Page 40 of The Duke’s Defiant Love

She hesitated.

Julian smiled faintly.

"Curiosity is not a contract, Miss Hartwell."

That, strangely, reassured her.

"Very well."

He offered his arm.

"Then let us satisfy it."

She should have refused outright. She had turned the invitation over alle night and half the following day, telling herself firmly that a well-bred woman did not sneak from her own house to attend a gathering she had no business witnessing. And yet she had found, despite every sensible argument, that she could not stop thinking of Sebastian long enough to actually decline.

Julian handed her up the carriage, settling across from her with the same careful courtesy he'd shown from the start. "You may ask me anything on the way. I would rather you arrive prepared than frightened."

"What actually happens there."

"People talk more honestly than society permits elsewhere. Some of them do considerably more than talk. No one is obliged to do anything they have not chosen for themselves." He said it plainly, without embarrassment. "I will stay near enough that you need only ask, should you wish to leave."

The house, when they arrived, gave nothing away from the street, an ordinary door in an ordinary row, and it was only once she stepped past the threshold that the whole evening rearranged itself around her.

Two figures stood close together near the hearth, foreheads nearly touching, murmuring something that made them both smile before their mouths met, unhurried, entirely unconcerned with being seen.

Music drifted through the rooms. Candlelight caught against large mirrors and polished wood. Servants moved quietly with trays of wine. Laughter came from somewhere upstairs.

But it was the people that startled her. There was no rigid separation between men and women, no carefully maintained distance. No matrons watching from corners. People spoke freely, flirted openly and touched each other's hands without pretending it was accidental.

Amelia stopped just inside the doorway.

Julian noticed.

"Overwhelmed?"

"A little."

"That is understandable."

"I have never seen anything like this."

"That is rather the point."

A gentleman passed them with a woman on his arm, both laughing over some private joke.

Another couple stood beside the fireplace speaking in low voices about erotic literature as casually as if they were discussing the weather.

Amelia glanced toward Julian.

"Do people actually speak about such things here?"

"They speak about almost everything."

"Without embarrassment?"

"Embarrassment is terribly inefficient."

She gave him a look.