Page 2

“No, I wasn’t talking to you, my precious darling,” Nicolette told the sweet little dog, she acquired the purebred pug in Colechester two months ago. Bending, she patted Bella’s soft head, earning a doggy grin in return. “Are you having fun?”

Tongue lolling, Bella gazed at her adoringly and promptly tried to nip Nicolette’s gloved fingers in an attempt to play. Everything was a chew toy for the teething pup.

Thank goodness for this little dog who’d helped ease the sadness and loneliness Nicolette hid from the world behind a carefully constructed contradictory facade: part carefree flirt and part coldly aloof spinster.

She donned her mask of gay coquette and pretended to all of the world that she didn’t have a single care. That being jilted hadn’t affected her in the least. Until a man became too familiar or forward, then she retreated into an icy shell.

Men never knew which she’d be, on any given occasion, and she preferred it that way. It kept them slightly off-balance, which meant they couldn’t ever get close to her. And if they couldn’t get close, she ran no risk of heartbreak again.

It also kept the gentlemen from presuming too much. And Nicolette’s caustic tongue deterred even the more daring of the bucks from over boldness. She’d once overheard two matrons declaring Nicolette’s tongue was sharp enough to scrape barnacles from a ship.

Bah, she scolded herself for allowing her mind to wander down these melancholy paths on such a lovely day.

She was better off without Kilbourne.

That, she now knew to be an unqualified fact. For a man who’d stray while betrothed would assuredly do so once vows had been exchanged.

Had Maribelle considered that when she’d dallied with another’s affianced?

She ought to have.

For if the rumors were accurate—and there was generally a tidbit of truth in all tattle if one dug around enough to find the nugget—he’d recently become romantically entangled with an Italian opera singer.

Another sound of disgust echoed in Nicolette’s throat.

That made his fifth mistress since marrying.

Perchance, the lure of a title had sufficed for Maribelle, and after providing the requisite heir, she was content with her lot. Gossip also had it that the Duchess of Kilbourne was in the Americas for an extensive visit.

So perhaps, she’d come to her senses, after all.

Nevertheless, from that fateful day onward, at twenty years old, Nicolette had relegated love and all of the other flimflam associated with the useless emotion to a fusty, secluded corner of her heart. Where, in time, she hoped to forget she’d ever entertained such foolish, fanciful notions.

Pragmatism had replaced romanticism—reality instead of girlish daydreams.

Her desire for love had been exchanged with a passion for adventure. At least that’s what she believed this restlessness besetting her was. She’d approached Mama and Ansley about the possibility of traveling to exotic foreign destinations. But both had looked at her with such incredulity, she might’ve sprouted a pair of wings upon her shoulders or feathers in her hair.

Her mother and brother did not share her enthusiasm for exploring other cultures and places. They were perfectly content dividing their time between London during the Season and Fawtonbrooke Hall the rest of the time.

Oh, an occasional short holiday to Bath or Bristol, or even a jaunt to France or Scotland for a few days, might be acceptable. But nothing so dramatic or distant as exploring ancient cities or other antiquities.

However, for a spinster facing a boring, lonely future, the notion of visiting faraway, mystical places had taken the place of her desire for love, marriage, and children.

Or so Nicolette told herself. Repeatedly. Daily.

However, as contradictory as it might be, she was sincerely glad for her married friends. Several had recently fallen in love and were happy as grigs with their very own dukes. Just because love hadn’t worked out well for her, didn’t mean she begrudged them their happily ever afters.

She, alone, seemed to have been Cupid’s failure.

Puzzling her forehead, she bit her lower lip and skirted a fallen branch, a remnant from last night’s windstorm.

The whole being jilted ordeal still hurt. Awfully. Encompassed Nicolette with a desolation, she only acknowledged when lying in her lonely bed at night. When all of the day’s activities were behind her, and her mind was, at last, permitted to contemplate the reality she stoically ignored otherwise.

Nicolette faced a solitary and purposeless future, and when she’d grown tired of proving to le beau monde that she didn’t care about being tossed aside, what would she do?

Upon spying a twig on the path, Bella yipped and tugged upon her leash. She pounced on her unwitting prey before clamping her little jaws around the eight-inch long stick and marching along proudly for a few steps, her curled tail in the air.

Only in the last couple of weeks had Nicolette’s training Bella to walk on a leash met with enough success that the puppy could accompany her the entire length of her morning walks.