From a stately country house in Hampshire to the dazzling drawing rooms of London Society comes an exquisite tale of an elfin beauty, a vengeful lord, and a sweet love that is sheer poetry. With her reputation forever tarnished by a youthful indiscr...
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Josephine wished the floor of Rose Cottage would open up beneath her chair and swallow her whole. She was mortified. She was humiliated. She was in the throes of excruciating emotional anguish. She would have given anything to be able to succumb to a fit of the vapors. Unfortunately, her sensibilities were not quite that delicate.
Above all, she was furious. It was absolutely intolerable that the great love of her life should have snuck up on her and caught her so woefully unprepared for such a momentous occasion.
She took a sip of tea to calm her nerves, listening as the ladies of the local literary society made a desultory effort to discuss the latest articles in a recent edition of the Edinburgh Review. There was a distinct lack of enthusiasm attached to the project.
The cup rattled in the saucer when Josephine replaced it. The sound made her realize how strained her nerves were. At this rate it was just a matter of time before she spilled tea all over the carpet.
"I suppose I should not have been surprised by the review of Southey's latest effort." Hero's cool, deep voice cut through a fluttering conversation on John MacDonald's rather tedious work, A Geographical Memoir of the Persian Empire. "As usual, the editors are entirely off the mark in their comments. They simply do not know how to take Southey. Of course, they do not seem to know how to take Wordsworth or Coleridge, either, do they? One would think they had a vendetta against the Lake poets."
The weak discussion, which had had a di cult time getting started in the first place, promptly ground to a complete halt. Again.
Hero sipped his tea and glanced around the room expectantly. When no one spoke, he tried valiantly to restart the conversation. "Of course, what can you expect from that lot of Scotsmen who call themselves reviewers? As Byron pointed out a few years ago, the Edinburgh critics are a petty, mean-spirited lot. I'm inclined to agree. What does your little group think?"
"You are referring to Byron's verses entitled English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, my lord?" Miss Hornsby managed to inquire politely.
"Correct." Hero's voice crackled with impatience now.
Miss Hornsby blanched as if she'd been bitten. One or two of the other members of the literary society cleared their throats and looked at each other nervously.
"More tea, my lord?" Lavinia Inglebright demanded bravely as she seized hold of the pot.
"Thank you," Hero said dryly.
Josephine winced at the earl's obvious annoyance and frustration as the conversation trailed off into nothingness once more. But she could not resist a fleeting grin. Hero's thoroughly chilling effect on the Thursday Afternoon Literary Society was amusing in some ways.
It was rather like having a dragon in the parlor. One knew one ought to be extremely polite, but one did not know quite what to do with the creature.
Seated in a place of importance near the hearth, H. F. Tiffin appeared to take up all the available space in the tiny, frilly, feminine room. In fact, he overwhelmed it with his overpowering, subtly dangerous masculinity.
