A flicker of something sharp and appreciative crossed his face before vanishing. "Well said. Well said indeed. I do like a wife with resources."

He offered his arm, and she took it, aware of the eyes that followed them. They walked the perimeter of the ornamental pond, his gait lazy, his free hand gesturing as he narrated a trivial anecdote about a mishap at White's involving a lobster and a bishop.

Alina listened, nodded at appropriate moments, and watched his reflection in the still water. The man in the reflection was not smiling.

When they paused by a stone bench, she ventured a quiet question. "Do you always entertain strangers with stories of crustaceans, Your Grace?"

His grin faltered by a hair's breadth. "What else would you have me discuss on so fine a day? Politics? The price of corn?"

"The price of corn might at least be honest."

The words slipped out before she could stop them. His expression stilled. The gray eyes sharpened, and for a moment she felt herself truly seen, not as a piece of scenery, but as a person capable of cutting through the noise. The sensation was disorienting, like stepping from a darkened room into hard light.

"Honesty is a luxury few can afford," he said, and his voice had dropped into a lower register, stripped of its jester's lilt. Then he seemed to catch himself. He laughed too loudly, and the mask resealed. "But I forget myself. Come, let us rejoin the party before they invent a scandal."

Later, as the guests took lemonade beneath a striped awning, Alina slipped away to find a moment's solitude in a rose arbor. Voices reached her from the other side of the dense greenery, the Duke's and another man's, not one of his dandies.

"Cannot keep this up forever, Alexander. She is not a fool. I saw her watching you."

"She is sharper than I anticipated." The Duke's tone was weary, stripped of affect. "That may complicate things or simplify them. I have not decided which."

"And the scheme with her father?"

"Was necessary. I will not apologize for it. She deserved better than a public courtship that would have torn her reputation to ribbons while I played the fool. At least this way, the blame falls on me."

Alina's blood chilled, then heated. Scheme with her father? Necessary? She had been bought, and he spoke of it as a strategy he had orchestrated, not a debt he had mercifully discharged. Her hands clenched in the folds of her skirt.

She slipped away before she could hear more, her mind a churn of anger and confusion. That evening, when the betrothal was formally announced in the papers, she stared at the emerald on her finger and wondered what manner of man she had truly bound herself to, and what he wanted from her that he would not say aloud.

Part Three

The morning of the wedding dawned gray and damp, a fitting sky for a ceremony that felt more like a surrender than a celebration. St. George's, Hanover Square, had been dressed with hothouse lilies whose scent hung thick and cloying over the assembled guests. The pews were full, for the ton would no more miss a scandalous wedding than they would a public execution.

Alina walked the aisle on her father's arm, her gown of ivory silk rustling against the stone floor. The veil she wore was Brussels lace, so fine she could see through it clearly, and what she saw made her spine stiffen.

The Duke of Ashworth stood at the altar with a smirk already in place. His groomsmen arrayed behind him like a chorus in a farce. Lord Cedric Hale leaned forward to whisper something in the Duke's ear, and both men laughed softly.

The rector cleared his throat. The ceremony began. The Duke's vows were spoken with a theatrical lilt that made them sound like lines from a comedy. When he slid the wedding band onto her finger, his touch was brief and impersonal, the contact of a man handing a parcel to a servant.

Alina spoke her own vows in a voice low and steady, each word a stone laid into the foundation of a prison she had chosen to enter.

At the wedding breakfast, held in the ballroom of her father's townhouse, the Duke raised his champagne glass with a flourish. "To my lovely bride, who has done me the extraordinary honor of making an honest man of me, though I cannot promise how long the condition will last." He winked. Scattered laughter rippled through the room.

Alina's mother pressed a handkerchief to her mouth. Her father stared into his glass as though it held absolution. Alina ate little. The food tasted of nothing.

She excused herself as soon as decorum permitted and found a narrow balcony overlooking the street. The cool air was a mercy. She gripped the iron railing and breathed, counting the carriages that passed below.

A soft step sounded behind her. She did not turn.

"I am sorry," said a quiet voice. "He is not always like this. He is not really like this at all."

Alina looked over her shoulder. Lady Beatrice Ashworth, the Duke's younger sister, stood in the doorway. She was a slender girl of perhaps nineteen with the same gray eyes as her brother, but where his were guarded behind laughter, hers were wide and earnest.

"You need not apologize for him," Alina said.

"I am not apologizing for him. I am apologizing to you." Beatrice stepped closer, lowering her voice. "Alexander is—he is playing a part. I cannot explain more, and I know that sounds like an excuse, but please, please do not judge him only by what the world sees tonight."

Alina studied the girl's face. There was fear there, the kind that lived in the bones and did not sleep. "What is he protecting?"