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“This will be your first ball as an engaged couple,” Marian said, cutting him off entirely. “I will not have you skulking about in your study while the whole of London wonders why the Duke of Glenhaven cannot be bothered to dance with his own betrothed. You will go. Leonora will go. I will go. That is the whole of the matter, and I do not intend to discuss it further.”

Anthony looked at Leonora, hoping for some measure of support in the matter, and found none whatsoever. She was watching him with an expression that was entirely too close to enjoyment for his liking.

“I believe your grandmother has decided,” Leonora said.

“You are not going to help me?” he mouthed to her.

“I do not see any particular reason why I should,” she whispered back, then turned to Marian. “It sounds like a perfectly reasonable request.” Her eyes glinted, and he could tell she knew exactly what she was doing to him. “Besides, I have not been to a ball in some time myself.”

“Traitor,” Anthony whispered, without any real heat behind it.

“Wonderful,” Marian declared, entirely satisfied with the outcome. “I shall write to Lady Camden this afternoon to confirm. You will both need to be properly dressed, and Leonora, I shall lend you my own pearls if your wardrobe wants for anything suitable. It has been an age since this house had a proper reason to celebrate. I must let the housekeeper know.”

“Grandmother, I can find her for you,” Anthony offered.

“I am capable of doing it myself, thank you very much.”

She rose, gathered the sleeping cat into her arms with surprising gentleness, and swept from the room. The door clicked shut behind her, leaving Anthony and Leonora alone.

“You did that on purpose,” Anthony said.

“I have no idea what you mean,” she answered sitting back down.

“You could have objected. You could have claimed some prior engagement, some illness, anything at all. Instead you sat there and agreed with her.”

“It seemed the more entertaining choice.” Leonora rose from the bench again, smoothing her skirts with a composure that did nothing to hide the amusement still lingering at the corners of her mouth. “You should have seen your face when she mentioned the ball. It was very nearly worth attending simply to watch you find your way out of it.”

“Well, there was no finding my way out of it. You saw how she was.”

“I did.” Leonora’s expression softened slightly, though the humor did not entirely leave it. “For what it is worth, I do not think it will be so terrible. A few hours of dancing and being looked at. We have managed considerably more difficult performances than that already.”

Anthony considered her for a moment, the ease with which she said it, the steadiness she had learned to bring to every part of this arrangement even when it cost her something to do so. He thought of the jewellers, and the questions she was asking them, and the whole dangerous project she was carrying alone without once mentioning it to him.

“Perhaps,” he said, rather than any of that.

“You do not sound convinced.” Leonora studied him a moment longer, her head tilted slightly, as though she were trying to read something in his face that he had not intended to show her. “Is something troubling you? You have worn that particular look since you walked in.”

“Nothing worth mentioning.” It was, he was aware, not entirely honest, but the alternative was admitting that he had spent the better part of the morning having his butler report on her private business, and he was not prepared to explain himself on that count just yet, not until he understood his own reasons for wanting to know a great deal better than he currently did. “Only estate matters. They have a way of following a man into every room he enters, whether he invites them or not.”

“That sounds very boring.”

“It is, on most days. Today rather less so, apparently, given that I have somehow agreed to a ball I did not recall existed an hour ago,” he sighed and shook his head. “I am also now aware we appear to have committed ourselves rather further into this ploy than either of us originally intended. A companionship has become an engagement. An engagement is now, apparently, a ball. I begin to wonder how much further my grandmother intends to take us before this is through.”

Leonora considered that, tilting her head slightly. “We may well be in over our heads.”

“We may well be,” Anthony agreed, not able to help the smile that was forming on his face from watching her amusement.

CHAPTER TWELVE

“No, no, that will not do at all.”

Leonora turned from the looking glass to find Lady Byron standing in the doorway with her arms crossed and her head tilted at the gown laid out across the bed, an expression on her face that suggested the dress had personally wronged her.

“What is wrong with it?” Leonora asked.

Lady Byron pointed a hand to the dress. “It is the colour of a dead leaf.”

Leonora playfully rolled her eyes. “It is called bronze, and the modiste assured me it was very fashionable.”