Lucie had to yet see such a thing.

But if anyone could hope to do both, it had to be Annabelle, hadn’t it. “It’s your prerogative to wish for however much you want,” she said.

Besides, even to her bitter crone eyes, it was obvious that the duke was besotted with Annabelle. He wasn’t an expressive man but inevitably, his attention shifted and settled on his wife, wherever she happened to be in the room. In terms of affection, their union appeared balanced. It was hardly degrading to fawn over a man who was fawning right back.

“What are you going to do now, about the pamphlets?” she asked. “Is the prince terribly annoyed?”

Annabelle scoffed. “Between the two of us, I think he’s dying from ennui, so he is grateful for diversion of any kind. That said, he doesn’t suffer provocations against his person gladly.”

“I imagine—what will you do?”

Annabelle smiled without humor. “Montgomery already convinced him that the pamphlets were the idea of some inebriated ladies in the wee hours after the ball; a wager between foolish women.”

“Ingenious. The most expedient way to take the gravity out of any situation.”

“Of course. No red-blooded male would concern himself with such a frivolous matter.”

“The women, however, are another kettle of fish,” muttered Lucie, remembering the turned backs, Lady Salisbury’s piercing eyes . . . her mother’s seething embarrassment. “They think I tried to make a fool of a duke. Or tried to draw attention. The question is, who did it? And why? Are there any clues?”

Annabelle’s face darkened. “Nothing yet. Montgomery has plenty of detractors among his guests who would like to make him look less than in control.”

“As do I,” Lucie murmured.

Annabelle’s eyes widened. “You think this was directed against you?”

“That was my first thought, although why someone would go to such lengths—oh.” A thought struck her, and it sent her stomach plummeting straight to the floor. She knew one person who might have a rather acute interest in sabotaging her credibility. Someone who had ample experience with playing cruel pranks on her. Tristan.

Her palms turned damp, and she noted that her heart was pounding.

“We will find out whoever it was,” Annabelle said, confidence in her voice. “In the meantime, the whole affair is only a provocation if we make it so. As long as we make light of it, the people who continue to take offense will look terribly gauche. No one here wants to look gauche.”

This was true. She still reached for her bag. Mollified prince or not, the thought of spending another day under covert scrutiny made her skin crawl. The magic of last night, the warmth of Tristan’s hands, the easy laughter and champagne, it had gone in a blink, leaving her chest feeling hollow. Her body was reacting far too strongly to a potential betrayal by Tristan Ballentine.

Annabelle folded her hands in her lap. “Lucie, I don’t want to pry, but . . .”

“Go on?”

“Is there something that is troubling you? If I may say so, you do seem a little angry lately.”

She chortled. “I’m always angry.”

Annabelle shook her head. “This is different. If you wish to speak about something in confidence, I am here.”

Half an hour ago, she would have appreciated the offer. But if Tristan had scattered the Citizen around Claremont, she was back to despising him, a simple emotion that required no further analysis.

A flurry of knocks hit the door, and Hattie and Catriona tumbled into the room a moment later.

“I told you so,” Hattie said as she flung herself onto the bed. “Did I not tell you so?” And, when everyone looked at her blankly, she raised her hands toward the ceiling. “Whenever the four of us attend an event, there’s a scandal.” She shot Lucie a speaking glance. “And this had absolutely nothing to do with me not controlling my intuition.”

Annabelle looked from Hattie to Lucie to Catriona. “Has she taken leave of her senses?”

“Never mind,” said Catriona, and claimed the last available space on the mattress. “Do we have a suspect? Do we know whether Lucie or Montgomery was the target?”

Hattie nodded. “And we need a plan how we will catch the culprit and keep the awkwardness contained at a reasonable level until our departure.”

Lucie’s heartbeat slowed. The hollowness in her chest filled with warmth, and she surveyed her friends with a lump in her throat. “No culprit yet,” she said. “But we will pretend to be unbothered.”

“We are unbothered,” Annabelle said firmly.

