Chapter One

Margot’s ivory silk gloves clung damply to her palms as the hired carriage halted before the glittering façade of Grosvenor House. Lord Lionel’s gout had flared that very afternoon, striking with cruel precision and leaving her mother without their intended escort. Margot had lingered until the physician’s work was complete, only to follow alone—an unchaperoned arrival that would surely be noticed.

Her corset felt suddenly unforgiving, her ribs bound too tight for breath.

“And so it begins,” she whispered, pressing gloved fingers to the pulse fluttering in her throat.

The emerald silk gown she had once admired in her looking glass now seemed garish against the effortless elegance surrounding her. The doorman barely glanced at her card before ushering her inside, though his eyes flicked toward the grand foyer clock. Half past ten. An hour late.

Wonderful. Nothing proclaims one’s awkwardness like entering a ballroom once every guest has already settled in to observe.

The vast chamber unfolded before her: glittering chandeliers, walls gilded and mirrored in glass, every surface reflecting wealth and privilege. Yet for Margot, beauty only sharpened the ache of not belonging. Her gaze fell quickly on her family stationed along the far wall.

Her mother, Lady Honora Caldwell, stood with the same regal bearing that had once made her the toast of London. Though time had sharpened her beauty into severity—her cheekbones like carved marble, her auburn hair threaded with silver and drawn into an unforgiving knot—she remained an imposing figure. Even the set of her mouth suggested judgment, as though any softness had been trained out of her the moment scandal touched their family.

Beside her, Lydia looked like a porcelain angel—golden curls gleaming, pale blue muslin sprigged with embroidered flowers, every inch the darling of society.

Breathe, Margot commanded herself, forcing her feet to carry her forward. Simply locate Charlotte, offer your apologies for being late, and attempt to fade into the wallpaper until this interminable evening concludes.

She stepped forward—carefully. Fate, apparently bored, reached out and flicked her heel into the beadwork at the edge of her own emerald hem. She lurched, arms pinwheeling, and came down—calamity—against an elderly gentleman balancing two flutes of champagne on a single plate.

“Oh!” The cry escaped before she could stop it. Gold bubbles cascaded down his pristine coat. “I am so dreadfully—truly, sir, I—”

“Think nothing of it, my lady,” he said, already laughing as he dabbed his lapel with an immaculate handkerchief. His eyes were kind. “These floors have seen worse.”

Relief had time to rise only an inch before a voice like a lash cracked the air.

“Margot Fairleigh.”

The name, spoken in that precise register of maternal displeasure, could have frozen steam. Margot turned. Lady Honora advanced, every step an indictment.

“Mama—” Margot began, but Honora had already dipped the minimal curtsy the gentleman’s age required.

“Sir, I cannot express my horror at my daughter’s conduct,” she declared in tones meant for every ear within fifteen feet. Fans fluttered; whispers leapt like sparks finding tinder. “At five-and-twenty, one would expect some grace. Instead, she blunders like a ship without an anchor.”

Heat raced up Margot’s neck, a tide she could not outrun. Please, not here. Not now. She could survive anything but public humiliation administered by the one person whose approval she had never learned how to earn.

“Lady Honora.” The new voice arrived bright and dangerous as cut glass. Charlotte Everstone—hostess, friend, saviour—slipped to Margot’s side, dark eyes flashing beneath a feathered headpiece that would have looked ludicrous on any other woman and, on Charlotte, suggested a conquering general. “How fortunate London is to bask in your presence. Lydia,” she added, tilting a smile so sharp it could slice fruit, “radiant as always.”

Charlotte slid her arm through Margot’s, an anchor masquerading as a gesture of girlish affection. “I have been searching everywhere for you, dearest. The refreshment table is a wasteland without your ruthless discernment. Come—there are introductions waiting.”

They had almost escaped when Honora said, with a voice that implied obedience as a matter of course, “Charlotte, you remember my niece, Lady Lydia Everstone? A treasure to have with us this Season.”

Lydia glided forward, cheeks touched with cherub’s pink, and managed a curtsy that somehow resembled a sigh. At two-and-twenty, she seemed every poet’s muse made flesh—delicate, golden, untouched by awkwardness. Where Lydia shone, Margot stumbled. And their mother—Margot could not remember a time when Honora’s eyes had filled with unalloyed warmth for her.

“We shall cherish her,” Charlotte said very gravely, and tugged Margot away so smoothly it almost looked like choreography.

“Drink.” A glass of lemonade was thrust into Margot’s hand, coolness kissing her wrist through the glove. Charlotte positioned them with her back to the room, a small screen against further attack. “And stop looking as though you intend to collapse into the fernery.”

