Prologue

London, 1825

What had she been thinking?

Ariel Tilbury paced back and forth in the front parlor of the May- fair Townhouse she shared with her elder brother, Arnold. It had been just the two of them since their father's death three years prior and, with Arnold out for the evening enjoying fully the perks of being a male with a title, she was alone. The silence of the house was unfa- miliar and heavy, fraught with anticipation.

Or was it, perhaps, judgment?

She twisted her fingers until the knuckles blanched and then glanced for easily the forty-third time between the carefully drawn drapes and the clock upon the mantle.

Two hours and twenty-nine minutes remained until the clock chimed to announce her thirtieth birthday.

And one agonizingly long minute until her guest arrived.

She had been so confident one month prior when the idea had first occurred to her.

She'd bubbled over with nervous excitement when, just three days earlier, she'd decided to follow through and discreetly requested her friend contact the agency.

Then, she'd woken that morning to a jittery feeling in her limbs, as if she was physically unable to sit still and wait for the hours to pass by with all the speed of hot, caramelized sugar dripping from a spoon.

Now that the hour was upon her, however, Ariel was regretting her bravado, cursing her brilliantly awful, scandalous idea, and contemplating hiding beneath her covers and pretending she hadn't heard the knock on the door when it finally did come.

She was miserably anxious, practically crawling out of her skin with each passing second. She regretted everything about the situation—her harebrained idea, being born that sunny day three decades prior, every experience and choice that had led her to this moment…

She'd just fisted her hands in her skirts, having concluded that she would cancel all of it—forget the sum of money she had already paid and retreat to her room—when a knock finally sounded upon the door.

An ice-blue wave of shock jolted through Ariel's body, freezing her limbs and stalling her breath. She didn't know how long she stood there frozen, but it was long enough that the caller rapped against the door once more, slightly louder and more impatient than the first time.

It served to prod her into motion. She could have been a coward and remained silent until the knocker retreated, but that was not in her nature.

Stiffly, she moved one halting foot and then the other until she somehow wound up in the entryway, facing the door to her future. She raised a trembling hand to the knob and turned it while holding the air in her lungs for buoyancy.

What had ever possessed her to hire a male courtesan for the evening?