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along the page of Aidan’s appointment book. “Your schedule is now quite full for Thursday. Tennis in the morning, an appointment with your boot maker at eleven and your tailor at half past, then lunch at the Clarendon with Lord and Lady Malvers, the meeting with Lord Marlowe, and tea at the Savoy with Lord and Lady Worthing, and then the opera. You’ll be exhausted, sir, by the time the day’s done. Why do you always commit yourself to so many engagements during the season?”
    Unfortunately, this sort of frenetic social activity was going to be his life for the next three months because it was the most efficient means of finding a wife, something he wouldn’t have to be doing now if he’d been able to resist a certain dark-haired beauty nine months ago.
    “I have my duty, Mr. Lambert,” he said with a sigh.

Chapter Four
    J ulia was in England to rebuild her life after razing it to the ground, and that meant facing the consequences of her past. One of those consequences was a pile of debt and no way to pay it. With his wealthy American wife’s return to the States, Paul’s only source of income was Danbury Downs, and covering Julia’s enormous debts would cause him and his family a great deal of hardship. She’d given them so much grief already; she didn’t want to cause any more.
    One morning a week after the May Day Ball, Paul took her aside and inquired as to her finances. She couldn’t bear to tell him just how far in debt she was, for it would enrage her cousin to learn Yardley hadn’t paid her a shilling of support during the last six years of her marriage, and there was no point in doing that. Besides, he’d be so disappointed in her if he knew she hadn’t altered her spending habits one iota in consequence of Yardley’s parsimony. He would feel compelled to lecture her about her extravagance, and rightly so, and it would all become such a tiresome conversation.
    Upon Paul’s inquiry, she’d only hinted at her dire need for funds, and her cousin had responded at once, assuring her of an allowance of fifty pounds per month, the same amount Beatrix had received before her marriage. In terms of pin money, it was quite a generous allowance, but Julia didn’t have the heart to tell Paul it wouldn’t pay even the monthly interest on what she already owed. Still, she accepted her cousin’s offer without a murmur, and knew she had to find another way to pay her debts.
    After breakfast, she gathered all her overdue bills and sat down at the secretaire in her room with quill, ink, and paper, determined to find a solution to her financial woes, but she was well aware that she had very few options.
    Her dowry had been handed over to Yardley on their wedding day. Only seventeen at that time, she hadn’t had the wits to insist upon prenuptial settlements for herself, and her parents had seen marriage to a peer, any peer, as their rebellious daughter’s only chance to make good. The modest amount she’d inherited upon the deaths of her parents had gone to payment of the death duties, and her entailed family home was passed to a cousin of her father’s, leaving her little in the way of property.
    Her cottage in Cornwall, an inheritance from her grandmother, was one of the few possessions she had left, but it was entailed within the family, so she couldn’t sell it even if she wanted to. And she didn’t want to. Dovecotes was her haven, her refuge, and the closest thing she had to a home of her own.
    She could sell the Mercedes, which was the only other thing of real value that she owned, but at the thought of parting with her beloved motorcar, Julia’s very soul rebelled. She’d originally acquired it as a means of escape, using it to flee as quickly as possible whenever her husband had been inclined to arrive on the scene and make trouble. She didn’t need it for that purpose any longer, of course, but it meant more to her than just a means of escape. It was a symbol of her liberty, and whenever she