her father’s face cleared and he snapped his fingers. “You know, by God, I think she does need a husband,” he said. “Something to settle her down, keep her occupied, on her toes. No time to wonder about church bells or whatnot with a husband and children.”

It was acid poured on a wound.

Lillias’s mouth dropped open.

After a moment, an arid sound emerged from it.

“Henry, darling, I think you’ve hit upon the problem and the solution.” Her mother was pleased.

The earl slapped his hands cheerfully on his thighs, as though it was all settled. “Suitable young men abound in our circles. Pick one or I will! As long as he has a title and a long lineage and piles of money, you’ll be fine. They’re most of them decent lads. They’ve got all their limbs and teeth and the right manners and belong to the right clubs. You’re a wonderful catch.”

A high-pitched humming sound had started up in her ears. “You make it sound as though it’s a sale at Tattersall’s!”

“In the end, is it truly much different, dear?” her mother said practically.

She was teasing, of course. And two months ago, Lillias might have laughed. She’d been confident that her own match would not only be forthcoming, it would be as spectacular as the ton had long anticipated with delicious degrees of envy and resignation, and as blissfully content as her parents’.

Now she felt as though someone were holding her over the edge of a cliff while her feet thrashed about in midair.

“But—I—”

“You’ll make some titled young man very happy. Just look how happy I made your mother. She finds nothing more satisfying than time spent with her family.”

“Yes, it’s delightful,” her mother said dryly. “If you like finding new gray hairs every morning.”

Her parents were happy. Lillias was learning that happy people tended to live in a land with its own happy culture and rules and language. They could be utterly baffled by the notion that someone might feel otherwise, and were often incapable of noticing it at all.

“So that’s settled,” her father said with great satisfaction. “You’ve had a few seasons of fun. It’s time to be serious.”

“To be clear, you’re equating marriage with the end of fun?” It was a risky gambit, pitting her parents against each other, but she wasn’t about to go down without a good fight.

“Aren’t you clever. Of course,” her father said blithely. “Now off to bed with you. And I should think a fortnight’s confinement to the premises of The Grand Palace on the Thames will give you time to reflect upon the wisdom of smoking cheroots. No social calls, no riding in The Row, nothing but gazing out the window and reflecting upon your choices. But of course . . .” he added on his way out of the little sitting room, “. . . you will join everyone in the drawing room . . . as the rules compel.”

She’d been confined to the premises ever since.

She eyed her paints, but she couldn’t seem to bring herself to touch them.

Lillias plucked up the little printed card handed to her family when they’d arrived and, improbably, been interviewed about whether or not they’d be suitable for The Grand Palace on the Thames. Imagine the Earl of Vaughn and his family not being considered suitable. Laughable.

All guests will eat dinner together at least four times per week.

Day by day over the past near fortnight, her father had fallen more and more in love with the food. “I don’t know what it is,” he said with almost pained, misty reverence. “It’s simple . . . eel pie? But flawless.” Perhaps it was. Lillias put a certain amount of food in her mouth every day, but it had mostly lost its taste about two months ago.

All guests must gather in the drawing room after dinner for at least an hour at least four times per week. We feel it fosters a sense of friendship and the warm, familial, congenial atmosphere we strive to create here at The Grand Palace on the Thames.

Her parents had been enchanted by this outlandish requirement. “You’ll all be grown and out of the home soon enough and I’d like us to be together every night. Perhaps it’s a blessing that St. John won a snake.” And if her father said it, then it was law. Claire was enjoying it. Lillias was enduring it.

But her brother St. John was suffering. He reliably left a trail of blushes and a veritable breeze of fluttered eyelashes and fans behind him when he strolled through ton ballrooms, but he’d failed to engender much more than bemused, kindly tolerance among the ladies of The Grand Palace on the Thames. Not even when he’d tried striking his most insouciantly masculine pose against the mantel during the evenings in the parlor. Not even when he strode from one end of the room to the other “like a panther—it’s my panther walk” he’d told Lillias and Claire, which was a grave mistake as they never, never let him forget it, and often slinked about after him growling softly, then falling apart in giggles.

And almost no one adored being handsome as much as St. John did. He wasn’t wholly insufferable. He was just male. They did tend to abuse such gifts.

All guests should be quietly respectful and courteous of other guests at all times, though spirited discourse is welcome.

She wondered if Mr. Delacorte muttering, “Oh, bollocks,” fell under the definition of spirited discourse. So far, the most spirited discourse had been regarding a book called The Ghost in the Attic, about which the maid Dot and guest Mrs. Pariseau seemed to hold very strong opinions.

