Page 84 of A Virgin to Tempt the Duke

“You look wonderful,” Anna said. “You are so radiant!”

“I feel wonderful,” Rachel said. “Have you had a chance to speak with Thomas? He has been looking for you.”

“I have been waiting to find him unoccupied for longer than two minutes.”

“That is fair,” Rachel laughed. “I fear the same fate is mine. Please… find me later? We can get some air on the terrace.”

“Sounds like a plan,Lady Larthby,” Anna said when she was pulled into the next throng of guests, and the evening moved on.

After a few passing conversations and flutes of champagne, Anne ended up near the balcony windows, breathing a moment’s space between conversations. She saw the moment Lady Oldbarrow found Rachel. Anna was close enough to overhear.

“My dear girl.” Lady Oldbarrow took both of Rachel’s hands and held them. “He is a good man. I have known him nearly as long as his own mother has, and I tell you so with full knowledge of his history and no illusions whatsoever about his character.” She paused. “He will make you work for it, at intervals. All the best ones do. But he is good, and he is capable of great loyalty, and he has looked at you tonight like a man who has found the thing he didn’t know he was looking for. Bravo, my girl. Your mother would be proud.”

“Thank you,” she said quietly. “That means more than I can easily say.”

“It is only the truth.” Lady Oldbarrow released her hands and patted her cheek once. “Now, go and find your young man. He is over there trying to have a conversation with Lord Barker, and he looks like he is suffering.”

Thomas found Anna before she found him, appearing at her shoulder with a glass of champagne she hadn’t asked for but accepted wholeheartedly. They started walking about the room, and he fell into step beside her effortlessly.

“I understand I am meant to be congratulated,” he said. “And threatened.”

“In that order certainly,” Anna agreed. “Congratulations. She is my dearest friend in the world, and if you make her unhappy?—”

“I know, I know. You are not the first to say such words. I suspect Frederick will have broken most of the relevant bones before you get the opportunity,” he said as he gestured across the room.

Anna followed his gaze before she could stop herself and found that Frederick was looking right back at her. Their eyes met across the length of the room. It was a second, no more. Full of electricity and heat and fire, and then nothing. He looked back at his guests, and she looked back at Thomas, and neither of them acknowledged what had happened.

“He will be glad to have her well settled,” Anna said, a pleasant smile plastered across her face. “He has worried about her a great deal.”

“He has worried about her a great deal,” Thomas agreed, then raised an eyebrow. “He worries about the people he loves with a thoroughness that leaves very little room for anything else. Including himself.”

Anna looked down at her glass and began to trace the bottom with her finger.

“He will find his way,” she said, in the same pleasant tone that was beginning to sound effortful (even to herself).

“Anna.” Thomas said her name quietly, not unkindly, and when she looked up at him, his eyes were on her. “You don’t need to do that with me.”

She held his gaze for a moment. Then she looked down once more, which was an admission of a kind, and he accepted it without pressing it. A quality he shared with his soon-to-be wife. Anna decided then that she really liked him.

“I am not judging anyone,” he said, carefully. “Not you. Not Frederick. And I want to be clear that nothing you say here goes further than the two of us. I am speaking as your friend, new as this role may be. And as his, which is older than I care to admit.” He was quiet a moment. “He is not a simple man, whatever he may appear to those on the outside. You may have gathered that already.”

“I have gathered something of it.”

“His father…” He paused, and Anna felt her stomach grow tight. “It is not my story to tell. And I won’t tell it. But I want you to understand that Frederick has been carrying things alone since he was 13, things that most men would have… lesser men would have…” He stopped again. “He learned, when he was very young, that he was the one who kept things together. That composure was his vocation, and everyone else’s comfort was his responsibility, and his own…”

“Aas not the priority?”

“Yes. And that takes some time to unlearn. Do you understand?”

Anna was quiet. Around them the party continued its bright hum.

“His father,” she said, at last, not quite a question.

Thomas met her eyes. “It’s not mine to say.”

“No,” she said.

She looked across the room again. Frederick was talking to Rachel now, his head bent toward his sister’s. There was something in his face, a devotion that he didn’t show the rest of the room. Anna could see the real warmth, the unguarded version of Frederick. She felt so drawn to the part of him that existed under all the careful composure, like a moth to a flame.