Prologue

      London—late March 1833

      ‘She’s done it again,’ Gregory Lattimar, oldest son and heir of Lord Vraux, said as he ushered his twin sisters, Temperance and Prudence, into the small salon of their Brook Street town house, where their aunt, Lady Stoneway, awaited them.

      The vague foreboding she’d felt when her brother pulled Pru from happy contemplation of the latest fashions in Godfrey’s Lady’s Magazine intensified into outright alarm. ‘What’s happened, Gregory? Whatever it is, surely we won’t have to delay our Season yet again!’

      That pronouncement was met with a groan from her aunt, who came over to give Prudence a hug. ‘I’m so sorry, my dear! I thought for sure we’d be able to launch you girls this spring!’

      ‘So it’s no Season for us, eh?’ Temperance asked, crossing her arms as she regarded her brother grimly. ‘What’s the latest event to besmirch our reputations?’

      ‘Your brother heard about it over breakfast at the Club and summoned me for a strategy session straight away.’

      ‘A strategy session about what?’ Temperance cried.

      ‘Easy, Temper,’ Gregory said, putting a hand on her arm. ‘I’m about to tell you.’

      Though, as usual, she suppressed the emotions her more volatile twin was expressing, Pru could hardly refrain from raising her own voice. ‘What happened, Gregory?’

      ‘Farnham. Well, not being officially out, you won’t have met him, but he’s recently down from Oxford and followed the usual convention of appearing enamoured of our mother. He and another young admirer, Lord Hallsworthy, have been snarling at each other around her like two dogs over a choice bone. Apparently last night, with both of them well in their cups, Farnham claimed Hallsworthy had insulted Mama’s virtue and challenged him to a duel. Which Hallsworthy accepted, the two of them dispensing with the usual protocol and going off at once to Hounslow Heath.’

      ‘At night?’ Temperance said incredulously. ‘Besides, I thought duelling was illegal—and out of fashion.’

      ‘There was a full moon and it is,’ Gregory said. ‘I don’t know what got into them. The upshot was, before anyone realised what was going on, Farnham put a ball into Hallsworthy. The friends who caught up with them took Hallsworthy to a surgeon, but he isn’t doing well. Farnham has fled to the Continent and, by now, the news of the duel, and over whom it was fought, is all over London.’

      ‘Well, I say “bravo, Mama!” if she’s still bewitching young men at her age,’ Temperance said defiantly.

      ‘If she only would consider how much her actions reflect upon us!’ Pru cried, beset by the familiar mix of admiration and resentment for her dazzling mother.

      ‘To be fair, it’s not her fault, Pru,’ Aunt Gussie said. ‘Paying court to London’s longest-reigning Beauty has been a rite of passage for young men coming down from university since the Season your mama debuted. You know she does nothing to encourage them. Quite the opposite.’

      ‘Which only intensifies their rivalry,’ Gregory observed with a sigh.

      ‘Mama has been trying to shield us, Pru,’ Temperance added. ‘Though she’s certainly had offers, she hasn’t taken any new lovers these last five years.’ At her aunt’s gasp, she snapped, ‘Oh, please, Aunt Gussie, there are no innocent maidens here. Not after what we’ve seen going on in this house.’

      Though her sister didn’t blush, Pru felt her own cheeks heat at the reminder. They’d barely been out of leading strings when, even relegated to the nursery, they’d started noticing the parade of handsome men paying calls on their mother. They were hardly in their teens when they’d pieced together the whispers among the staff and come to understand exactly why.

      ‘The Vraux Miscellany,’ society called them. Knowing that only Gregory was truly the son of her legal father, while her brother Christopher and she and Temperance were acknowledged to be the offspring of other men.

      Keenly as she felt this latest scandal, which might well delay once again her chance to find the love and family she yearned for, fairness compelled her to agree with her sister. ‘I know Mama has been trying to live less...flamboyantly, just as she promised us. For all the good that’s done,’ she added bleakly.

      ‘It’s not her fault society conveniently forgives a man the errors of his past—but never a woman,’ Temperance retorted.

      ‘I haven’t always agreed with her...wandering tendencies,’ Aunt Gussie admitted, ‘but married to my brother, I could certainly sympathise. He’d already begun to show passion only for the beautiful objects he collected before I made my come-out. I remember one morning in the breakfast room, I tripped over his latest acquisition, some sort of ceremonial sword. He rushed over when I cried out—it gave me a nasty cut! And completely ignored me, all his concern for whether the sword had been damaged!’

      ‘If only he hadn’t chosen Mama to add to his collections,’ Temperance muttered.

      ‘Well, that’s past lamenting,’ Gregory said briskly. ‘We need to decide what we shall do now, which is why I asked Aunt Gussie to join us. Do