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This time, Grace’s laugh was genuine, if a little weary.

“Hello, hello, hello!” Diana, the Duchess of Hawkins and the last of their foursome of friends, bustled toward them. “There you all are. Sorry I’m late; Gracie was being simply too precious, and I could scarcely tear Andrew away.”

Grace had…mixed feelings about Diana naming her daughter Grace, back when they’d thought the elder Grace to be tragically murdered. On one hand, it was a nice gesture. On the other, baby Gracie was a living reminder of all the years that Grace’s friends had assumed her to dead, which was a reminder of all the years that Grace had been very much alive, living with thosepeople…

Plus, it was confusing, having two Graces.

“You could have stayed home with your daughter,” she pointed out as Diana bussed a kiss against her cheek. “Just a thought.”

Diana waved a hand. “No, I really couldn’t have. Andrew has been looking forward to the opportunity to glower at people all week. He complains that ever since I birthed his beautiful daughter—his words—that it isn’t as much fun to glower at me anymore. He needs to get the energy out somewhere, or else I fear he’ll explode.”

Grace considered this. It seemed plausible. Though Andrew Young was, to those who knew him well, a doting husband and father, the rest of thetonconsidered him downright terrifying.

Society did agree, however, that the new Duke of Hawkins was far preferable to his father, the late duke, who had been hanged for Grace’s apparent murder. Even if Grace was alive and well—and the true culprit in her kidnapping another man entirely—the consensus was the at the Duke of Hawkins had still rather deserved his fate.

“Besides,” Diana went on grandly. “You know how I like to smile benevolently at everyone who was rude to me before I married. They get that pinched look around their mouths.” She sighed happily. “What’s that bit about living well being the best revenge? It’s wrong. The best revenge is forcing people towatchyou live well, naturally. Watch this.”

She raised a hand in greeting and pitched her voice louder. “Well,hellothere, Lady Caldwell!”

A woman in her forties paused in her conversation, then dropped a curtsey. When she stood, she did, as promised, have a pinched look on her face.

“Good evening, Your Grace. How are you this?—”

But Diana had already turned back to her friends. “See? I once overheard her calling me a ‘dreadful, bookish little mouse.’ But now I’m a dreadful, bookish littleduchess, and it drives her positively mad.”

Grace’s smile was growing with every word from her friends’ mouths. If returning to London had been emotionallycomplicated, being reunited with her friends had been nothing but straightforward pleasure.

“Power has gone straight to your head,” she accused her friend, who sighed happily.

“I know,” Diana said dreamily. “Isn’t it grand?”

It was pragmatic Emily, of course, who put an end to the silliness and got to the heart of the matter.

“Besides,” she said briskly, “as soon as people see that you are back for good, without anything dramatic to show them, they will get bored with their idle chatter. Doing so with your friends at your side?—”

“Titled friends,” Frances put in quietly.

“—will simply make the process go faster,” Emily concluded smartly.

Grace smiled at her friends, grateful for their support, even if she wasn’t so certain that they were correct about the speed with which the cloud of scandal hanging over her would blow away. She’d been gone foryears. Most young noblewomen were considered ruined if they were out of their chaperone’s eye line forhours. Sometimes mere minutes.

If there was anything positive to be said about her abduction—a thought Grace allowed only with a generous helping of irony—itwas that her kidnappers had not committed any violence against her person. They’d been rude, of course, and they’d given her all the worst chores, working her to the bone, until her tiny closet with it’s too thin blanket proved no deterrent to sleep on all but the most frigid nights.

But they hadn’t raised a hand to her in violence, though Grace had attributed that more to apathy than kindness. And they hadn’t made any advances, thank the Lord.

So, Grace was not, on a technical matter,ruined. And yet, in every way that mattered to the eyes of theton, she was inked with an indelible stain.

The storm would probably never pass, not fully, but what choice did she have but to try and weather it?

What I really need,Grace thought as she struggled to maintain the façade of good cheer for her friends’ benefit,is someone whom thetonfinds even more interesting, even more scandalous, than me.

And then, as if her prayers had been answered, he appeared.

“And how should I announce you, my lord?” asked the polite, upright, and appallingly English servant.

Caleb let out a long slow breath. Christ’s eyes, this was a mistake. For a moment, he indulged in a blissful fantasy of turning around, marching out of here, and riding north, past Montgomery Estate, past the Scottish border, just keeping riding until he hit the North bloody Sea.

But no, he’d come here for a reason, and he would see it through.