All at once, she was as transparent and fragile as glass.

Her gaze jerked away, her heart racing. She knew his type. She had spent years resenting this kind of man, the kind who had his confidence bred into his bones, who oozed entitlement from the self-assured way he held himself to his perfectly straight aristo nose. He’d make people cower with a well-aimed glare.

It suddenly seemed important not to cower away from this man.

They wanted men of influence to hear them out? Well, she had just completed step one: identify the gentleman.

Two: approach him firmly . . . Her fingers tightened around the leaflets as her feet propelled her forward, right into his path.

His pale eyes narrowed.

Smile.

A push against her shoulder knocked her sideways. “Make way, madam!”

The brute. She had forgotten he existed; now he sent her stumbling over her own feet, and for a horrible beat the world careened around her.

A firm hand clamped around her upper arm, steadying her.

Her gaze flew up and collided with a cool glare.

Drat. It was the aristocrat himself.

And holy hell, this man went quite beyond what they had set out to catch. There wasn’t an ounce of softness in him, not a trace of a chink in his armor. He was clean shaven, his Nordic-blond hair cropped short at the sides; in fact, everything about him was clean, straight, and efficient: the prominent nose, the slashes of his brows, the firm line of his jaw. He had the polished, impenetrable surface of a glacier.

Her stomach gave a sickening lurch.

She was face to face with the rarest of breeds: a perfectly unmanageable man.

She should run.

Her feet were rooted to the spot. She couldn’t stop staring. Those eyes. A world of tightly leashed intensity shimmered in their cold depths that held her, pulled her in, until awareness sizzled between them bright and disturbing like an electric current.

The man’s lips parted. His gaze dropped to her mouth. A flash of heat brightened his eyes, there and gone like lightning.

Well. No matter their position in the world, they all liked her mouth.

She forced up her hand with the pamphlets and held it right under his nose. “Amend the Married Women’s Property Act, sir?”

His eyes were, impossibly, icier than before. “You play a risky game, miss.”

A voice as cool and imperious as his presence.

It heated rather than calmed her blood.

“With all due respect, the risk of being pushed by a gentleman in bright daylight is usually quite low,” she said. “Would you release me now, please?”

His gaze snapped to his right hand. Which was still wrapped around her arm.

His face shuttered.

The next moment, she was free.

The bustle and noise of Parliament Square reached her ears again, unnaturally loud.

The press of strong fingers round her arm lingered like the afterglow of a burn.

He was already moving past her, staring ahead, his two companions rushing after him.

She swallowed and found her mouth was dry. Her lips still tingled as if he’d brushed over them with a fingertip.

A small, gloved hand touched her sleeve, and she jumped. Miss Greenfield’s brown eyes were wide with concern and . . . awe. “Miss. Are you all right?”

“Yes.” No. Her cheeks were burning as if she had fallen nose first onto the damp cobblestones. She smoothed a trembling hand over her skirts. “Well then,” she said with false cheer, “I gather the gentlemen were not interested.”

From the corner of her eye, she watched the ice lord and his minions file into a large carriage. Meanwhile, Miss Greenfield was contemplating her with covert wariness, probably trying to determine politely whether she was a little unhinged. She wasn’t, but there was no denying that she had acted on impulse. Lord help her. She hadn’t been impulsive in so long.

“Do you know who that was?” Miss Greenfield asked.

Annabelle shook her head.

“That,” the girl said, “was the Duke of Montgomery.”

A duke. Of course the first man she tried to lobby turned out to be a duke, just a fraction short of a prince . . .

A pair of heels clicked rapidly behind them; Lady Lucie was approaching with the force of a small frigate. “Was that what it looked like?” she demanded. “Did you just try to lobby the Duke of Montgomery?”

Annabelle’s spine straightened. “I didn’t know that he was excluded from our efforts.”

“He’s not. Just no one has ever tried going near him before.” The lady cocked her head and looked Annabelle up and down. “I can’t decide whether you are one of the bravest or one of the most foolish women I’ve recently recruited.”

“I didn’t know who he was,” Annabelle said. “He just looked like a man of influence.”

“Well, you had that right,” Lady Lucie said. “He is one of the most influential men in the country.”

“Wouldn’t it be worth a try, then, to speak to him?”

“Have you seen him? This is a man who divorced his wife after barely a year, kept her dowry, and made her disappear. We can safely assume that he is a lost battle where women’s rights are concerned, and not squander our limited resources on him.”

“A divorce?” She might be from a small place like Chorleywood, but even she knew that the aristocracy did not divorce. Still, she could not seem to let it go. “Would the duke’s opinion sway other men of influence?”

Lady Lucie gave an unladylike snort. “He could sway the entire upcoming election if he wished.”

“But that means that if he’s against us, it hardly matters how many of the others we win for the cause, doesn’t it?”

“Possibly.” A frown creased Lady Lucie’s brow. “But it is of no consequence. Our army is not made for attacking such a fortress.”

“How about a siege, then,” Annabelle said, “or a subterfuge, like a big, wooden horse.”

Two pairs of eyes narrowed at her.

Oh, grand, she had thought that out loud. Being pushed by that man must’ve shaken her more than she’d thought.

“Well, I do like the sound of that,” Lady Lucie drawled. “We should put Montgomery onto the agenda for next week’s meeting.” A smile curved her lips as she stuck out her hand. “Call me Lucie. You too, Miss Greenfield. And do excuse me, I believe that is Lord Chiltern over there.”

They watched her plunge into the fog, her red scarf flapping behind her like a pennant. When Miss Greenfield turned back to Annabelle, her expression was serious. “You saved me from Lucie biting my head off in front of everyone earlier. Please call me Hattie.”

It felt a little wrong, such familiarity first with a lady, and now an heiress. Annabelle took a deep breath. This was her new life, being a student, petitioning dukes, shaking hands with unfathomably wealthy girls in purple fur stoles. It seemed that the wisest course of action was to pretend that this was all perfectly normal.

“My pleasure,” she said. “And apologies for not keeping a low profile earlier.”

Hattie’s laugh floated merrily across the square, attracting almost as many scandalized glances as their pamphlets.

They failed to enthuse any man of influence that afternoon. In between half-hearted attempts, Annabelle’s gaze kept straying back to the direction where the coach with the duke had disappeared.

Chapter 3

When Her Majesty requested a meeting, even a duke had to comply. Even when the duke in question was notoriously occupied with running one of the oldest dukedoms in the kingdom and preferred to stay far from the madding crowds of London. One did not say no to the queen, and Sebastian Devereux, nineteenth Duke of Montgomery, knew that he was no exception to that rule. It behooved a man to know his limitations. It meant he could heed or ignore them precisely as the situation required.