lizabeth stood up slowly, her hands clenched into nervous fists at her sides as she gaped at Alexandra Townsende across the young duchess’s sumptuous green-and-cream London drawing room. “Alex, this is madness!” she burst out in frustrated disbelief. “My uncle gave me until the twenty-fourth, and it’s already the fifteenth! How can you possibly expect me to consider attending a ball tonight, when my life is practically coming to an end, and we haven’t thought of a single solution!”

“It might be a solution,” Alex reasoned. “And it is the only one I’ve been able to think of since you arrived.”

Elizabeth paused in her pacing to roll her eyes and shake her head in a gesture that clearly implied Alex had taken leave of her senses. Elizabeth had come racing back from Scotland to England, hoping to reason with her uncle, only to have him gleefully inform her that he’d just received a near-offer from Lord Marchman as well. “I prefer to wait in hope Marchman comes up to scratch. His title is greater, and so is his wealth; therefore he’s less likely to squander my money. I’ve written to him and asked him to make his decision by the twenty-fourth.”

Elizabeth had kept her senses and used his good mood to convince him to let her go to London in the meantime. Now that he knew he was about to get her off his hands, Uncle Julius was uncharacteristically agreeable. “Very well. Today is the tenth; you may remain there until the twenty-fourth. I shall send a message to you if Marchman offers.”

“I-I think I’d like Alexandra Townsende’s advice on the formalities of a wedding,” Elizabeth had prevaricated on an impulse, hoping that Alex might somehow help her find a way to avoid marrying either man. “She is in London for the Season, and I can stay with her.”

“You may use my town house if you bring your own servants,” he offered magnanimously. “If Belhaven wants to press his suit with you in person in the meantime, he may call upon you in the city. In fact, while you are there you may order a wedding gown. Nothing too expensive,” he added with a dark frown. “There’s no reason for a big town wedding when a small one here at Havenhurst will do as well and there’s no reason for a wedding gown either, now that I reflect on it, since your mother’s was only worn the one time.”

Elizabeth didn’t bother to remind him that her mother had been married in an elaborate ceremony at St. James’s in a sumptuous, pearl-encrusted gown with a fifteen-foot train, and that such a gown for an intimate little wedding would look absurd. At the moment she was still hoping to avoid any ceremony at all, and she was much too anxious to flee to London to discuss finery. Now, after she’d spent five days with Alex, thinking of and discarding impossible solutions, Alex had suddenly decided it was imperative Elizabeth reenter society at a ball tonight. To make matters worse, in his excessive eagerness to continue his courtship, Sir Francis had arrived in London yesterday and was practically haunting Uncle Julius’s town house on Promenade Street.

“Elizabeth.” Alex’s voice was filled with determination. “I’ll admit I haven’t had a great deal of time to work out all the details, since I only conceived of the plan three hours ago, but if you’ll just sit down and have some of that tea, I’ll try to explain the logic of it.”

“Attending a ball tonight,” Elizabeth said as she obediently sank down on a lovely little settee upholstered in green silk, “is not a solution, it’s-it’s a nightmare!”

“Will you just let me explain? There’s no point arguing about it, because I’ve already set wheels in motion, and I absolutely refuse to be gainsaid.”

Elizabeth raked her hair off her forehead in a nervous gesture and nodded reluctantly. When Alexandra glanced pointedly at the tea her butler had just carried in Elizabeth sighed, picked up the dainty cup, and took a sip. “Explain.”

“Not to put too fine a point on it, we have nine days left of your reprieve. Nine days to find you a more desirable suitor.”

Elizabeth choked on her tea. “Another suitor? You are joking!” she sputtered, caught somewhere between hilarity and horror.

“Not at all,” said Alex practically, daintily sipping her tea. “When you made your debut you received fifteen offers in four weeks. If you could accumulate an average of half a suitor per day before, then, even allowing for the scandal hanging over your head, there’s no reason in the world why we oughtn’t be able to find at least one suitor you like in nine full days. You’re more beautiful now than you were as a girl.”

