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The gloved hand that flew up to cover the speaker’s tittering mouth couldn’t hide the silly girl’s words. Nancy’s acute hearing had been honed by years dodging the antics of her siblings.

“Hold up your head, Nancy,” Mama said.

Nancy did as she was told while dread slithered down her spine.

Lady Chilcombe’s ball the week before had engendered a mocking caricature that spurred her family to action.

Her maid had reported the comings and goings in the public rooms at Loughton House: curious callers had come sniffing for gossip, Mama’s bosom friends had offered aid and sympathy, and even an impudent reporter had tried to worm his way in.

She herself, after one glance at the hideous depiction in the cartoon, had refused to leave her bedchamber until Fitz, who’d rushed to town without his family, barged into her room, cajoling, encouraging, and when all else failed, offering his gentle sort of bullying.

“Shall I go knock their pretty heads together?” Fitz teased.

He’d deigned to accompany them to this rout tonight.

“Better that I should find someone to introduce them to Nancy,” Mama said. “Remember what I told you, young lady.”

You are The Honorable Nancy Lovelace , Mama had said. Head up, shoulders back, act as if nothing of any importance has happened .

Nothing of importance. The one man who ought to have shown her kindness had humiliated her in a very public way. She’d never fancied being a leader of the ton. She’d looked forward to seeing London, meeting an old friend, and dressing up for parties and balls. Just another girl making her come-out.

Simon had given her notoriety, not just amongst the ton, but all the mocking classes that ogled the caricatures slapped up in shop windows. He’d made her a laughingstock.

Across the room, a gaggle of fresh-faced bucks turned their gazes her way. Mischief glittered in their eyes. That she could almost stomach. She had younger brothers, after all. It was the older peacock stuffed into a tight waistcoat advancing on them who made her skin crawl.

Before he could reach them, Mother shooed Fitz toward the fellow and led Nancy off for a round of obligatory introductions. “Remember, this will pass,” she whispered.

As the gathering wore on, though, it was clear Mama was wrong.

The whispers, winks, and knowing looks pushed Nancy’s nerves to the precipice.

No one came along at this party to knock her to the floor, and she managed to remain standing, oh yes.

But the panic gripping her throat had her croaking the rote conversational platitudes she’d learned as a girl.

How she’d survive the rest of this miserable season, she had no idea.

If she ever saw Simon again, she’d wring his neck.

J une 1824

Loughton Manor

“T hat one looks like baby Henry’s bottom.”

“Does not. It looks like the vicar’s jiggly cheeks when he’s pon-ti-fi-cating, doesn’t it, Nancy?”

The children’s voices carried on the still air as Simon Clayding, Duke of Swillingstone, broke through the apple tree orchard to the lawn. Three figures—a lady and two children aged about seven or eight—lay on the grass.

His breath caught. The lawn sloped down to a wide lake that some prior baron had created by choking the river downstream.

Across the water, the white pillars of the estate’s folly gleamed in the late morning sun, ringed by lushly blooming roses in shades of pink and red.

On this side, sheep grazed peacefully in a nearby field, and the happy children stretched between a lady with soft golden hair, swelling breasts, and long legs ending in trim ankles.

She was Nancy? George, his old school friend, had told him she’d be roaming somewhere in the grounds of Loughton Manor with her niece and nephew.

Dear God, why had he not gone to her straightaway?

She was a mere child in the memories he’d carried with him from his earliest visits to Loughton Manor.

From those memories he’d crafted a few dreams for himself: a peaceful home, a large happy family, a prosperous estate.

Given the relative poverty of his birth, they had seemed impossible to achieve.

But he was a duke now; perhaps the first two desires were in reach sooner rather than later. He needed an heir, and he’d welcome even more children with the right sort of wife. Prosperity would take longer, but he was willing to work for it.

He'd got off to a bad start with this duke business. This visit was his chance to set things right and begin again.

The little girl plucked the head off a wildflower. “I wish we could visit the folly.”

The lady’s consoling murmur was too quiet to understand, but mention of the folly stirred more happy memories in Simon. School holidays here had been filled with adventures on the lake and rainy afternoons spent sheltering in the folly.

Designed by some past Lord Loughton, the structure’s octagonal portico surrounded a central room with a large hearth.

