The Season

These are —"

He kissed her, interrupting her rambling. Within moments, she had forgotten what she was saying.

"Alexandra," he said, pulling away slightly and staring deep into her eyes. "My God, I love you."

She dipped her head, made shy by the comment.

"I don't know what I would have done without you today," he said, his voice rich with emotion. "I don't know how I would have handled my uncle and I can't imagine how any of us would have found the information left by my father, but, most importantly, I don't know how I would have survived the last few hours — poring over that information until I finally understood the reasons behind my father's death — if I hadn't known you were here, waiting for me."

"I'm so sorry, Gavin. About everything. I'm sorry it happened to you."

"I'm not," he said, kissing the tip of her nose lightly.

"You aren't?" she asked, surprised.

"I'm sorry my father was kill ed. I would do anything to get him back ... and I imagine I shall feel that way forever. But the rest of the events ... those I don't regret. You see, they brought me to you."

They embraced for a long moment, breathing each other in, savoring this end to such a harrowing, exhausting day. Minutes later, Blackmoor pulled back from her and asked, "Don't you want to know what your father and I discussed?"

"No. I mean, not unless you want me to know. I understand that you might want to keep that conversation private."

"Really? That's very mature of you." He leaned back on the chaise, closing his eyes, a hint of a smile playing across his lips.

"Thank you." She folded her hands in her lap, not knowing what to say. She couldn't ask. That wasn't very ladylike. They sat in silence for what seemed like an eternity, until she was certain she would go mad with curiosity. "Fine! Yes! Of course, I want to know!"

Before the words had left her lips, he had started to laugh. "Nine seconds. That's how long you could go without asking."

She smiled. "Truly? It felt like much longer. A quarter of an hour at least."

He laughed again, pulling her to him, letting her rest her head on his chest. She could hear his heartbeat beneath her ear, slow and steady. When he spoke, she felt the words as much as she heard them. "We talked about my being in love with you. And about my wanting to court you."

Her heart began to pound. "And what did he say?"

"He launched into a remarkably detailed lecture regarding the proper order of events when making this kind of request. Specifically, he thought the father should be consulted before the daughter runs any risk whatsoever of being ruined."

She winced, flushing with embarrassment at the idea that her father thought she might be ruined. She looked up at him and said, "What did you say?"

"You have beautiful eyes."

"You told my father that he has beautiful eyes?"

He smiled. "No. You distracted me. I told your father that, while I was very grateful for the lesson, I doubted I would ever have need of it again — because I was planning to court only one woman in my lifetime."

Her breath caught. "And what did he say?"

"Does it matter?"

"Not entirely, no."

"You realize that if you allow me to court you, all your opposition to marriage is going to have to be reconsidered."

She smiled, feigning innocence. "What opposition to marriage?"

"Excellent."

"But I am thinking we should have a long courtship."

"Why?" He looked surprised.

"Because I find I've developed a taste for adventure."

"That sounds dangerous. Not at all in character for a delicate flower."

She laughed. "We know I've never been good at being a delicate flower. Besides, it shan't be too dangerous."

"How can you be so sure?"

She smiled brilliantly at him, taking his breath away. "Because, on my next adventure, I’ll have you by my side."

He pulled her across his lap and they kissed, the emotion of the day and the promise of the future making it soft and sweet and wonderful. She sighed as he lifted his lips off hers and offered her one of his wide, beautiful smiles. Overcome with happiness, she threw her arms around him and laughed, wondering just how it was that she had come to be so lucky.

acknowledgments

As much as I would like to say that my characters sprang from my forehead fully formed like some kind of literary pantheon, the truth is that Alex, Ella, and Vivi would never have come to life if it hadn't been for a group of truly remarkable people. Thank goodness for acknowledgments, or I would feel very much a fraud.

First and foremost, thank you seems too little to say to my brilliant editor and wonderful friend, Lisa Sandell. Lisa, you have my unending gratitude for believing in Alex, in Gavin, and, most of all , in me. You are the greatest editor an author could ask for — the perfect combination of insight, ideas, and inspiration. Lisa came packaged with the incredible team at Scholastic, including Susan Jeffers Casel, Jody Corbett, Elizabeth Parisi, and Chris Stengel, all of whom worked tirelessly to bring these girls to life. I must give a special thanks to the unparalleled Corporate Communications team, who were so very encouraging from the earliest days of this journey.