“I am a fool,” Margot said, taking an obedient sip. “Standing next to Lydia is like putting a carthorse in a line of racers.”

“Because your mother has rehearsed that comparison for you since you were twelve,” Charlotte retorted, voice low and fierce. “You are not invisible, Margot. You want to be seen. That is not weakness—it is human.”

Margot’s throat tightened. She wanted to laugh it away and could not. “Pathetic, though, isn’t it? To want to matter.”

“It is natural.” Charlotte’s expression softened, then sharpened again, conspirator’s light kindling behind her eyes. “Do you remember our summer dares? Speak to the blacksmith’s son. Dance with the curate who stammered so sweetly on p words. Steal a tart from Cook and eat it on the roof.”

“Charlotte,” Margot said, a helpless sound slipping into her voice. “We were twelve.”

“And yet the rule still stands.” Charlotte set down her own glass, as if freeing both hands for mischief. “Dare… or forfeit.”

Margot managed a laugh that contained rather more nerves than she liked. “Name it.”

“One real moment tonight,” Charlotte said softly. “Not empty pleasantries. Choose a gentleman who is safe and kind. Let him escort you to air. Speak honestly for five minutes—about something you care for, not what the room expects. And if you are mutually inclined at the end of it, accept a chaste kiss.” She smiled, wicked as a cat with cream. “Refuse, and the forfeit is simple: you will sing tomorrow at Lady Tinsley’s breakfast. Before Marlborough and his terrifying mother.”

Margot groaned. Lady Tinsley’s musicales were infamous for tufts of badly tuned courage offered up as entertainment. “You are unforgivable.”

“Say ‘wager accepted,’ and I shall sweeten the pot,” Charlotte murmured. “Succeed, and I will carve your name beside the first set at Mrs. Weatherby’s musicale—with a partner of your choosing.” She flicked a glance across the room, too fleeting to be anything but deliberate.

Margot followed it—and wished she had not. Near the card room doors, Philip Fairfax, Duke of Berkley, stood with the stillness of a man accustomed to being observed. Evening black cut mercilessly to his shape. Broad shoulders. The suggestion of strength even in repose. His hair—dark, and a fraction too long for strict fashion—caught the chandelier light and threw it back as a suggestion rather than a sparkle. And his face—

Their gazes met for the briefest heartbeat. Something flared in her chest. He looked away, as men like him always looked away from women like her: a glance, a swift assessment, a dismissal polished by years of practice.

Margot turned her head so sharply she nearly sloshed lemonade onto her glove. “I accept.”

“Good girl,” Charlotte whispered, and tipped her chin toward a pleasant-faced gentleman examining the punch bowl as if it might yield revelations. “Mr. William Hartwell, lately from Yorkshire. Impeccable manners. Generous heart. Exactly the sort of man who would never make you feel small.”

“Introduce me,” Margot said, before courage could decide it would very much prefer the fernery after all.

Charlotte obliged, drifting them across the floor with a hostess’s instinct for currents. Here, a nod to a dowager; there, a glance that herded a gaggle of debutantes out of their path without appearing to do any such thing. By the time they reached the table, Mr. Hartwell had already turned, alerted by Charlotte’s air of purposeful benevolence.

“Mr. Hartwell,” Charlotte sang out, “allow me to present Lady Margot Fairleigh. She has been hoping to consult you on a point of natural philosophy. Birds, in particular. How fortunate London is to have a gentleman who knows which end sings.”

Mr. Hartwell laughed, eyes crinkling. He was fair and a touch round through the middle, with an earnestness that reminded Margot of an eager retriever. “Miss—my lady, forgive me. What a pleasure. If there is one subject on which I can reliably bore a stranger, it is birds.”

“Then you shall find me most obligingly bored,” Margot said, and earned another laugh. Her voice steadied. “I have long admired their migrations. The idea that a creature can cross oceans and return to the same eave each year—how do they remember?”

“They don’t remember so much as they are guided,” he said, warming, and Charlotte’s eyes sparkled in approval. “By the earth’s magnetism, we think, and by the position of the stars. Their instincts draw a map no man has fully read.”

“I should like to borrow that map,” Margot murmured. To find my way back to a place I have not yet seen. She did not know she was going to say it until it was spoken.

Charlotte’s gloved fingers brushed the inside of Margot’s elbow. A tiny pressure. Good.

