Epilogue

April 1822

"The best man is one you love who loves you wildly in return." –the working memoirs of Mrs. Georgiana Evans

F rom across the crowded London ballroom at Sarah's first event as hostess, Georgiana watched her husband eat cake. A brute, he was, shoving the dense, fruit-heavy slice right into his mouth without a care for the raisins that had dropped by his boots or the crumbs dotting his evening jacket. With a sigh, she bustled across the room. She'd have to clean him up. He saw her coming before she arrived, and the grin that grew on his lips—slow and knowing and hot-blooded—put speed into her steps.

When she reached his side, she opened her mouth to read him a lecture and found a bite of cake between her lips instead, attached to his fingers. She tried to stay strong, but the sugar melted her as it melted on her tongue, and she chewed and swallowed her lecture with the cake. She took the plate from his hands and helped herself to more.

He chuckled, then said, "You have been watching me all evening."

"Have I?" Oh, a crumb fell on her decolletage.

He found it, swiped it away with the pad of his thumb, and sucked that thumb right into his mouth.

Her mouth went dry.

"I demand you stop," he said, "watching me."

"Do you?" She managed to lift an eyebrow, unable to take her gaze from his lips. "Just because the hostess is your sister-in-law does not mean I'll—"

"Let me seduce you? Drag you off to a bedchamber and have my wicked way with you?"

"I was going to say tolerate shenanigans."

"Ah, yes, Wife, I remember. Shenanigans, fortune hunters, and fools. All things you do not tolerate. What about aroused husbands? Do you tolerate those?"

"Most decidedly, I"—she licked her lips, letting him wait—"do."

"You're sure?" He folded his arms behind his back as if to keep himself from temptation and tempered his smile. "I'll not interrupt your evening if you do not desire it. You've missed almost every ball this Season. Musicals, teas—all of it missed because you've been languishing with me in the country."

"You call it languishing, Josiah, but I call it living." She bounced up on her toe and whispered in his ear, "Happily. You taste better than cake. And better our little cottage than some crowded ballroom. I miss my garden and my library. And teasing your father. He turns a very funny shade of red that simply does not exist anywhere else in the world. And who but me will make sure Peter and Henry don't pick up their father's silliness when they are home from school. Sarah is running her hospital, and you and Xavier tend to the estates. There is no one but me to reform your father and educate your brothers. I do it selflessly for the women they will one day meet."

"You enjoy lecturing them." He tapped the tip of her nose.

"Of course not." She fluttered her eyelashes as if she were one of the debutantes dancing around the room in anxious gentlemen's arms.

"You want to boss them about."

She leaned forward and dropped her voice low. "I want you ."

The cake dropped to the ground as his arm stole around her waist, and she gasped loud enough for the nearby string quartet to miss a note. The colors of the ballroom—black and white and pastel pink—blurred together as he whisked her away. To an abandoned room for now, but later he'd whisk her back home, to a house in the country where she was never quite alone, not on Christmas day or a springtime evening, not on snowed-in mornings or rainy afternoons. Her own family had sold her away, but she'd found a new one, and with Josiah's kiss on her lips and words of love in her heart, she'd never be alone again.

The End

Thank you for reading The Heiress Who Dared Me , a Christmas novella in Charlie Lane's USA Today bestselling The Debutante Dares series? If you haven't read all books in the series, make sure to check them out now!

In the glittering ballrooms of Regency London, a group of unconventional debutantes is turning heads and breaking hearts. The Debutante Dares series follows these audacious young ladies as they defy societal norms, challenging the ton's most eligible bachelors to fall madly in love. Get ready for a whirlwind of passion, wit, and scandalous romance that will leave you breathless.

If you are looking for a brand new series, make sure to not miss Never Woo the Wrong Lady , book 1 in A Gentleman's Guide to Courtship .

In this fun Regency romance, newspaperman Tristan seeks the perfect wife to protect his brother. Lady Andromeda, with a scandalous secret—a hidden erotic lending library—is in a fake engagement. When Tristan enters, sparks fly. With a persistent newspaperman, a fake engagement, and desires igniting, will love expose secrets or steal hearts?

Get your copy now or read on for a sneak-peek!

CHAPTER ONE

May 1818

The book dropped to the floor in the entry hall of the Duke of Clearford's London home and echoed like a church bell on a clear afternoon. Or a gun fired in the close marble quarters. Lady Andromeda Merriweather nearly expired. Every function that kept her alive stopped in an instant. Lungs—empty. Heart—still. Mental functioning—entirely blank.

