He turned over to punctuate the point, likely not realizing that the coverlets did not conceal his back. Walking to the adjoining door, Caroline could not help stealing a glance, knowing it would be a long while before she could remove the vision of those broad shoulders and that sculpted muscle out of her mind… and wondering why on earth there were butterflies loose in her stomach.
“If I had known you would be here, I would never have come in,” she said as she passed, knowing he was not yet asleep. “Whatever you say or whatever you might think of me, my intentionsweregood.”
He did not reply, but she hoped she had given him something to consider.
CHAPTER ONE
THREE MONTHS LATER…
“You can borrow my reticule if you would like,” Caroline said in a mischievous voice, sidling up to Dickie.
He stood in an alcove on the edge of the Greenfield House ballroom, plainly doing his best to hide from the swarm of guests he had invited to celebrate his instatement as Earl of Greenfield. The news had been announced a fortnight ago, and Dickie was never one to resist a reason to throw a grand party. Even less so, now that he had his own inheritance to put on gatherings with.
“Your reticule?” Dickie asked, chuckling grimly as his eyes darted this way and that. “You do not think I am already drawing enough attention to myself?”
Caroline smiled. “I thought you could use it to bat away the unceasing tide of eligible young ladies who seem determined to become your countess. I have never much cared for hunting, but seeing you like this, I have begun to feel an even greater pity for the fox.”
“I brought it on myself,” he lamented. “I should have known what would happen.”
Caroline nodded. “Indeed, you should. The invitation said, ‘a ball of celebration,’ and all the mothers of society read, ‘a chance for a wedding.’ Quite foolish of you, really.”
“You are not helping,” he replied. “If you came over just to torment me, you can take your teasing elsewhere. I am enduring enough of it from Max, who cannot stop saying ‘I told you so.’ For someone so proper and respectable, he does delight in my misery.”
Caroline flinched at the mention of Max’s name. They had bumped into one another here and there since her ill-fated excursion to his bedchamber at the Grayling Estate, and though he was always polite and courteous, their brief conversations never failed to be painfully awkward.
Worst of all, those encounters seemed to happen just as Caroline was forgetting the image of his bare chest and back, gleaming like a marble statue in the moonlight.
“You should have proposed to me when you had the chance,” she said with a wry grin.
Dickie pulled a face. “Goodness, what an awful thought.”
“If you are going to be rude, I shall whistle and reveal your location to all and sundry.” She put her fingers to her lips, toying with him.
He chuckled. “I would have made you twice as miserable as I am feeling right now. You know it to be true.” He leaned in. “Although, it is rather flattering to think that me and you are the first pairing that my sister got wrong.”
“You know as well as I do that she panicked,” Caroline replied. “And when you look at the two of us, you can see how desperate she must have been. It remains a sore point of embarrassment that I considered you, though. We would have yawned our way through life, bored to tears of one another within a year.”
He feigned a pout. “Now, who is being rude?”
“Honest, never rude.” She laughed softly, swiping two glasses of punch off a tray as a servant passed by.
She handed one to Dickie and cradled her own, observing the cheerful ball that was well underway. The seasons had changed, summer blending into the chill of autumn, and not so many people were venturing out onto the terraces, preferring the warmth of the ballroom and the exertion of the dancing.
To Caroline, it seemed like a lifetime ago that the Matchmaker’s letters had come to her. She had, eventually, shown Dickie the note she had received, and they had joined forces to ask Anna what on earth she had been thinking. Anna had explained herself, rather apologetically, adding that she had intended tosend another letter to Caroline, telling her that the suggestion had been a mistake, but her identity had been discovered before she could do so.
They had laughed about it, all had been forgiven, and the entire debacle had become something of a running joke between Caroline and Dickie, especially.
“I doubt we would have been bored of one another, but there would have been no heirs; that is for certain.” Dickie took a hearty drink of his punch. “You are as much a little sister to me now as Anna is.”
Caroline nodded, quite pleased with that assessment. “And you are the troublesome brother I never had.”
“Daniel has never caused trouble?” Dickie clicked his tongue. “Come now, in his younger, bachelor years he was assuredly a wild thing. And do not forget that he has traveled the world—he has probably seen and done things that you could not imagine.”
Caroline covered her ear with her free hand, humming loudly. “And I do not wish to hear it, nor would Phoebe.”
“Granted, there are few gentlemen in society who are as loyal and doting as your brother to his wife.” Dickie paused, tilting his head to one side. “Come to think of it, every last member of the Spinsters’ Club has succeeded in gaining a husband who does not even glance at other ladies when they think their wife is not looking. I suspect it was never a Spinsters’ Club at all, but acoven for witches, casting spells of love and obsession over those poor, unsuspecting gentlemen.”
Caroline snorted, secretly liking that notion. “You are calling your own sister a witch?”
