Page 2

His mother replaced her monocle and eyed him. “You’d better open the Dower House. Lady Yasmin won’t want to live with me.”

A full renovation of the master bedchamber and Dower House at the ducal estate, Huntington Grange, was already in progress. “You will come to love Yasmin,” he said, not at all sure, but it was worth a try.

Her Grace snorted again. “Every Season, one woman attracts all the men like seagulls on a gutted fish.”

“A lovely metaphor,” Silvester commented.

“A lady who tolerates fools will make a dreadful wife.”

“Why?” Silvester inquired, though he didn’t really care.

“Because she tolerates fools,” his mother repeated. “She has no bollocks!”

“No woman has bollocks, as they are male appendages,” Silvester said. “May I point out that Stella has as many suitors as Yasmin?”

“Fortune hunters and third sons,” the dowager said contemptuously. “You’d be the only duke. My point is that Lady Stella braves ballrooms in spectacles, although society dictates that ladies should blunder blindly around the dance floor.”

“An idiotic rule,” Silvester agreed.

“Don’t you see?” his mother demanded. “You need to find a woman who has backbone, not just a woman at the center of a crowd.”

His mother was a brilliant tactician. She delivered that line with just the right amount of scorn. If women were allowed to debate in the House of Lords, the opposition would wither.

Luckily, he had a lifetime’s worth of experience thwarting her demands.

“No,” Silvester stated.

From the moment he entered Eton at the age of eight, he had carefully shaped a reputation for easy charm to counter his family’s reputation for eccentricity.

That didn’t mean he hadn’t inherited his mother’s steely core. Or his father’s entitled ferocity.

“I will never marry Lady Stella.”

The best debaters know when to retreat. His mother bounded to her feet and headed for the drawing room door. “You won’t marry Lady Yasmin, either,” she said over her shoulder.

He opened his mouth to retort—

But she was gone.

Chapter One

March 24, 1816 (just over a month later)

The Duke and Duchess of Trent’s annual ball

Bearing the weight of a man sounded interesting . . . until it happened.

Mind you, Lord Belper was a particularly healthy specimen. Stella found herself pinned to the floor, gasping for air.

She had made an error while dancing a quadrille and bumped her partner, who collided with her bosom and toppled like an elm tree struck by lightning.

“Lord Belper,” she rasped, pushing ineffectively at his shoulders. From above came a swell of alarmed voices, along with more than a few giggles.

“Wha’ happened?” he asked groggily. Perhaps his head hit the floor when he fell. Hers certainly had.

“I can’t breathe,” she gasped.

“I can,” he informed her.