Page 7 of Duke of Wickedness
“Of course,” she said. “Goodnight.” She squeezed Catherine’s hand, then bobbed a curtsey to the duke.
She didn’t know what possessed her, but as she headed toward the exit, she chanced a glance backward.
The Duke of Wilds was still watching her. And, as she met his gaze, he gave her a most irritating, most irregular wink.
CHAPTER 2
“I’m terribly sorry for the wait, my lady,” the coachman said to Ariadne as he hopped down from the driver’s box.
“Not at all,” she assured the man.
Ariadne knew that hostesses desired for their balls to be a dreadful crush, so that the gossip pages would write about how popular and successful the evening had been, but it did make for quite the crowd when people tried to leave.
The poor coachman had had a devil of a time trying to pull the carriage around. Ariadne had struggled not to shiver as she’d waited; spring had come to the daytime, but the evenings had not yet gotten the message, it seemed, that this meant it ought to be cool and pleasant instead of chilly and damp.
Standing alone had made the waiting all the more challenging. Percy and Catherine had offered to retrieve her from home, sincethey’d been attending together, but Ariadne had brushed off the suggestion when they’d made it earlier in the week.
Xander and Helen had been scheduled to spend the evening at home with their daughter, Cornelia, so the carriage was free. It simply made more sense for Ariadne to meet them at the ball, rather than sending her sister and brother by marriage on an extra voyage through Mayfair’s busy streets.
She’d made that decision based on pragmatism.
She hadn’t considered that doing so would remind her that she was just a bit lonely—that maybe her desire to find a husband this Season wasn’t exclusively about wanting to be out of her siblings’ way as they started their lives and their marriages.
In the cold, misty night, she had to admit that maybe, just maybe, she wanted something that was just hers.
She would later blame this loneliness for the absolutely madcap idea that seized her next.
She was just about to let the coachman hand her up into Xander’s carriage when something caught her eye.
No, not something.
Someone.
The Duke of Wilds, lamplight glinting off that hair that, though technically brown, had just enough burnished color that it seemed to gleam an illuminated bronze.
His words came back to her.
I will see Hershire at…an event we are both scheduled to attend.
Now that she thought about it, thathadbeen mysterious and evasive, hadn’t it? And, to be certain, that could have been because flirtation came as naturally to the duke as breathing. But something about the vagueness of thateventpiqued her curiosity.
“John,” she said slowly to the coachman, “do you see that carriage up there?”
Pointing was technically less efficient than saying “that carriage with the Duke of Wilds’ crest on it,” but if she dared say the man’s name aloud, Ariadne feared she would be overcome with the folly of what she was about to do.
“Ah, yes, my lady?”
“Follow it,” she ordered—and then quickly entered the carriage and pulled the door shut behind her before she could think better of the request.
John Coachman hesitated only for a moment before Ariadne heard him mount back up into the driver’s box, then click softly to the horses to guide them back out onto the street.
She didn’t dare look out the carriage windows as they clattered along.
“You are being a lunatic, Ariadne Lightholder,” she told herself, trying to imagine what advice Catherine would give her—and not the Catherine who was desperately in love, but the past version of her sister, the one who had made such sensible arguments aswhy marmalade does not belong on one’s hairorI promise you, one day you will be thankful that you learned how to do sums, even if practicing them is boring.
“Following a man’s carriage to an unknown location is very foolish,” she told herself, her voice lacking conviction. “He could be going anywhere. He could be leaving London! He could be going to visit his great aunt.”
She admitted that this last option seemed a touch unlikely, in fairness.