Elizabeth paled at the mention of the scandal. “I can’t do it,” she said shakily. “I cannot face everyone. Not yet!”

“Not alone, perhaps, but you won’t be alone tonight.” In her desperation to convince Elizabeth of the feasibility and the necessity of the plan Alex leaned forward, propping her elbows on her knees. “I’ve been busy these past three hours since I conceived the plan. Since the Season is just beginning, not everyone has arrived yet, but I’ve already sent a note to my husband’s grandmother asking her to call on me here today the moment she arrives in town. My husband is still at Hawthorne, but he’d planned to return tonight and spend the early evening at one of his clubs. I’ve already sent him a long note explaining the entire situation and asking him to join us at the Willingtons’ ball at ten-thirty. I’ve also sent a note to my brother-in-law, Anthony, and he will escort you. So far that makes four of us to stand by you. That may not seem like many to you, but you cannot fully imagine the enormous influence my husband and his grandmother have.” With a reassuring, affectionate grin she explained, “The Dowager Duchess of Hawthorne is a lady of enormous consequence, and she shamelessly adores forcing society to bend to her will. You haven’t met my husband yet,” Alex finished, her smile turning tender, “but Jordan bas even more influence than the dowager, and he will not permit anyone to say an unkind word to you. They wouldn’t even dare try if he is with us.”

“Does he-does he know about me? Who I am, I mean, and what happened?”

“I explained in the note who you are-to me-and briefly what had happened to you two years ago. I would have told him before this, but I haven’t seen him since I came to you at Havenhurst. He’s been away, seeing to all the business and estate matters that were left to others for the year and a half we were traveling.”

Elizabeth felt sick at the very real possibility that Alex’s husband might return to London tonight and announce that Elizabeth was not a fit companion for his wife-or that he wanted nothing whatever to do with the scheme, The prospect was so repugnant that Elizabeth actually seized on an obstacle to the entire plan with enormous relief, “It won’t work!” she said happily.

“Why not?” Alex asked.

“I have nothing to wear!”

“Yes, you do,” Alex replied with a triumphant smile. “It’s a gown I brought back from France.”

She held up her hand to silence Elizabeth’s cry of protest, “I cannot wear the gown,” she said quietly. “My waist is enlarging already,”

Elizabeth cast a dubious glance at Alex’s slim waist as her friend finished reasonably, “By next year it will be quite out of style, so it’s only right that one of us enjoy it. I’ve already sent word to Bentner to bring Berta here along with anything else you’ll need,” Alex admitted with a sheepish grin. “I’ve no intention of letting you go back to Promenade Street, because I fear you would send me a note later today announcing you have a violent headache and have taken to your bed with your salts,”

Despite all the awful emotions warring in Elizabeth she had to bite back a guilty smile over that last astute remark. She’d already been thinking of doing exactly that. “I’ll agree to the plan,” she said slowly, her wide green eyes insistent, “but only if the dowager duchess has no reservations at all about sponsoring me tonight.”

“Leave that to me,” Alex said with a huge sigh of relief. She glanced up as the butler arrived in the doorway and grandly announced, “The dowager duchess has arrived, your grace. I’ve shown her into the yellow salon as you instructed.” With a bright smile that displayed confidence she didn’t completely feel, Alex stood up. “I just wanted to have a few words with her alone, to explain before she meets you,” she said, already heading away. Partway across the room she stopped and turned back. “There’s one small thing I ought to warn you about,” she added hesitantly. “My husband’s grandmother is occasionally a bit-brusque,” she finished lamely.

The “few words” Alex needed with the dowager took considerably less than five minutes, but Elizabeth watched the clock in sublime misery, imagining the sort of indignant reluctance Alex must be confronting. When the drawing room door swung open Elizabeth was so tense that she shot to her feet and then had to stand there, feeling graceless and gauche, while the most formidable-looking woman she had ever beheld swept majestically into the room beside Alex.

