Prologue
June 1820
Wedding breakfast of Viscount Flint and his new wife, London
“Men only have one thing on their minds, and it’s not cake.” –from The Masculine Inconvenience: Memoirs of a Superior Lady
From across the crowded room at his brother’s wedding breakfast, Mr. Josiah Evans watched the heiress eat cake. He should not be watching her. That much he knew. Watching a woman eat cake simply felt… well, inappropriate at best, sinful at worst. Lips, tongue, fingers, sugar.
Damn.
The heiress eating cake should not have proved such a tempting image. With her grim mouth and hard eyes, she was not the sort of woman a fellow like Josiah watched. He much preferred women with sultry merriment in their eyes and seductive whispers on their lips.
No, the heiress was neither sultry nor merry, yet he could not look away from her. Not because Lady Georgiana Hunt was beautiful. Objectively, it could not be denied. Tall, statuesque, every curve exactly where fashion dictated it should be. Perhaps a little rounder than fashionable about the bust. She dressed elegantly so likely no one noticed. It was exactly the type of thing Josiah noticed, though. Couldn’t help it. Her hair was abundant and honey colored. The best kind of color, really. It streaked toward amber in the candlelight and toward golden in the sunshine. Dark eyes, too, of some indeterminate shade between brown and black. But one did not have to know their exact color to know she was beautiful. Objective observation, that. And not why he watched her.
He watched her because for a fraction of a second, right after the fork slipped between her lips, that mouth transformed, softened, the corners tipping up. And in that fraction of a second—hell—he couldn’t look away if the King ordered him to.
Was the cakethatdelicious? He had to know. He tore his gaze from her and found the cake along with the footman with the knife and plates, and he took a piece. He dug in, bringing the fork to his lips as he turned from the table and—“Ack!” He almost dropped the plate, cake, and all.
The heiress stood before him with her plate held firmly in her hands before her like a shield held horizontally. “You have been watching me all morning.”
“Have I?”
“I demand you stop.”
“Do you?”
Lady Georgiana pointed her fork at him. “Just because you are the brother of the groom and the new brother-in-law to my dearest friend does not mean I’ll tolerate your antics.”
He grinned, his fork still hovering. “Antics?”
“I do not tolerate fortune hunters—or fools, either.”
“What else, or whom else, do you not tolerate?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Those who think they’re clever. And. Are. Not.”
“My. My, my, my.” He parted his lips as he finally rested the cake on his tongue and hell—all the sugar of heaven exploded on his taste buds, just the perfect amount of lemon tartness, too. “Thatisgood.” He talked around the cake. “I hadn’t planned on having any, but after watching you eat it up like it was some damn erotic delight—”
She gasped.
“I had to try.” He took another bite, chewed, swallowed, and stabbed the cake once more. This time, he held it out to her. “Care for a bite of mine?” If looking at heiresses eating cake was unpardonable, offering to feed them was… well, he’d likely end up in the corner of hell reserved for rakes, no doubt. He took another bite of the damn delicious cake and winked at her, accepting his eternal fate.
Lady Georgiana’s face turned to brittle glass. Then it shattered with a laugh, revealing something softer beneath the mask—rosy skin and real warmth. Huh. Perhaps this was why his brother Xavier’s new wife, Sarah, liked this stony woman. She had a different self, hidden leagues beneath the guise she showed the world. He wanted to dig further, discover more. He shook the impulse away, though, because he had no time for such explorations. He was a new man with real purpose in life. Finally. He itched to leave London, actually. He’d only begun to learn the accounts at Apple Grove House, and he never would if he kept being pulled away because of family matters.
He flashed a look at the newly wedded couple—his older brother and the heiress’s close friend, easy in each other’s company, exchanging little touches—and felt the corner of his mouth lift. He didn’t mind these little family events too much. Mother would, were she alive, have been beaming with pride, brimming with happiness. That made these delays in his work bearable.
So, apparently, did the sight of heiresses eating cake.
He pointed at her plate. “Go along. Finish it up. You know you want to.”
She stopped laughing, sniffed, but cleaned the plate, and this time, she did not hide the smile that bloomed with each bite. Once empty of all but the tiniest crumbs, she placed the plate on the table and tilted her head, considering him.
“Well,” he said, “After that study of my person, what is your estimation?”
She snatched a glass of bubbling champagne from beside the cake table. “I’ve heard about you.”
“All good things, I hope.”
