10) We shall give our loyalty and our undying friendship to England and Scotland and our brothers and fellow members of the Free Fellows League, and equal loyalty to the wives and families we love and who love us in return.
Signed (in blood) and sealed by:
Griffin Abernathy, 1st Duke of Avon and 1st Marquess of Abbingdon, aged thirty years and two months. Happily married since May 1810.
Colin McElreath, 27th Viscount Grantham, aged thirty years and five months, eldest son and heir apparent to the 9th Earl of McElreath. Happily married since June 1812.
Jarrod, 5th Marquess of Shepherdston, 22nd Earl of Westmore, aged thirty-one years and three months. Happily married since May 1813.
Daniel, 9th Duke of Sussex, aged eight and twenty years and eight months. Happily married since May 1813.
Jonathan Manners, 11th Earl of Barclay, aged eight and twenty years and ten months.
Alexander, 2nd Marquess of Courtland, aged six and twenty years and one month.
Continue reading for a special preview of
Nicole Byrd’s next novel
GILDING THE LADY
Coming in August 2005 from Berkley Sensation!
Prologue
The face …
It was the face that haunted her nightmares—but here, in clear daylight, distinct amid the crowd.
Clarissa Fallon drew a deep, disbelieving breath. It couldn’t be. A moment ago she had been happily engrossed in the street scene, inhaling the aromas of savory meat and pastry that drifted from a street vendor’s cart, as his call of “Hot meat pies!” rose above the clatter of horses’ hooves and carriage wheels. She had paused on the sidewalk to relish the sparkle of sunlight off the polished panes of shop windows and admired enticing wares like a new bonnet trimmed with yellow roses, a pair of elegant ecru kid gloves, or a flowing swathe of crimson silk draped artfully across a stand …
And Clarissa herself was free, at last, to consider such once-unheard of luxuries, free to lift her head to meet the eyes of the ladies and gentlemen strolling along the walkway. Free …
And then she’d caught sight of the once-familiar face, and fear pierced her like a thorn hidden amid a nosegay of roses.
Her brother had promised that Clarissa would be safe now. He’d said … But the face was here, and it was turning—at any moment, those dark bulging eyes would meet Clarissa’s horrified gaze, and then—
Clarissa jerked her head aside and plunged away from the specter which had appeared so abruptly out of the cheerful melee. She pushed her way past two chatting women and ran as if the devil himself waited to snare her soul.
Behind her, someone called, “Miss Clarissa, wait!”
Ignoring the cry, Clarissa plunged ahead. Her heart beat so loudly, the blood pounding in her ears, that she could hear nothing else. Even the noise of the busy London street faded, and she was lost in her worst nightmare.
She ran.
Chapter One
Dominic Shay, seventh earl of Whitby, sipped a glass of port. His head was lowered, and he didn’t seem to notice when Timothy Galston paused, standing just to the side of the comfortable club chair. “Whitby!”
Timothy had practiced his tone of righteous indignation carefully in the privacy of his own rooms, and he was annoyed to observe the other man ignore his greeting. They were old acquaintances, and there was no reason for the slight prickle of unease that the earl always seemed to provoke in the younger man, but there it was. Timothy almost had second thoughts about his rehearsed speech, wishing for a moment he could just slip away, but dash it all, the girl was his cousin.
He cleared his throat and said, more loudly, “Whitby, I’m speaking to you!”
And the earl lifted his face, his perfect features set in an expression of arctic disinterest, his deep brown eyes so dark that they could make one shiver. “Oh, hello, Galston. Have some wine; the butler has just uncorked a quite tolerable bottle.”
Timothy waved away such a minor consideration. No, perhaps not minor, but he could not be distracted until he’d aired his grievance.
“How could you do it? Why shoot down a girl in her first Season, who needs all the advantage she can muster, what with those freckles and the habit she has of smirking—” He paused. No, no, he was getting off the track. “I mean, she’s a perfectly nice girl, with only a moderate dowry to recommend her, and you had no call to say that she dances like an African giraffe who’s drunk too much homebrew. The girl can’t help being tall, you know!”