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“She’s looking for the best fabric for her wedding gown,” said Teddy quietly, her cheeks pinking too, though Gwen had absolutely no idea why.

Oh, dear Lord.

“Indeed?” Lord Frasemere’s smile did not falter, not even an inch.

Which struck Gwen as strange. Surely, someone would have some sort of reaction to news like that.

Precisely what reaction she wanted the man to have, she did not know, which was all the more infuriating.

The bell jangled above the door of Rivers’s Haberdashery and another pair of ladies stepped inside, rubbing their hands from the cold and chattering excitedly about finding the exact ribbon they needed.

“And if we can find that crimson—why, it’s Teddy!”

“Lucy!” Gwen smiled at their cousin, arm in arm with Evelyn, who had evidently returned from her travels on the Continent. “Goodness, you look brown!”

“You should have seen it—oh, Teddy, what have you got there?!”

The three ladies converged on a new sample swatch that Gwen’s sister was holding—this time a horrendous polka dot that appeared to be made of different browns—chattering away happily near the buttons.

And that left her alone with…

Gwen swallowed. Not alone. No one could really be described as being alone with anyone within Rivers’s; the place was one of the largest haberdashers and fabric emporiums in London. Why, even Phylis had mentioned that she supplied it.

The walls were lined with bolts of fabric, their little sample swatches right on the front of the shelves, and there were cascades of ribbons descending from the ceiling. Buttons of every type—and Gwen had never known there were so many variations—were presented in little boxes in the large table in the center of this particular room in the shop, and in the next room were umbrellas of all sizes and colors, and the next room held pelisses, and the next shawls…

Now that she came to think of it, Gwen was not entirely sure whether she had ever ventured to the deepest depths of Rivers’s Haberdashery. Someone must have, though whether they had returned to tell the tale was quite another matter.

The place was humming with excitement. It was the changing of the seasons that did it; the new plates had arrived from Paris only last week, and Gwen had heard her mother complaining to Mrs. Kinley that the family modiste had a waiting list as long as her arm, with everyone attempting to adjust their attire to the changing fashions seen in the newly printed catalogs.

And so no one was looking at her, standing here in Rivers’s Haberdashery beside a man.

A man who quite inexplicably—and rudely, to her mind—took her breath away.

“A wedding gown, is it?” The corners of Lord Frasemere’s lips quirked upward into a tight smile.

It was only now that Gwen truly examined him that she realized that though all his smiles looked the same, there were minute differences.

Take this one, for example. Oh, the shape of his lips was the same…but the smile had not reached his eyes. There was no warmth there.

“Yes,” Gwen said decidedly, turning away and making her way along the wall to the fabrics that were singular colors.

What she had not intended was for the man to believe she had issued an invitation to follow her, but that was clearly what he believed had occurred, for Baron Frasemere accompanied her across the shop floor.

“And you do not wish for something a tad more…interesting?”

Gwen whirled around and jabbed him in the chest. Blast, she had to remember to stop doing that. “What concern is it of yours?!”

It was the wrong thing to say. Lord Frasemere’s eyes widened and he took a hasty step back.

It was also the wrong volume with which to speak. Heads turned, and a few mutters fluttered around the rom.

“Well, really!”

“Who is that?”

“I heard she was engaged to the Marquess of Ravenshurst—”

“No!”