He crossed a ballroom of forty sweating guests to reach the plainest woman in it — and Cassandra Ashwell, twenty-four, three seasons unclaimed, made the error of taking his hand. He was a duke. He was also hiding something with teeth.

PART 2

The news outran the sun.

By the time Cassandra came down to breakfast the following morning, the little parlor that faced the lane already smelled of other people’s curiosity. A full basket of cut roses from the vicarage stood on the sideboard with a card too effusive to have been written for any reason but hers. A note from Mrs. Falk begged leave to call. And worst of all, her mother sat at the head of the table in her second-best cap, positively vibrating over the cold ham.

“Three years,” Mrs. Ashwell announced to the room, though only Cassandra and the teapot were in it. “Three years I have watched you turn your face to the wall. And now a duke.”

“A duke, Cassandra. And not a decayed one either — not one of your consumptive marquesses with a mortgage where his heart should be. Ravensmore. Do you know what Ravensmore is worth?”

“I do not,” said Cassandra, buttering her toast with great concentration. “And I suspect you are about to tell me to the shilling.”

“Forty thousand a year if it is a farthing. Old Mrs. Peverell had it from her nephew, who had it from the man’s own steward — and the steward would know.”

Her mother pressed a hand to her bosom as though to keep her heart from leaving by the shortest route.

“And he asked to call on you.”

“He asked to discuss a matter. Those are not the same thing. A man may wish to discuss the drains and still not offer for one’s hand.”

“Do not be vulgar at the breakfast table.” Her mother’s eyes had gone bright and wet at the corners, and Cassandra, watching her, felt the old familiar tenderness twist against the old familiar despair. “What matter could a duke possibly have to discuss with a girl of no fortune, save the one matter that signifies?”

“You will wear the sprigged muslin. The blue. It does something for your complexion — or it would, if you did not scowl through it.”

“I intend to scowl through whatever I wear. It is the only ornament I own that fits me perfectly.”

The door opened on Aunt Maud, who had come from the guest chamber, where she had passed the night rather than trust the roads home in the dark. She took in the roses, the cards, and her sister’s transfigured face with a single sweep of her sharp old eyes, and helped herself to tea before she spoke.

“Margaret,” she said, “you have the look of a woman who has already ordered the wedding cake and is quarreling with the confectioner over the almonds. Do sit on it. The man has asked to call, not to be churched.”

“You would have her refuse him, I suppose.”

“I would have her keep her wits — which is a different and rarer thing.”

Aunt Maud turned to Cassandra, and beneath the dryness there was something steadier. Something that had watched a great many ballrooms swallow a great many girls.

“He is not calling to court you, child. I have known dukes. They do not court. They select, and they announce, and they expect the county to applaud. But that man last night was not selecting. He was hiding something behind his teeth the whole while he smiled at you. And I should very much like to know what it was before your mother marches you up the aisle after it.”

“Maud—”

“I am only saying what the girl already knows, and you are too dazzled to see.”

She patted Cassandra’s hand once, briskly, and rose.

“Wear the blue. Not because it flatters you — because it has a high collar, and you will want your armor on. He will come at eleven. His sort always come at eleven, so as to be gone before the vulgar hour of two.”

He came at eleven.

Cassandra heard the carriage before she saw it — the crunch of good wheels on the lane, the jingle of harness far too fine for their gate. She stood at the parlor window with her hands folded and her heart going like a trapped bird, and watched the Duke of Ravensmore hand himself down into the July glare as though the whole steaming morning had been arranged for his convenience.

He wore no coat of ceremony today. Only a riding coat of dark bottle green, and dust on his boots. And he stood a moment in the lane, looking up at the modest front of Ashwell Cottage with an expression she could not read at that distance — and did not, she thought, look like a man arriving at a wife-shop.

He looked like a man arriving at a decision.

She received him in the small parlor, the door to the garden thrown open on the day’s rising heat, her mother hovering over the tea things in an agony of pride and Aunt Maud posted by the mantel like a sentry who did not trust the weather.

He did not sit. He came straight to it, without a scrap of the ballroom’s ease left in him.

“I owe you an explanation before I owe you anything else, Miss Ashwell. I did not cross that room on a whim.” He turned his hat once in his hands. “My father’s will binds me to marry before the last of September, or three villages on the northern boundary pass to my cousin Julian. I have perhaps nine weeks.”

“Nine weeks,” Cassandra repeated. “That is not a courtship, your grace. That is a siege.”

“It is whatever you wish to call it. I will not dress it prettier than it is.” A muscle moved in his jaw. “And it cannot be any woman. It must be someone who stands outside the old families — outside every web of cousins and mourning calls that ties this county together. That is the whole of what I can tell you today.”

“Why?”

The question landed plain and hard, exactly as she had thrown it at him in the ballroom. He held her eyes a moment, and she saw something shutter behind them.

“Because it is not only my secret to spend,” he said. “I will not lie to you, Cassandra. But I cannot yet hand you the whole of it either, and I would rather you know that plainly than have you catch me at it later.”

“That is not an answer.”

“No,” he agreed. “It is the truth instead, which I find I would rather give you.”

Her mother made a small strangled sound over the teapot. Aunt Maud’s eyes had narrowed to two considering points.

Cassandra opened her mouth to press him further — and it was then that the second carriage spoke, wheels loud on the lane, coming on far too fast for a morning call.

It was finer even than his. A lacquered thing with a crest on the door and four matched grays, and it did not slow at the gate. It came on past the Duke’s hired chaise as though the chaise were a farm cart, and drew up at the cottage door with the particular arrogance of a vehicle that had never once in its life been made to wait.

The Duke of Ravensmore turned and looked at it. And Cassandra, watching from behind the glass, saw his whole body go still — saw the easy country gentleman drain out of him in the space of a breath and something harder, colder, wholly armed take its place.

A woman descended. Dark hair dressed high. A traveling gown of deep amber silk. A face of such cool and perfect symmetry that it seemed less made than minted.

She did not look at the Duke. She looked at the cottage.

And then she looked up, straight through the parlor window, and found Cassandra watching — and smiled.