“They’re worse, believe me,” Maggie said, blowing out a breath. “I am the eldest. I should know better, I should think before I act, I am to set a good example. It’s endless.”
“I like the example you set.” Eve gave her a smile. “You do as you please, you come and go as you please, you have your own household and your own funds. You’re in charge of your own life.”
Maggie did not quite return the smile. “I am a disgrace, but a happy one for the most part. Let’s be on our way and I can turn my rooms upside down when I get home.”
Evie took her arm and as they passed from Maggie’s bedroom, they crossed before the cheval mirror.
A study in contrasts, Maggie thought. They were the bookends of the Windham daughters, the oldest and the youngest. No one in his right mind would conclude they had a father in common. Maggie was tall with flaming red hair and the sturdy proportions of her mother’s agrarian Celtic antecedents, while Evie was petite, blond, and delicate. By happenstance, they both had the green eyes common to every Windham sibling and to Esther, Duchess of Moreland.
“Is this to be a full parade muster?” Maggie asked as she and Evie settled into her town coach.
“A hen party. Our sisters ran out of megrims, sprained ankles, bellyaches and monthlies, and Mama will be dragging the lot of us off to Almack’s directly. Sophie is lucky to be rusticating with her baron.”
“I don’t envy you Almack’s.” She did, however, envy Sophie her recently acquired marital bliss. Envied it intensely and silently.
“You had your turn in the ballrooms, though how you dodged holy matrimony with both Her Grace and His Grace lining up the Eligibles is beyond me.”
“Sheer determination. You refuse the proposals one by one, and honestly, Evie, Papa isn’t as anxious to see us wed as Her Grace is. Nobody is good enough for his girls.”
“So he took it out on the boys and now they’re wed with babies on the way.”
“Finally. Then Sophie had to go and ruin things by marrying her baron.”
Their eyes met and they broke into giggles. Still, Maggie saw the faint anxiety in Evie’s pretty green eyes, and knew a moment’s gratitude that she herself was so firmly on the shelf. There had been long, fraught years when she’d had to dodge every spotty boy and widowed knight in the realm, and then finally she’d reached the halcyon age of thirty.
By then, even Papa had been willing to concede, not defeat—he still occasionally got in his digs—but truce. Maggie had been allowed to set up her own establishment and the time since had seen significant improvement in her peace of mind.
There were tariffs and tolls, of course. She was expected to show up at Her Grace’s weekly teas from time to time. Not every week, not even every other, but often enough. She stood up with her brothers when they deigned to grace the ballrooms, which was thankfully rare of late. She occasionally joined her sisters for a respite at Morelands, the seat of the duchy in Kent.
But mostly, she hid.
They reached the ducal mansion, an imposing edifice set well back from its landscaped square. The place was both family home and the logistical seat of the Duke of Moreland’s various parliamentary stratagems. He loved his politics, did His Grace.
And his duchess.
One of his meetings must have been letting out when the hour for Her Grace’s tea grew near because the soaring foyer of the mansion was a beehive of servants, departing gentlemen, and arriving ladies. Footmen were handing out gloves, hats, and walking sticks to the gentlemen, while taking gloves, bonnets, and wraps from the ladies.
Maggie sidled around to the wall, found a mirror, and unpinned her lace mantilla from her hair. She flipped the lace up and off her shoulders, but it snagged on something.
A tug did nothing to dislodge the lace, though someone behind her let out a muttered curse.
Damn it? Being a lady in company, Maggie decided she’d heard “drat it,” and used the mirror to study the situation.
Oh, no.
Of all the men in all the mansions in all of Mayfair, why him?
“If you’ll hold still,” he said, “I’ll have us disentangled.”
Her beautiful lacy green shawl had caught on the flower attached to his lapel, a hot pink little Damask rose, full of thorns and likely to ruin her mantilla. Maggie half turned, horrified to feel a tug on her hair as she did.
A stray pin came sliding down into her vision, dangling on a fat red curl.
“Gracious.” She reached up to extract the pin, but her hand caught in the shawl, now stretched between her and the gentleman’s lapel. Another tug, another curl came down.
