Prologue
London, Spring 1813
The dark nightwas lit with a bevy of twinkling, ethereal stars, if one bothered to look. Lady Lydia Brownlow was the sort of female whodidlook. She had studied astronomy under the auspices of her late and most beloved grandpapa, and she recognized the delights of Cassiopeia and Andromeda better than most.
She inhaled deeply of the fragrant earth and intricate gardens about to renew with the unfurling of the new season. Flowers would blossom. The earth would warm. Another round of parties and routs and musicales would unfold. One more season of enduring her mother’s pointed sniping about the arts of a lady and her father’s beleaguered attempts to get her to set her cap at an eligible gentleman.
Endless and unwanted, all of it, save spring’s vibrant renaissance. But here, at last, in the calm of the Earl of Havenhurst’s gardens, she could steal a slice of solitude. Here was a space in which she could be herself, look upon the stars and think of the man who taught her how to gaze into the heavens and see a world beyond her sheltered sphere.
Her heart gave a pang, the prick of tears making the glittering formation above go blurry. How she missed Grandpapa. Her nose began to run, and she sniffled. Oh, bother. She had already risked her mother’s wrath by escaping from the evening’s festivities. If she returned looking a fright…
“Mother will have my head on a pike,” she muttered.
“I do hope not,” drawled a low, familiar voice just over her shoulder.
With a gasp, she spun about, hand over her fluttering heart as if mere pressure could somehow still its foolish pace. It would not, forthatvoice—with its deep, velvety rasp seemingly crafted by the Lord himself to make all females swoon—always had the same humiliating effect upon her.
In the shadows of the garden, she could not discern his chiseled features, though the silvery bath of moonlight washed his face in just enough light to confirm her mortification was complete. Of all the people in the crush of Lord Havenhurst’s ballroom, why did it have to be the Duke of Warwick who came upon her when she was sniffling and talking to herself in the dark?
She sniffed again, hoping she did not have any tears leaking from her eyes or, even worse, an unladylike ribbon of snot descending from her nose. “Warwick, what are you doing out here?”
Lydia did not bother to hide her vexation, for if she disliked anything more than someone sneaking up behind her, it was surely her unfortunate reaction to the duke. Whenever she entered his rarified presence, her heart beat like the frantic wings of a bird and a heavy, tingling sensation stole through her. A reaction that was equal parts disconcerting and unwanted.
“The same could be asked of you.” He took a step closer, canting his head as the tips of his gloved fingers found her chin and asserted enough gentle pressure to tilt her face to his. “The devil. Are you crying, Freckles?”
Freckles.
The old, childhood nickname ought not disturb her.
Indeed, she ought to remind him that she was Lady Lydia, no longer the wayward girl, five years his junior, who snuck away from her grim governess to fish with him and her brother, much to their mutual irritation. As a girl, she had been hopelessly dazzled by him, dreaming of the day when she would be old enough and pretty enough for him to notice her. For him to look at her the way he did her gorgeous elder sister Mary and Mary’s equally graceful, charming friends.
But as she had grown older and the naïveté of her youth dissipated, she had accepted that such a day would never arrive. Here she stood, a woman grown, resplendent in her white evening gown, roses in her hair, and for all that, still a bluestocking about to be left forever on the shelf.
Still Freckles rather than Lady Lydia. Still a creature worthy of Warwick’s pity. And though her girlish fancy for him had matured into a hardened acceptance that he would never look upon her as a woman, her cheeks still flamed under his intense regard.
This would not do. She squared her shoulders, recalling she had seen him dancing with Lady Felicity Drummond not half an hour before, a true diamond of the first water. A handsome couple they made, Lady Felicity’s golden curls a rich contrast to Warwick’s mahogany locks.
“I am not crying, Warwick,” she snapped, taking a step in retreat so that she could inhale without breathing in the decadent masculine scent of his shaving soap, and so that he no longer held her chin captive. “I do not cry.”
He ignored her obvious desire for space, stalking forward in what she knew to be gleaming Hessians, for she had admired them and his strong thighs and calves as she’d watched him dance earlier.
“Is it a gentleman?” An edge underscored his tone. “Only give me a name, and I will meet him at dawn.”
She frowned. He sounded oddly sincere, perhaps even angry at the imagined offender. “There is no gentleman, and I was not crying. Now, do go away before someone comes upon us. I should like to be alone, precisely as I was, before your unwanted interruption.”
Being Warwick, he ignored her. “I am not one to put in my oar, Freckles, but your eyes were glistening in the moonlight, and you are out here alone, and I distinctly heard a sniffle.”
She sighed. “Very well. If you must know, I was thinking of my grandfather.”
“Then there is no need for me to assist some jackanapes with sticking his spoon in the wall tomorrow?” he asked gently.
Was it her imagination, or had he drifted nearer? She could once more smell him, and while her inner fool applauded any and all proximity to the Duke of Warwick, her sense of reason most assuredly did not.
“No, though you do have a way of phrasing things, Warwick. Are you as cow-handed with all the ladies, or is this a special treatment reserved for myself alone?”
“I would not duel for any other lady’s honor save my mother’s.”
His pronouncement filled her with shock and then a deep, suffusing warmth that she could not contain. It was as if the sun had suddenly appeared in the garden, burning away the night. But, no. This was Warwick before her, Corinthian, prime marriage mart prize, the most handsome man in London, and notorious Lothario. He did not mean what he said. Very likely, it was the sort of thing he said to every lady.
