Free Love's Refrain by Patricia Kiyono

of fulfilling Cumberland's request.
    Every intention. Of making a display of herself in the Hanover Square assembly rooms.
    And all he could do was be there, to do — whatever little she allowed. Perhaps she'd come to her senses and let him protect her, as he'd done since their childhood together. Perhaps all he'd be able to manage would be the witnessing of her social downfall, helpless to intervene.
    "So be it."
    He'd walk back home. To his home, not hers. The exercise would help him sort this through. But his first step entangled him with a bystander. No, buff and red livery, dancing aside away from his path. It was Paul, Beryl's personal groom-footman-factotum, assigned to keep an eye on her by a father worried about his boisterous daughter. Well, as it proved, he had every reason.
    Fitz dodged Paul and stalked off. There had to be something he could do. He just had to think about this.
    ****
    From his position on the west-facing portico of St. Mary-le-Strand, peering from behind the smooth, handsome Ionic columns, His Grace watched Fitzwilliam duck around Miss Beryl's liveried footman and stalk away. Rather as a wounded bear, finding itself outmaneuvered by a huntress and her hound, might find it expedient to exit a scene, trailing the sad remnants of its dignity behind.
    Miss Beryl stamped one elegantly booted foot on the pavement and planted her hands on her hips, tightening her pelisse against her appealing form. A sudden qualm of indecision, that most unbalancing and for His Grace, almost unknown of sensations, made him shift slightly in place. Perhaps his assumptions were incorrect. After all, Fitzwilliam didn't even glance back toward that delicious sight.
    But then the footman rolled his eyes, chest rising and slumping on a heaved breath, and the world righted itself. The man's unspoken message had a point; it wasn't as if this couple ever argued, after all. Only every single time they got together.
    No, he could hardly blame a man for not noticing an event that happened behind his turned back. And not every man appreciated the female form — and such a form — as he did.
    He'd continue the hunt as planned.
    And so the game begins.