PROLOGUE
It was a sad legacy that led the Marquess of Granborough to seek out his bride overseas. His late father had squandered the family fortune on drink, cards, and women. Rather than economize, his mother had ordered frocks, jewels, and carriages until her credit was denied at every fashionable establishment in London. She then abandoned her debts for a life of luxury on the Continent.
The pox had taken Father, and Mother had remarried last spring. Giles was left with a crumbling estate, neglected tenants, and a Mayfair townhouse he couldn’t step foot in for fear of his creditors. He’d stripped the cellars and emptied the coffers until there was nothing left worth selling, and still, the bailiffs hounded him.
Giles needed money to save himself from bankruptcy. He needed food, clothes, and a roof over his head. There was no honest industry in England that could provide that amount of wealth.
No, indeed, there was a reason men like him sought heiresses from across the Atlantic. New York was filled with plutocrats who loved nothing more than to spoil their pretty daughters. What father wouldn’t bankroll the ultimate triumph—an old and noble English title—for his darling girl?
Thankfully, Giles’ cousin Caroline had married the son of a Yankee diplomat. They’d taken up residence in the Vanderheid mansion on Millionaire’s Row, and had warmly welcomed Giles upon his arrival in the States.
So excited had the Vanderheids been to flaunt their illustrious connection to the British aristocracy, they’d put him up in their finest guest apartments, fed him and fêted him. They’d secured invitations for him from every Knickerbocker neighbor, and thanks to their hospitality—for which hewasgrateful—Giles hadn’t known a sleepless night or an empty belly in longer than he cared to remember.
It was Cousin Caroline who ultimately came to his rescue. She understood that Giles required heaps of ready money, which eliminated many of the oldest and best families who were too heavily invested in their own ventures to bail him out. He required a set of parents who were willing to sell their daughter to a stranger from a distant land, which again eliminated many of the Vanderheid’s neighbors who preferred to keep their fortunes and their daughters among their own kind.
Clever Caroline had given this reception in his honor, under the guise of introducing him toallof New York society. Invitations had extended down Fifth Avenue, farther than the fashionable addresses bordering Central Park. She’d summoned the daughters of her new-money connections, recalled friends from their rustications in Tuxedo Park, and—discreetly—brokered invitations for those who couldn’t gainentréeto the Four Hundred any other way.
Giles stood at Caroline’s side in her in-laws’ vulgar Fifth Avenue ballroom. Cousin Caroline had done her best to soften the marble walls with garlands of greenery and trellises of roses. She placed pots of orchids atop gilded French side tables and hid buzzing electric lamps behind China vases filled with tall, blue delphiniums. There was no soft candlelight to flatter the guests, but a quartet of three-tiered crystal Electroliers illuminated the ballroom, their brilliant light reflected by a dozen mirrored panels in a garish imitation of Versailles’ precious Hall of Mirrors.
He resisted the urge to shield his eyes from the glare.
He shook hands with yet another industrialist as Cousin Caroline assessed the crowd. “Miss McKee is rich but hasn’t yet grown into her looks. Miss Bruerton is beautiful, but not quite rich enough for your needs.” She pointed out another guest in the reception queue, explaining, “Madeleine de Gruyter is both pretty and rich, but her mother will settle for nothing less than a ducal coronet.”
Giles scanned the young ladies scattered about the room, a sea of billowing white satin ballgowns and fluttering fans. They dressed bridal and appeared virginal, yet the finest clothes and brightest jewels could not disguise the fact that this was, for all its grandeur, a flesh market.
“What about her?” he asked.
He spied a vibrant girl in the center of a crowd of belles. At that moment, she tossed her head back and laughed, sending the plume of ostrich feathers in her coiffure dancing. The swain at her side offered champagne, which she happily took. The group of girls gathered around her seemed to pay court to her, as though she were a princess…
As though she were a marchioness.
“You’ve a keen eye, Giles,” answered Caroline. “She is lovely.”
The girl was attractive, lively, and of an independent spirit. He wagered she wasn’t the sort of woman who clung to a man’s coattails or tugged at his sleeve for validation. She wouldn’t need a husband to tell her who she was, for she was already coming into her own.
“Yes, who is she?”
“Louisa Thurston Reid has a million dollars upfront and another fifty thousand per year. She is not of the Four Hundred though—regrettably, her father owns a Westchester carpet mill.”
“Sounds dreadful.” Surely, for that price, her pedigree could be overlooked. “Introduce us.”
Miss Thurston Reid was hastily fetched. She stood before Giles, a vision in lily-white Worth, as he looked her over. At first glance, she had a fair complexion, an angular face, and a flawless profile. Her figure was trim and pert.
She curtsied, though she failed to lower her eyes in deference to his rank. “My lord.”
Giles too kept his eyes on her.
She was bold, direct. Unflinching beneath his gaze, which had pinned so many British debutantes when his bachelorhood had still held promise. Who was he now to skewer her so?
Miss Thurston Reid refused to yield to him. They studied one another in a silence that must’ve been awkward to anyone observing their exchange. Somewhere a glass shattered, and they both looked away.
The girl smiled slyly. “How fortuitous. I wasn’t sure who of us would break first.”
He disliked her flat, nasally accent, so different from the polished articulation of aristocratic ladies. But she spoke clearly and proudly, and he admired that. “Pencil me in for a dance.”
Miss Thurston Reid handed over her dance card. He scanned it—names filled the slots claiming waltzes, polkas, mazurkas, galops, reels, and even rags. Everything for the next hour was spoken for, and Giles dared not wait that long to take her in hand.
He crossed out some unlucky fellow’s name. “This waltz will do.”
