Chapter One
Duchess Square, Mayfair
London, England
June 1820
“Berry, is heout there?”
Lady Berengaria Thane grabbed the porcelain vase sitting atop the small table beside her parlor window before it toppled as her friend, Miranda, and Miranda’s niece, Gwenys, elbowed their way past several other friends who were peering out the window to seehim.
“Eek!” Gwenys cried. “He’s taking off his shirt!”
“Cover your eyes,” Miranda scolded. “You are too innocent to look upon that shameful man.”
Berry thought she and her friends were the shameful ones for gawking at this fellow, who appeared to be in a position of authority amid the construction work going on at her neighbor’s residence.
But who could blame them?
“Aah! He’s flexing his muscles!” her friend Arabella cried.
Dear heaven.
Had all her friends gone mad?
“Ladies, the tea cakes are out,” Berry called to them to gain their attention, to no avail. “Ladies!”
Sighing, she set her rescued vase atop her pianoforte for now.
The Ladies Tea Society to which Berry belonged was supposed to meet at a different member’s home every Thursday afternoon, but meetings had been held at her home on Duchess Square every week for this past month because ofhim.
“Is he out there today? Let me see!” Margaret, a newly arrived friend, asked as she sprinted across the parlor to join the others.
“Would anyone care for a tea cake?” Berry called out again, and then sank onto her floral silk settee to await the meeting’s start.
A booming noise from next door shot her to her feet again.
This was intolerable.
First the constant noise as her new neighbor, a mysterious gentleman by the name of Mr. Knight, reconstructed a perfectly fine townhouse that had belonged to her dear friend, Lady Fiona Shoreham, who was now Duchess of Durham. Then to have his builders put on a display of their muscles… Well, their attention was mostly on that one spectacular man who seemed to be the hardest worker, and it had been brutally hot all week.
There was another loud boom that startled them all and had them leaping in fright.
“What are they doing?” Miranda asked, finally turning away from the window to address Berry.
Berry frowned. “I don’t know. Extending the back wall of the townhouse, I think. Fiona often mentioned her desire to do the same but never got around to it. It was the first thing that oaf of a new owner did upon purchasing her home. I am going to put a stop to all that banging. How are we ever to hold our meeting if we cannot hear ourselves talk above the din? I’ll be right back.”
She marched out of her townhouse and stormed next door just as a massive beam came tumbling off the roof and almost struck her.
“Who in bloody blazes let you back here?” the man they had all been gawking at roared as he scampered down the tall ladder with the agility of a cat.
A big, dangerous cat, for he strode toward her with a look so savagely angry that steam could have poured from his ears.
Dear heaven.
His body appeared to be carved from granite.
Endless muscles stretched tautly across his tanned skin. He had a thick head of raven-black hair that needed a proper trim and piercing gray eyes as cold as honed steel. The dark blotch that seemed to wrap itself around his upper arm turned out to be the depiction of a dragon.
