“Barna—who?”
The pink-cheeked butler swept into the room from his position just outside the open doorway. “If you’ll come with me, madam?”
“But I still—”
Julian could barely hear them. He was striding too quickly to the room adjacent to his study, where his man of business sat at a large desk.
“Mr. Voss,” the duke said briskly. “There’s been a change in plans.”
“Change?” Voss stared at him. “You?”
“It’s the same plan,” Julian admitted. “Marriage by thirty-five. I’ve decided to implement my bride hunt concurrently with the most outrageous masquerades of my tenure.”
“Concurrently, Your Grace?” his man of business stammered.
Julian nodded at the basin of invitations upon Voss’s desk. “As you politely decline, if the recipient is at all connected to the beau monde, feel free to casually divulge that His Grace is finally on the hunt for a bride.”
“If I do that,” Voss said carefully, “they will all descend upon you like locusts.”
“No.” Julian smiled. “Only the ones who don’t mind a little debauchery.”
Chapter 6
The next evening, as Julian strode through his wide, empty ballroom, the air felt charged with electricity, like a summer night just before a storm.
Everything was in place, exactly as he liked it. Exactly as he’dplannedit. The first guests would arrive within the hour. Ten o’clock sharp. Already a queue of carriages was forming. They knew the rules. No one allowed in before ten; no one allowed to remain past dawn.
Which meant, the only way to maximize one’s limited time at the masquerade was to be one of the first through the door.
He made his way there now. The night butler installed himself at nine thirty. Julian pulled open the door to the receiving chamber and paused halfway across the threshold.
Fairfax was not alone.
Miss Unity Thorne was chatting with him in the vestibule. She wore a glittering emerald mask with tall, golden feathers, but there was no disguising her beauty. That warm honey voice, that soft caramel skin, that sole beauty mark near those berry-red lips...
“You’re early.”
He couldn’t see her arch a brow, but he could hear it in her voice. “You said not to be late.”
Fairfax’s mask did not cover his lips, which were smirking in obvious amusement.
“Where is your mask?” Miss Thorne asked Julian.
“I don’t wear one.”
“He wouldn’t want to be mistaken for anything other than king of the castle,” Fairfax said helpfully.
Julian glowered at him.
Miss Thorne eyed him appreciatively. “I doubt anyone could mistake our duke for anything other than who and what he is.”
Somehow, this managed to sound like both a compliment and a condemnation.
“No more bothering the night butler.” Julian turned back toward the empty ballroom. “Follow me.”
He did not wait to see if she would. He knew the answer. People always followed him. Tease as she liked, Miss Thorne wanted to be granted entrée more than Julian needed to give it. Per the terms he had laid out, he could terminate this arrangement at any moment.
Indeed, perhaps he ought to. She was not just a distraction to the entirely too-amused-for-his-own-good night butler. Miss Thorne was also a distraction to Julian himself.
