Kingsland should have learned his lesson then and there: one couldn’t take such an impersonal approach to obtaining a suitable wife.īut no. She hadn’t known with whom he’d gone until all of London heard her name pass his lips: Lady Kathryn Lambert.įor nearly a year, he’d courted the woman, but in the end, she’d turned him away in favor of a rapscallion with no title and a heritage that included a treasonous father. She’d hovered in the shadows as the clang of the magnificent gong echoing to the far corners indicated he was on the verge of revealing his choice. He’d made the selection himself, announcing his choice during a ball within this very residence, one she had arranged and overseen. He’d done the same last year, with disastrous results. Sitting at the desk in her small office in his London residence, using the green-marble-handled letter knife he’d given her one Christmas, she efficiently and quickly sliced open another envelope, preferring to keep the wax seal intact, withdrew and unfolded the heavy parchment, adjusted the position of her spectacles, and began scouring the words some young, naive unmarried miss had meticulously and with unbridled hope penned in response to the duke’s recent incisive advert seeking a noble lady of marriageable and procreational age to become his duchess. The latest, however, was beyond the pale. But then, during the eight years she had been secretary to the Duke of Kingsland, she had been beset with unpleasant tasks. If there existed a more unpleasant task in the world than selecting the woman who was to marry the man you loved, Penelope Pettypeace certainly couldn’t imagine what it might be. Critique partner and collector of obscure facts
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