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Mayfair, London

March 1812

Remember, you wanted this. The neck chain scraped heavy around Sophie St. Quinton’s throat, cold metal against warm skin. Gooseflesh swept up her arms. Proof of vitality—or perhaps calling it an outward sign of life would be a more profitable selection of words, for she was a hull. Hollow, heavy, and anchored to the last of her good sense.

“You look lovely.” Her mother moved into view of the looking glass, her wrinkled hand settling on Sophie’s shoulder.

The maid’s twitching fingers at last secured the necklace clasp, and the unwieldy ruby heirloom dropped into place. One of the golden links snagged Sophie’s hair on its descent, yanking it out. The face in the mirror underwent no change in expression.

Sophie watched her own hand, encased to the elbow in white satin silk, close over her mother’s and squeeze. She couldn’t break her own gaze. Who was this proper lady? The sort of woman who had been presented before the queen and felt nothing, who now prepared for her first ball with all the enthusiasm of a felled, rotting oak. Not quite the romantic product of her girlhood dreams. That mischievous, bouncing, utterly hopeful child was gone forever.

Yes, it really should have been me.

Little good being alive did her anymore. If her brother, Lieutenant Edmund St. Quinton, had not run off to that naval academy, had not been enamored with England and honor and Lord Nelson and the Royal Navy, if he had just stayed home and contented himself to being the heir and the torturous older brother—

“You will do very well tonight.” Mama’s hand was by itself again, patting lightly on her daughter’s shoulder, a slow beat that still managed to outpace that of Sophie’s heart. “Perhaps when your father is feeling less melancholy, it will be us who escort you to these balls.”

That was almost worthy of a laugh. The reflection of Sophie’s lips, massaged to a dull red with French rouge, curled sardonically. The last nineteen months of mourning already meant she was making her debut in London society two years belated. If she waited for melancholy to abate to find a husband, to add a man to the decidedly female-dominated St. Quinton line, she would no longer be a felled oak but a fossil.

“I am grateful to you,” Sophie said, forcing the corners of her mouth into a more pleasant-looking shape. “Had you not convinced Lady Penney to escort me, I might not be attending at all.”

Lord and Lady Penney, along with their outrageously beautiful daughter, were sour people. Nearly impossible to impress and certainly impossible to please—but those same qualities made them wretched chaperones. All the better.

Mama drifted toward the bed, where a sampling of luxuries had been arranged. A bracelet of seed pearls from the jeweler on the Strand. Crimson silk for the gown, a bold yet youthful shade meant to dissolve the last two years of aging. Silver tulle overlaying the bust, which the modiste had lowered the neckline of not once, but twice. Every selection had been made by Mama with painstaking care.

It was strange to finally be the object of her parents’ attention. Throughout Sophie’s childhood, Mama and Papa had been largely absent, too busy fussing over Belmaine Hall and the house’s endless string of renovations to worry much about their children. And in a strange, backward sense, the care her parents were now putting into her Season was still an investment in the old Sussex estate.

Edmund had died. There were no male relations who could inherit. Only the last, most tasteless option remained: marry Sophie to a gentleman worthy of inheriting all but her father’s title.

Oh, the old Sophie would have balked at the idea. Shook her fists in the air and made a case for the love she one day hoped to find—but now she took comfort in it. She possessed a power, a duty, that most daughters could never hope to claim. If she succeeded in marrying well, she would honor her late brother and her parents both. Her frayed sense of self would mend. Life would hold purpose again.

Sophie rose to join her mother, and found her eyes rimmed with red. “Tonight will prove successful,” Sophie said, and she thought the confidence in her voice would have made her proud, were she capable of feeling. “You agree, do you not?”

“I … do hope so.”

“It will.” Now she almost sounded angry. These tones, these portrayals of self, were growing difficult to regulate. “I cannot imagine a gentleman present who would not be proud to marry his name to that of our family and Belmaine Hall.”

“Not a soul present won’t have heard of your father’s improvements. What a legacy he has created.” Lady St. Quinton’s mouth twisted, and Sophie’s mind filled out the unspoken finale. And what a shame it will no longer bear his name, that his title will die with him, that the sum of our life’s toil will be left in the hands of whichever man you wed.

Sophie’s dressing robe was in a pool around her feet now, the fabric hot from the heat of her body. Lady St. Quinton turned her back; she never liked to see her daughter in any state of undress, and Anne, the scowling and newly hired lady’s maid, returned. Sophie stepped into the frothing skirts one foot at a time.

She would liberate her parents from their fears for the future. She would marry well, all hint of feeling be cursed (that wouldn’t be so difficult, now, would it?) and carry out her duty to this family.

Never mind that it should have been Edmund’s role. That the younger, naïve version of herself had dreamt of the day she would stand in Mayfair ballrooms, looking like this proper woman, and settle for nothing less than blinding love. She, the woman in the glass, might glow with vitality—hot skin and eyes of fire—but the old Sophie St. Quinton was dead.

“You are fond of Sussex, I imagine?”

Sophie forced a smile and blinked at her dance partner. Between the stomping feet, the swell of the orchestra, and the mingled shouts of laughter coming from the outskirts of the ballroom, she could scarcely hear him. A baron, was he? Or a second son? It had been half an hour since their introduction and she had already forgotten.

“Yes, sir,” she said, as he guided her through a turn of the cotillion. “You imagine correctly. My family’s seat there is the most important thing in all the world to me.”

The steps of the dance separated them. Her hands were sweating inside her gloves where he had been gripping them so tightly. After this—she glanced discreetly down at her wrist to confirm the vacancy on her dance card—she would slip off to the refreshment room. Five dances, and five droll dance partners, spoke of an endurance worthy of a drink.

The cotillion returned the pale young man to her. She hadn’t noticed his scent before, but the eau de cologne burned high in her nose now. He squashed her fingers together. Her teeth clenched behind her smile.

“It is Belmaine Hall which you speak of, is it not, Miss St. Quinton?”