Then she rang the bell to order up a tray with a full breakfast for Lucie and more tea and pastries for everyone.

* * *

Tristan arrived in the breakfast room bleary-eyed and in need of coffee, black as tar, please. The ball had petered out shortly after midnight, which was when he had convinced a handful of gentlemen including the duke’s younger brother, Lord Peregrin, that it was necessary to play vingt-et-un in Claremont’s blue smoking room. They had dealt cards and poured drinks until everyone was red-eyed and badly disheveled. He had emerged victorious from a drawn-out battle of card games, but because he had still been clearheaded enough to think obsessive thoughts about a certain woman in red, he had coaxed young Lord Peregrin into raiding Montgomery’s port cabinet. The lad, easily inspired because he was only nineteen, had selected an impressively ancient bottle that was now giving him an equally impressive headache.

It was always the last bottle that did it, he surmised as he surveyed the empty breakfast buffet with a vise clamping down on his skull. He beckoned one of the footmen lining the brocade-papered walls, because it appeared that Montgomery’s spartanic household really did clear the breakfast tables before one o’clock. He asked that the footman bring up a breakfast tray and to come find him outside at the back of the house.

Light glared through the tall glass doors leading to the terrace, right into his pounding brain. He squinted. He should have taken a back exit, away from the crowds. The whole regiment of house party guests was promenading out here and in the French Garden below in their Sunday finery.

He was about to retreat when she found him.

“My lord!”

Cecily was bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked, because she hadn’t been drinking and gambling until past the darkest hour. She was of a mind to take a turn around the French Garden, she told him, the hope that he accompany her written plainly in her eyes, while Lucie’s ever-present mother raked him with a cool glare. Unlike innocent Ceci, Lady Wycliffe was not fooled by his meticulously assembled attire and too-tight cravat knot but saw the brandy and port still sloshing in his innards.

He wanted to tell everyone to bugger off.

What he did was offer Cecily his arm, and her small hand latched on with a surprising grip.

She chattered about something as he descended the steps leading to the French Garden—the weather, presumably.

His attention was consumed by the group of women coming toward them at a leisurely pace, their arms entwined, their merry voices drifting toward him. Lucie and her lady friends.

Lady Catriona, the Greenfield daughter, and the duchess returned his greeting when they passed each other.

Lucie gave him a dark, assessing stare, and he just knew she considered him guilty of something. He nearly stopped right then, to demand what had ruffled her feathers, but an ice wall rose around Lady Wycliffe when the quartet passed them by, and short of abandoning the woman on his arm in full sight of the ton and run after another, there was nothing he could do but move along.

“The duchess is very generous,” Cecily murmured as he led her deeper into the garden. “Though some people say it reveals her own radical inclinations to be so forgiving of such a prank.”

He squinted, evidently still too drunk to follow. “A prank?”

“Haven’t you heard?” Cecily said, her voice hushed. “Apparently, Lady Lucie left some radical suffrage pamphlets around Claremont so that the Prince of Wales could find them.”

His expression didn’t change, but she now had his full attention. “Did she say it was her?”

Cecily gave him a puzzled look. “No. At least I did not hear her confess,” she added quickly.

“Ah well. Then it wasn’t her.”

“How certain you are,” Cecily said, her blue eyes amazed.

“It’s a pointless provocation, which is stupid, and considering the duchess is her friend, it would also be disloyal. Your cousin is neither stupid nor disloyal.”

Cecily’s smile was sugary enough to make a man’s teeth ache. “You know my cousin well.”

“You don’t have to know her well to know this about her.”

“How quick you are to judge a person’s character,” Cecily marveled. “Do you think it is your observant writer’s eye?”

Mother of God, help, he thought as he smiled at Cecily so brilliantly, she tripped over her own feet.

Lucie ambushed him on his way back to the breakfast room. She looked as warm as black ice, and he knew he should have had a coffee first before engaging with that.

“Did you do it?” she demanded.

He was unprepared for the bodily reaction to her accusation. His muscles turned rigid. A warmth that had lingered in his chest since last night dissipated.