Tall, Duke, and Dangerous (Hazards of Dukes #2) - Megan Frampton Page 0,6

want to do? a tiny voice murmured in her head.

I don’t know, but I want it to be my choice, Ana Maria replied.

But for now she was choosing her own gown for the evening. She sighed in satisfaction as she regarded it. It was the most outrageously opulent gown she had ever owned, but that wasn’t saying much, since until six months ago her gowns had been the duchess’s lady’s maid’s castoffs.

But even when measured with opulent gowns in general, this one was opulent. It was made of a silver fabric, but that wasn’t its entirety; it had tiny puffed sleeves made of sheer netting, while the body of the gown had small clear gems sewn on, only a few at first, then cascading to gather in a momentum of brilliance at the bottom.

“It’s the kind of gown,” Jane said in a worried tone, “that wears you more than you wear it. You have no experience wearing this kind of thing. I don’t even know how we’re going to do your hair either.”

Jane’s words, spoken with love, nonetheless shot straight to the heart of Ana Maria’s insecurities. Worry that she wouldn’t be accepted in her world paired with an equal worry that she would be, thus making her precisely like every other lady prancing about on dance floors and sipping tea.

It was an oxymoron, but it was her oxymoron, so it made sense to her.

“But that’s precisely why I should be wearing it,” Ana Maria reasoned. She couldn’t resist reaching out to stroke the gown, its thin fabric a silky whisper under her fingers. “I want to begin as I mean to go on, and I won’t hide at the corner of ballrooms, embarrassed about my past.” Even though that would be my preference. “If I am to make my way in this world as it seems you and everyone else who knows me wants me to, I will do it my way—wearing beautiful gowns, unashamed of my past and my heritage, and if someone does not like that, then I do not want them in my life.”

Bold words from a woman who had only recently begun to be bold. Begin as you mean to go on.

“You’re going to look absolutely spectacular in this,” Jane warned. “I just hope you’re up to the challenge.”

“I am,” Ana Maria promised, vowing to herself as much as to her maid.

She was not, as she soon discovered, up to the challenge.

Ana Maria stood at the entrance to the ballroom, her cousin Thaddeus at her side, holding her breath as she surveyed the crowd.

So many people, none of whom she knew. Of course not, how would she have met them? Unless they accidentally stumbled into the duchess’s kitchen when she was sweeping the ashes from the stove. And even then they would have looked over her head, or anywhere but at her, since she was clearly a lowly servant and they were—well, they were the cream of Society. People who wouldn’t have the first idea of what to do with a stove, much less how to clean it.

First you had to assemble your tools: a brush, a dustpan, a piece of cloth destined for the garbage. Then you had to clean from the back forward, using patience to collect all the ashes and scrape the stuck-on bits.

Thoughts that would no longer be of use to her. Now she needed to know how to sweep into a room, not sweep out a stove.

It was just far more intimidating than a pile of ashes. Though far less dirty.

The room was enormous, cleared of all furniture except for the chairs that lined the walls and a large table that held a sparkling bright punch bowl, filled with some sort of enticing pinkish-red beverage.

The musicians sat on a raised dais diagonally to the right of where Ana Maria and Thaddeus stood while footmen weaved in and around the crowd bearing massive silver salvers holding champagne glasses. The music had just stopped, and Ana Maria could hear the low chatter of people exchanging pleasantries. Or gossip that would shred someone’s reputation in a single whispered word.

“Breathe,” Thaddeus commanded.

“Perhaps I can give a short lecture on stove management,” Ana Maria muttered. The thought made her chuckle, which then had the effect of forcing her to breathe.

“Pardon?” Thaddeus said.

She shook her head. “Nothing. Just working on breathing.” As you ordered.

Thaddeus had, until recently, been in command of an army regiment, and still spoke as though everyone was serving under him. Of course,