Besides having the regal posture of a woman who was born with a ramrod down her back, the Dowager Duchess of Hawthorne was quite tall and possessed of a piercing pair of hazel eyes, an aristocratic nose, and an imperious expression that had been permanently stamped into her otherwise seamless white skin.

In aloof silence she waited while Alex performed the introductions, then she watched Elizabeth execute her curtsy and acknowledge the introduction. Still silent, the dowager then raised her lorgnette to her cold hazel eyes and inspected Elizabeth from the top of her hair to the tips of her toes, while Elizabeth mentally abandoned any notion that the old woman would lend her consequence tonight, willingly or otherwise.

When she finally deigned to speak, the dowager’s voice had the cutting snap of a whip. “Young woman!” she said without preamble, “Alexandra has just explained to me that she is wishful of my assistance in reintroducing you to society this evening. However, as I told Alexandra, there was no need for her to describe to me the scandal that surrounded your association with a certain Mr. Ian Thornton the year before last; I am well aware of it-as is nearly everyone else in society.” She let that unkind and unnecessary statement do its damage to Elizabeth’s lacerated pride for a full moment before she demanded, “What I want to know is whether or not I can expect a repetition of it, if I were to agree with what Alexandra wants.”

Drowning in angry mortification, Elizabeth nevertheless managed not to flinch or drop her gaze, and although her voice shook slightly, she managed to say calmly and clearly, “I have no control over wagging tongues, your grace. If I had, I would not have been the topic of scandal two years ago. However, I have no desire whatever to re-enter your society. I still have scars enough from my last sortie among the Quality.” Having deliberately injected a liberal amount of derision into the word “Quality,” Elizabeth closed her mouth and braced herself to be verbally filleted by the old woman whose white brows had snapped together over the bridge of her thin nose. An instant later, however, the pale hazel eyes registered something that might have been approval, then they shifted to Alexandra.

With a curt nod the dowager said, “I quite agree, Alexandra. She has spirit enough to endure what they will put her through. Amazing, is it not,” continued the dowager to Elizabeth with a gruff smile, “that on the one hand we of the ton pride ourselves on our civilized manners, and yet many of us will dine on one another’s reputations in preference to the most sumptuous meal.” Leaving Elizabeth to sink slowly and dazedly into the chair she’d shot out of but moments before, the dowager then walked over to the sofa and seated herself, her eyes narrowed in thought. “The Willingtons’ ball tonight will be a complete crush,” she said after a moment. “That may be to our advantage-everyone of importance and otherwise will be there. Afterward there’ll be less reason to gossip about Elizabeth’s appearance, for everyone will have seen her for themselves.”

“Your grace,” Elizabeth said, flustered and feeling some expression of gratitude was surely in order for the trouble the dowager was about to be put to, “it-it’s beyond kind of you to do this-”

“Nonsense,” the woman interrupted, looking appalled. “I am rarely kind. Pleasant, at times,” she continued while Alexandra tried to hide her amusement. “Even gracious when the occasion demands, but I wouldn’t say ‘kind.’ ‘Kind’ is so very bland. Like lukewarm tea. Now, if you will take my advice, my girl,” she added, looking at Elizabeth’s strained features and pale skin, “you will immediately take yourself upstairs and have a long and restorative nap. You’re alarmingly peaked. While you rest”-she turned to Alexandra-”Alexandra and I will make our plans.”

Elizabeth reacted to this peremptory order to go to bed exactly as everyone reacted to the dowager duchess’s orders. After a moment of shocked affront she did exactly as she was bidden.

Alex hastily excused herself to accompany Elizabeth to a guest chamber, and once inside, Alex hugged her tightly. “I’m sorry for that awful moment-she said she wanted to reassure herself you had courage, but I never imagined she meant to do it that way. In any case,” she finished happily, “I knew she would like you excessively, and she does!”

She departed in a flurry of rose skirts, leaving Elizabeth to lean weakly against the door of her bed chamber and wonder how the dowager treated people she liked only slightly.

The dowager was waiting in the drawing room when Alex returned, a bemused expression on her face. “Alexandra,” she began at once, helping herself to tea, “it occurs to me there is something of which you may not be aware....”

