CHAPTER 1
“You are my beloved match, and I cannot wait to take you into my arms?!”
Selina winced as her father’s voice boomed across the empty parlor, laced with such unrestrained fury that she could have sworn she heard the tiny crystals tinkling from the chandelier over her head.
Her stomach twisted into knots as the Duke of Barlow crumpled the missive in his fists, his eyes boring holes into her sorry figure.
“Tell me why you are in such intimate correspondence with that cursed progeny of our family’s mortal enemy?” he demanded, absolutely incandescent with rage. “And why in heaven’s name would that abhorrent cur be so eager to touch you? Why would you be anywhere near his arms?!”
Selina hung her head, avoiding her father’s outraged gaze. “I doubt he is truly as eager,” she muttered under her breath.
What could she say? She had only just read the words herself.
“And on the first Sunday after the banns were read at that!” her father carried on. “The same banns for your engagement withanothergentleman.”
She flinched at the reminder of her engagement.
The Marquess of Ramsbury was a fine gentleman, by all accounts. She was certain that he had some redeeming qualities aside from being titled and of apparently sufficient wealth, what with Miss Wesley carrying on and on about just howwonderfulthe man was.
Unfortunately, she had yet to witness the man’s supposed marvelousness. Oh, yes, he was polite, almost to a fault, but that was where her experience of her betrothed ended. She had partaken in exactly one dinner and one afternoon tea with the gentleman, in which any attempt at conversation had been monopolized by her father.
The Marquess would make a decent husband for anyone—Miss Wesley certainly came to mind—but Selina? He had hardly made a dazzling first—or, indeed, second—impression. He was, to damn with faint praise, perfectly fine.
But nothing like I have dreamed of on late nights with my books.
The letter crushed in her father’s hand, however, nowthatwould have been the kind of thrill her heart craved, had it not been so hastily snatched from her clutches.
My forbidden fruit. My apple of Eve, ripe on the bough.
At least her father hadn’t read that part aloud. Selina would not have been able to bear the embarrassment.
“Oh, John, please would you calm down and take a breath for a moment,” her mother sighed softly. “Perhaps this is all just a misunderstanding.” She cast Selina a furtive look, to which Selina eagerly nodded like a famished chick pecking at grain. “Besides, there has been no interaction between that family and ours for more than two decades.”
Well, her mother was mistaken on that account, but Selina was not so foolish as to add more rope with which her father would most certainly hang her.
“Mother is right,” Selina seconded.
She hesitated, thinking of the book tucked down the side of the nearby settee, where this humiliation had all begun.
It had come with the letter. A book that half the young ladies in the tonhad struggled to get their hands on. It wasthatwicked.A French novel, translated in secret—a rare and passionate story about a soldier and a maiden on opposing sides of a war, falling hopelessly in love. Passionate, descriptive, titillating love.
The accompanying story was how she knew the true origin of the letter, though it would be hard to explain. Perhaps the punishment for reading such shameless literature would be less than receiving a letter from her father’s sworn enemy.
“You see, there is this book, and—” she tried.
“What is there to misunderstand?!” her father roared, cutting her off in the middle of her defense. “My daughter is in possession of aconfessionfrom a descendant of that vile bloodline!”
Of course, he would not listen to her. He never did, not when she told him that she did not wish to marry the Marquess yet, and not when he had all but convinced himself that she had been consorting with the heir to his most hated enemy.
She could see how it looked, but if he would just hear what she had to say, this could all be swept aside.
“The book, Father,” she tried again. “It is?—”
“I told you to watch her.” He turned to her mother. “And look what has happened? This is your fault, Charity. This is all your fault.”
Selina could have counted on one hand the number of times she had heard her father speak her mother’s name. It was never with fondness, always in anger or rebuke, as if it were a cursed word.
She watched despondently as her mother shrank back and dared not speak any more in her defense.
