Free Duty Before Desire by Elizabeth Boyce

like fireworks against the night sky. A sinking sensation in his chest, Sheri snapped his quizzing glass to his face, enlarging the woman in question. She walked with that stubborn chin leading the way. He’d know it anywhere, for he’d seen it from a distance of only inches when he’d cradled her to his chest. She walked in the company of her Indian maid, both females oblivious to the male audience lapping up the scene.
    A brief instant of joy at seeing her in good health was followed by a wash of anger. She’d played him for a fool, after all. “Snatched from the jaws of death, are we?” he muttered darkly. What the devil was Arcadia Parks playing at?
    As she came abreast of the window, Arcadia stopped. Her head turned, and she met his gaze through the glass. Her hazel eyes, which he’d just been recalling with the misty nostalgia one grants the nearly dead, squinted up at him, small and unremarkable. She studied him and frowned, as though he was the most depressing shop window display in London.
    In a flash, he sized her up and found her just as wanting. Anger lapped at his mind, stoking the flames of his critique. How dare she and her aunt attempt to play his softer emotions? Who did she think she was? She was no one he would ever take notice of, unless he deigned to offer her a dance out of pity. She wasn’t pretty. Her skin was overly browned by the sun, but still managed the feat of sallowness. Her attire was appalling. That shawl was a riot of jewel tones, while her pelisse was drab and too tight. Someone should tell her that constricting one’s breasts in corsets and improperly fitted dresses did not make them appear bounteous—merely desperate for escape. Once already he’d had to rescue her from the folly of her attire, if she thought he’d do it again—
    “Isn’t that Miss Parks?” A man standing near Sheri nudged his shoulder. “The one you were with in Hyde Park? They just can’t get enough of you, can they, Zouche? They go mad for wanting you. This one’s thrown propriety to the wind. How do you do it?”
    Laughter rippled through the gathering, while Arcadia’s name was bandied about like a bottle of cheap wine.
    A muscle in Sheri’s jaw ticked, hearing them speak of her with such crassness. But really, a respectable woman did not walk down St. James’s Street, lined as it was with gentleman’s clubs. It just was not done. Reputations had been ruined for less.
    Still, she held his gaze. He could not look away. He was embarrassed for her, he told himself. She wasn’t worth his anger. She was pitiful, really, in her desperation for attention.
    “Now, now, gentlemen.” His voice carried over the throng. “She is a recent émigré. Might we not give Miss Parks the benefit of the doubt?” Even as he spoke them, he sensed the fruitlessness of his words; her
faux pas
would be known far and wide before tea. But never let it be said that Sheridan Zouche participated in the social pillorying of a lady.
    Suddenly, Arcadia’s head snapped to the side, like a dog responding to a whistle. She launched farther down the street, deeper into ruin.
    With a groan, Sheri pushed to his feet. He couldn’t let her continue to make a spectacle of herself. Once again, it fell to him to rescue Miss Parks.

Chapter Six
    Fatigue lashed at her temples. Like a slave driver, Poorvaja pressed her onward. “Just a little farther, Jalanili,” the woman said. “Soon, you may turn around and go home.”
    “It isn’t home,” she said by rote, her voice dull.
    After Lady Delafield’s rebuke, she felt even more strongly that England was not the place for her. Clearly, her aunt felt compelled to find her a husband solely out of familial obligation. She had no interest in Arcadia herself; she wished to marry her niece off as quickly as possible and get the imposition out from under her own roof.
    Despite Arcadia’s continuing weakness, taking a walk had seemed like a capital idea. She had to escape from that house,