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to St. John’s Wood before the crack of dawn, to secure a place for the ladies at the side of the cricket ground. The ladies themselves, however, did not leave the house until eleven o’clock, arrayed in the latest gowns from Worth’s Paris atelier.
    Cricket was not the point. The point was to see and be seen—and that was best done during the luncheon hour.
    They arrived just as the players were walking off the field. With an alacrity that belied her complaints of arthritic joints, Mrs. Graves leaped down from the second-best carriage that had conveyed them to the outskirts of the cricket ground, which was now ringed by carriages three, sometimes, five deep. Pulling Millie along, she joined the great stampede of spectators making for the playing field that the two teams had just vacated.
    The sky was a flawless blue, the clipped lawn a lively green. Thousands of ladies in their spring best milled about, splashes of pastels everywhere one looked, set off all the better against the somber black of the gentlemen’s day coats, like gems upon the dark velvet of a jewelry box.
    It was a marvelous sight, if one were of the mind to enjoy the day. Millie was not. She’d never been one to relish public attention, especially not the kind of sidelong glances she gathered in her extravagant clothes that werebeyond the means of many wellborn ladies. Worse, Mrs. Graves had turned into Parvenu Mother.
    Mrs. Graves was not normally Parvenu Mother: She was proud of the haute bourgeoisie respectability from which she came. Social climbing was never foremost on her mind. She did it out of duty to her husband’s kin, especially his dead father and brother, both of whom had longed fiercely to ally the family with noble blood.
    But this particular occasion seemed to turn her head. She informed everyone who would stand still that her daughter, paired with the winsome Lord Fitzhugh, was going to take Society by storm.
Oh, my Millie has the most charming figure on the dance floor. Oh, my Millie has the most captivating way with conversation. Oh, the worst snobs among them will admire my Millie and she will be invited everywhere.
    Millie’s protestation of her mediocre appeal only made Mrs. Graves scale ever greater heights of hyperbole.
    Finally Mrs. Graves ran into an old friend who knew all about Millie’s imminent ascension as the Countess Fitzhugh and who was already convinced that Millie would set a new standard of popularity as a Society hostess. As a result, their conversation revolved around Millie’s trousseau, her wedding breakfast, and her honeymoon.
    As Mrs. Graves waxed poetic about a honeymoon in Rome, which she herself would have enjoyed, were it not for Mr. Graves’s virulent objection to eating nothing but macaroni for two continuous weeks, the crowd shifted, revealing Lord Fitzhugh.
    He stood amidst a flock of uniformed Eton students and their butterfly-bright sisters. There were at least five girls, but he had eyes only for one, a beautiful young lady withjet-black hair and lips of the loveliest pink Millie had ever seen, the color of Mrs. Graves’s prize peonies.
    Millie was envious, but not overly alarmed at first: It was only too normal for a young man’s attention to be drawn to a beautiful young woman. Then she saw that the earl’s gaze was not one of mere interest, but of desperate yearning, as if he were a prisoner in his cell, staring at the tiny square of sky allotted him.
    It shattered Millie. For all her hair-rending over his reluctance to marry her, she’d yet to consider that he might be in love with someone else. But he was, wasn’t he, desperately in love? And desperately unhappy for the loss of his beloved.
    She was frantic to hide herself. He must not see her. He must not think that she’d come to be near him. And he must never, never know that she felt anything for him besides a polite obligation.
    God heard her prayers: The warning gong sounded. Millie tapped Mrs. Graves on the sleeve. “The game