She broke off, glaring at the butler who appeared in the doorway and caused her to stop speaking. “Excuse me, your grace,” he said to Alexandra, “but Mr. Bentner begs a word with you.”

“Who is Mr. Bentner?” the dowager demanded irritably when Alexandra instantly agreed to see him in the drawing room.

“Elizabeth’s butler,” Alex explained with a smile. “He’s the most delightful man-he’s addicted to mystery novels.”

A moment later, while the dowager looked on in sharp disapproval, a stout, white-haired man clad in slightly shabby black coat and trousers marched boldly into the drawing room and seated himself beside Alexandra without much as a by-your-leave. “Your note said you have a plan to help Miss Elizabeth, out of her coil, Miss Alex,” he said eagerly. “I brought Berta myself so I could hear it.” “It’s a little vague yet, Bentner,” Alex admitted. “Basically, if we’re going to re-present her to society tonight and see if we can’t live down that old scandal over Mr. Thornton.”

“That blackguard!” Bentner spat. “The sound of his name makes my knuckles ache for a poke at him!” For emphasis, he shook his fist. “It has the same effect on me,” Alex admitted wryly. “That’s as far as we’ve planned.” He stood up to leave, patted Alexandra’s shoulder, and blithely informed the elderly noblewoman who terrified half he ton with her stony hauteur, and who was already glowering at him for his familiarity with Alex, “You’ve got yourself a fine girl here, your grace. We’ve known Miss Alex since she was a girl chasin’ frogs at our pond with Miss Elizabeth.” The dowager did not reply. She sat in frigid silence, and only her eyes moved, following his progress out the door. “Alexandra,” she said awfully, but Alex laughed and held out her hand. “Don’t berate me for familiarity with the servants, I beg you, Grandmama. I cannot change, and it only upsets you. Besides, you were about to tell me something that seemed important when Bentner arrived.”

Diverted from her ire at indecorous servants, the dowager aid severely, “You were so concerned in the salon that we lot keep Elizabeth in an agony of doubt in here that you have me no time to discuss some pertinent facts that may cause you some grave concern-that is, if you aren’t already,ware of them.” “What facts?” “Have you seen the newspaper today?” “Not yet. Why?” “According to the Times and the Gazette, Stanhope himself is here in London and has just affirmed Ian Thornton as his grandson and legal heir. Of course, it’s been whispered for years that Thornton is his grandson, but only a few knew it for a fact.”

“I had no idea,” Alex said absently, thinking how grossly unfair it was that the unprincipled libertine who’d brought so much unhappiness into Elizabeth’s life should be enjoying such good fortune at the same moment Elizabeth’s future looked so bleak. “I never heard of him until six weeks ago, when we returned from our trip and someone mentioned his name in connection with the scandal over Elizabeth.”

“That’s hardly surprising. Prior to this past year he was rarely mentioned in polite drawing rooms. You and Jordan left on your trip before the scandal over Elizabeth occurred, so there’s no reason you would have heard of him in connection with that, either.”

“How could such a wretched blackguard convince someone to legitimize him as his heir?” Alex said angrily.

“I daresay he didn’t need to be ‘legitimized,’ if I take your meaning. He is Stanhope’s natural and legitimate grandson. Your husband told me that in confidence years ago. I also know,” she added meaningfully, “that Jordan is one of the very few people to whom Thornton has ever admitted it.”

Alexandra’s feeling of disaster increased, and she slowly put her teacup back in the saucer. “Jordan?” she repeated in an alarmed voice. “Why on earth would a scoundrel like that have confided in Jordan, of all people?”

“As you well know, Alexandra,” the duchess said bluntly, “your husband did not always live a life that was above reproach. He and Thornton ran with much the same crowd in their wilder days-gaming and drinking and doing whatever debauched things men do. It was this friendship of theirs that I feared you might not know of.”

