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The family couldn’t leave the townhouse without being besieged by reporters. Joan enjoyed blowing kisses to those she liked; Viola seriously considered refusing to leave her bedchamber until the Season was over.

Yet the debut ball was not proving as dreadful as she had feared. She had exchanged remarks with several young men and danced with two of them. Her wretched shyness had not disappeared, but it had receded.

Most importantly of all, her nerves hadn’t gone to her stomach.

“Anyone who has heard you are incurably timid knows it to be a falsehood,” Aunt Knowe had whispered in her ear after the first hour. “Brava, darling!”

What Aunt Knowe didn’t realize was the reason for Viola’s surprising change of heart. Her show of courage. Her cure.

It was love.

Love had changed everything.

Love kept her calm as she danced an allemande with a young squire, calm as an eligible earl lectured her on gargoyles, calm as she accepted gentlemen’s compliments that would have made her squirm a month before.

She no longer worried whether her so-called suitors thought she didn’t measure up to being a Wilde. If her dance partners were secretly as rough and unprincipled as the man she’d interrupted at that long-ago ball, it wasn’t her problem. She could scarcely believe that she’d cared so much.

Every beat of her heart brought her closer to the part of the evening that truly mattered: a meeting with Mr. Marlowe in the library. At precisely twenty minutes past midnight, Viola slipped out of the ballroom, pretending that her hem needed adjusting.

To her horror, she arrived at the ducal library just in time to see Sir Reginald Murgatroyd, an acquaintance of her Aunt Knowe’s, disappear inside. Surely a respectable widower in his fifties hadn’t planned an illicit tryst?

Viola cautiously pulled open the door a crack.

“Found you!” Sir Reginald bellowed. He was standing with his back to Viola before an armchair set at an angle to the door. As Viola watched, he gave the pair of long legs stretched out before him a kick.

“That charming greeting can only originate from a member of my family,” said a deep voice from the depths of the chair.

Not a tryst, thankfully. Viola would have fled a rendezvous, but family squabbling was old hat.

“Of course it’s me, Nephew,” Sir Reginald said, giving him another kick. “On your feet, you lazy laggard.”

Viola slipped through the door and let it close silently behind her. Thanks to her bouts of shyness, she was an expert at concealing herself, and nothing could be easier than hiding in her own house.

The library at Lindow Castle was a comfortable room where the family lounged about, reading books and sipping tea. In sharp contrast, the library at the ducal townhouse was formal, with walls covered with brocade apricot silk and glass-fronted bookshelves designed to house works of great brilliance. Narrow, tall-backed armchairs were clustered around the room like stern matrons wearing whalebone corsets.

The windows were hung with silk curtains, heavy enough to conceal one small, if curvy, person. Over the years, they had proved useful for hide-and-seek—and avoiding Aunt Knowe. No matter how beloved, she had always been the person most likely to push Viola into meeting strangers.

Viola slid quietly along the wall and nipped behind the nearest curtain, sending up silent thanks that fashion dictated modest side panniers this year. Then she sent up a fervent prayer that Sir Reginald would drag his nephew back to the ballroom, now that the fellow had been kicked awake.

“What are you doing in here?” His Lordship demanded. “I have picked out your wife, and I want to introduce her, since you were impolite enough to arrive after the receiving line had dissolved.”

“I am thinking about a Persian king named Cambyses II who laid siege to the Egyptians,” his nephew replied.

Viola felt a flash of envy. If a gentleman was tired of conversation and wanted to think of ancient battles, he could simply retire to the library. Whereas she’d be ruined if anyone found her doing the same. No one would believe her.

For good reason, she reminded herself fairly.

She hadn’t left the ballroom to contemplate antiquity, and her mother would definitely not approve of her true goal. She edged along the window until she could peek through the opening in the curtains, curious to see the historian.

Retreating to a library to contemplate a Persian king was not customary, especially for a gentleman searching for a bride.

Unfortunately, she could see only Sir Reginald. He was a portly gentleman with a fruity accent, violet-colored pantaloons, and a wig powdered to match. “What on earth are you talking about?” he demanded, scowling down at his nephew.

The man hadn’t risen from the chair, perhaps thinking that a kick does not warrant a gentleman’s greeting.

“The Egyptians revered cats. Cambyses II had all his men paint cat faces on their helmets, and he drove a herd of felines ahead of him. The Egyptians could not harm the cats, and therefore their soldiers retreated in disarray.”

“Ridiculous!” Sir Reginald said. “Balderdash!”