Chapter One

A Brief Conversation
The Duchess of Girton’s Bedchamber

Lady Troubridge's House Party
East Cliff

"Well, what does he look like?"

There was a pause. "He has black hair, I remember that," Gina said dubiously. She was sitting at her dressing table and tying a hair ribbon into small knots. Ambrogina, Duchess of Girton, rarely fidgeted. Duchess is as duchess does, one of her governesses had insisted. But Gina was panicking. Even duchesses panic, on occasion.

Esme Rawlings burst into laughter. "You don't know what your own husband looks like?"

Gina scowled. "It's easy for you to laugh. Your husband isn't returning from the continent to find you in the midst of a scandal. I've been insisting that Cam annul our marriage so that I can marry Sebastian. After he reads that dreadful bit of gossip in The Tatler, he'll think I'm a loose woman."

"Not if he knows you," Esme chortled.

"That's just it! He doesn't know me. What if he believes the talk about Mr. Wapping?"

"Fire your tutor and it'll blow over in a week."

"I won't fire poor Mr. Wapping. He came all the way from Greece to be my tutor, and the poor man doesn't have anywhere to go. Besides, he hasn't done anything wrong, and neither have I, so why should I act as if I had?"

"Being seen with your tutor at two in the morning by Willoughby Broke and his wife was not the soundest policy."

"You know we were simply observing the meteor shower. At any rate, you're not answering me. What if I don't recognize my own husband?" Gina turned around on her stool and fixed her eyes on Esme. "It will be the mosthumiliating moment of my life!"

"For goodness' sake, you sound like a bad actress in a melodrama. He'll be announced by the butler, won't he? So you'll have time to collect yourself. Oh my dearest husband," Esme said, casting Gina a melting look of welcome. "What a terrible, terrible sorrow your absence has been to me!" She began fanning herself languidly.

Gina grimaced at her. "I suppose you employ that sentence frequently?"

"Naturally. Miles and I are always polite, whenever we meet. Which is rare, thank goodness."

Gina put down the ribbon, now knotted in fifty places. "Look at this -- my hands are shaking. I don't know anyone who has experienced such a horrendous meeting."

"You're exaggerating. Think how poor Caroline Pratt felt when she had to tell her husband she was pregnant -- and he away in the Low Countries all the previous year!"

"That must have been difficult."

"Although she really did him a favor. What in God's name would have happened to the estate if she hadn't managed to produce an heir? They have been married over ten years, after all. Pratt should have thanked her very nicely, although I have no doubt but what he didn't, men being the boors they are."

"My point is that meeting Cam is going to be prodigiously difficult," Gina said. "I'm not sure I will know him from Adam."

"I thought you spent your childhood in his pocket."

"That's not the same as meeting him as a grown man. He was just a boy when we married."

"There are plenty of women who would love to see their husbands move to the continent," Esme pointed out.

"Cam is not really my husband. For goodness' sake, I was raised to think he was my first cousin, until the very day we married."

"I don't see how that changes things. There are plenty of married first cousins, more's the pity. And you are not truly first cousins, given that your mother merely raised you, as opposed to giving birth to you."

"Just as my husband is not truly my husband," Gina added promptly. "Cam jumped out the window within fifteen minutes of his father forcing him to say the vows. It has simply taken him twelve years to return and annul the marriage."

"At least my husband left through the front door like a civilized man."

"Cam was hardly a man. He turned eighteen only a few days earlier."

"Well, you look glorious in that rose gown," Esme said, smiling at Gina. "He'll weep to think that he ever leaped out your bedchamber window."

"Nonsense. I'm not beautiful. I'm too thin and my hair resembles nothing so much as a carrot." She peered at herself in the mirror. "I wish I had your eyes, Esme. Mine are the color of mud."

"Your eyes are not muddy, they're green," Esme corrected her. "And as for not being beautiful -- look at you! You look like a Renaissance Madonna today, all slender and composed and a bit teary. Except for your hair, of course. Do you think you inherited all that red hair from your scandalous French maman?"

"How should I know? My father refused to describe my real mother."

"Actually, a Madonna is a perfect description," Esme continued with a wicked twinkle. "Poor dear ... yet another married virgin!"

There was a knock at the door, and Annie, the duchess's maid, answered it. "Lady Perwinkle would like to visit for a moment, Your Grace."

"Do ask her to come in," Gina replied.

Carola Perwinkle was small and deliciously rounded, with curls that bounced around her heart-shaped little face. She let out a squeal of delight at the sight of Esme.

"Darlings! I had to come even though it's past time to dress because Lady Troubridge told me the most astounding tale about Gina's husband -- "

"It's true," Gina put in. "My husband is returning to England."

Carola clasped her hands together. "How romantic!"

"How so? I see nothing romantic about my husband annulling our marriage."

"All the way from Greece, simply to free you, to allow you to marry the man you love? I've no doubt but that his heart is secretly broken at the thought."