The Season is, at its core, a story about the power of female friendship, and I have been blessed with a group of amazing women who have supported me from day one: Susan Lawler, Cynthia Noble, and Gayle Jacobson, who set my standards of friendship so very high at the beginning; Lindsay Thibeault and Beth Jarosz, who enthusiastically shared my obsession with historical fiction in the early days; all my friends from Smith College; Lynn Goldberg, who taught me everything I know about the publishing world and so much more; and, of course, my girls — Lisa, Meghan Tierney, Sarah Gelt, and Amanda Glesmann, who understood when I let all call s go to voice mail during those final months and loved me anyway. They -and countless other remarkable women — were my inspiration. I can only hope the book does them justice.

There will never be enough words to tell my family how instrumental they have been in this journey or how much I love them. Enormous thanks go to my sister, Chiara, who taught me the power the written word can have in shaping one's dreams; to my mother, Gylean, who has never wavered in her encouragement of my wild ideas; to my father, Zeno, who has always championed my eccentricities; and to Baxter, who sat quietly by my side as I wrote —my most loyal companion.

And finally, to Eric — you already have my heart, but now you have my eternal gratitude for your patience, your strength, your insight, and your love. This book would not exist without you.

about the author

As the daughter of a former British spy and a jet-setting Italian who met in Paris and lived, at one point or another, in Rome, London, San Francisco, and New York, I feel that I should tell you that I'm a real-life Lara Croft who spends her days haggling in the bazaars of Morocco, shopping on the Champs-Élysées, riding a motorbike across the Gobi desert, and scaling ancient Mayan temples.

Unfortunately for all of us, however, that would be a gross untruth. My parents settled down in Rhode Island long before I was born and left me little choice but to turn to books to find my own romance and adventure. And turn to books I did. When I was in elementary school, I must have read Roald Dahl's entire catalog five or six times, I was addicted to The Baby-sitters Club, and I can vividly remember reading Judy Blume and feeling like I had finally found someone who understood me.

By high school, thanks to my older (and much wiser) sister, I was thoroughly obsessed with historical fiction. I would become enamored of whole eras and read anything and everything I could get my hands on that related to them. I went through phases — the Civil War, medieval England, the Vikings, the Italian Renaissance.

Then I found Jane Austen. And I was hooked. Here was an author (a woman, no less!) who went against everything that had been written before and who birthed a genre of literature. She cast aside the melodramatic go

thic romance that had dominated "literature for women" for decades and that the Bronte sisters (whom I could never quite stomach) would eventually canonize, and instead made romance fun ... and funny ... and real. Austen's heroines were cheeky and ironic, her heroes dark and brooding and arrogant to a fault. The combination of the two, for the teenager I was then and the twenty-something I am now, was electric.

That's when I fell in love with Regency England. I imagine that I — and everyone around me — thought it was just another one of my historical phases ...

but I never seemed to grow out of this one. I spent much of my teenage years, nose buried in historical romances, bemoaning the fact that I was born more than a century too late to enter the swirling beau monde that waltzed its way through the glittering ball rooms of London for my own season.

All was not lost, however. Through a stroke of very good luck I found myself at Smith College, where I was free to explore my wild obsessions. I had a group of friends who shared my love of historical fiction; we traded romances, talked Austen, and imagined what it would be like to be courted ... really courted. I majored in history and somewhere along the way learned a rhyme that lists the Kings and Queens of England in order. After graduation, I went on a trip across Britain with my mother. We stopped in Hampshire, where I sat in the gardens of the Austen home and breathed the air of Aunt Jane.

Next, I found my way to New York, where I took a job in publishing and all those years of reading paid off. I bounced through several jobs and a graduate degree, amassing an unfathomably large collection of Regency fiction along the way, which fill s the bookshelves of my Brooklyn home to bursting. I am lucky to have a husband and dog who overlook my eccentricities and, sometimes, love me better for them.

And now, I'm happy to say that, through writing, I have the chance to put my crazy, eclectic life to good use and, while I may never be able to live up to the British spy and the jet-setting Italian, my characters are certainly making a go of it.