Bernard imagined the man’s view of England would change quite a bit once he discovered he’d become a peer of the realm. An exceedingly wealthy one. “Of course. It’s my very great pleasure to tell you that, as of twelve days ago, you are the Duke of Warnick.”
Throughout his career, Bernard had witnessed all manner of response to the reality of inheritance. He’d stood by in the face of devastation of those who had lost beloved fathers, and recognized the eagerness on the face of those with not-so-beloved sires. He’d witnessed the shock of distant inheritors, and the joy of those whose fortunes had changed in the blink of an eye. And, on the least pleasurable of his days, he’d witnessed the devastating burden of inheritance—when a newly minted aristocrat discovered that his title had come with nothing but incapacitating debt.
But in the more than twenty years that he had served the upper echelons of the aristocracy, Bernard had never once met with apathy.
Until now, when the Scotsman he’d crossed a country to find calmly said, “Nae,” turned on his heel, and made for the exit, dogs on his heels.
Settlesworth sputtered his confusion. “Your . . . Your Grace?”
A long bout of laughter came at the honorific. “I’ve no interest in an English title. And I certainly have no interest in being anyone’s grace.”
With that, the twenty-first Duke of Warnick, last of a venerable line and rich as a king, disappeared.
Bernard waited another hour in the stone keep and a full three days at the only inn in the nearby town, but the duke had no interest in speaking with him again.
And so it was that for the next five years, the duke rarely showed face in London and, when he did, he eschewed all things aristocratic. Within months, London society had discerned his disdain and decided that it was they, in fact, who disdained him, and not the other way around.
The Diluted Duke, they contended, was worth neither time, nor energy. After all, seventeenth in line for a dukedom was virtually no duke at all.
Such a view suited Alec Stuart, proud Scotsman, more than well, and he resumed his life without a second thought for the trappings of his title. As he was no monster, he managed his now vast estates with meticulous care, ensuring that those who relied upon Warnick lands were well and prosperous, but he avoided London, believing that as long as England ignored him, he could ignore England.
And England did ignore him, right up until it didn’t.
Right up until a missive arrived, revealing that alongside the estates and servants and paintings and carpets he had inherited, alongside the title he had no interest in using, the Duke of Warnick had inherited something else entirely.
A woman.
Chapter 1
LOVELY LILY TURNED MISS MUSE!
April 1834
Royal Academy Exhibition
Somerset House, London
Miss Lillian Hargrove was the most beautiful woman in England.
It was an empirical fact, requiring absolutely no confirmation from experts on the subject. One had only to set eyes upon her, noting her porcelain skin, precisely symmetrical features, high cheekbones, full lips, curving ears, and a pretty, straight nose that evoked the very best of classical sculpture, and one simply knew.
Add to it her red hair, somehow not at all brash but a rich, golden hue that evoked the most heavenly of sunsets, and her grey eyes like a summer storm, and there was no question at all.
Lillian Hargrove was perfect.
So perfect, that the fact she had come from nothing—that she lacked title, social standing, and dowry, that she had been plucked from Lord knew where by London’s finest artist, to whom she was not married—was somehow rendered irrelevant when she entered a room. After all, nothing blinded gentlemen (titled or otherwise) quite like beauty, a fact that was enough to set any matchmaking mama with an invitation to Almack’s on edge.
Which was why the female half of the aristocracy took exceeding pleasure in the events of the twenty-fourth of April, 1834, the opening day of the Royal Academy Exhibition of Contemporary Art, and the day Lillian Hargrove—current favored beauty of the scandal sheets—was made a proper scandal.
And ruined. Thoroughly.
Later, when that same subsection of the ton whispered fervently about the events of the day, white gloves hiding fingertips stained black with ink from the gossip rags they swore they never read, the conversation would always end with a horrified, gleeful “The poor thing never saw it coming.”
And she hadn’t.
Indeed, Lily had thought it would be the best day of her life.
It was the day she had been waiting for her entire life—all twenty-three years, forty-eight weeks. It was the day Derek Hawkins was to propose.
Not that she had known Derek for her entire life. She hadn’t. She’d known him for six months, three weeks, and five days—since he’d approached her on the afternoon of Michaelmas as she lingered in the Hyde Park sun on one of the last warm days of the year, and told her, in no uncertain terms, that he was going to marry her.
“You are a revelation,” he’d said in his cool, crisp voice, surprising her from her book.
Another might have considered his unexpected arrival the reason for her breathlessness, but Lily had known better. He had taken her breath away because he had found her, ignored in her place in the margins. Despite her beauty, she was alone and unnoticed by the world, thrice-orphaned—first by her land steward father; then by a string of ducal guardians, each meeting a quick end; and, finally, in full, by the neglect of the current duke.
In her loneliness, she’d become very adept at being unseen, so, when Derek Hawkins noticed her—when he saw her with the full, blinding force of his gaze—she’d fallen quite in love. Quite instantly.
Lily had done her best to seem unaffected by his words. After all, she had not read every London ladies’ magazine published in the last five years for nothing. Looking up at him, she tried her best, softest smile and said, “We have not met, sir.”
He’d crouched next to her at that, removing the book from her lap—charming her with his blinding white teeth and even more blinding impertinence. “A beauty such as you should not have time for books.”
She blinked, drawn to his cool blue eyes, trained upon her as though they were the only two people in all London. In all the world. “But I like books.”
He’d shaken his head. “Not as much as you shall like me.”
She’d laughed at the boast. “You seem very certain of yourself.”