Prologue
August 1843
Hillcrest, country house of Viscount Yardley and his family, Essex
Arabella Prescott flattened herself against the drawing room wall and held her breath until the footman passed by. Her heart beat so fiercely inside her chest, she was certain every servant in the house could hear. She’d run all the way from the garden. That was possibly the worst of her sins so far today.
Her mother didn’t mind if she wasn’t good at dance lessons or spent too much time with her nose in a book. Mama loved books too, after all. But running was a grave misdeed, particularly in a pink beaded taffeta gown specially commissioned from a famous London modiste.
Today, of all days, she’d be expected to display the ladylike refinements learned through all the years of tutors and governesses. Bella knew the rules and she was good at keeping them. She liked pleasing her parents. As an only child, there was no one else to make them proud. But she didn’t need lessons to know it wasn’t proper to skulk through drawing rooms when she was supposed to be attending to guests at her eighteenth birthday party.
The problem was one guest had gone missing and he was the only one who mattered to Bella.
After peeking around the threshold to make sure no one was about, she lifted the long skirt of her gown and dashed down the hall to the library.
Rhys Forester didn’t love reading as she did, but they’d made a kind of haven out of the library together. It was where they’d go when she helped him decipher words in books which had challenged him since he was a boy, and it was where he’d listen patiently while she talked through a new idea for one of her riddles.
The room was large enough to find a private corner where they could talk for hours and Bella searched all those nooks now, only to find them empty. Stopping at one of the long windows, she pulled the drape back and looked down at the guests milling around the garden. From this high above, the party looked elegant. Tables laden with food and enormous punch bowls were arranged around a central area that servants had cordoned off for dancing. Another square of lawn had been pressed and trimmed for lawn tennis.
Down there, amid the flurry of guests and servants, it felt far different. Less elegant and more panic inducing. She could only focus on the dais that had been assembled for her to stand on and give a little speech of thanks to everyone for attending. The thought of it made her stomach tumble.
Speaking in front of others was not her skill, but she knew someone who did it naturally. Effortlessly. He’d even helped her craft what she would say. In the farthest nook of the library, the one with the cushioned window seats, they’d worked together just two days prior on the speech her mother expected her to give today.
And now he’d gone missing.
She’d searched every drawing room, the conservatory, the morning room where they sometimes used her mother’s desk when Bella helped him with writing. He wouldn’t be upstairs, and he was nowhere to be found in the gardens.
“Looking for me?” Rhys’s deep voice sent a shiver down her spine.
She turned so quickly her skirt tangled around her ankles. “I thought you’d gotten bored and gone home.”
“Miss Prescott.” He pressed a hand to his chest and winced dramatically. “Your lack of faith wounds me. I would never abandon a friend and I’m determined to celebrate your day along with everyone else.”
“Where were you?” Bella untangled her skirts by shaking out the fabric and moved closer.
“Looking for you, of course. You’re the lady of the hour. The girl of the day.” He pulled something from his waistcoat pocket, cupped it in his hands so she couldn’t see, and hid it by sliding both hands behind his back.
“If that’s a gift for my birthday, you’re meant to wrap it and present it to me properly, not hide it away.”
Her pulse quickened as she thought of what he might give her. Then she looked down and the way his shirt buttons strained across his chest made her breath speed too. Lately she was aware of everything about him in ways she’d never been before. More specifically, she’d become intensely aware of his body.
Like now, when she noticed that the stubble on his chin glittered gold in the sunlight. How he smelled of fresh air and the cinnamon biscuits Cook had made for the party and that unique deeper scent that was all Rhys.
“I’m not sure you’ll like it, Arry. You are known to be rather picky.”
Arry was a nickname only Rhys used. He wasn’t satisfied with Bella, as everyone else called her. He insisted on something unique.
“How dare you? Everyone knows you’re the pickiest man in the village.” Bella pushed playfully at his chest as she’d done dozens of times over the course of their friendship.
This time was different.
He wasn’t a little boy anymore and she was no longer a little girl. That he was four years older had never mattered much when they were children, but over the course of the previous summer, she’d begun to think of him as a man. The inescapable fact was that he’d grown very appealing. And very handsome. Her feelings for him had grown too, into something she was afraid to voice.
But now, standing inches from him, she found she didn’t want to pull away. Under her palm, he radiated heat and it was as much of an enticement as discovering whatever gift he concealed behind his back.
“You’re so picky, none of the girls in the village can catch your eye.” Her heart leaped in her chest as she waited for his reply. A part of her dared to hope she was the reason no other girl could tempt him.
“It took you a month to decide which color of dress to wear today,” he teased.
“Mama said it was the most important dress I’d ever wear, at least until the start of the Season. But she is dramatic when it comes to fashion.”
He laughed and the sound was infectious. She always laughed when he did. But the sound was richer now that she could feel the reverberation against her palm.
“Show me what it is,” she insisted with a gentle push.
Rhys tipped his head and looked down at where she touched him. She felt his response. His heartbeat raced faster. When his eyes met hers again, their cool blue shade seemed darker.
“Turn around, Arabella,” he said on a husky whisper.
Bella did as he requested without protest or hesitation. That was new too. Usually they debated everything.
Her breath snagged in her throat as she waited, listening to the rustle of fabric as he brought his arms forward. A little squeak sounded in the high-ceilinged library, like the metal-on-metal rub of a hinge giving way.
A hinged box? Bella’s mind went to jewelry and then to the image of a ring and her deepest most secret wish that she was almost afraid to admit to herself. She was expected to have a wildly successful coming-out Season. Her mother had been planning for months. Years. But since her change of heart toward her best friend, Bella’s dream was an uncharacteristically rebellious one.
Deep down, she hoped her Season might be unnecessary because Rhys would ask her to be his.
Her parents couldn’t disapprove. They’d known Rhys as long as she had and loved him as a son, not to mention that he was heir to a dukedom. As her mother had told her a hundred times while they discussed eligible noblemen who might be promising prospects for the coming Season, “nothing compares to a duke.”