Perhaps, “Go back inside, little girl, you wouldn’t know daring if it bit you,” was an example of spirited discourse. She clamped down on her back teeth. She could think of a dozen retorts now . . . now that he wasn’t hovering over her, all blue-eyed self-righteousness.

Guests may entertain other guests in the drawing room.

The phantom words “. . . but not in their bedrooms” practically throbbed from the end of that sentence. If a girl had eyes, half a brain, a father with a decent library, and maybe a loquacious older brother, she was hardly going to remain ignorant of such matters. She’d even been kissed—chastely and swiftly—a time or two. It had not changed her world.

She supposed such a rule was necessary if one was going to rent rooms to men hailing from the wilds of America, for instance. One never knew what they would get up to. How had Mr. Cassidy passed the interview? He must have impressed them with his moral superiority.

Curfew is at 11:00. The door will be securely locked then. You will need to wait until morning to be admitted if you miss curfew.

This one had sent her brother St. John into a panic. “What could you possibly want to do after 11:00?” their father demanded, clearly experiencing amnesia over being young once.

So far he’d managed to be in by curfew. Lillias and her sister had a private wager—two pence—over how long this would last.

If the proprietresses collectively decide that a transgression or series of transgressions warrants your eviction from The Grand Palace on the Thames, you will find your belongings neatly packed and placed near the front door. You will not be refunded the balance of your rent.

She wondered if anyone had ever sufficiently transgressed. Would producing a cheroot in the parlor get her evicted, or her entire family?

Was it worth attempting?

Claire flounced into the room, a happy vision in striped muslin, her face alight with a mischievous secret.

“What are you doing, Lillias? Are you drawing?” She peered at the sketchbook.

“I suppose I was thinking about it.” This wasn’t untrue.

“I wish you would. I love your drawings.”

“That’s very sweet, Clairy.”

“Did you know the king visited here?” Claire announced. “I sat on the very spot on the very same settee. Mrs. Hardy told me all about it.”

“The king has visited a lot of questionable places.”

“He has? Where?”

“Good try, Claire, but if I told you, Father would disown me, because you wouldn’t be able to keep it to yourself.”

“Fair enough. It’s cleaner than our townhouse, this boarding house.”

“Well, isn’t everything at the moment, since father shot a hole in the wall?”

Claire laughed.

Lillias smiled. Making her sister laugh was always a reliable way to make herself feel a little better about everything for a second or two.

“But don’t say that to Mother or you’ll get all the maids replaced, and they’re only now getting used to us,” she added quickly.

“Of course not. Guess what was sent over from the house today, Lillias. I sneaked it out of the stack of mail sent over when Mother wasn’t looking.”

From behind her back, Claire slowly and theatrically produced what was clearly an engraved invitation. She held it out as if her palms were a tray.

Reflexively, absently, Lillias took hold of it.

When she saw what it was she dropped it.

Her hands went cold.

It wasn’t as though it was unexpected. The Landover Ball came about every year, after all. She’d been to three of them, and thoroughly enjoyed herself. All the bloods and the people who wrote gossip for the newspapers had made cakes of themselves over her.

This year it was not so much approaching as hurtling toward her like a cricket ball she couldn’t possibly duck in time.

A fresh wash of dread lapped up over her heart.

Fourteen more days. A fortnight until the last of her dream would be murdered, and she would have no choice but to be there and witness it.

She was half tempted to grind her heel on the invitation as Mr. Cassidy had done away with her cheroot.

She felt invigorated by the little flame of fury that reared up at the very thought of him.

Go inside, little girl.

She rubbed her hand against her cheek as though the words were a glove with which she’d been struck.

She knew she could ascribe her beauty to the roulette wheel of fate and a couple of pleasant-looking parents. It wasn’t something she’d achieved. She wasn’t daft about it. But women were afforded so little power as it was, and if someone had handed an unarmed man a sword and sent him into battle, wouldn’t he learn how to use it? Since her debut she’d deftly parried everything from worship to bitter envy and she couldn’t honestly say she’d been above wielding—and enjoying—a certain queenly, if benevolent, social supremacy. It still hadn’t gotten her what she wanted.

And now here she was, confined to her room like a child for her transgression, as though she’d never had any power at all and never would. But now she understood the most infuriating thing of all about him: two minutes with Hugh Cassidy had given her a taste of the true, thrilling, unnerving power she possessed.

And then he’d stripped her of that power with a few words.

She intended to take it back from him.