Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

“ T hat is Lady Grace Miller? Goodness. I can scarcely believe she’d show her face, after everything…”

Grace pretended not to hear, though the matrons gossiping behind her hadn’t even bothered to lower their voices. She rolled her eyes and took a sip of her lukewarm ratafia, before grimacing at that, too. When would someone come up with a better drink to have at these wretched affairs?

She turned to her friend and now sister by marriage, Frances, Marchioness of Oackley.

“Frances, darling,” she said. “Where is that husband of yours? He used to smuggle a flask into these events as a matter of habit; do you think he still does so?”

Frances arched an eyebrow. Grace’s friend was losing some of her shyness since her marriage to a future duke. Apparently having half the ton bow and scrape for her favor had made her realize how utterly fake it all was—which had, in turn, made her realize the pointlessness of feeling bashful around such people.

Grace envied her, in a way. After all, it had taken a much more painful lesson for Grace to learn about the insidiousness of the ton .

“I don’t believe so,” Frances replied. “But I suppose it’s not impossible.”

On Grace’s other side, her friend Emily Hoskins, the Countess of Moore chuckled.

“Try Benedict,” she suggested. “He positively loathes these events and only came tonight because I forced him to. He might have decided some liquid courage would improve the evening.”

Emily’s tone was light and teasing, but Grace found it was a struggle to summon a smile at the unspoken words. Emily had forced her husband to come to the ball so that Emily herself could attend, and Emily only wanted to attend to protect Grace from the endless gossip. And Grace had attended because…

Well, that was the most frustrating part of all. Grace didn’t know why she was putting herself through all this. If she’d ever suspected that she could simply slip back into her normal life after her years kept held captive in that hovel in the north, the past few weeks had put a definitive end to such a delusion.

She supposed she came to these events for lack of anything better to do. Her father pushed her to show her face, to show how brave and unaffected she was, even in the wake of such dreadful hardship. He kept insisting it would help her become adjusted to her regular life again, but Grace knew the real reason he wanted her out and about was to reinforce his own political career. After all, if Grace was brave and stalwart, no doubt it was because she’d inherited it from her father, the venerable Duke of Graham.

Nobody could say she’d gotten such qualities from her mother after all. Penelope Miller had spent the time since her daughter’s return either bursting dramatically into tears or nodding so hard at anything her husband said that Grace genuinely feared that, one of these days, her mother’s head would fall right off.

“Benedict really didn’t have to come,” Grace told Emily, her voice pitched low. “You don’t have to make your husband miserable on my account.” She glanced at Frances. “I’d include you in that, but Evan is my brother, so he should be miserable on my account, actually.”

Frances gave her a small, knowing smile, as if she recognized that Grace’s attempts at humor were more bravado than actual good cheer.

“Oh pish,” Emily said, linking her arm through Grace’s. “It’s good to give them something to complain about.”

“Indeed,” agreed Frances, taking Grace’s other arm. “Goodness knows they can’t complain about their wives; we’re perfect.”

This time, Grace’s laugh was genuine if a little weary.

“Hello, hello, hello!” Diana, the Duchess of Hawkins and the last of their foursome of friends, bustled toward them. “There you all are. Sorry I’m late; Gracie was being simply too precious, and I could scarcely tear Andrew away.”

Grace had…mixed feelings about Diana naming her daughter Grace, back when they’d thought the elder Grace to be tragically murdered. On one hand, it was a nice gesture. On the other, baby Gracie was a living reminder of all the years that Grace’s friends had assumed her to dead which was a reminder of all the years that Grace had been very much alive, living with those people…

Plus, it was confusing, having two Graces.

“You could have stayed home with your daughter,” she pointed out as Diana bussed a kiss against her cheek. “Just a thought.”

Diana waved a hand. “No, I really couldn’t have. Andrew has been looking forward to the opportunity to glower at people all week. He complains that ever since I birthed his beautiful daughter—his words—that it isn’t as much fun to glower at me anymore. He needs to get the energy out somewhere, or else I fear he’ll explode.”