All her deceased being fixated on the book, which had fallen open to an illustrated page. A woman bent over a desk. A gentleman, trousers dropped around his ankles, positioned just behind her.

Hell and chaos.

Lottie, Andromeda's sister, pounced at once with a tiny yelp, covering the book, hiding it. The woman who'd dropped the book, Baroness Chapman, used her reticule to beat back a footman kneeling to help with the book's retrieval, her attack so energetic her bonnet fell away from her steel-gray curls. The footman did not need much persuading, and when he stood, defending himself with raised arms, Andromeda rushed to his side.

"Johnny. Thank you for the help, but the book is quite special to Lady Chapman. She does not let others touch it." She turned him toward a nearby antechamber.

"But Lady Charlotte is touching it," Johnny grumbled.

"Lady Charlotte is special, too." Quick thinking to save the day. She tried not to wince, opened the door, and shoved Johnny inside. His yelp barely made it past the crack in the door before she shoved it closed once more. She whirled to face the others. "I so dislike even a hint of discourteousness, but… out, Lady Chapman."

Lottie pressed the book into Lady Chapman's hands, whirled her round, and helped her out the door, admitting in exchange for the woman, an unusually oppressive wave of heat. "Hold tight to that," she admonished. "No more dropping it. Particularly not where others can see it. Or we'll refuse you access to our collection."

A gasp. "You can't, Lady Charlotte!" The brackets around her mouth deepened.

"I won't if you treat the books even better than you treat your children. No! Better than that heirloom ruby necklace I know you love."

Lady Chapman's face blanched, and she hugged the book to her chest. "I will, I will. It was an accident ."

Andromeda joined Lottie in the doorway to watch the lady follow the others, who'd just left their monthly tea, down the street and into waiting carriages. "See you have no more!"

They closed the door and pressed their backs against it with matching ragged sighs.

Andromeda blew a lock of hair out of her eyes. "I might never recover."

"Me, neither. Imagine if Johnny had picked it up." Lottie shivered and stood straight, then made her way down the long hallway to the drawing room they'd all recently vacated, her steps precise and her head held high as if their entire operation hadn't almost been discovered.

Following her older sister down the hall, Andromeda tried to emulate her calm, but she could never replicate Lottie's unruffled perfection—golden hair curled perfectly, stylish gown without a wrinkle, blue eyes serene and sharp. Andromeda's coiffure was too loose and wispy, her skirts a tad bit too wrinkled about her thin frame, and her insides—a mess. They'd had surprisingly few brushes with discovery in the four years they'd been lending their mother's erotic books to the matrons and widows of the ton , but each one sent her bones rattling for days afterward.

In the drawing room, Andromeda and Lottie sank into seats near open windows that looked out into the garden behind their London townhouse. Andromeda slouched, where her sister sat straight as a pin. The hot breeze wafting inside beaded sweat at her nape. Sweat likely ran from Lottie, terrified of insulting her.

Three of Andromeda's seven sisters—Prudence and the twins, Imogen and Isabella—bustled in on soft feet and with eager eyes. Like Lottie, the twins shared golden blonde hair and blue eyes, while Prudence resembled Andromeda—hair that could be called blonde in some lights but decidedly light brown in others, and eyes that shifted from greenish blue to bluish green, depending on what color gown they wore. Their remaining three younger sisters, who shared their father's dark hair and gray eyes, were all still safe in the schoolroom, unaware of the sordid content of their mother's locked wardrobe.

"What happened?" Prudence asked, snatching a returned book from a nearby chair.

Lottie groaned. "Mrs. Chapman dropped Mémoires de Saturnin . And it landed, open to a very interesting illustration."

Three identical gasps.

"Precisely." Lottie's mouth curled and not into a smile. "We managed to avoid detection, though." A sigh, uncharacteristic, as she rubbed the space between her eyes, smoothing out the grooves a frown had etched there.

"Quick, round up the books," Andromeda instructed. "We must lock them up in the wardrobe before any other almost catastrophe occurs."

Prudence and the twins searched the room—the chairs, the shelves, behind cushions, and under tables—for left-behind books.

"I've got the last of them, I think." Prudence held up two books in one hand and one in another. Behind her, the twins each held two. "We'll return them to the wardrobe."

"Don't forget to lock it immediately," Lottie said. An unnecessary warning. They all knew the danger they played with.

"Yes, yes," Imogen said, peeping into the hallway. "Empty. Come on, then. Before anyone pops up."

With their arms piled high with books that would shock most of London into fainting fits, they ran from the room. Their slippers patted softly but quickly down the hall.

