Eleven Scandals to Start to Win a Duke's Heart (Love By Numbers #3)(11)

And then he would finish what she had started all those months ago.

And he would bring her to heel in an entirely different way.

He fisted his hands at his sides to keep his body from acting on the promise of his imagination. There was nothing he could do that would be more damaging than feeding the unwelcome desire he felt for this impossible female.

He simply had to remember that he was in the market for the perfect duchess.

And Miss Juliana Fiori was never going to be that.

No matter how well she filled out his favorite chair.

It was time to wake the girl up.

And send her home.

Chapter Three

Ladies’ salons are hotbeds of imperfection.

Exquisite ladies need not linger within.

—A Treatise on the Most Exquisite of Ladies

Surely there is no place more interesting in all of London than the balcony beyond a ballroom . . .

—The Scandal Sheet, October 1823

“I thought that your season was over and we were through with balls!”

Juliana collapsed onto a settee in a small antechamber off the ladies’ salon of Weston House and let out a long sigh, reaching down to massage the ball of her foot through her thin slipper.

“We should be,” her closest friend Mariana, the newly minted Duchess of Rivington, lifted the edge of her elaborate blue gown and inspected the place where her hem had fallen. “But as long as Parliament remains in session, seasonal balls will be all the rage. Every hostess wants her autumnal festivity to be more impressive than the last. You only have yourself to blame,” Mariana said wryly.

“How was I to know that Callie would start a revolution in entertaining on my behalf?” Calpurnia, Mariana’s sister and Juliana’s sister-in-law, had been charged with smoothing Juliana’s introduction to London society upon her arrival that spring. Once summer had arrived, the marchioness had recommitted herself to her goal. A wave of summer balls and activities had kept Juliana in the public eye and kept the other hostesses of the ton in town after the season was long finished.

Callie’s goal was a smart marriage.

Which made Juliana’s goal survival.

Waving a young maid over, Mariana pulled a thimble of thread from her reticule and handed it to the girl, who was already crouching down to repair the damage. Meeting Juliana’s gaze in the mirror, she said, “You are very lucky that you could cry off Lady Davis’s Orange Extravaganza last week.”

“She did not really call it that.”

“She did! You should have seen the place, Juliana . . . it was an explosion of color, and not in a good way. Everything was orange—the clothes . . . the floral arrangements . . . the servants had new livery, for heaven’s sake . . . the food—”

“The food?” Juliana wrinkled her nose.

Mariana nodded. “It was awful. Everything was carrot-colored. A feast fit for rabbits. Be grateful you were not feeling well.”

Juliana wondered what Lady Davis—a particularly opinionated doyenne of the ton—would have thought if she had attended, covered in scratches from her adventure with Grabeham the week prior.

She gave a little smile at the thought and moved to restore half a dozen loose curls to their rightful places. “I thought that now you are a duchess, you do not have to suffer these events?”

“I thought so, too. But Rivington tells me differently. Or, more appropriately, the Dowager Duchess tells me differently.” She sighed. “If I never see another cornucopia, it will be too soon.”

Juliana laughed. “Yes, it must be very difficult being one of the most-sought-after guests of the year, Mariana. What with being madly in love with your handsome young duke and having all of London spread before you.”

Her friend’s eyes twinkled. “Oh, it’s a wicked trial. Just wait. Someday you’ll discover it for yourself.”

Juliana doubted it.

Nicknamed the Allendale Angel, Mariana had made quick work of meeting and marrying her husband, the Duke of Rivington, in her first season. It had been the talk of the year, an almost instant love match that had resulted in a lavish wedding and a whirlwind of social engagements for the young couple.

Mariana was the kind of woman whom people adored. Everyone wanted to be close to her, and she never lacked for companionship. She had been the first friend that Juliana had made in London; both she and her duke had made it a priority to show the ton that they accepted Juliana—no matter what her pedigree.

At Juliana’s first ball, it had been Rivington who had claimed her first dance, instantly stamping her with the approval of his venerable dukedom.

So different from the other duke who had been in attendance that evening.

Leighton had shown no emotion that night, not when she’d met his cool honeyed gaze across the ballroom, not when she’d passed close to him on the way to the refreshment table, not when he’d stumbled upon her in a private room set apart from the ball.

That wasn’t precisely true. He had shown emotion there. Just not the kind she had wished.

He’d been furious.

“Why didn’t you tell me who you were?”

“Does it matter?”

“Yes.”

“Which part? That my mother is the fallen Marchioness of Ralston? That my father was a hardworking merchant? That I haven’t a title?”

“All of it matters.”