“Allow me.” It wasn’t a request. The gentleman’s hands were bare and his fingers nimble as he reached up and removed several more pins from Maggie’s hair. The entire flaming mass of it listed to the left, then slid down over her shoulders in complete disarray.
His dark eyebrows rose and for one instant, Maggie had the satisfaction of seeing Mr. Benjamin Hazlit at a loss. Then he was handing her several hair pins amid the billows of her mantilla, which were still entangled with the longer skeins of her hair. While Maggie held the fluffy mass of her mantilla before her, he got the blasted flower extracted from the lace, and held it out to her, as if he’d just plucked it from a bush for her delectation.
“My apologies, my lady. The fault is entirely mine.”
And he was laughing at her. The great, dark, brute found it amusing that Maggie Windham, illegitimate daughter of the Duke of Moreland, was completely undone before the servants, her sisters, and half her father’s cronies from the Lords.
She wanted to smack him.
Maggie instead stepped in closer to Hazlit, took the fragrant little flower, and withdrew the jeweled pin from its stem.
“If you’ll just hold still a moment, Mr. Hazlit, I’ll have you put to rights in no time.” He was tall enough she had to look up at him—another unforgivable fault, for Maggie liked to look down on men—so she beamed a toothy smile at him when she jabbed the little pin through layers of fabric to prick his arrogant, manly skin.
“Beg pardon,” she said, giving his cravat a pat. “The fault is entirely mine.”
The humor in his eyes shifted to something not the least funny, but Maggie’s spirits were significantly restored.
“Your gloves, sir?” A footman hovered, looking uncertain and very pointedly not noticing Maggie’s hair rioting down to her hips. Maggie took the gloves and held them out to Hazlit.
“Can you manage, Mr. Hazlit, or shall I assist you further?” She turned one glove, and held it open, as if he were three years old and unable to sort the thing out for himself.
“My thanks.” He took the glove and tugged it on, then followed suit with the second.
Except his hand brushed Maggie’s while she held out his glove. She didn’t think it was intentional, because his expression abruptly shuttered. He tapped his hat onto his head and was perhaps contemplating a parting bow when Maggie beat him to the exit.
She rose from her curtsey, her hair tumbling forward, and murmured a quiet, “Good day,” before turning her back on him deliberately. To the casual observer, it wouldn’t have been rude.
She hoped Hazlit took it for the slight it was intended to be.
“Oh, Mags.” Evie bustled up to her side. “Let’s get you upstairs before Mama sees this.” She lifted a long curling hank of hair. “Turn loose of that mantilla before your permanently wrinkle it—and whatever happened to put you in such a state?”
Acknowledgments
For a tadpole author to see her debut trilogy published in the space of a year is terrifically gratifying. This takes a lot of patience on the part of the publisher’s staff, because the author is very much learning the process by the seat of her pants. My thanks go to Sourcebooks’s publisher, Dominique Raccah, for many reasons; to my editor, Deb Werksman, for even more rea
sons; and to all the troops at Sourcebooks, Inc., who’ve had a hand (yes, Valentine) in creating this lovely little book: Skye, Susie, Cat, Danielle, Madame Copy Editor, cover artist Anne Cain, and all the unsung heroes in marketing, art, bookmaking, and everywhere in between.
And there’s one other person I need to thank: My first piano teacher. The late Kaye Rossi instilled in me a love of music that brings me joy to this day.
About the Author
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Grace Burrowes hit the bestseller lists with both her debut, The Heir, and her second book in The Duke’s Obsession trilogy, The Soldier. Both books received extensive praise and starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Booklist. The Heir was also named a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2010, and The Soldier was named a Publishers Weekly Best Spring Romance of 2011. She is hard at work on stories for the five Windham sisters, the first of which, Lady Sophie’s Christmas Wish, is already on the shelves. Grace is a practicing attorney specializing in family law and lives in rural Maryland.
Grace loves to hear from her readers and can be reached through her website at graceburrowes.com.
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