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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 had for this past year.

If not for the dowager duchess’s kindness, Ellie feared that she might have been forced to offer herself up to the tender mercies of becoming one of the demimonde after the death of her mother and stepfather had revealed she had not only been left penniless but seriously in debt. Edith St. Just, hearing of her nephew’s profligacy, had wasted no time in sweeping into his stepdaughter’s heavily mortgaged home and paying off those debts before gathering Ellie up to her ample bosom and making a place for her in her own household as her companion. This past year in that lady’s employ had revealed to Ellie that Edith St. Just’s outward appearance of stern severity hid a heart of gold.

Unfortunately the same could not be said of her grandson, the arrogant and ruthless Justin St. Just, Duke of Royston, the haughtiness of his own demeanor a reflection of the steel within...

“Are you sure this is altogether wise?” Lady Cicely ventured uncertainly. “Thorne is sure to be most displeased with me if he should discover I have plotted behind his back to secure him a wife.”

“Humph.” The dowager duchess snorted down the length of her aristocratic nose as she took a seat beside the unlit fireplace. “We may plot all we like, Cicely, but it will be our grandsons’ decisions as to whether or not they are equally as enamored of our choices of brides for them. Besides, our grandsons are all past the age of eight and twenty, two of them never having married, the third long a widower, and none of them giving so much as a glance in the direction of the sweet young things paraded before them with the advent of each new Season.”

“And can you blame them?” Lady Cicely frowned. “When those young girls seem to get sillier and sillier each year?”

“That silliness is not exclusive to the present.” The dowager duchess frowned. “My own daughter-in-law, but eighteen when Robert married her, was herself evidence of that very silliness when a year later she chose to name my only grandson Justin—to be coupled with St. Just! Which is why it is our duty to seek out more sensible women to be the future brides of our respective grandsons, and mothers of the future heirs.”

Lady Cicely did not look convinced. “It is only that Thorne has such an icy demeanor when angry...”

Lady Jocelyn gave her friend a consoling grimace. “I am afraid Edith is, as usual, perfectly correct. If we are to see our grandsons suitably married, then I fear we shall have to be the ones to arrange matters. No doubts they will all thank us for it one day. Besides,” she added coyly, “with the advent of my ball tomorrow evening, I do believe that I have already set things in motion regarding Christian’s future.”

“Indeed?” The dowager duchess raised steely brows.

“Oh, do tell!” Lady Cicely encouraged excitedly.

Ellie, listening attentively to the conversation while giving the outward appearance of concentrating upon her own sewing, was also curious to hear how Lady Jocelyn believed she had managed to arrange the securing of a wife for her grandson, the cynical and jaded—frighteningly so, in Ellie’s opinion!—Lord Christian Ambrose, Earl of Chambourne...