jerked herself upright. “The Duke of Wingate?” she squeaked. Setting Vallen down, Sylvia all but crawled on her knees over to the gossip columns. She frantically whipped paper after paper aside, flipping through, and then grabbed one. “The Duke of Wingate,” she whispered, jabbing at the pages.
Lila gave her head a shake. “It doesn’t change that I do not—”
“I’ve only been speaking to you about the gentleman for the better part of the morning, Lila.” Her sister caught her hand and gave it a firm squeeze. “The Lost Lord,” she mouthed.
“What . . . I . . . What business would he have with me?” To be precise, she didn’t know any dukes. She didn’t know any gentlemen . . . or any man. There’d been but one . . . Feeling her sister’s penetrating stare, Lila said once more, “I don’t know him.”
“Of course you don’t.” Sylvia stood and scooped up her son. “You don’t go anywhere that you might know him.”
Lila blinked. Did she imagine a double meaning to her sister’s words?
Wholly focused on the babe, however, Sylvia gave no hint of knowing.
Either way, it mattered not. Mansfield was mistaken. Lila didn’t deal in the living.
She concentrated on the servant. “Please explain to His Grace that he has me mistaken for another.”
Mansfield instantly proffered a wax-sealed note. “His Grace asked that I give you this.”
Her intrigue deepening, Lila took the missive. Sliding a finger under the crimson seal, she broke the wax and unfolded it.
Flittermouse,
I’ve come to call.
She gasped.
The letter fluttered from her fingers and landed at her lap.
“Lila?” her sister asked, concern in her tone. “What is it?”
Everything.
Her heart hammered.
It couldn’t be.
And yet . . . those words? They couldn’t belong to any man but the one who’d slipped out of her sister’s household a fortnight ago.
Fourteen long days it had been since she’d seen him. And her heart knocked extra hard at the prospect of again seeing him—even if it was under duplicitous origins. Even as she’d been scorched by his disdain and fury.
Smoothing her features, she very deliberately refolded the page. “Where have you shown the . . . gentleman?” How was her voice so even?
“I’ve shown His Grace to the parlor,” the butler said.
“His Grace,” she repeated back dumbly. It was impossible, and yet her sister’s servants would never question a visit from a proper duke. A notorious fighter, they would. A fighter who’d trailed his hands over her body as he’d schooled her on the most lethal blows to land. Guilt sluiced through Lila, and she studiously avoided looking at her sister. “Thank you, Mansfield.”
The butler turned to go, but stopped as his mistress came to her feet.
“Surely you’re not thinking to actually meet him, Lila? The man is a stranger to you.” Not allowing Lila so much as a chance to respond, she spoke to the head servant. “Mansfield, see the gentleman out.”
Mansfield bowed. “As you wish—”
“No.”
Lila’s quiet utterance froze the servant, and the poor butler, who ever aimed to please, wore a pained expression on his heavily wrinkled face.
Sylvia looked at her in confusion. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking to meet with the gentleman and see what reason he has come,” she said with a calm that belied her sister’s frantic tone.
Sylvia grabbed the copy of The London Inquisitor she’d been reading from out of Vallen’s hands, and giggling as if they played a game, the boy stretched fingers toward it.
“We know nothing of him,” Sylvia said, furiously shaking those pages, and her babbling son made another grab for the prize. “You know nothing other than he is unwelcome by society.”
Lila arched a brow. “And now you’d suggest I shouldn’t see him because of that past?”
Her sister blushed. “I didn’t say that.”
“No, but you may as well have.” That was what the world had been for Hugh. Her sister’s words, the reason he’d rightfully judged the ton. “For you’re just not explicitly stating what you think of a Lost Lord showing up here.” This was what Hugh had spoken of. This was why he despised a world she herself also abhorred. “You’ll say you feel regret for how the world has treated this gentleman, and mayhap even believe that . . . but the moment you’re expected to have dealings with him, you’ll treat him the same way as the rest of the world.”
“It’s not me he wants to have dealings with,” Sylvia cried out, “but you.”
Lila, whom the world sought to protect.
Vallen began to cry. “My-My-My.”
“Shh, dear angel. Here.” She