Grace considered this. It seemed plausible. Though Andrew Young was, to those who knew him well, a doting husband and father, the rest of the ton considered him downright terrifying.

Society did agree, however, that the new Duke of Hawkins was far preferable to his father, the late duke, who had been hanged for Grace’s apparent murder. Even if Grace was alive and well—and the true culprit in her kidnapping another man entirely—the consensus was the at the time Duke of Hawkins had still rather deserved his fate.

“Besides,” Diana went on grandly, “you know how I like to smile benevolently at everyone who was rude to me before I married. They get that pinched look around their mouths.” She sighed happily. “What’s that bit about living well being the best revenge? It’s wrong. The best revenge is forcing people to watch you live well, naturally. Watch this.”

She raised a hand in greeting and pitched her voice louder. “Well, hello there, Lady Caldwell!”

A woman in her forties paused in her conversation then dropped into a curtsey. When she stood, she did, as promised, have a pinched look on her face.

“Good evening, Your Grace. How are you this?—”

But Diana had already turned back to her friends. “See? I once overheard her calling me a ‘dreadful, bookish little mouse,’ but now I’m a dreadful, bookish little duchess , and it drives her positively mad.”

Grace’s smile was growing with every word from her friends’ mouths. If returning to London had been emotionally complicated, being reunited with her friends had been nothing but straightforward pleasure.

“Power has gone straight to your head,” she accused her friend, who sighed happily.

“I know,” Diana said dreamily. “Isn’t it grand?”

It was pragmatic Emily, of course, who put an end to the silliness and got to the heart of the matter.

“Besides,” she said briskly, “as soon as people see that you are back for good, without anything dramatic to show them, they will get bored with their idle chatter. Doing so with your friends at your side?—”

“Titled friends,” Frances put in quietly.

“—will simply make the process go faster,” Emily concluded smartly.

Grace smiled at her friends, grateful for their support even if she wasn’t so certain that they were correct about the speed with which the cloud of scandal hanging over her would blow away. She’d been gone for years . Most young noblewomen were considered ruined if they were out of their chaperone’s eye line for hours . Sometimes mere minutes.

If there was anything positive to be said about her abduction—a thought Grace allowed only with a generous helping of irony—it was that her kidnappers had not committed any violence against her person. They’d been rude, of course, and they’d given her all the worst chores, working her to the bone until her tiny closet with it’s too thin blanket proved no deterrent to sleep on all but the most frigid nights.

But they hadn’t raised a hand to her in violence though Grace had attributed that more to apathy than kindness. And they hadn’t made any advances, thank the Lord.

So, Grace was not, in a technical matter, ruined . And yet, in every way that mattered to the eyes of the ton , she was inked with an indelible stain.

The storm would probably never pass, not fully, but what choice did she have but to try and weather it?

What I really need, Grace thought as she struggled to maintain the facade of good cheer for her friends’ benefit, is someone whom the ton finds even more interesting, even more scandalous, than me .

And then, as if her prayers had been answered, he appeared.

“And how should I announce you, My Lord?” asked the polite, upright, and appallingly English servant.

Caleb let out a long slow breath. Christ’s eyes, this was a mistake. For a moment, he indulged in a blissful fantasy of turning around, marching out of here, and riding north, past Montgomery Estate, past the Scottish border, and just keeping riding until he hit the North bloody Sea.

But no, he’d come here for a reason, and he would see it through.

“Ye don’t,” the Duke of Montgomery told the servant flatly.

The last thing he needed was for all these painted peacocks and their manipulative mothers to realize that an unattached duke had entered the battlefield they called a ballroom. He would get in, find a suitable bride—if such a thing existed among English lasses, of which he had sincere doubts—and get out. Then he’d wed her, bed her, get his heir, and send her back to London if she chose.

