Chapter One
She held me spellbound from the first moment I spied
her. For it was like a spark fell from heaven and lit my
heart afire. I fear I will never be whole again without
her in my life.
Lieutenant Throckmorten to
his batman, Thomas Rivers
in Miss Darby's Daring Dilemma
London
The Season of 1817 should have begun like any other, in
fact it should have been the most engaging Season in ages.
Napoleon was no longer a threat. English officers and
gentlemen alike were ready to celebrate, and more
importantly, many were of a mind to marry.
The mothers of unwed daughters throughout the land should
have been in alt.
Instead they were in a panic.
Their daughters were refusing to cooperate. Refusing to be
wed!
Who had ever heard of such a notion? Not marry? Why not
just declare oneself a savage and be done with the matter.
Well, such foolishness wasn't to be borne. Especially not
by Malvina Witherspoon, Countess of Tottley, the mother of
Lady Lucinda. She hadn't spent a fortune sending her
darling daughter to Miss Emery's exclusive school only to
have her arrive home and announce that she would never
take a husband.
Never. Ever.
"It is all this wretched Darby creature's doing," Malvina
declared one morning to a circle of equally desperate
mothers. "And it is time we put a stop to this nonsense
once and for all."
Heads nodded enthusiastically, since they knew the
countess had good reason to want to see this state of
anarchy put to an end.
If the rumors were true, and most likely they were given
the ungodly hour Lady Tottley's summons had arrived, Lady
Lucinda had refused, yes, refused, the young and handsome
Lord Barwick, heir to the Hemswell dukedom.
There wasn't a moment to lose. It could very well be one
of their daughters refusing such an eligible parti. And so
it was that the good mothers of London had gathered
together to formulate a plan of attack. The author of the
Miss Darby chronicles, known only as M. Briggs, was
probably hated with more ferocity and incurred more wrath
by the occupants of Lady Tottley's morning salon than
Boney at the height of his despotic reign.
The murmurs of complaint and gossip were interrupted by a
discreet knock at the door. Crumpton, Lady Tottley's
infamously stodgy butler, poked his long nose through the
crack in the door. "Ma'am, there is a gentleman here who
claims to have been invited."
His tone spoke volumes. That he no more believed the man
in question was a gentleman, nor that this interloper had
been invited.
So it was a rare treat for all those in the room to see
Crumpton's mouth fall open in dismay when her ladyship
responded with an enthusiastic wave of her hand.
"Send him in at once, Crumpton."
"But, my lady," the butler protested, "this ... this ...
person isn't accepted. I have it on good authority that
he's considered -- "
"Don't be such a ninnyhammer, Crumpton," the countess
said. "These are desperate times and we can no longer
cling to social boundaries if we are to see the world
righted."
Fans fluttered and more than one slanted glance asked the
same question.
Who had Lady Tottley invited that had Crumpton in such a
state?
They didn't wait long to find out, for a few moments later
the door opened a second time, swinging inward in defiance
to the soft, hallowed confines of this oh, so very
feminine sanctuary.
As their savior entered, filling first the doorway, and
then, in many ways, the room with his long-legged stride
and wide shoulders, there was a soft echo of gasps and
even a few sighs at the sight of this all-tooinfamous man.
His dark gaze sped around the room, examining and
discarding a hasty inventory of property and persons as if
he suspected that danger lurked close at hand.
Not that the man wasn't receiving the same detailed
inspection from every woman in the room. It wasn't his
fashionable dress that caught their attention, for he
wasn't wearing anything of note other than plain buff
breeches, scuffed and stained boots, and a black worsted
jacket.
No, it was the man beneath the plain and unnoticeable
wrappings that couldn't be so easily hidden.
And what a man he was.
A hairsbreadth past thirty, Raphael Danvers stood well
over six feet tall and his presence left no one in doubt
that he was a man in his prime. Oh, he may have gained his
proper English name and citizenship from his illustrious
father, Baron Danvers, but his dark mien and rakishly
foreign good looks spoke of thousands of years of Spanish
nobility -- hawkish, penetrating eyes, a jaw line hammered
and tempered from a Castilian forge, and a masculine fire
that emanated from him like the unforgiving Iberian sun.
Since his return from the Peninsular wars, there hadn't
been a happily married, matronly, or thankfully widowed
woman in London who hadn't wondered what it would be like
to bask beneath his raw, untamed heat, strip the
unfashionable clothes from his muscled body and see just
how unacceptable Rafe Danvers could be.
And to Mr. Danvers' credit, he was inclined to indulge
them.
"My lady," he said, nodding his head slightly to the
countess.
She should have been miffed that he hadn't managed a
decent bow, but she knew, like most everyone else, that
Rafe's long years at war and unconventional upbringing had
not garnered a healthy respect for his betters. Besides,
at present, she was doing her best to set aside her own
decadent notions of a deserted hunting lodge, ten foot
snow drifts, and Rafe wearing only a ...
© 2003-2026