Chapter One

      May, 1817

      Clayborne House, London

      “Correct me if I am wrong, dear Genevieve,” said the raven-haired Sophia Rowlands, widowed Duchess of Clayborne, looking at her two companions as the three of them stood talking together beside the crowded dance floor in the ballroom at Sophia’s town house in Grosvenor Square, “but it appears to me that you are suggesting that, now our year of mourning for our husbands has come to an end, we should all take at least one lover if not several before this tedious Season closes…?”

      “That is exactly what I am suggesting, yes.” The red-haired, mischievous blue-eyed Genevieve Forster, Duchess of Woollerton laughed softly. “Discreetly, of course.”

      “Oh, of course…” Sophia echoed faintly.

      Genevieve giggled. “Just think, my dears—in private, we might become all the rage, and become known collectively as the Daring Duchesses!”

      “Or the scandalous ones,” Sophia offered wryly.

      “I believe I have had quite enough of scandal this past year to last me—did you say several lovers…?” the golden-haired Pandora Maybury, Duchess of Wyndwood prompted dubiously.

      “I do not mean for you to take them all at the same time, my dear Pandora!” Genevieve assured her with an affectionate laugh. “Although…” Those sparkling blue eyes had settled speculatively across the room. “I am sure I should not complain if those two gentlemen were numbered amongst the aforementioned lovers, either separately or together!”

      “Genny!” Pandora Maybury sounded even more shocked.

      Sophia, at two and thirty, several years older than her two friends—and supposedly less shockable!—was no less unsettled by Genevieve’s suggestion, and the scandal such behaviour might bring upon them all, as she turned her deep green gaze towards the arched doorway where two strikingly handsome and rakish gentlemen were now paused in order to survey the candlelit ballroom with equally jaundiced, if different coloured, eyes.

      The two gentlemen known by the ton as Devil and Lucifer!

      The gentleman on the left—Devil—possessed the hard and masculine but beautiful face of a fallen angel, his fashionably styled hair also an angelic gold, the gentleman standing at his side—Lucifer—having the black hair and eyes of the same demon that lurked in those hard black orbs as his disinterested gaze skimmed across the other guests currently gathered in the crowded and noisy ballroom.

      “Taking either, or both of those gentlemen, as a lover, would almost certainly cause a scandal!” Sophia protested.

      “Sherbourne does not appear to have accompanied his two friends this evening,” Genevieve murmured disappointedly, as if unaware—or simply uncaring? —of Sophia’s warning.

      “I wonder why not?” Pandora prompted with the same air of disappointment.

      “He is not here this evening because I did not invite him.” The haughtiness of Sophia’s tone did nothing to disguise her feeling of satisfaction in that knowledge.

      “Indeed you did not,” drawled a softly mocking voice from close behind her—so close, in fact, that Sophia felt the warm brush breath against her exposed nape! “A mere oversight on your part, I am sure. Which is why I decided to correct the omission.”

      Sophia had stiffened at the first sound of that infuriatingly mocking drawl, her pleasure in the success of the evening also diminishing before taking wing completely, as she acknowledged that the gentleman who had briefly been a friend of her husband’s nephew and ward whilst the two young men were at Cambridge together had, with his usual arrogance, obviously decided to present himself at her ball without so much as a by-your-leave. Or invitation!

      His proximity also led Sophia to wonder just how long he might have been standing so close behind her, and whether or not he might have overheard any of her less-than-proper conversation with the Duchesses of Woollerton and Wyndwood!

      “I believe, as you are otherwise engaged, that I might go and offer entertainment to your two newly arrived guests, Sophia.” Genevieve Forster hastily made her excuses, as she obviously saw the frown, which had now tightened Sophia’s creamy brow, as a prefix to the verbal set-down she intended giving her uninvited guest, no doubt.

      “I believe I shall accompany you.” Pandora Maybury excused herself with the same haste, the two ladies linking arms before crossing the ballroom in the direction of those two fashionably late arriving gentlemen.

      A deep and throaty chuckle sounded behind Sophia. “Are you about to run away like a scared rabbit also, Sophia?”

      Sophia had never ‘run away like a scared rabbit,’ from anything, or anyone, in her life! Neither did she intend for that to change simply because she found the arrogant Earl of Sherbourne too infuriating for words.

      She drew in a deep breath and arranged her features into an expression of extreme boredom before turning to face the man who seemed to take such delight in bedevilling her. “Sherbourne.” She gave a cool nod of acknowledgement as she chose to level her gaze upon his square and determined jaw rather than that arrogantly mocking face, having taken in at first glance how handsome he looked in his tailored black evening clothes and snowy white linen, his shoulders wide, with the tapered waist, muscled thighs and long legs of the excellent swordsman he was known as through the length and breadth of England.

      “Sophia,” he returned tauntingly.

      Sophia raised her long dark lashes long enough to give him a reproving glance at his familiarity, and at once wished she had not, as she was instantly overwhelmed by the masculinity of the man’s rakish good looks. A handsomeness that had set many a female heart aflutter since this man had first made his appearance into Society on attaining his eighteenth year. Feminine hearts which had remained unsatisfied, as he easily and continuously managed to avoid being entrapped by both the marriage-minded