Which she probably would.

The servant’s icy composure cracked. “But My Lord—” he protested.

Caleb brushed past him. He was not here for niceties.

Not that his efforts were rewarded. He’d scarcely taken three steps into the crowded room when a woman stopped him. She was a matron of the ton , clearly, at least a decade or two Caleb’s senior. This advanced age had not stopped her, however, from corseting herself so aggressively that her sizeable bosom swelled alarmingly above the neckline of her gown.

“ Do excuse my forwardness, My Lord,” she said, fluttering her eyelashes in time with the rapid movements of her fan, “but I’m certain I’ve not seen you at such events before, and I attend positively every party the ton has to offer.” She extended a hand like she expected him to kiss it. “I am, of course, Lady Arabella-Celestine Heatherington-Smythe.”

Whoever named the woman, Caleb thought grimly, ought to be in gaol. At the very least, they should be stripped of their title and fortune as a warning against any future generations of English aristocrats getting ideas.

Caleb was Scottish. He’d been raised with a well-deserved horror of any time the English got ideas .

“Caleb Gulliver,” he grunted, hoping she’d be put off by either his tone, his Scottishness, or his lack of reference to a title.

Instead, her eyes grew wide, and her fan fluttering grew even more emphatic.

“ The Duke of Montgomery?” she asked, voice pitched high—and loud enough that everyone within ten feet of them snapped around to look.

Saint Margaret’s left hand, Caleb swore inwardly. How did she know that?

Lady Heatherington-Smythe’s announcement had approximately the same effect that Caleb would have expected from dropping a chunk of prime meat into a pack of starving hounds. Only instead of fighting with claws and teeth, this group battled with cutting words and flashing fans.

“Oh, dear me,” said one such doe-eyed lass, gazing sidelong at Caleb. “But I cannot help but have overheard, Lady Heatherington-Smythe. Did you say this was the Duke of Montgomery? I would be ever so honored if you might give me an introduction.”

Lady Heatherington-Smythe scoffed. “He doesn’t want to talk to you Lady Eleanora. You’re old.”

Lady Eleanora’s glance went from simpering to vicious in an instant. “I’m five and twenty,” she countered.

“Precisely,” the older woman said smugly. “Ancient. On the shelf. Shoo, now.”

Christ. Caleb had been in literal wars less vicious than this.

He might have tried to sidle away from this whole affair while the two women were distracted with sniping at one another except he was attacked from behind. He looked to find a diminutive, dark-haired beauty blinking up at him innocently.

“I do beg your pardon,” she gasped, a hand flying theatrically to her chest. “That was so clumsy of me. Do let me apologize…” She tilted her head expectantly, waiting for him to provide his name.

“No need,” he grunted instead.

He practically had to shove people away to get through the crowd. He had to credit these women their bravery if nothing else; he was a big man, unfashionably so, broad and brawny from his time with the army. He was tall, too, topping even the most statuesque of the lasses by six inches or more.

And it was easy to compare as they all seemed determined to press in on him at once.

Again, Caleb wondered if this was a mistake—not the whole project; that part couldn’t be avoided. But he was a military man. He ought to know better than to walk into an ambush unprepared.

On the far side of the room, Caleb saw a small cluster of men standing together, watching the proceedings with undisguised amusement. Caleb would not have considered himself, generally speaking, the kind of fellow who made friends easily, but for a moment, he was seized with a fervent need to make the acquittances of those men for the mere fact that they were not likely to flutter their eyelashes at him.

What was it with English lasses and eyelashes? he wondered. They were forever acting like they had a speck of dirt or something stuck in there.

His focus was quickly pulled to the gaggle of women standing adjacent to the men. Three of them had their heads bent together, laughing about something. But the fourth…

The fourth was staring at him with something like triumph in her gaze.

That was odd, but in an interesting way—certainly more interesting than the mob cawing for his attention. He held her gaze for a moment, assessing her, until a tug at his elbow caught his attention.

