LITMIR.BIZ

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      Contents

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Chapter Twelve

      Chapter Thirteen

      Chapter Fourteen

      Chapter Fifteen

      Chapter Sixteen

      Afterword

       Chapter One

      Penny House

       St. James Square, London 1805

       I n the experienced opinion of Eliot Fitzharding, His Grace the Duke of Guilford, there were few things better contrived to reduce a sensible woman to blithering idiocy than a wedding, and the nearer the relationship of the woman to the bride, the greater the intensity of that idiocy.

      This is not to say that his grace did not enjoy watching the idiocy, much the way that other gentlemen enjoyed a good sparring match in the ring. As a confirmed and practicing bachelor, he was free to watch the spectacle surrounding a wedding as the purest of spectators: emotionally uninvolved, financially uncommitted, with no other goal than to amuse himself.

      Which was why Guilford was sitting alone in the back parlor of Penny House this evening, enjoying an excellent brandy while he savored the exhausted quiet after the storm of the wedding earlier that day. He didn’t mind in the least that he had the parlor to himself. Most nights, Penny House was like any other gaming club in London, vibrating with male bravado and high spirits, tempered by the despair of those who’d lost at the tables. Guilford had never seen Penny House as quiet as this, and he rather liked it. All the other guests had left long ago, and the servants seemed to have faded away for the night, too. The hothouse flowers were wilting in their vases, the fire nothing but gray ash and embers in the grate, and even the candles in the chandeliers had mostly guttered out, leaving the large, elegant room in murky shadow.

      All were signs that would send most gentlemen to make their own farewells for the night and head for the door, as well. But Guilford never had been like most gentlemen, much to his late mother’s constant disappointment, and instead of leaving, he stretched out his long legs before him and settled himself more comfortably in his armchair. Why should he leave when the best show of the night still lay ahead?

      A yawning maidservant shuffled wearily into the room, and with the long-handled snuffer, began to douse the last of the lit candles in the chandelier until, finally, she noticed Guilford.

      “Your grace!” she cried out, adding a little shriek for emphasis. “Oh, your grace, how you started me!”

      “Forgive me, sweetheart,” he said easily, his smile in the shadows enough to make the poor girl blush and fumble with the snuffer in her hands. Of course she’d recognized him; not only was he a peer, but he’d been a charter member of the club—as much from sheer curiosity as anything—and now served on its membership board. He’d also earned favored status because he cheerfully dropped the occasional large wager at the card tables, just to be agreeable.

      “It’s—it’s me what should be asking forgiveness, your grace!” she stammered. “Truly, your grace!”

      “Not at all.” He raised his glass to the girl by way of apology. “Frightening you was never my intention.”

      Belatedly she remembered to curtsy. “Is there anything I might fetch for you, your grace? They’re banking the kitchen fires for the night, but if there’s something special you want, then I’m certain Mrs. Todd could—”

      “But alas, not Miss Bethany.” He sighed dramatically. Bethany Penny was one of the three sisters who owned Penny House, the one who’d overseen the kitchen, the one who could rival the king’s own French cooks for her delicacy with spices, her wit with pastry. Of course, cookery fell within a woman’s natural sphere, a concept her older sister had always failed to understand. “However shall I survive without Miss Bethany’s roast goose and oysters?”

      The maid looked at him uncertainly. “Miss Bethany will return to us, your grace. She’s only gone away for a bit on her wedding trip with the major.”

      “Oh, the major, the major,” Guilford said darkly, indulging in a bit of brandy-laced melancholy. No matter what Bethany Penny had promised, she’d

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