Free To Win a Lady's Heart (The Landon Sisters) by Ingrid Hahn

again sequestered for an afternoon of amusing themselves.
    “My hair was dressed with a hot iron this morning.”
    Hetty’s soft curls had no need of anything more than an upsweep and a few pins to make her appear as if she were a fashion plate come to life. As a consequence, her maid, whom Hetty had given use of to the Landon sisters, was unpracticed with the art of styling straight hair.
    Besides, she couldn’t have met the earl last night wearing rags upon her head. The alarming state in which she’d appeared when they’d gone to the stables had been horrific enough.
    “It looks stiff and pulled too tight.”
    “It feels stiff and pulled too tight.” The weight of what had to have been a vast surplus of pins wasn’t helping, either.
    Hetty gave a sage nod. She turned to the gathered ladies. “Eliza, may we see you a moment?”
    As Lady Eliza made her way across the room from where she’d been sitting making garlands with Phoebe and Jane, Hetty inclined her head toward Grace, voice low. “I’ve always wanted you and she to become better acquainted and now is your chance. You mustn’t think about how my brother and she were supposed to have been linked for a short while, there was never any truth to it.”
    Grace started. Had Corbeau been interested in Lady Eliza? Hetty said it wasn’t so, but Grace had never caught even the slightest hint of such a rumor. But someone had thought there had been reason to speak as though they had been, and rumors were rarely without some hint of truth.
    She’d always been peripherally aware of the woman. Eliza’s mother, Lady Rushworth, being an inexplicable part of Lady Bennington’s wider circle. Eliza and Grace were nearly the same age, though Eliza had the advantages of having come out one season earlier and of being the sole heiress to thirty thousand pounds.
    Hetty brightened as Eliza drew near. “I’ve decided something simply must be done about Grace’s hair.” She turned to Grace. “You wouldn’t know it by looking at her, but Eliza’s hair is even straighter than yours.”
    “I hardly see how that could be possible.”
    Eliza smiled. The woman was possessed of a sort of refined beauty. Though she wasn’t small, there was a porcelain kind of delicacy to her features further enhanced by her gentle poise. Her hair was the exact shade of black that the heroines of novels were described as possessing, and she looked as though she couldn’t conceive of the concept of a freckle, much less ever suffer from having one mar her skin. “I thought the very same.”
    “Here’s what I propose.” Hetty’s eyes were bright with the look she had when she was particularly pleased with herself. “Tomorrow morning, we both bring our maids into Grace’s room. Then yours can teach mine how to properly dress straight hair.”
    It was decided in a blink. Eliza was called back to her original task, leaving Hetty and Grace once again alone.
    Grace wanted to ask about the connection between Corbeau and Eliza. What could she say to broach the subject? She wasn’t jealous—she couldn’t possibly be, not least because she had Hetty’s own assurances of the rumor being unfounded—but there seemed no way of managing the task without danger of raising the suspicion that she was.
    …
    “What might you do were you going to try to win a woman?”
    Max couldn’t have given Corbeau a stranger look had the latter announced he lived on a strict diet of dog meat. “Was I dreaming, or did you find yourself in the last few weeks inopportunely engaged? Not that I blame you, mind.” He clapped his friend on the back as he went to take his position around the billiard table. “But I always thought you’d consider keeping a mistress immoral.”
    They were the only two left at the game, the other gentlemen having gone to pore over the collection of firearms in the gunroom. Finally Corbeau could relax as only he could in the company of an old and trusted friend.
    “Of course I do. And