He looked down to see a positively ancient woman, so wrinkled and stooped she was practically half his height. When she gestured for him to bend down, so she could speak to him, he half expected her to say something like, I fear I shall be crushed to death; please remove me from this madness .

Instead, she said what he should have expected: “I’ve a granddaughter who had just made her debut,” she whispered. “She’s a wretched bore but not too bad to look at. And she doesn’t talk much if that’s what you’re looking for in a woman.”

Caleb reeled back in shock. “I see,” he said flatly.

The bleeding audacity of these English! Not for the first time, he regretted not faking his own death in battle. Then someone else could have inherited the bloody dukedom which would have laid this whole ‘bride and heir’ problem at the feet of some distant cousin or other. Caleb could have returned to Scotland and raised sheep. He didn’t know much about sheep, it was true, but he felt certain he could learn. They seemed gentle enough, and simple. Not like these confounding English aristocrats, who were apparently as vicious as they were complex.

When he looked up again, the intriguing golden-haired girl had turned to speak to her friends once more. The new position showed him her hair was more a light brown color that occasionally flickered like it was burnished by candlelight. Not that he was here to pay attention to such things.

With nothing else for it, Caleb gritted his teeth and let himself be introduced about, an honor that Lady Heatherington-Smythe demanded she be granted on the premise of I found him first .

He met dozens of eligible young ladies, their faces and names swirling together until Caleb could not have said, even under pain of death, whether it was Miss Rutherford who was gifted at the pianoforte or the one with the red hair or the one who had tripped when she’d approached him. In truth, he couldn’t have sworn that he’d even met someone called Miss Rutherford, not if pressed on the matter.

This was a mistake , he told himself glumly for the umpteenth time. He was resigned to it now, however. This night was like the eve of battle—dreadful and excruciatingly long but impossible handle any other way besides simply getting through it.

Periodically, he would manage to slip away from his self-appointed chaperone for a moment or two, but she would always find him again with the kind of unerring precision that he’d have found impressive if she’d been using it against anyone else.

It was during one such temporary escape that he turned and found himself coming face to face with the interesting woman from before. Her friends were, a quick glance told him, off on the dance floor, being squired around by the three gentleman who had been standing with them earlier.

“Excuse me, Your Grace,” she said politely enough but with none of the overwrought deference he’d seen from some of the other young ladies at this event. “I must have been woolgathering as I didn’t quite see you there.” Her eyes flicked over him, not provocatively but merely in a casual glance. “Which is impressive, I daresay, as you are quite tall.”

“Astute,” he said flatly, entirely finished with his capacity for politeness.

Instead of seeming offended, however, she merely arched an eyebrow. He thought perhaps there was even a slight quirk to her mouth that spoke of amusement. The look was gone as soon as it appeared, however, and she was back to appearing like any other English lass, albeit not one who seemed overly keen for his favor. But she was as polite, composed, and collected as the rest of them. It set his teeth on edge. What he wouldn’t give for an unpolished, honest Scottish lass.

But no, this whole marital issue was one last awful gift from his father. Not even death could stop the man from ruining Caleb’s life, apparently.

“Well,” she said, far more graciously than he deserved, “it has been very nice to meet you, but I shall have to bid you farewell. It seems you have more admirers seeking to make your acquaintance.”

This time, the flicker of expression was one of nervousness—and not directed at him, either. It was, rather, at the assembled masses looking in their direction. He stifled a sigh—barely—when he saw that Lady Heatherington-Smythe heading the charge.

“ There you are!” she exclaimed. “Why, I almost neglected to introduce you to my second cousin’s great-niece, Lady Honoria Chapworth! You must come meet her; she’s a dear.”

By the time Caleb glanced back, the intriguing woman was gone. He didn’t see her again for the rest of the evening—not, he reminded himself, that he was looking for her in any case.