"Well," Andromeda said. "That went well."

Lottie raised a brow.

"Until the incident in the hall."

Her eyebrow fell to an appropriate level in line with the other. "Lady Templeton was quite pleased with Fanny Hill ."

"They always are."

Lottie snorted, then she snuck a look at Andromeda from the corners of her eyes. "I can't believe you've not read it yet."

Andromeda rested her head on the back of the chair. She preferred running their little operation more than the books themselves, enjoyed the gleam of satisfaction in their borrowers' eyes when they felt the leather of a new book between their fingers, loved the chuckling sound of their conversation as they whispered about what they'd read with one another every month over tea.

"I will," Andromeda said. "One day. Perhaps."

Imogen popped back into the room, arms empty, Isabella and Prudence right behind her. They sank together onto a couch, and Imogen bent her legs beneath her, wrapped an arm around Prudence's shoulders.

"When do we get to attend the monthly book exchanges?" Prudence asked, folding her hands in her lap.

Charlotte stiffened, her already rigid spine going almost imperceptibly straighter. "Not yet."

"It's too risky," Andromeda added. "Tea?"

"No." Isabella leaned her head on Prudence's shoulder. "We had some in mother's parlor while we waited."

Andromeda rose and pulled a bell in the corner of the room, anyway. Her sisters chatted and teased, a lovely sound, more perfect than the sweetest aria from the highest talent.

When she returned to her seat, she said, "I think we should allow it, Lottie. Im and Is have had their first Season, and Prudence is on her third. We were not much older when we discovered the books, took over Mother's little project. We should not keep them from joining us if that's their wish." It would keep them close. They could all work together out in the open. Well, as in the open as possible with such a secret.

The frown returned to Lottie's face. "They already have access to the books. They do not need to let the ladies of the ton know it."

"They're our sisters. The ladies of the ton likely already guess. Besides, it's not every titled lady. Just the handful that borrow our books, and they keep our secret because we keep theirs. A perfect exchange of silence."

"Still, I don't think they—"

" They are right here," Prudence said, "and are not tennis balls to be bounced about between the two of you."

"Apologies." Charlotte softened, her shoulders slumping, but firm determination did not leave her face. "It is only, Prudence, that you should, perhaps, have a life outside of Mother's books. Don't you agree, Andromeda?"

Andromeda searched for words. Found none. Life outside of Mother's books? That sort of thing had not existed in the four long years since her death, and it would never exist again.

A throat clearing jerked her attention to the doorway. Her sisters stared there, too, at the butler standing like an arrow in the frame, his black hair carefully slicked backward into place over thick, low brows.

"Yes, Mr. Jacobs?" Lottie asked.

"Your brother has requested your presence."

"Samuel? What could he want with me?"

"Not just you, my lady. All of you. In his study. At your first convenience." He bowed and disappeared.

They'd been summoned. Their brother, the Duke of Clearford, had never done that before—requested their presence en masse in his cavernous study without a single hint as to why. But dukes could do as they pleased. It mostly pleased Samuel, though, to leave his sisters to their own devices but for weekly walks in the park and family dinners each evening.

"Why?" Andromeda wondered aloud.

"Best get it over with." Charlotte rose, and the others followed suit.

"Do you think he knows ?" Imogen asked as they spilled into the hallway.

A ripple of fear made Andromeda's heart thump like a drum. They'd gone so long without discovery. Surely, they were safe. Yet… their three youngest sisters had not been summoned from the schoolroom, and they were not involved. A bad sign, that.

"Surely not," she said, as much to convince herself as to reassure her sisters.

In single file, they found Samuel's study. Five chairs had been set up in a queue facing the fireplace and the large family portrait hanging above it. Were they to be interrogated? Was this an execution?

Lottie took the first seat at the far end of the room, closest to Samuel's large oak desk. And one by one, they sat until Andromeda took the chair closest to the door.

Beside her, Prudence glowered. "Where is he? I've a meeting with Lady Hempstead in an hour."

"He'll be here soon," Andromeda assured her. "We must be patient." Any hint of fear on their part might arouse their brother's suspicion.

Lottie leaned forward and peered down the line at Andromeda on the other end. "If he asked for us to be punctual, he could have at least followed suit."

Imogen and Isabella snorted their agreement.

Prudence crossed her arms over her chest and slumped in a less than lady-like position. "I've tasks to complete today. We all do, I'm sure."

