“Teach me.”
The words came out low, reluctant, pulled from her chest by force.
“Teach you what, exactly?”
“Whatever it is that makes men like Wilfrey lean closer instead of stepping back.” Her jaw set. “You know this world better than I do. You know what they want, how they think. Teach me, and the engagement ends faster. You will be rid of me, and I will have what I came for.”
Hugo tilted his head. The corner of his mouth curved. “My eager little student.”
“Do not call me that.”
“You came to me for instruction, Lady Lily. You must allow me some enjoyment in the arrangement.” He pushed off the arbor and looked down at her. “Very well. I will teach you. But mymethods will not be proper, and you will not always like what I have to say.”
“I have not liked a single thing you have said since we met.”
“And yet here you are. Asking for more.”
Her cheeks flushed. She looked away, and Hugo allowed himself a moment of satisfaction before he offered her his arm.
“Shall we return to the party, my betrothed? I believe we have a performance to maintain.”
Lily rose from the bench and placed her hand on his arm. Her touch was stiff, controlled, and absolutely correct.
But her pulse was racing beneath her glove. He could feel it against his forearm, rapid and warm, and he smiled to himself as he led her back toward the crowd.
The lessons were going to be the most entertaining thing that had happened to him in years.
CHAPTER 5
“Engaged to the Duke of Thornwaite?” Aunt Margaret set her teacup down slowly.
But Lily could sense that her aunt wanted to hurl it at the wall instead. She sat in the morning room at Brimsey House with her traveling cloak still draped over the arm of the sofa. Her silver-streaked hair was pinned beneath a bonnet she had not yet removed, and her sharp blue eyes fixed on Lily with an expression that fell somewhere between disbelief and the particular brand of exasperation she reserved for situations involving men.
“It is not what you think,” Lily said.
“What I think is that I left London for ten days to visit my friend, Charlotte Pembury, in Wiltshire, and in my absence, my niece attached herself to a man whose name appears in gossip columns more often than anyone else.”
“Aunt…”
“I read the pamphlet on the road, Lily. A friend in Guildford sent it to me by express. I nearly turned the carriage around at Reading.” She picked up her tea again and took a sip that suggested she wished it were something stronger. “Tell me everything. And do not leave out the parts you think will upset me, because I assure you, I am already upset.”
Lily told her. Not everything. She left out the whipped cream and the woman sneaking through the servants’ entrance and the way Hugo’s breath had grazed her ear when he told her she would break her own rules. But she told her about the forged Lady Fairhart pamphlet, the damage it had already caused, and the logic behind the arrangement.
Margaret listened without interrupting, which was unusual for a woman who had opinions about everything and the vocabulary to express them. When Lily finished, her aunt sat in silence for a long moment, turning the handle of her teacup between her fingers.
“And this engagement is temporary?”
“Entirely. Once my reputation is restored and I have secured a proper match, we dissolve it.”
“And just how many people know? I assume everyone in this room. And the Duke. And Sophia and Edward. And presumably the Duke’s household staff.” Margaret raised a brow. “Secrets have a way of growing legs in this city, Lily.”
“It is the only option we have.”
“I know.” Aunt Margaret’s voice softened.
The exasperation had faded, and what remained beneath it was quiet concern, worn smooth by years of watching the women in her family navigate a world that offered them very few choices and punished them for making the wrong ones.
“I know it is. That is what angers me. Not you, darling. Never you. But the fact that a single piece of paper, printed by some coward hiding behind your sister’s pen name, can force a young woman into an arrangement she did not choose, with a man she does not know, simply because Society has decided that her virtue is a commodity to be traded and protected and never, under any circumstances, her own to define.”
