Prologue
Summer 1810
Sarah Carlton stood at the edge of the ballroom, watching her dreams drift away as couples spun around the dancefloor. Her heart ached, and even the two glasses of punch she’d drunk in the last half an hour could not take the edge off her disappointment, fear and regret. They only made her mind cloudy.
She’d had one task when she came out to this party at Abernathe with her mother, and that was to make herself attractive to the gentlemen in attendance. That had been her only obligation since her coming out two years before. She and her mother needed the security a good match could offer, and time was running out. After all, every Season she got older, and every year new Diamonds appeared in the crowd that made Sarah look uninteresting and even less attractive, with her unimportant name and miniscule dowry. At the rate she was going, even that small settlement would be nonexistent.
She glanced across the room to find her mother in the crowd. Alice Carlton looked so tired. Even when her mother smiled, Sarah saw the dullness in the expression. The listless surrender to a dark future. Sarah could do nothing about it unless she wed.
Her desperation had been at its peak, and then she’d come here and found a spark of new hope, new life. The Duke of Crestwood had actually shown her some interest. TheDuke of Crestwood, with all his money and status! He had danced with her, chatted with her. It was all friendly, nothing particularly serious, but she’d allowed herself to feel optimism for the first time in months.
And now that was gone. Stolen by a woman who had no need for such hope.
Sarah glanced across the room. Lady Margaret, the sister of the Duke of Abernathe, stood with her brother and his wife. Looking stunning, of course. For a moment, a dark streak of jealousy and anger flared up in Sarah’s chest, and she shook her head.
Margaret…Meg to her many friends…had always had the opposite life to Sarah’s, it seemed. She’d had money and privilege from the start. Her bright personality gave her popularity to boot. And she had support from her beloved brother. Abernathe had even arranged a marriage for her with the Duke of Northfield. What more could a person want than that handsome, rich, settled kind of man?
Apparently,Megcould. Just days ago, scandal had erupted at the party. Margaret had been caught after spending a night unchaperoned with…Crestwood. And in a flash, the lady had not only blown up her own engagement, but any hopes Sarah had allowed herself to have of a future.
Meg would marry Crestwood. Immediately, to reduce the scandal. And Sarah was back to desperation and despair as her time ticked away.
Sarah huffed out a breath. Her life had never been an easy one, and when she was just a tiny bit in her cups, it felt so much more unfair.
Abernathe and his wife Emma stepped away from Margaret, and Sarah jolted forward. She had no idea what she would say to Margaret, but she felt compelled to move at any rate. Pushed by drink and disappointment.
She reached her side and folded her arms as she glared at her. “Good evening, Lady Margaret.”
Oh dear. She could hear the slur in her words. Apparently Abernathe wasn’t watering down his drinks, and Sarah hadn’t had much to eat that day.
But it was too late to go back now as her target stiffened and turned toward her. Meg had been frowning and now that expression grew deeper as she looked Sarah up and down. Dismissively, Sarah thought. Just like most everyone in the Upper Ten Thousand did.
“Miss Carlton, isn’t it?” Meg asked, her tone strained.
Sarah nodded once and then stepped up to stand beside her. For a moment, they observed the dancefloor together in silence. Sarah tried to figure out what it was she wanted to say to this woman who had crushed her dreams so effortlessly.
“Are you enjoying yourself?” Meg asked.
Sarah glanced at her. Was she serious? As if she hadn’t been fully aware of the connection Sarah had been working to build with Crestwood? As if she hadn’t seen them talking and laughing and forming what Sarah had prayed could be a bond? All that just before Meg had swept in and…well, one couldn’t exactly steal aperson…
She shrugged. “Iwas.”
There was no mistaking the peppery accusation in her tone. Sarah hadn’t quite meant to put it there, but between her desperation and the alcohol, it was undeniable.
“Oh,” Meg said, and Sarah felt her watching from the corner of her eye. “Is there somethingIcan do for you, since our hosts are currently dancing?”
Sarah turned to her, and her gaze narrowed. Something she could do?Something she could do? As if she hadn’t done enough. As if she hadn’t ruined enough, for her own family and for anyone else in her periphery.
“You had a fiancé,” Sarah hissed, trying to meter her tone and finding it difficult in her slightly inebriated state. “A perfectly good fiancé who was a duke. I think an even richer duke than Crestwood, if my mother is to be believed.”
Meg clenched her fists at her sides and her frown turned deeper. She looked at Sarah with what felt like pure disdain. “You and I do not know one another well enough to be having this incredibly impertinent conversation.”
Sarah’s eyes went wide. Of course, the conversationwasimpertinent. She was far beneath Meg in station, and it wasn’t as if she had a real claim on Crestwood. Only the hopes she’d had for a future. Her last hopes.
That spurred her on where she normally wouldn’t go. “I don’t care if it’s impertinent. Great God, is any man safe? Will you bore of the Duke of Crestwood soon enough and move on to another? Will you suck up all the eligible men in the countryside and leave none for anyone else?”
The moment she said the words, Sarah wished she could take them back.Thiswas why she rarely drank. It loosened lips. And yet she didn’t do the prudent thing and walk away.
“You havenoidea what you are talking about,” Meg snapped, and she had the audacity to look annoyed. “Crestwood and I have been friends a very long time and—”
