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 amale courtesanfor the evening?
Chapter One
It was a time-honored state of being that Society was unkind to those who did not fit in; especially females.
A woman who focused too much on her family was antisocial, possibly viewing herself as too good for Society. A woman who spent too much time on charitable endeavors was generating a saintly facade; holier-than-thou. A woman who dressed too fashionably was either vain or trying much too hard. A woman who didn’t dress well enough was frumpy and unappealing. A woman who danced too much was loose with her morals and her favors; a woman who danced too little was a wallflower. Decline too many proposals—whatever the reason may be—and you were a tease or snobbish; receive no proposals and you were pitied as being in dire danger of becoming a spinster, dusty and set firmly upon the shelf.
Perhaps the greatest of sins were the ones difficult or impossible to change—the physical ones or those who made a woman who she was at the very core of her being.
Women too tall, too intelligent, too outspoken, too shy, too pock-marked, too sallow, too freckled, too plump…these were the women who suffered the most for no reason other than something about them was deemed different.
Lady Ariel, sister to Arnold Francis Martin Tilbury, Earl of Darby, was one woman unfortunate enough to be in possession of several of the aforementioned “undesirable” traits.
At just shy of six feet in height thanks to sturdy Northern ancestry, she towered over many men in Society.
Having received the same education as her elder brother and gone on to cultivate her extensive library, she was often more intelligent than those same men; though she’d learned early on that they were not fond in the least of being reminded of this fact.
At twenty-nine years and three-hundred-and-sixty-four days in age with not a single proposal to her name above a septuagenarian baron looking for his third wife, she was unquestionably a spinster in need of a good dusting.
She’d removed her bonnet a few too many times when she’d snuck off to the gardens to read, so a healthy smattering of freckles was splashed across her nose and the round apples of her cheeks.
And her figure was well past the “pleasantly plump” side of theton’s scale. To state it plainly, she was fat. Or so she’s been told, both behind her back and to her face more times than she could count at that point.
At first, this had crushed her as it would anyone receiving such venomous barbs. Words can be crushing to a girl who wanted nothing more than to be accepted and welcomed into the glittering world she’d read of and heard so much about. The reality of the darkness flitting just beneath the bejeweled surface was enough to make her wish she’d never left her library.
