Chapter One

CHAPTER ONE

THREE MONTHS LATER…

" Y ou can borrow my reticule if you would like," Caroline said in a mischievous voice, sidling up to Dickie.

He stood in an alcove on the edge of the Greenfield House ballroom, plainly doing his best to hide from the swarm of guests he had invited to celebrate his instatement as Earl of Greenfield. The news had been announced a fortnight ago, and Dickie was never one to resist a reason to throw a grand party. Even less so, now that he had his own inheritance to put on gatherings with.

"Your reticule?" Dickie asked, chuckling grimly as his eyes darted this way and that. "You do not think I am already drawing enough attention to myself?"

Caroline smiled. "I thought you could use it to bat away the unceasing tide of eligible young ladies who seem determined to become your countess. I have never much cared for hunting, but seeing you like this, I have begun to feel an even greater pity for the fox."

"I brought it on myself," he lamented. "I should have known what would happen."

Caroline nodded. "Indeed, you should. The invitation said, ‘a ball of celebration,' and all the mothers of society read, ‘a chance for a wedding.' Quite foolish of you, really."

"You are not helping," he replied. "If you came over just to torment me, you can take your teasing elsewhere. I am enduring enough of it from Max, who cannot stop saying ‘I told you so.' For someone so proper and respectable, he does delight in my misery."

Caroline flinched at the mention of Max's name. They had bumped into one another here and there since her ill-fated excursion to his bedchamber at the Grayling Estate, and though he was always polite and courteous, their brief conversations never failed to be painfully awkward.

Worst of all, those encounters seemed to happen just as Caroline was forgetting the image of his bare chest and back, gleaming like a marble statue in the moonlight.

"You should have proposed to me when you had the chance," she said with a wry grin.

Dickie pulled a face. "Goodness, what an awful thought."

"If you are going to be rude, I shall whistle and reveal your location to all and sundry." She put her fingers to her lips, toying with him.

He chuckled. "I would have made you twice as miserable as I am feeling right now. You know it to be true." He leaned in. "Although, it is rather flattering to think that me and you are the first pairing that my sister got wrong."

"You know as well as I do that she panicked," Caroline replied. "And when you look at the two of us, you can see how desperate she must have been. It remains a sore point of embarrassment that I considered you, though. We would have yawned our way through life, bored to tears of one another within a year."

He feigned a pout. "Now, who is being rude?"

"Honest, never rude." She laughed softly, swiping two glasses of punch off a tray as a servant passed by.

She handed one to Dickie and cradled her own, observing the cheerful ball that was well underway. The seasons had changed, summer blending into the chill of autumn, and not so many people were venturing out onto the terraces, preferring the warmth of the ballroom and the exertion of the dancing.

To Caroline, it seemed like a lifetime ago that the Matchmaker's letters had come to her. She had, eventually, shown Dickie the note she had received, and they had joined forces to ask Anna what on earth she had been thinking. Anna had explained herself, rather apologetically, adding that she had intended to send another letter to Caroline, telling her that the suggestion had been a mistake, but her identity had been discovered before she could do so.

They had laughed about it, all had been forgiven, and the entire debacle had become something of a running joke between Caroline and Dickie, especially.

"I doubt we would have been bored of one another, but there would have been no heirs; that is for certain." Dickie took a hearty drink of his punch. "You are as much a little sister to me now as Anna is."

Caroline nodded, quite pleased with that assessment. "And you are the troublesome brother I never had."

"Daniel has never caused trouble?" Dickie clicked his tongue. "Come now, in his younger, bachelor years he was assuredly a wild thing. And do not forget that he has traveled the world—he has probably seen and done things that you could not imagine."

Caroline covered her ear with her free hand, humming loudly. "And I do not wish to hear it, nor would Phoebe."

"Granted, there are few gentlemen in society who are as loyal and doting as your brother to his wife." Dickie paused, tilting his head to one side. "Come to think of it, every last member of the Spinsters' Club has succeeded in gaining a husband who does not even glance at other ladies when they think their wife is not looking. I suspect it was never a Spinsters' Club at all, but a coven for witches, casting spells of love and obsession over those poor, unsuspecting gentlemen."

