Chapter One

      April, 1817

      The London home of Lady Cicely Hawthorne.

      “I trust, ladies, that you have not begun to discuss the matter of our grandsons’ future wives without me...?” Edith St. Just, Dowager Duchess of Royston, frowned down the length of her aristocratic nose as she entered the salon where her two closest friends sat on the sofa in cozy conversation together.

      “We would not think of doing such a thing, Edith.” Her hostess stood up to cross the room and greet her with a warm kiss on both of her powdered cheeks.

      “Of course we would not.” A smiling Lady Jocelyn Ambrose, Dowager Countess of Chambourne, also rose to her feet.

      The three women had been firm friends since some fifty years ago when, at the age of eighteen, they had shared a coming-out Season, their friendship continuing after they had all married. After becoming mothers and then grandmothers in the same years, the ladies continued to meet at least once a week while their respective husbands were still alive and sometimes two or three times a week since being widowed.

      The dowager duchess nodded her satisfaction with her friends’ replies before turning to the young lady who had accompanied her into the salon. “You may join Miss Thompson and Mrs. Spencer at their sewing, Ellie.”

      * * *

      Eleanor Rosewood gave a brief curtsy to the lady who was not only her step-great-aunt by marriage but also her benefactress before stepping lightly across the room to join the other companions quietly sewing in the window alcove. The ladies, much older than her nineteen years, nevertheless smiled at her in welcome. As they