Within minutes, Charlotte had orchestrated the rest. She drew Margot into a small cluster where conversation turned, as it always did, to the dreadful morning column—The Morning Whisper, as if society’s appetite for malice were a dainty creature requiring gentling. Someone made a tart observation about its anonymous author’s talent for embroidery. Someone else pretended to defend it as a necessary mirror. Margot said nothing. Mirrors had not been kind to her this Season.

“Forgive me,” she said at last, laying a hand very gently against her temple. “The heat—would you mind terribly if we sought a breath of air?”

Mr. Hartwell was all gallantry. “My lady, I insist upon it.” He looked at Charlotte. “You will permit me the honour?”

“I am counting on it,” Charlotte said, so blandly innocent that only Margot recognized the dare sealed within. “The terrace is especially pleasant tonight.”

They found a path through the dance, skirting a cluster of girls who had learned to arrange themselves like ribbons around the most eligible gentlemen. Someone’s perfume—a heavy, powdery rose—clung briefly and then was gone. A footman opened one of the tall doors and bowed them out.

Air kissed her cheeks. The terrace stretched wide, pale stone balustrades warmed by the day’s sun, now giving back a faint stored breath of heat. Lanterns glowed at intervals, softening the dark to a chiaroscuro of silver and shadow. The ornamental lake lay beyond, taking the moon’s face into its own and breaking it upon the ripple of a breeze.

“Do sit, Lady Margot,” Mr. Hartwell urged, gesturing toward a stone bench sheltered by clipped yews. “You still appear pale.” He hesitated. “Forgive me—that sounded impertinent. I only meant—”

“That you are kind,” she said, and lowered herself, grateful for the cool stone under her thighs and the disguise of night for any untidy emotion. She drew a breath that was almost clean and decided to tell the truth, as the wager required. “Mr. Hartwell, may I be forward? Charlotte told me of your knowledge of birds. I have long been fascinated by their behaviour. I hoped you might indulge me.”

Delight animated his features. “How rare! You astonish me, Lady Margot. Society discourages such interests, I’m afraid—”

“Society discourages anything it cannot pin and label,” Margot said, and he laughed again, softer this time, surprised into it.

He spoke—first of swallows, then of starlings, and the great murmurations that could make a sky seem a breathing creature. He described rooks that recognized faces, crows that left gifts, albatrosses paired for decades. His words made a gentle architecture around them: the promise that curiosity could build a life even where society had stamped corridors and assigned doors.

“And when they display,” he said, leaning a fraction closer, “when the male shows himself, the feathers can be so extravagant as to seem absurd. Yet it is all for the female’s eye—a language of fitness and vigour and—”

“—and hope,” Margot said.

He blinked in pleased surprise. “I had not put it quite that way.”

They spoke on. Of plumage and instinct; of maps drawn in the blood. She asked about migration and memory—about why swallows returned to the same eaves, as if a house could become part of a bird the way a bird became part of a house. Her own words surprised her. In truth, she had not spoken so freely in months. Perhaps years. It did something strange in her chest, like a door unlatched.

Mr. Hartwell was as advertised: kind, respectable, safe. Exactly the sort of man who would never make her feel small. The sort of man a sensible woman would choose.

And yet—even as she listened and asked and smiled, her heart remained curiously still. She thought of Charlotte’s terms. One real moment. Five minutes of honesty. A chaste kiss if you are mutually inclined. The kiss was not the point. The point was the courage to invite one.

Courage. She could do courage.

She angled toward him. Don’t tremble, she instructed her hands, and to their credit, they obeyed. “Mr. Hartwell,” she said, lowering her voice so the word Mr. curled into something almost intimate, “there is something most compelling about a man of learning. I would like very much to continue such conversations.”

His eyes widened. Heat crept into his face. “Nothing would give me greater joy.”

“Then,” Margot said, heart tapping a nervous tattoo against her stays, “perhaps we might—”

“How charming,” drawled a sardonic voice.

The words fell like a shard of ice down the back of her gown. Margot turned, pulse vaulting, and saw him step from the shadows as if he had been cut out of them.

Philip Fairfax, Duke of Berkley.

He was not smiling. He was not anything so social as smiling. His presence consumed the garden with the inevitability of tide mastering shore—dark hair, broad shoulders, evening black tailored to ruthless perfection. He gave the impression of strength even when utterly still, and of threat even when he had not yet spoken.

But it was his gaze—fury wrapped in ice—that dried Margot’s throat.

“Your Grace—” Mr. Hartwell surged to his feet, flustered. “Lady Margot was unwell. I merely offered—”

“I see precisely what you offered.” The Duke’s voice was a blade tempered in scorn. “Did either of you consider how such intimacy appears? Alone. At this hour.”