"Patience," Andromeda counseled. "He'll be—"

"Good morning." Samuel strode into the room, snapping the door shut behind him. Then he walked to the far end of their line, snatched a tattered notebook off his desk, spun sharply on the toe of his boot, and retraced his steps. When he stood before Andromeda, he spun again, holding the book in both hands behind his back, paced back down the line, and stopped in its very middle.

He stared at them, face unreadable. Like their father, he had midnight hair and eyes so gray they appeared black in some lights. He'd always been a foreboding sort of man, a duke, though also a brother. But since their parents' deaths five years ago, he'd been the only father they had, willing to use his hauteur, his power, and his intimidating appearance to stare down any danger to them. A protector they admired. But the brother they'd teased had disappeared, giving way to the man who kept his distance.

Andromeda craned her neck as subtly as she could, trying to read the spine of the book he held behind him. What was it? Bad news, likely.

Samuel squared his shoulders and slowly lifted a single brow. Then he tossed the book at Lottie.

She caught it without fumbling and peered at its spine, a burgeoning frown furrowing her brow. "There's no title."

Imogen reached across her twin and neatly plucked the book from Lottie's hands. "It's a notebook." She paged through it. "Mostly blank."

Prudence took the book, flipped to the very first page, and raised a brow. " A Guide to Courtship ? Is this for us?"

Lottie asked, "Why did you throw a courtship guide at my head? If you think I require help finding a suitor, say so, Brother."

Samuel made a slow study of them all, running his gaze from Lottie to Andromeda and back up the line before settling fully on the oldest of them. "You are six and twenty years old, Lottie. You've had ten proposals of marriage since your come-out six years ago, and you've given not even a maybe to a single one of those brave yet hopeless suitors."

Lottie stiffened. "I have my reasons."

They all did.

Samuel focused on Im and Is. "You've experienced only one Season. I concede you have time yet to find husbands, but neither of you took a single offer of marriage seriously this last year, and you have four between you."

Samuel chose Prudence as his next target, and she did not squirm when his attention hit her. She sat taller, pinned him with a challenge in her eyes.

"Three years on the marriage mart, Pru," Samuel said, "and I'm not sure you've even noticed you've left the schoolroom. No offers, but I'm positive it has more to do with your complete avoidance of social gatherings than it does with your appearance or pedigree. The gentlemen simply do not know you exist."

She squared her shoulders. "I prefer it that way."

Samuel took up a wide-legged stance before Andromeda and traced the line of his jaw as he considered her.

She held her chin high, refusing to be cowed. Clearly, he did not know . He'd brought them here to demand answers regarding their perpetually unmarried states, not to confront them with their secrets.

"You are engaged." Samuel tapped his jaw, studying her. "Have been since your first Season four years ago. Yet you remain unwed."

"Samuel," Lottie said, "you are wasting your precious time regaling us with facts we already know. Better than you, I dare say."

"If Andromeda is aware of her engaged yet unmarried state better than I, then why has she not married yet?" Samuel spoke to Lottie but pinned Andromeda with his flintiest gaze.

She sat on her hands to keep from wiggling. "It is not so complicated as you suggest, Samuel." It was very simple, really. She was not really betrothed. Hubert Smalls, Baron Bashton lived in Cornwall, and yes, he exchanged letters with Andromeda, and yes, everyone thought them engaged. But they were not. "Hubert has been quite busy, but he promises to set a date this Season." A lie she gave every time Samuel asked that particular question, which had been more frequent of late.

"Have you called us here to humiliate us?" Prudence asked.

Samuel snapped his jacket straight and stood at the very middle of their line once more. "I've called you all here to remind you of a few things. First, Mother made me promise every one of you would have the power to choose your own husband."

A heavy, buzzing silence fell over them all, and as if some unseen force worked over them all at once, they peered up at the large portrait over the fireplace. Mother and Father surrounded by their nine children. Grief still sat like a boulder on Andromeda's chest, even five years after the carriage accident that had taken their lives, and she had to breathe hard to push air past it.

Samuel recovered first, swinging back around to face them. "I will by no means betray that promise." A harder edge to his voice now. "The choice is yours. But it is time to make it." He snapped the notebook from Imogen's lap where it lay forgotten. "That is what this is for." He paused, a dramatic bit of theatrics for a usually somber man. "I intend to help you find husbands."

Lottie shot to her feet. "You said you would not break your promise to Mother!"

"And I will not."

"Why must we choose now ?" Imogen demanded.

"Will you reduce our dowries if we do not comply?" Prudence asked.

Imogen clutched Isabella's skirts. "Do you plan to cart us off to the country if we do not marry whom you choose?"

