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worn, but I’ll be doing the dressing, is that clear?”
    “Thank you, m’lord,” Willis said, returning to his haughty and gratingly condescending tone. “And may I summon the marquis’s tailor for some fittings, or do you have more trunks that will soon be arriving?”
    Duncan just stared at the man. Give an Englishman an inch

Nine
    S abrina didn’t see it as such a tragedy, the revelation of her family history. But then the London
ton
was so funny, in their reaction to it, that she was more amused than not. Where people had previously looked at her with the mere curiosity reserved for any newcomer on the scene, they now gave her looks that said clearly,
You’re still alive? But not for long, I’ll warrant.
One silly lady had even screamed, thinking her a ghost. Sabrina could just imagine how distorted the rumors had been before they reached the screamer’s ears.
    Her prospects of finding a husband in London were now quite done in, of course. After all, what gentleman marrying to get himself an heir, and that was why a good many of them married, would want a wife who might not live long enough to produce that heir? Both her aunts werestill living many years after the tragedies, obviously breaking the chain, but did anyone take that into account? No, that was definitely overlooked by the sophisticated London
ton.
    It did no good, really, to tell anyone the truth about her family. They would believe what they wanted to believe, and didn’t the evidence support their belief? Hardly, but then the truth didn’t make such juicy gossip. Much more interesting to insist that it must run in the family, the inclination to end one’s Ufe before it was ready to be ended.
    Unfortunately, Sabrina’s great-grandfather Richard had done just that, and his flighty wife, unable to bear up under the tragedy of it, had followed suit. That might have been the end of it, though. Their surviving daughter, Lucinda, after all, was already married at the time to William Lambert, an earl of strong constitution, and they already had two daughters themselves in Hilary and Alice. Sabrina’s father, John, had yet to be born, which was why the old duke’s title went to another distant branch of the family whom the Lamberts had never even met.
    No one, in the family at least, was quite sure whether Lucinda jumped from that upstairs balcony or accidently fell off. Her health had declined somewhat after she bore William a son, and she’d been blue-deviled for months after John’s birth, so it
was
quite possible that she had taken the same route as her parents. But whether she did or not, no one else doubted for a minute that she did, thus the scandal resurfaced and stayed around long enough to ruinHilary and Alice’s chance of a successful London Season.
    It
should
have ended there. After all, there was new blood in the family now from the earl’s side. And the talk of “bad blood” did die down by the time John married Elizabeth, and Sabrina came along from that union.
    But then her parents had the misfortune to consume some tainted food and they both died of it before the doctor arrived. Even the dog died, having been given the scraps. And two of the kitchen maids, having had only a small taste of it, had been severely cramped as well. The doctor himself claimed it had been bad food. But it didn’t take long for the rumor to start that they had taken poison—deliberately.
    Hilary and Alice knew better. Their brother and his wife had loved each other and were very happy.
Their
deaths, at least, were truly accidental. But once again, no one else would believe that.
    Her aunts, not surprisingly, were devastated that the scandal was running wild once again, all these years later, but then they’d had such high hopes for Sabrina, which were now quite dashed. They couldn’t imagine who had been mean and spiteful enough to reintroduce that old scandal to the London gossip mills, not that it would make any difference to know who did. The