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Chapter One

London, June 1817

Blackberry glaze

Biting the inside of her cheek, Amelia d’Orsay suppressed a small cry of jubilation Even at a rout like this one, a well-bred lady’s abrupt shout of joy was likely to draw notice, and A ladies surrounding her Especially when the reason for her delight was not a triue, but rather the completion of a dinner menu

She could i misses would say, “only you could think of food at a time like this ”

Well, it wasn’t as though A offor weeks over a new sauce for braised pheasant, to replace the sa sweet, yet tart; surprising, yet faal At last, the answer had colaze Strained, of course Ooh, perhaps mulled with cloves

Resolving to enter it in her inary dish aside and corin to a half-smile Summer at Briarbank would now officially be perfect

Mrs Bunscombe brushed past in a flounce of scarlet silk “It’s half-eleven,” the hostess sang “Nearly ht ”

Nearly ht to quell her exuberance

A cherub-faced debutante swaddled in tulle grasped Amelia by the wrist “Any ht, I just know I’ll swoon ”

Aan As it did at every ball, when half-eleven ticked past

“You needn’t worry about reen satin said “He scarcely utters so much as a word ”

“Are we even certain he speaks English? Wasn’t he raised in Abyssinia or …”

“No, no Lower Canada Of course he speaks English My brother plays cards with hiirl lowered her voice “But there is so rather primitive about him, don’t you think? I think it’s the way he moves ”

“I think it’s the gossip you’re heeding,” Amelia said sensibly

“He waltzes like a dreairl put in “When I danced with him, my feet scarcely skimmed the floor And he’s ever so handsome up close ”

Aave her a patient smile “Indeed?”

At the opening of the season, the reclusive and obscenely wealthy Duke of Morland had finally entered society A feeeks later, he had all London dancing to his tune The duke arrived at every ball at the stroke ofthe available ladies At the conclusion of one set, he would escort the lady in to supper, and then … disappear

Before teeks were out, the papers had dubbed hiht,” and every hostess in London was jostling to invite His Grace to a ball Un the supper set to any other partner, for fear oftheir chance at a duke To amplify the dramatic effect, hostesses positioned tiin the set at the very hour of twelve And it ithout saying, the set concluded with a slow, romantic waltz

The nightly spectacle held the entire ton in delicious, knuckle-gnawing thrall At every ball, the atmosphere thickened with perfume and speculation as the hour of twelve approached It was like watchingto wrest Excalibur froossips declared, sorip on the recalcitrant bachelor … and a legend would be born

Legend indeed There was no end of stories about him Where a man of his rank and fortune was involved, there were always stories

“I hear he was raised barefoot and heathen in the Canadian wilderness,” said the first girl

“I hear he was barely civilized when his uncle took hiave the old duke an apoplexy ”

The lady in green murmured, “My brother told me there was an incident, at Eton Some sort of scrape or brawl … I don’t know precisely But a boy nearly died, and Morland was expelled for it If they sent down a duke’s heir, you know it must have been dreadful ”

“You’ll not believe what I’ve heard,” A in close “I hear,” she whispered, “that by the light of the full”

When her co, she said aloud, “Really, I can’t believe he’s so interesting as to merit this much attention ”

“You wouldn’t say that if you’d danced with him ”

Amelia shook her head She had watched this scene unfold tiain over the past feeeks, admittedly with amusement But she never expected—or desired—to be at the center of it It wasn’t sour grapes, truly it wasn’t What other ladies saw as intriguing and roent melodrama Really, an unmarried, wealthy, handsome duke who felt the need to command more female attention? He must be the most vain, insufferable sort of man

And the ladies of his choosing—all flouncy, insipid girls in their first or second seasons All petite, all pretty None of the like Amelia

Oh, perhaps there was a hint of bitterness to it, after all

Really, when a lady dangled on the outer cusp of ht to allow her a quiet, unannounced slide into spinsterhood It rather galled her, to feel several years’ worth of rejection revisited upon her night after night, as the infaht, and at twelve-oh-one his eyes slid straight past her to so chit with more beauty than brains

Not that he had reason to notice her Her dowry barely scraped the floorboards of the “respectable” range, and even in her first season, she’d never been a great beauty Her eyes were a trifle too pale, and she blushed e of six-and-twenty, she’d come to accept that she would always be a little too plump