“You loathe dancing,” Grace said.

“Not true. I loathe being required to dance. It is a very different endeavor.”

“I can find my sister,” Elizabeth said quickly.

“Don’t be silly. She obviously loathes being required to dance, too. Grace shall be my partner.”

“Me?” Grace looked surprised.

Thomas signaled to the small band of musicians at the front of the room. They immediately lifted their instruments.

“You,” he said. “You don’t imagine I would dance with anyone else here?”

“There is Elizabeth,” she said as he led her to the center of the floor.

“Surely you jest,” he murmured. Lady Elizabeth Willoughby’s skin had not recovered any of the color that had drained from it when her sister turned her back and left the room. The exertions from dancing would probably lead her to swoon.

Besides, Elizabeth would not suit his purposes.

He glanced up at Amelia. To his surprise, she did not dart immediately behind the curtain.

He smiled. Just a little.

And then—it was most satisfying—he saw her gasp.

She ducked behind the curtain after that, but he was not concerned. She’d be watching the dance. Every last step of it.

Chapter 2

Amelia knew what he was trying to do. It was clear as crystal to her, and she was quite aware that she was being manipulated, and yet, drat the man, there she was, hiding behind the curtain, watching him dance with Grace.

He was an excellent dancer. Amelia knew as much. She’d danced with him many times—quadrille, country dance, waltz—they’d done them all during her two seasons in London. Duty dances, every one of them.

And yet sometimes—sometimes—they had been lovely. Amelia was not immune to the thoughts of others. It was splendid to place one’s hand on the arm of London’s most eligible bachelor, especially when one was in possession of a binding contract declaring said bachelor hers and hers alone.

Everything about him was somehow bigger and better than other men. He was rich! He was titled! He made the silly girls swoon!

And the ones of sturdier constitution—well, they swooned, too.

Amelia was quite certain that Thomas Cavendish would have been the catch of the decade even if he’d been born with a hunched back and two noses. Unmarried dukes were not thick on the ground, and it was well known that the Wyndhams owned enough land and money to rival most European principalities.

But his grace’s back was not hunched, and his nose (of which, happily, he possessed but one), was straight and fine and rather splendidly in proportion with the rest of his face. His hair was dark and thick, his eyes riveting blue, and unless he was hiding a few spaces in the back, he had all of his teeth. Objectively speaking, it would have been quite impossible to describe his appearance as anything but handsome.