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of...well, chaos, if he was being honest.
    It was nearly one in the morning. Anders briefly considered going to his club, but immediately discarded the idea. There would be no one there at this hour, and he was exhausted. He had sent Phelps to bed hours ago, though he doubted the butler had actually gone. But he didn’t call as he walked down the hall to his room. He had dressed simply, and it would not take long to get undressed. It was just this independent streak Anders knew drove Phelps to distraction, but he didn’t care. Until his mother had married his stepfather, they had lived very simply, not out of necessity but because that was her way. Anders knew, because his uncle had told him, that his father had married beneath himself. Mother had been a gentleman’s daughter, of course, but her father had been a simple country curate, her mother a foreigner, and she had not been considered worthy of an earl’s son. Still, they had eventually been forgiven, largely because everyone had expected Uncle Frederick to marry again after his young wife had died in childbed, taking the baby with her. Everyone had assumed that Frederick would emerge from the dark fog of grief he had fallen into and produce an heir of good breeding, and preferably a spare as well, and it would not matter that the Viscount Landridge’s bride was not of the best stock.
    But Uncle Frederick had disappointed his whole family and had never taken another bride. Mother had once told Anders that Frederick had been deeply in love with his wife, and that the idea of replacing her had been unbearable. And so Anders had become his uncle’s heir. But his mother, who had been taught frugality and practicality by her Norwegian mother, had preferred to live simply, and after Anders’s father died, the little village in Devon where she had been raised had served as the backdrop for his childhood. In many ways it had been idyllic. He had played with the village boys and run wild through the woods and fields. His grandfather had taken him fishing and taught him his letters. But then he had been sent to Eton at ten, and everything had changed. He had no longer been Anders, grandson of the curate, but Viscount Landridge, the future Earl of Stowe, and the peaceful existence he had known had evaporated. Then his mother had met Mr. Coleridge, and they had married and moved to Kent, and even the simple cottage where Anders had made his fondest memories had been lost.
    So he excused himself when he occasionally chose to forgo the privileges of his rank. He dressed simply, ate simply, and dedicated himself to his work in a way that other men of his age and station did not. He eschewed the late nights and carousing his Eton and Cambridge friends preferred. He avoided many of the glittering social gatherings to which they flocked. He was a member of White’s, as the previous Earls of Stowe had been, but he rarely went except to read the broadsheets.
    Leo had admonished him often, claiming that his political career would suffer if he didn’t attend the soirees and parties that littered the Parliamentary calendar. But Anders had no desire to rub elbows with the fashionable elite. He knew he was singular. But he preferred it that way. There was more at stake than his social standing.
    And in thirty-six hours, Anders would be able to enter the fray once more.
     

FOUR
     
      January 29, 1833
     
    Clarissa awoke before the dawn on the morning of the Opening with a splitting headache. Late hours were one thing, but her pocket watch told her she had managed to snatch barely three hours of sleep. With an unladylike groan she forced herself up and out of bed. She wanted to be early this morning, not only to impress the earl with her work ethic, but also because the cook, Mrs. Butterford, had promised her a big breakfast this morning. When they had been introduced yesterday Mrs. Butterford had been aghast at Clarissa’s—Mr. Ford’s—thinness, and had insisted she arrive early