Alex closed her eyes in misery. “I was counting on Jordan’s support to help us launch Elizabeth tonight. I’ve written to him explaining how dreadfully Elizabeth was treated by the most unspeakable cad alive, but I didn’t mention his name. I never imagined Jordan would know of Ian Thornton, let alone be acquainted with such a person. I was so certain,” she added heavily, “that if he met Elizabeth, he would do everything in his power to help put the right face on things tonight.”

Reaching across the settee, the dowager squeezed her hand and said with a gruff smile, “We both know that Jordan would give you his full support if you wished to stand against foe or friend, my dear. However, in this instance you may not have his unconditional empathy when he finds out who the ‘unspeakable cad’ is. It is that which I wished to warn you about.”

“Elizabeth mustn’t know of this,” Alex said fiercely. “She’ll be so uneasy around Jordan-and I couldn’t blame her. There is simply no justice in life!” she added, glowering at the unopened issue of the Times lying on the side table. “If there were, that-that despoiler of innocents would never be a marquess now, while Elizabeth has to be afraid to show her face in society. I don’t suppose there’s the slightest chance,” she added hopefully, “that he didn’t get a shilling or a piece of property with the title? I could endure it better if he were still a penniless Scots cottager or a down-at-the heel gambler.”

The duchess snorted indelicately. “There’s no chance of that, my dear, and if that’s what Elizabeth believes he is, she’s been duped.”

“I don’t think I want to hear this,” Alex said with an angry sigh. “No, I have to know. Tell me, please.”

“There’s little to tell,” the dowager said, reaching for her gloves and starting to draw them on. “Shortly after the scandal with Elizabeth, Thornton vanished. Then, less than a year ago, someone-whose name was not divulged for a long time-bought that splendid estate in Tilshire, named it Montmayne, and began renovations, with an army of carpenters employed to do the work. A few months later a magnificent town house in Brook Street was sold-again to an ‘undivulged purchaser.’ Massive renovations began the next week on it, too. Society was all agog, wondering who the owner was, and a few months ago Ian Thornton drew up in front of number eleven Upper Brook Street and walked into the house. Two years ago the rumor was that Thornton was a gambler and no more, and he was assuredly persona non grata in most respectable homes. Today, however, I have the sad task of telling you, he’s said to be richer than Croesus, and he’s welcome in almost any drawing room he cares to set foot in-not that he cares to very often, fortunately.” Standing up to leave, she finished in a dire voice, “You may as well face the rest of it now, because you’ll have to face it this evening.”

“What do you mean?” Alex asked, wearily arising. “I mean that Elizabeth’s prospects for success tonight were drastically reduced by Stanhope’s announcement this morning.” “Why?” “The reason is simple. Now that Thornton has a title to go with his wealth, what happened between him and Elizabeth will be overlooked by the ton as a ‘gentleman’s sport,’ but it will continue to stain her reputation. And there’s one more thing,” she added in her most dire tone.

“I’m not certain I can bear it. What is It?”

“I,” her grace announced, “do not have a good feeling about this evening!”

Neither did Alex at that moment. “Tony has agreed to escort Elizabeth tonight, and Sally is in accord,” she said idly, referring to her brother-in-law and his wife, who was still at home in the country. “I wish, though, her escort was someone else-an eligible bachelor above reproach someone everyone looks up to, or better yet fears. Roddy Carstairs would have been the perfect one. I’ve sent him an urgent message to present himself to me here at his earliest convenience, but he is not expected back until tonight or tomorrow. He would be the perfect one, if I could convince him to do it. Why, most people in society positively tremble in fear of his cutting remarks.”

“They tremble in fear of me,” said the dowager with pride.

“Yes, I know,” Alex said with a wan smile. “No one will dare to give Elizabeth the cut direct in front of you, but Roddy might be able to terrify everyone into actually accepting her.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not. When and where are we all to gather tonight for this ill-fated debacle?”

Alex rolled her eyes and smiled reassuringly. “We’ll leave from here at ten-thirty. I asked Jordan to meet us at the Willingtons’ receiving line so that we can all go down to the ballroom together.”