Free Three Weddings and a Murder by Courtney Milan, Tessa Dare, Carey Baldwin, Leigh LaValle Page A

this day.”
    “What day is that?”
    “The day you’d prove yourself to be my match.”
    Her heart throbbed lazily in her chest. There were equals now. Not just in wit and intelligence, but in understanding and character. Perhaps now they could be friends.
    Or more.
    Harry.
    With great effort, she kept her tone playful and light. It wouldn’t do to tip her hand just yet. “Attend my debut, Mr. Wright. And then you may learn how it feels to be bested.”

You are cordially invited to a ball the nineteenth evening of May, 1813, on which occasion Miss Elizabeth Anne Cade will be introduced to society.
    H ARRY SAT AT THE DESK in his cramped, dilapidated bachelor’s apartment and read through the invitation. Again. The thing had been sitting on his faded, ink-stained blotter for over a week, and he still hadn’t penned a response.
    “Miss Elizabeth Anne Cade will be introduced to society,” he read aloud.
    The mere wording rankled. Harry didn’t need to be “introduced” to Eliza Cade. He knew her. Perhaps better than anyone else did.
    He sat back in his leather armchair and closed his eyes, picturing the scene. She’d be dressed in some pale, delicate shade—yellow or pink, perhaps. Stars in her eyes, roses on her cheeks. Surrounded by admirers, just as she’d always wished to be.
    As she deserved to be.
    He sat up and drummed his fingers on the blotter. He shouldn’t be churlish. As long as she’d waited, she’d earned her measure of freedom—and if she chose to squander it on frivolity, that was hers to decide. She wouldn’t be happy until she’d had this—a season of exuberant, exhilarating youth. Twirling through life, fast and free.
    But he was a little too old for that sort of thing, himself. And he had too much pride to be just another face in the admiring throng.
    Plus, he didn’t have a damned thing to wear.
    That was it, then. He’d decline.
    He took out a sheet of paper, resolved to pen a brief, solicitous note of regret. Surely he could come up with some excuse.
    But before he could even sharpen his quill, he’d abandoned the letter—deciding to read the newspaper instead. After all, invitations could wait for days or weeks, but news was of the moment. It had to be read, and now.
    Right?
    He took a draught of red wine and laughed at his own absurdity. As many times as he’d resolved to not attend Eliza Cade’s debut, he couldn’t bring himself to put the decision on paper.
    He was taken with her. Smitten. He was a man in his thirties, in the throes of the most adolescent, puppyish attraction possible. All the more reason to stay away from her. He all but slavered in her presence, and she was mature enough now to see it.
    She might even gloat.
    When he opened the broadsheet, Harry soon found something to divert his attention from Eliza Cade’s imminent extravaganza of silk and suitors.
    His chest hollowed out, and his heart dropped straight to his gut. He scanned the list with a mounting sense of dread. It couldn’t be.
    But there it was. Printed in black on white.
    “No, no, no. Bollocks. Blast. Bloody hell.”
    He shot to his feet, casting the newspaper aside and reaching for his coat.
    He must go to her at once.

    E LIZA SAT NUMBLY on the garden bench. Her bombazine gown was a smudge of charcoal gray in the midst of nature’s brilliant spring palette. It was a rare joy, to see Cade Manor’s gardens at this time of year. Usually, they spent these months in Town. The daylilies were just coming into bloom, a hundred cheerful yellow smiles.
    Sadly, their beauty wasn’t as restorative as she’d hoped it would be. She felt disloyal sitting out here amongst the blossoms and songbirds and all these lush, vibrant signs of life while her sister sat weeping inside. But Eliza couldn’t help it. She needed a respite from gloom and grief. Even if it only lasted a few minutes.
    She watched a finch flitting about the wall, gathering a bit of moss to line its nest. As the bird took wing and flew