Caroline snorted, secretly liking that notion. "You are calling your own sister a witch?"

"The witchiest of them!" Dickie insisted. "She is likely the one who mixes the love spells, being the Matchmaker and all. Not to mention the fact that her closest confidante, the Countess of Grayling, is called the Sorceress by many. Nevertheless, I will guard her secret with my life. She is my sister first, a sneaky enchantress second."

They fell into a companionable silence as the ball carried on without them, the other guests barely noticing that the host of the occasion had disappeared. The eligible ladies and their mothers would soon enough resume their pursuit of Dickie but, for now, he had peace and quiet with his acquaintance, in that tucked-away corner of the ballroom.

No more than two minutes later, Dickie's face blanched. "Oh, heavens no," he whispered, looking over her shoulder.

Caroline discreetly peered back to see what he was looking at. A woman in a gaudy gown of burnished orange, with bright red ostrich feathers in her hair, stood perfectly still in the middle of the ballroom, searching like a hawk waiting for a mouse to pop out of its hideaway. She was vaguely familiar to Caroline, though Caroline could not quite place her.

"Lady Joan," Dickie said, as if reading Caroline's mind. "Formerly interested in Percival, but when he fobbed her off for my dear sister, she set her sights on me. Foolishly, I indulged her pursuit for a while, and now she will not leave me be. I could have sworn I ‘neglected' to send an invitation."

Caroline hid a laugh behind her hand. "Do you think that would stop a woman in love? Indeed, if you did not want her to be here, you should not have made it the only thing anyone has been able to talk about for two weeks."

"My fame is my downfall. Considering my reputation, I should not be as well-liked as I am, but what is a charming man like me to do?" Dickie put on a dramatic grimace. "Come, Caro, join me in my escape."

He opened a narrow door at the rear of the alcove, half-hidden behind a brocade drape and flashed his friend a grin. "This is the way to freedom, Caro," he said, and disappeared into the passageway beyond.

Seized by the excitement, and the fact that she loved to discover how many secret entrances and corridors there were in the grand houses of England, she dove into the passageway before the door shut.

The beautiful, lively music of the orchestra faded to a muffled murmur, the passage lit by soot-stained lanterns that cast an eerie, sickly glow into the gloom. Still, it was better than absolute darkness, and with her heart racing giddily, Caroline followed the bobbing shape of Dickie, all the way to wherever the passageway might end.

As it turned out, the passage connected directly to the ornate and stately study that had once belonged to Anna's father and then to Max, before finally being passed on to Dickie. It did not look like he had spent any time in there at all, the huge mahogany desk bare of correspondence and ledgers, the bookshelves unfilled, the old rugs still rolled up and leaning against the wall, a dust sheet covering the armchairs by the fireplace.

Not at all like Daniel's study, where he spent the majority of his days when he was not doting on his wife and children and, less frequently these days, his sister. He had even turned one corner of his study into a sort of nursery, with soft cushions and toys for the children to play as he worked.

"You realize that you have to undertake duties as an earl, do you not?" Caroline teased. "Balancing ledgers, accounting for rents and expenditures, hearing the complaints of your dependents, ensuring your income is greater than what goes out—that sort of thing."

Dickie made a retching sound. "Cease with such talk, or I shall suffer an apoplexy right here in this room. You sound like my brother. And my sister and my brother-in-law, now that you mention it. No one seems to want me to enjoy my new position for even a moment, before I have to consider the realities of it."

"It is a great responsibility. You should not be so?—"

"Not another word!" Dickie pleaded, laughing helplessly.

Caroline smiled and whipped the dust sheet off one of the armchairs, sitting down on the creaking leather. "Very well. I shall say nothing."

"Gratitude." Dickie jumped up on the desk, swinging his legs.

"But, if I may, what is so terrible about Lady Joan? She appears to be a pleasant young lady, and I daresay I pity her if she has been unsuccessful with two gentlemen in such a short span of months." Caroline sank back in the armchair. "Not that I am not glad that Percival saw sense and fell hopelessly in love with Anna instead."

Dickie shrugged. "She does not inspire me. She does not make me feel what I know I should feel for a potential bride. Yes, she is pleasant, but pleasant does not make the heart race and the mind grow dizzy with adoration. Now that I am an earl, I simply cannot settle for less than my match, in every sense of the word."

