Chapter One

      London, May 1822

      Asher Wellingham, the ninth Duke of Carisbrook, stood in a corner with his host Lord Henshaw, and watched a woman sitting alone near the dais.

      ‘Who is she, Jack?’ he asked with feigned casualness. In truth he had noticed her as soon as he had walked into the salon, for it was seldom a beautiful woman wore such a plain gown to a ball and then sat alone looking for all the world as if she was actually enjoying her own company.

      ‘Lady Emma Seaton, the Countess of Haversham’s niece. She arrived in London six weeks ago and every young blood has tried to strike up some sort of relationship with her since.’

      ‘Arrived…from where?’

      ‘Somewhere in the country, I would presume. Obviously she has not seen a London stylist—I’ve never seen hair quite like it.’

      Asher’s gaze travelled across a thatch of blonde curls barely restrained by hairpins. A home-fashioned coiffure, he surmised, and executed badly, yet the whole effect of sun-bleached curls threaded with gold and corn was unsettling.

      People seldom surprised him. Or intrigued him.

      But this girl with her lack of self-consciousness and her fashion faux pas had succeeded. What woman, after all, ate her supper whilst wearing her gloves and licked the end of a silk-covered finger when the jam of a sweet biscuit stained it.

      This one did.

      Aye, this one did not nibble on the food as every other female in the room was wont to do, but piled the plate before her from the tray of a passing waiter as though her very life depended on it. As though it might indeed be a good deal of time until the next course showed itself, or as if, perhaps in her old life, in some country village, she had not had as much food as she had needed and could barely believe that she was being offered such bounty here.

      He saw others looking her way and felt vaguely irritated. The buzz of whisper had grown as she stood, tall and thin,