There were other chambers as well: on the main floor, two large, cluttered storerooms; downstairs, kitchen rooms with a pump for fresh water from the folly’s rooftop cistern, and even a privy tucked away.

Upstairs there were two low-ceilinged rooms with naked bedframes.

It was a ramshackle play place for them, but no adults bothered them there.

“Well, we can’t, Mary,” the boy said. “Uncle Fitz said it’s still off limits until the repairs are finished and the bridge is completed.”

Simon chuckled. Typical male—pontificating again like the jiggly-cheeked vicar.

“Perhaps your papa will take you there in a few days, Mary,” Nancy said, “if they’ve finished construction inside the folly. Maybe after the party. If the new bridge isn’t ready, you can walk upstream and cross on the old one.”

The voice, a low, throaty alto, sent his heart beating unexpectedly faster.

“Or we could go over by the steppingstones upstream,” the boy said.

“Have your legs grown long enough?” she teased.

The lad wriggled, shrugging. “Or, we could pull out one of the skiffs from the shed.”

“They both have holes. Perhaps after tomorrow night’s party, the servants will have time to mend them. Now look.” She pointed at the sky. “Those, Benjamin, are cumulus clouds. And those…” She pointed westward “are cirrhus.”

“I like the fat ones better,” Benjamin said.

Simon walked closer, shuffling through the grass to make as much noise as possible. “And let us hope we do not have nimbus clouds for tomorrow night’s party,” he said.

Nancy lifted her head and looked back. Grass clung to her hair.

She sat up, stumbled to her feet, and steadied herself on the boy’s shoulder.

Taller than most women and many men, she looked even better standing up.

The thin summer gown clung to her legs and outlined a shapely figure that made his mouth grow dry and manly parts stir.

This was Nancy, but not the thin, startled figure of the scandal sheet.

She looked more like… like someone else, but he couldn’t quite grasp who .

She certainly wasn’t that skinny little girl who’d rushed out in her nightgown to wish him a tearful goodbye when he’d left to return to his regiment. She’d grown into a woman—a delectable one—since he’d last seen her.

Or, since he last remembered seeing her.

She whacked her bonnet on her wrinkled skirt and clamped it on her head, dislodging a few blonde tendrils and blades of grass, then scrutinized him through narrowed eyes, their icy blue challenging him.

He thought back to his last visit to Loughton Manor, when she was not much bigger than the two who were inspecting him just as closely.

It was her sister, Cassandra, who’d been the greater hoyden.

Nancy had followed along, the quiet one, the gentle, awkward one, and on that last visit so many years ago, the one with adoring eyes.

There was no adoration in her gaze now. She’d had her first whirl on the marriage mart at the age of nineteen and had come home miserable, depressed and angry.

And it was Simon’s fault, her brother George said.

She’d appeared in the scandal sheets as an awkward wallflower, grossly insulted by the greatest cad of the Season. Himself.

He supposed that the title of greatest cad was quite an achievement since he’d only attended that one ball after taking up the title of the Duke of Swillingstone.

The previous duke, as it turned out, had been a far distant cousin.

Inheriting the title and all the trappings that went with it had seemed like an incredible stroke of luck, resembling something out of a fairytale.

Simon’s mother had been a farmer’s daughter.

His father had worked as a clerk—related to a duke of course—but their branch of the family tree had drooped lower with every generation.

The other branches had thinned as well, at least of male progeny.

To Simon’s surprise, he’d discovered that he, a captain who’d barely scraped together the blunt for mess fees and uniforms, was the new duke. He’d immediately left the army and swanned into London.

And then learned just how much lay on his ducal shoulders, and how much of the ducal resources the previous incumbent had frittered away.

There were numerous holdings: a townhouse in Mayfair, a great pile of an abbey in Derbyshire, another manor in Sussex, hunting lodges in various locales, stables and kennels, now almost empty. All of them had leaky roofs, crumbling mortar, and serious problems with dry rot.

Not to mention the problems with the tenants’ dwellings.

There was also a mortgage on each unentailed property, as well as personal loans, all with payments due by the midsummer quarter.

His time in London had been brief, but, er, colorful . The late duke’s solicitor and all of Simon’s attentive new friends at his new clubs insisted the only course was to marry an heiress, a notion that stuck in his craw.