Every woman in London was warned never to sit beside Alistair, Duke of Roth. Yet Lydia Penhallow accepted her sisters’ wager and unexpectedly talked with him until the ball ended. The next morning, everyone was stunned when the feared Duke arrived at her door with an offer that could save her entire family.

PART 2 

“Endurance,” Roth repeated softly, rolling the word around in his mouth as if testing its weight. He leaned back against the cushions, though his spine stayed rigidly straight. “A useful trait. Especially in this particular circle of hell.”

The country dance dragged on — a flurry of clapping hands and spinning silk. Lydia and the Duke sat inside their bubble of quiet treason.

Across the room, she could see her sisters huddled behind Lady Ashdown’s absurdly large feather headdress, eyes wide as saucers, waiting for the explosion. Waiting for him to summon a footman. Waiting for him to humiliate her.

“I apologize if I am intruding, your grace.” Lydia let her voice drop to a murmur only he could hear. “I require this seat for the duration of this dance. Then I shall return to the wall and leave you in peace.”

Roth didn’t look at her. He watched a young earl step on his partner’s hem.

“A wager, I assume.”

Lydia blinked. “Is it so obvious?”

“People do not approach me willingly, Miss Penhallow.” He paused. “They approach me for patronage, out of morbid curiosity, or on a dare. You lack the obsequious smile of a beggar, and you lack the trembling terror of the morbidly curious.” A beat. “That leaves a dare.”

She could not help the small, genuine smile that tugged at her lips. He was sharp. Sharper than anyone gave him credit for.

“Pearl earbobs and a velvet carriage cloak,” she said.

Roth let out a sound — short, sharp, entirely unexpected. It took her a moment to realize it was a laugh. A rusty, unused thing. But a laugh.

“A cheap price for your reputation,” he murmured. “By tomorrow morning the gossips will have decided you are either my secret mistress or completely insane.”

“I am twenty-three and entirely without a dowry, your grace.” She said it pragmatically, the way she said most things. “My reputation is a ghost. It can afford a little haunting.”

He turned his head to look at her again. The sheer unvarnished honesty of the statement seemed to catch him off guard. The hard, icy exterior cracked a fraction, revealing a weary intellect underneath.

“You do not simper, Miss Penhallow.”

“It strains the facial muscles.”

“And you do not fear me.”

Lydia looked at his leg, stretched out stiffly. She had read the broadsheets. Waterloo. A French musket ball that shattered the bone. A slow, agonizing recovery that left the once-athletic duke with a permanent limp and a dependence on laudanum the ton loved to whisper about.

“I fear poverty, your grace,” she said quietly, looking back up into his flinty eyes. “I fear illness. I fear living a small, insignificant life dictated by people who care nothing for me. I do not fear a man who simply wishes to be left alone because his leg hurts.”

Roth froze.

His breath hitched — a tiny, barely perceptible catch in his chest.

The ton danced around his injury, pretending it did not exist while simultaneously condemning him for the sour mood it caused. To address it directly was a colossal breach of etiquette. He stared at her, searching her face for pity. If he found it, she knew, he would shatter her. He would turn into the monster they all claimed he was.

But Lydia offered no pity. Only solidarity — the quiet acknowledgement of one outsider to another.

Slowly, the tension bled out of his shoulders. He reached down and adjusted his bad leg with a grimace, no longer trying to hide the wince from her.

“It is not just the leg,” he said. His voice was terrifyingly quiet. “It is the noise. The constant, unending noise of these people.”

“They are very loud,” Lydia agreed.

Just then, a passing footman with a silver tray of refreshments stumbled, jostled by a rogue dancer. Two crystal goblets of ratafia tipped, splashing sticky pink liquid onto the floor inches from Lydia’s hem.

The footman went white. His eyes darted to the Duke, waiting for the inevitable reprimand.

Roth looked at the spilled drink. Then at the terrified servant. Then, to Lydia’s absolute astonishment, he reached out and smoothly retrieved an unspoiled glass of lemonade from the far side of the tray.

“Mind your footing, man,” he said mildly. “The floor is waxed to within an inch of its life.”

The footman practically sobbed in relief, bowing frantically before scurrying off for a mop.

Roth turned back to Lydia and extended his gloved hand, offering her the glass. “It is horribly sweet,” he warned, the ghost of a smirk at the corner of his mouth. “But it will give you something to hold. It makes one look less stationary.”

Lydia took the glass. Their gloved fingers brushed for a fraction of a second — and a strange, sharp jolt snapped through her at the contact.

Across the room, Charlotte dropped her fan. It clattered against the parquet, forgotten. Georgiana looked as though she might faint.

Lydia took a slow sip. It was indeed horribly sweet.

“Thank you, your grace.”

“You are welcome, Miss Penhallow.”