They waited for the duke to call. George had gone for her usual morning ride with Cal. She missed the company of Lily and Rose, but still, it was good of Cal to come out.

She’d told him what had happened the previous night. His lips had thinned, but he hadn’t said much to the point. Cal was often like that. A man of action rather than words. leaving her with no idea what he really thought.

And when they’d arrived home, Aunt Agatha was waiting, a silver dragon lady breathing brimstone and betrothals. “At least you’re not wearing those disgraceful breeches,” she said the moment George walked in the door. “Run upstairs and change into something pretty, something worthy to receive the addresses of a duke in.”

George did think of changing into her oldest breeches, and went as far as pulling them out of the chest. But then she thought of the way he would look at her down that long, superior nose of his, and changed her mind.

She put on a dress—the plainest one she owned. She would not dress up for him.

She paced around the house, rehearsing in her mind what she was going to say to him. The trouble was, apart from “No, I won’t marry you,” she didn’t know what else she could say.

If he, like Aunt Agatha, pointed out her unseemly behavior, she couldn’t deny it. If he wanted an explanation, she had none—none that she cared to speak aloud, that is.

According to Aunt Agatha, he was being extremely gallant in offering for her, and George could see that, by some lights, that might be true. Only she had a deep dark suspicion that he’d engineered the situation. He’d sent that footman in to call her away from the concert.

And wasn’t it a very strange coincidence that he’d started kissing her just before the break for supper? Had he known everyone would come out then, and find George wrapped around him?

The flaw in that reasoning was that he couldn’t possibly have known that George would react to his kisses the way she had. And if she hadn’t, if she had pushed past him and walked away, as she’d intended, nothing would have happened.

No matter how George looked at it, it kept coming back to being her fault.

Aunt Agatha argued that if she didn’t agree to the betrothal, the duke would be held to be a scoundrel and a seducer. But Aunt Agatha would make any argument that would achieve her aim. She was determined that a Rutherford girl would marry the duke, and George, unsatisfactory as she was, was the only one left.