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believe we are about to find out for ourselves, however.”

    Her father-in-law had entered the assembly rooms, looking important in his genial way, his chest thrust out with pride, his palms rubbing together, his complexion ruddy with pleasure. Behind him were two gentlemen, and there was no doubting who they were. There were very rarely any strangers in Throckbridge. Of the few there had been in living memory, none—not a single one—had ever attended a dance at the assembly rooms and precious few had ever been to the annual summer ball at Rundle Park.

    These two were strangers— and they were at the assembly.

    And one of them, of course, was a viscount .

    The one who stepped into the room first behind Sir Humphrey was of medium height and build, though there was perhaps a suggestion of portliness about his middle. He had brown hair that was short and neatly combed, and a face that was saved from ordinariness by the open, pleasing amiability with which he observed the scene about him. He looked as if he were genuinely glad to be here. He was conservatively dressed in a dark blue coat with gray breeches and white linen. While probably past the age of twenty-five, he certainly still qualified for the epithet young .

    Louisa plied her fan and sighed audibly. So did a number of the other ladies present.

    But Vanessa’s eyes had moved to the other gentleman, and she knew immediately that it was he who had provoked the sigh. She did not participate in it. Her mouth had turned suddenly dry, and for a few timeless moments she lost all awareness of her surroundings.

    He was about the same age as the other gentleman, but there all similarities ended. He was tall and slim without being in any way thin. Indeed, his shoulders and chest were solidly built while his waist and hips were slender. His legs were long and muscled in all the right places. He had very dark hair, almost black, in fact, and it was thick and shining and cut expertly to look both tidy and disheveled at the same time. His face was bronzed and classically handsome with an aquiline nose, well-defined cheekbones, and the hint of a cleft in his chin. He had a firmly set mouth. He looked slightly foreign, as if perhaps he had some Italian or Spanish blood.

    He looked gorgeous.

    He looked perfect.

    She might have fallen headlong in love with him, along with at least half the other ladies present, if she had not noticed something else about him. Two things, in fact.

    He looked insufferably arrogant.

    And he looked bored.

    His eyelids were half drooped over his eyes. He held a quizzing glass in his hand, though he did not raise it to his eye. He looked about the room as if he could not quite believe the shabbiness of his surroundings.

    There was not even the faintest suggestion of a smile on his lips. Instead, there was a hint of disdain as if he could not wait to get back downstairs to his room. Or, better yet, far away from Throckbridge.

    He looked as if this were the last place on earth he wanted to be.

    And so she did not fall in love with him, magnificent and godlike as he undoubtedly was to the eyes. He had stepped into her world, into the world of her family and friends, uninvited, and found it inferior and undesirable. How dared he! Instead of brightening her evening, as the presence of any stranger ought to have done—especially a handsome gentleman—he was actually threatening to spoil it.

    For everyone, of course, would fawn over him. No one would behave naturally. No one would relax and enjoy the dancing. And no one would talk of anyone else but him for days—or more likely weeks—to come.

    As if some god had favored them by dropping into their midst.

    And yet it seemed clear to her that he despised them all—or that at the very least he found them all a colossal bore.

    She wished he had come tomorrow—or not at all.

    He was dressed all in black and white, a fashion she had heard was all the crack in London. When she had heard it, she