“Beadle is a treasure.” She crossed the room and sat herself on the corner of his desk in a manner that no respectable young lady ought to sit on any piece of furniture belonging to a duke. “What does it say?”
“It is from my betrothed. It is private.”
“It is from my best friend. It is half mine.”
“That is not how letters work, Joanna.”
“It is how all the letters in this house have worked since I was nine. What does it say?”
He studied her. She was wearing a morning dress the color of cream, her hair was coming down at the back as it always didbefore noon, and she was looking at him with the particularly bright expectance of a younger sister who had not, in years of trying, learned how to be put off.
“We are going to Almack’s tonight,” he announced.
“Almack’s?” She blinked. “But you hate Almack’s.”
“I have changed my mind about Almack’s.”
“You have not changed your mind about Almack’s, Cassian. You have changed your mind about a particular person at Almack’s.”
She plucked the letter off his desk and read it. He let her. He had decided some time ago that there was no point in trying to keep a letter away from Joanna once she had heard it existed. She had a way of finding them even in locked drawers which he had given up trying to investigate.
“Oh,” she murmured. “Oh, that is very neatly done.”
“Is it?”
“She is angry with you.”
“She is bored, Joanna. She is at Westbury House with her sister, her mother, and that father of hers, and she has had three days of being looked at, and she is bored.”
“She is angry with you,” Joanna repeated patiently. Apparently, she believed she knew her best friend better than him. A fair assumption. “Cassian, you have not called on her once. You have not sent flowers. You have not sent a note. You have not?—”
“She has not sent me a note either.”
“She has now.”
He did not have an answer to that.
Joanna folded the letter very neatly along its original creases and laid it back on his desk. “What are you going to wear?”
“To Almack’s?”
“Yes. We must consider it. You cannot wear the black coat; you wear the black coat to everything. You must wear the dark blue, the one Bessborough made for you. You have not worn it because you said it was vain. Itisvain. You should wear it.”
“Joanna.”
“And you must escort her to supper. The whole room will be watching. If you do not escort her to supper, they will say that you are bored with her already, and then Alice will be sad, and I will be required to be cross with you, and I do not want to be required to be cross with you. Escort her to supper, Cassian.”
“I had planned on it.”
She brightened. “Had you?”
“I had planned on doing very little else.”
She looked at him then. Whatever she saw on his face made her go briefly still in the way she did when she was working out a thing she had not quite worked out before. Then she smiled. It was a small smile. It was a smile he did not, on balance, entirely like.
“Cassian…”
“What?”