Mr. Hartwell’s mouth opened and closed. “We intended nothing improper.”

“Intention is rarely the point,” the Duke said, and took a step closer. Lantern light caught gold flecks in his dark eyes. The hard line of his jaw suggested he had been born for commands and had never learned to tolerate exceptions. He stood too near, and yet not near enough to be accused. It was an artistry Margot hated instantly, perhaps because a small, treacherous part of her admired how precisely he controlled every inch of space around him.

Chapter Two

The way Philip pronounced the word intimate made it sound positively scandalous, as if she and Mr. Hartwell had been found in flagrante on the garden bench rather than merely sitting close enough to share a patch of moonlight.

Margot fought the childish urge to ask whether he made a habit of lurking in shrubbery. “There was nothing improper about our conversation,” she said instead, rising with what dignity she could gather. She lifted her chin—the small, familiar motion that had preceded her most spectacular acts of defiance since girlhood.

“Wasn’t there?” The Duke’s brows rose with the most infuriating shade of polite interest. He stepped closer, and that unyielding height of his seemed designed expressly to cow lesser mortals. “From where I stood, you were moments from allowing this gentleman liberties.”

The bluntness stung precisely because it grazed truth. Not Hartwell’s fault—never Hartwell’s—but hers. She, who had tilted her chin and angled herself just so, as if stage directions might conjure a heartbeat that refused to be summoned.

“How dare you,” she managed, breath trembling, “question Mr. Hartwell’s honour. He has been nothing but a gentleman.”

“Has he?” Philip’s attention flicked to Hartwell. The poor man drew in on himself like a hedgehog. “Then perhaps, sir, you can explain why this particular bench—secluded, unlit, and beyond easy supervision—proved essential to your discussion of migratory habits.”

Hartwell blanched. “I—I… Lady Margot felt unwell. I sought air on her behalf.”

“Enough,” Margot said, stepping between them. Her annoyance startled even herself. “Mr. Hartwell offered kindness when I asked for it. If you are concerned with propriety, Your Grace, perhaps begin by examining your own—these accusations are offensive.”

The words fell between them like a gauntlet. Philip looked down at her—truly looked—and in the lamplight something flickered across his features that was not anger at all. Surprise, perhaps. Interest. Or the very male recognition that a creature he had expected to scold had flicked her claws.

“My behaviour?” His voice softened to silk, which was somehow worse. “I am not the one who arranged what any observer might call an assignation.”

“Assignation?” Outrage rose, thin and hot. “We were speaking.”

“Alone. At this hour.” He stepped in again, until moonlight cut a keen edge over his cheekbones and heat radiated from him like a challenge. “You led a gentleman to a remote corner of the garden and permitted a degree of—” his mouth tightened—“proximity. Tell me, Lady Margot: to what end?”

Performance. The word flared behind her eyes like a brand. Because that was what it had been—Charlotte’s wager played out in living tableau, with an unwitting Hartwell cast as partner and the hoped-for kiss as curtain.

Behind the Duke, Hartwell shifted, desperate to escape. Margot felt a flash of ridiculous protectiveness. Go, you dear man. You’ve been brave enough already.

Before she could speak, Charlotte’s voice carried across the path, bright with hostess concern. “There you are! I began to worry when I couldn’t find you.”

Hartwell seized his reprieve. “Miss Everstone.” He bowed, studiously failing to meet the Duke’s gaze. “The evening grows chill. Perhaps we should return?”

“An excellent notion,” Charlotte said, eyes skating over the tableau—a soldier reading a battlefield. “The next set forms shortly.”

“Actually,” Philip said mildly, which was how men like him made commands, “I should like a brief word with Lady Margot to clear a misunderstanding.”

Charlotte’s mouth set. “I hardly think—”

“We will remain in full view of the terrace,” he said, that effortless authority smoothing his words to inevitability. “Two minutes.”

Charlotte’s glance found Margot’s, threaded with promise. Shout, and the troops descend. Aloud, she said, “Of course. Mr. Hartwell, if you’ll escort me—Margot, I’ll wait on the terrace.”

They went. Silence expanded, taut as a bowstring.

Philip did not crowd her, not quite. He stood with the measured stillness of a man accustomed to being obeyed and let the night do its whispering work. When he spoke, his voice was quieter than she expected. “Now. Suppose you tell me what this evening was really about.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Don’t you?” His mouth tipped, not quite amusement. “I am not blind, Lady Margot, to the… machinations of young ladies determined to prove something to themselves.”