Page 2 of Kathryn

All five women goggled at her.

“Have you no shame?” Letty managed, the only one who appeared capable of speech.

“Not much,” Katie admitted.

Letty crossed her arms. “I know Elizabeth Morecombe, and she is a lovely person. I would never kiss her husband.”

Katie shrugged. “I already told you that you don’t have to—”

“I don’t care if he is married; I will kiss Morecombe,” Elinor said.

Katie lifted an eyebrow at the other girl’s brazen claim, and Elinor’s cheeks blazed with color, but she did not lower her eyes. Katie was impressed. Who would have guessed that Elinor had so much grit?

“Who else is on there?” Caroline demanded, her blue eyes sparkling.

Elinor continued, “Viscount Telford, Baron Fowler”—she cut Katie an exasperated look. “That is hardly fair!”

“Why not?”

“You are friends with Fowler. He will kiss you just to help you win.”

Katie gave a genuine laugh. Angus Fowler, the Duke of Chatham’s best friend, treated Katie the same way he did a woodlouse—a harmless nuisance to be tolerated but never encouraged. “If you believe Fowler would help me do anything you clearly don’t know as much as you think you do.”

Caroline frowned. “I still don’t—”

Elinor’s squeal made the rest of them wince. “Dulverton!”

Katie gave the little blonde a withering glance. “Perhaps you might screech that a bit louder, Elinor. There are probably a few people at the far end of Berkeley Square who didn’t hear you.”

Elinor’s mouth clamped shut and she glanced around nervously at a cluster of wallflowers not too far away. Several of them were staring at Katie’s group with yearning, but she doubted the other women could hear their conversation over the din of the ballroom.

“The Duke of Dulverton?” Letty repeated, taking the list from Elinor’s unresisting fingers, as if she needed to confirm the name with her own eyes.

“He is worth ten points, while everyone else is worth only one. Just think, Letty, you could win with only one kiss,” Katie said, amused by their dismayed faces.

Letty snorted. “He should be worth a hundred because he never comes to London during—”

“He is here tonight,” Julia contradicted smugly, looking to Katie for approval.

Katie nodded. “For once, Julia is right.” She ignored Julia’s huff of outrage and added, “Dulverton arrived just a few minutes before you did.”

“A fat lot of good that will do us,” Caroline groused. “He hasn’t danced a single set. All he’s been doing is talking to some old man.”

Six pairs of eyes slid toward where the massive, tow-headed duke loomed over a much shorter, rotund, gray-haired man. Katie could not help noticing how the people around the duke were all stealing furtive glances at him, as if Dulverton was a rare mythical beast that had wandered into their midst. Katie supposed an unmarried duke who was not an octogenarian was about as common as a unicorn.

“How will we ever kiss the man if he doesn’t dance or talk to any of us?” Julia demanded.

“That is your problem,” Katie said. She already had several ideas but had no intention of sharing them because she was going to win this contest.

“But he is so very ugly,” Caroline whined. “I cannot imagine kissing him, even if I could get near enough.”

Even from this distance it was clear that Caroline’s words, however unkind, were true. Not only did the duke have the hulking body of a common laborer rather than a gentleman of leisure but his nose was a veritable beak, and his jaw, while chiseled and square, jutted far too aggressively to be handsome. He had deeply set eyes and shadows lurked in the harsh angles of his face and beneath his heavy brow. It was a face that would have been more at home on a gothic carving than a peer of the realm.

His golden-brown skin contrasted bizarrely with his hair, which was a pale cornsilk color usually only seen on very young children. The unusual shade might have been appealing had it not been shorn as short as a sheep in June.

Caroline shivered. “He frightens me. Ten points is not enough for kissing him,” she said, her words causing nervous laughter.

“You needn’t kiss Dulverton nor anyone else in the room,” Katie snapped, for some reason annoyed by their girlish twittering. She swept the group with a contemptuous look. “You needn’t play at all.”