Prologue
Roland Nicolet, the Duke of Pelham, was beginning to think that unloading his seven daughters might be more work than he’d anticipated.
Despite the dire warnings of his sister, Lady Misery, known in the wider world as Lady Marchfield, he’d really thought it would not be much of a trick to convince a string of unsuspecting fellows to take his daughters off his hands.
As it happened, his first two efforts had ended successful, but it had been quite the thrilling ride to get to a church. His eldest, Felicity, had managed to set a bad-tempered Bengal tiger on the loose, resulting in her rather mauled suitor. His second, Grace, had accidently set a fire and then flung her suitor off the side of a house—mauled suitor number two.
It had all been entertaining in the extreme, until he began to consider what could be done with a dead suitor. Which was nothing. The last two were lucky to be alive; what if the next one did not survive courting one of his daughters? Did these girls of his not realize that they had to at least keep their gentlemen in the land of the living?
Despite the setbacks, the duke was a rather carefree specimen, as only the rich and powerful had the luxury of being. Trotting his horse through his vast holdings in the Dales, his thoughts turned toward imagining a future ease in unloading the rest of his offspring. Two of that feminine horde were out of his house already and only five more to go—his dream of an empty house was within reach!
This season, Patience would take her turn in society and he expected quick work of it. Patience did absolutely everything quick, so the duke presumed some gentleman would find himself standing in front of a vicar with little idea of how he got there. The duke did not intend to tell him.