Andromeda sat silent, her brain racing with words she could not put into the air. Marriage was impossible. For all of them. It would ruin everything. There must be a way to defy a duke, especially if he was also a troublesome older brother.

"None of that." Samuel raised his voice to be heard above the clamor. "I'm going to help you by helping your suitors and by locating men I consider good candidates to be your suitors."

The dissenting voices melted into nothing.

"How, please," Andromeda ventured to say, "do you intend to help us find husbands? Well, help them find husbands. As you'll remember, I am already engaged." Not engaged. Not really.

Samuel narrowed his eyes. " Bashton ," he said, as if the absent baron was his mortal enemy.

She laughed, a nervous sound, too high and sharp. "Ha. Haha. Do not be too harsh on poor, reluctant Hubert. Avoidant Hubert. Hubert the Hesitant. Haha."

Lottie groaned.

Prudence hid her face behind her palm.

Andromeda took in a deep breath to calm her nerves. Hubert the Hesitant? She wanted to slide under a desk and stay there.

Instead, she smiled, hoping it appeared confident and content. "He'll come around. One day, Lord Bashton will be less… bashful." She gave one more laugh for good measure.

Samuel did not appear amused, but he shook his head and refocused. "I've had six years of experience watching men court and fail to win you. I've watched one suitor after another, after another fail. And you have three more sisters still in the schoolroom who will eventually be where you are." He shook his head again, paced before them. "It's intolerable." He stopped, assuming a wide-legged stance of an invading emperor. "I've spent countless hours in the last few years studying the concept of courtship. There is not much out there to guide young men in how to do it. They cannot make a study of it at university, and they cannot find a book on it as readily as they could a horrid novel. Women are mysteries, and men of older generations are often no help in wooing them over. A young man can find no mentor among the older set. It is no wonder your suitors are so incapable. But I think I can help them, and through them, help you."

"You want us to be your… experiments?" Prudence asked.

He studied the ceiling, as if the word were pinned up there. "I'd not put it that way, but I suppose so, yes. And what harm could come of it? If it does not work, you are no worse off than you are now—unmarried. Or you are married, and to a man who loves you and who has won your love through courtship."

"Why now?" Lottie asked, her voice low and cold.

"Because you cannot remain forever unwed! Mother would have hated that as much as she hated the notion that you might be forced into a union you did not wish. It is time."

Five sets of eyes lowered to study five muslin-covered laps. Andromeda knew, as her sisters did, what her mother had wanted for them all—love matches. But she'd also left them a complicated and secret legacy that did not pair well with courtship and marriage, with husbands who demanded to know the details of their wives' lives.

"We will start this week." The clip of Samuel's boots on the floor made their heads pop up at the same time. He strode for the door, notebook held firmly in the hand of the arm folded behind his back. "None of you are exempt."

Lottie jumped from her chair. "Samuel, please—"

"Not even you, Andromeda." His face was calm, his voice steady and firm. "Bring Bashton up to snuff or find a new suitor who will do right by you."

It was Andromeda's turn to jump to her feet. "But I… but he—"

Samuel stepped into the hallway and slammed the door shut, knocking the breath out of her without a single touch.

"Hell," she breathed.

"And chaos," Isabella finished for her.

Prudence stood and stretched her neck from side to side. "You could have been a bit less suspicious, Annie. All that laughing."

Andromeda shrugged. "I never know what to do when someone mentions Hubert."

"Hubert the Hesitant?" Imogen snorted a laugh. "The Baron of Bashfulness is your betrothed . Surely you can speak of him without flailing."

Andromeda pushed to her feet. "This is a disaster. How are we to go on if we're plagued by suitors who are no more than Samuel's spies?" She lowered her voice. "We cannot continue our lending library under such scrutiny, and you"—she looked on Lottie with more sympathy—"perhaps you should consider finding another man to love."

Lottie's lips thinned, and her jaw hardened to a diamond edge. Then she slammed out of the room. They followed, marching back up the stairs like a regiment of defeated, weary soldiers, Andromeda dragging her feet at the back.

Dust motes danced on airy light, but Andromeda's feet felt too heavy for even the easiest jig. Because the five of them had secrets, and their brother seemed intent on finding them out.

Well, Andromeda would not let him have his way. Prudence and the twins wanted more responsibility with the books. And Lottie should be able to nurse a broken heart if she wanted to. Marriage would ruin all that, would tear them from one another, and force them into separate homes. Andromeda had lost enough family. She'd do whatever it took to keep her sisters close and happy and their secrets hidden.

Read on!