Page 12 of The Duke’s Defiant Love

"I spoke to the Duke of Ravensmere."

"There is no difference at all, Amelia, not to this room, and you know it perfectly well." He passed a hand over his face, weary in the way he only ever looked after a full day of examinations. "You dismantled his argument in front of three other dukes and half the guests standing near enough to hear it. Whatever the merits of your reasoning, and I do not doubt they were considerable, you have made yourself the single most discussed young woman at this ball within the space of a few minutes."

"He was arguing that women lack the discipline for scholarship. Was I meant to simply stand by and allow it?"

"I am not saying you should remained quiet. I am telling you what it will cost." His voice gentled, though the worry beneath it did not. "You have no significant dowry, my dear. You have intelligence and wit enough for three young ladies, but neither of those has ever once been the currency the ton trades in. A scandal that might cost a wealthy heiress a single unkind season could cost you considerably more, and I could not bear to watch that happen to you over an argument, however correct you were to win it."

Amelia opened her mouth to argue and found, for once, that she had nothing ready to say. He was not wrong; he so rarely was. That was the difficulty of arguing with her father.

"I only wanted him to admit he was wrong."

"I know." Something in his expression softened. "But being right in this room, Amelia, has never once been enough to protect a young woman without means, and I would rather see you safely home tonight than watch you learn that lesson the hard way, in front of witnesses who will remember it far longer than you'd like."

"You wish me to leave. Now."

"I wish it very much, yes." He glanced back toward the ballroom, where the murmuring showed no sign of abating, several heads still turned in their general direction with poorly disguised curiosity. "I will make your excuses. A headache will suffice, I think, and no one will trouble to question it."

"And you?"

"I will follow shortly, once I have smoothed over what can be smoothed." He managed a small, weary smile, the kind he had been giving her since she was a girl bringing home reports of some childhood injustice she'd argued her way through. "Go on. The carriage is waiting just beyond the gates, the second one in the row, I confirmed it with the driver myself. Have Simmons see you out through the side entrance. Fewer eyes that way."

"Papa, I am sorry, truly, if I have embarrassed you."

He took her hand and pressed it, briefly, before releasing her toward the waiting footman near the terrace doors. "Go now. Quickly."

She went.

The side entrance let out into a cool, blessedly quiet night. Simmons accompanied her as fas as the gate torches guttering along the drive and a long line of carriages waited nose to tail, drivers stamping against the chill. Amelia counted them as she walked, skirts gathered against the damp gravel, and found the second carriage exactly where her father had promised, its door already open as though anticipating her.

She climbed inside gratefully, drawing the door shut behind her, and sank back against the squabs with a long breath she had not realized she'd been holding since the moment she'd opened her mouth to interrupt four dukes at once.

Well. She closed her eyes, listening to the muffled sounds of the ball receding behind her, the distant orchestra, imagining the low murmur of gossip she had no doubt was still spreading through that ballroom like water through cracked plaster. That is quite enough excitement for one evening, Duke of Ravensmere included.

She intended, quite firmly, to put the whole infuriating business, and the infuriating man at the center of it, entirely out of her mind before the carriage had even cleared the gates.

CHAPTER FOUR

The carriage door opened before Amelia had drawn a second full breath, and a man climbed in without so much as a glance at who already occupied it, settling himself against the opposite squab with the unhurried ease of someone perfectly certain of his welcome.

"Driver, Grosvenor⁠—"

"This is not your carriage."

He stopped mid-word and looked at her and in the wavering light of the carriage lamp Amelia watched recognition arrive on his face in stages: surprise, then something closer to disbelief, then, infuriatingly, amusement.

"You."

"Me," she agreed. "In my carriage. Which you have just climbed into."

"This is my carriage." He rapped once on the roof to forestall the driver, who had already begun to move, and the whole conveyance lurched to a reluctant halt.

He knocked again, and the horses started forward before she could protest, the city sliding past the window in a blur of torchlight and shadow. "Driver! Stop the carriage at once."

Nothing happened. The carriage rolled steadily on.

"He cannot hear you over the wheels," Amelia said, with more satisfaction than the situation strictly warranted.

"My coachman was told to wait second in line from the gate."