"Has Anna not suggested anyone?" Caroline dug her fingers down the side of the armchair, her eyebrow raising as she felt the scratch of paper.

She pulled it out, the paper fairly new, but crumpled with the pressure of being shoved unceremoniously into that gulley. Curiosity led her to smooth it out, discovering it to be a rather sweet note: Must go to Raleigh's and ask what book A was looking at in shop. Do not forget birthday. ‘Not' was underlined five times.

"I dare not ask her," Dickie replied. "She will find me someone that I can grow to love, but I want it to be in bloom the minute we meet. That spark of passion that makes a person feel alive. Someone…" his gaze darkened "… who is everything I never knew I needed. "I am sure you know what I am talking about."

Caroline did not, but she did not want to admit that to him. She had debuted a year later than anticipated due to her nerves, so she had thought she would be more than ready to enter society, but the entire ordeal of the Season had not been what she expected. She had been inundated with proposals and offers of courtship and endless requests to dance but had felt nothing for anyone. Not even the mildest compulsion to accept.

Her mother, Amelia, had tried not to show her disappointment. Even Daniel had been almost sympathetic, telling Caroline, "No matter. There is always next year, and the year after, and the year after."

The ladies of the Spinsters' Club, of which she was an honorary member, had been similarly encouraging, as they had all married somewhat later than most women.

Now, it was autumn, and the London Season would begin in a month or so, and Caroline was not ready for that, either. Part of her wanted to retreat altogether, and the other part of her just wanted it to be over, the decision of her future placed in someone else's hands.

"Your brother must be pressuring you a great deal," she said, eager to keep the focus on Dickie, rather than her own worrisome thoughts.

Dickie jumped off the desk and went over to the dusty side-table, finding a quarter-full decanter of brandy beneath a small canvas sheet. He poured two measures. "Not so much," he confessed. "Regardless of how dearly my brother adores rules and duty, he has never pressured me in any matter. He gives pointed advice, makes not-so-casual suggestions, but he never outright commands anything of me."

He handed her one of the crystal glasses and she gazed down into the potent amber liquid. "That surprises me."

"It does?" Dickie canted his head.

"He always has such a… righteous air about him, as if he is superior to everyone else," she muttered, her tongue loosened by the privacy of the room. "He is not like you, Dickie. He is cold and… so aloof that it is no wonder he has not found a bride yet. But what I dislike most is how keenly he appears to judge my friendship with Anna and the rest of the Spinsters' Club and, I suppose, you. As if I am doing something appalling, or that I do not belong."

Dickie choked on his brandy. "My brother—cold and distant? We surely are not talking of the same man."

"It is the only version of him that I have ever seen," she shot back, a little embarrassed that she had spoken so forthrightly to Max's brother. She had forgotten, for a moment, who she was in the room with.

Dickie chuckled and came over to put a friendly arm around her shoulders. "There, there, dear Caro. It is a truth you must face in life that not everyone is going to like you, no matter how lovable you are. The entire world will not adore you as your family and your friends do." He paused. "Although, I do not believe that Max actually has any quarrel with you. He has no quarrel with anyone."

"He ought to tell his face that when he is near me," Caroline insisted. "Truly, he dislikes me, and I have not the faintest notion of why. Yes, I have spilled a few things on him by accident, and I did ruin that handkerchief of his, but you would think I had spat in his face or stolen his prize hound!"

Dickie patted her on the shoulder. "Let us find him and get to the bottom of this."

"Absolutely not. I am having a pleasant evening; I do not wish to sour it with?—"

A strangled yelp went up from the gardens behind them, a terrifying face illuminated by moonlight, wild eyes peering in through the glass panes of the French doors. Caroline screamed back, her heart leaping into her throat, her eyes as wide and wild as those that had seen the pair.

Lady Joan, it seemed, had gone searching for Dickie, and she had found them in a most compromising position.

Before Dickie or Caroline could say anything, or even reach the doors to explain, Lady Joan had taken off, no doubt to spread the word of what she had witnessed. Misunderstanding entirely.

But when had society gossip ever cared about a misunderstanding, when they could have a scandal instead?