Love Letters From a Duke by Elizabeth Boyle

to work calculating his age. Demmit, if he gave her much more information, she was going to discover who he was without any trouble whatsoever.
    “How old?” she ventured, trying to hide the curious note in her question.
    “Let’s just say a lad old enough to like trouble,” he demurred.
    “No doubt,” she replied as her gaze swept over him from head to toe. “Was the fair then like all this?” she asked, waving her hand at the booths, the makeshift shows, as well as the circle where the snow had been smoothed and swept clean so skaters could make elegant turns about the ice.
    He nodded. “And more—there was also a wild animal show. I remember someone brought the elephant from theTower out on the ice to prove to everyone it was safe.” He laughed, at both the memory and her shocked expression. “I came every day—learned to dice at a tent not far from there.” He pointed at a pavilion to their right.
    “Don’t tell Tally that,” Felicity warned. “She’ll be mad to learn as well.”
    “I don’t think she will when she finds out I diced away my only pair of skates.”
    “Then it was a good lesson to learn early,” she observed.
    “What was?” he asked.
    “Losing your skates. I’m sure it taught you the dangers of wagering,” she said. “I have to imagine you never gambled after that.”
    “Oh, no, never,” he teased.
    After a woeful shake of her head, she said, “Were you any good?”
    “At dicing?”
    “No! I believe I know that outcome.” She reached over and nudged him with her elbow. “At skating, I meant.” Her gaze traveled over to the ring, where an older couple were gliding arm in arm over the ice.
    “ Oh , skating. Well, yes. Yes, I was,” he told her. “Though I haven’t done so in years. There weren’t a lot of opportunities for it in Spain.” He too looked over at the agile pair. “Do you skate?”
    “Oh, yes,” she said, an enthusiastic yet wistful note to her words. “We were in Russia for three years with Papa and spent every winter skating to our hearts’ content.”
    “And your father took you skating all those times?” he asked, posing the question with an innocent air.
    She shook her head. “Of course not! Papa had his responsibilities at court. Our foot—” Her eyes narrowed and she glanced up at him. “You tricked me.”
    He pushed off the rail and winked at her. “I did no suchthing. I merely asked if your father took you skating, and you said he did not. Then you seemed to have some problem remembering who it was who took you skating.”
    “I remember,” she ground out.
    “And who was it?”
    She blew out a long breath, which was only exaggerated by the cold, leaving the little cloud hanging in the air like an exclamation point. “Our footman,” she muttered.
    “Your footman?” He folded his arms across his chest. “Wherever would you find one of those?” And before she could make another response, he pointed over to the other skaters. “Shall we?”
    “Oh no, I couldn’t…It wouldn’t be…”
    “Proper?”
    “Exactly!”
    “Why not?”
    “Because I am about to become betrothed.”
    He let his brows rise in a wide arch. “You are?”
    “Well, of course. Haven’t you been listening to a word I’ve been saying?”
    He’d been trying not to. “Miss Langley, I can’t see how a few turns on the ice will affect your betrothal. Does this gentleman have objections to skating?”
    She heaved a sigh and glanced back at the skaters. “Oh, ’tis nothing like that, it’s just that he’s a…”
    “A curmudgeon?” he offered. “For he must be to deny you something you enjoy.”
    “It’s just that I am to be a duchess, and you don’t usually see such ladies out skating.” There it was again. That wistful note. But she was right. Skating wasn’t exactly a ducal pastime. He was positive his grandfather never had. And so he found himself sharing her envious glances at the people gliding over the ice.
    “You should go skating,”