Lady Whistledown Strikes Back

The First Kiss - Julia Quinn

The Last Temptation - Mia Ryan

The Best of Both Worlds - Suzanne Enoch

The Only One for Me - Karen Hawkins

For readers everywhere, who loved Lady W
too much to let her go.

This week’s most coveted
invitation appears to be Lady Neeley’s upcoming dinner party, to be
held Tuesday evening. The guest list is not long, nor is it remarkably
exclusive, but tales have spread of last year’s dinner party, or, to be
more specific, of the menu, and all London (and most especially those
of greater girth) are eager to partake.

LADY WHISTLEDOWN’S SOCIETY PAPERS,
27 MAY 1816

Tillie Howard supposed that the night could get worse, but in all truth, she couldn’t imagine how.

She hadn’t wanted to attend Lady Neeley’s dinner
party, but her parents had insisted, and so here she was, trying to
ignore the fact that her hostess—the occasionally-feared,
occasionally-mocked Lady Neeley—had a voice rather like fingernails on
slate.

Tillie was also trying to ignore the rumblings of
her stomach, which had expected nourishment at least an hour earlier.
The invitation had said seven in the evening, and so Tillie and her
parents, the Earl and Countess of Canby, had arrived promptly at half
past the hour, with the expectation of being led into supper at eight.
But here it was, almost nine, with no sign that Lady Neeley intended to
forgo talking for eating anytime soon.

But what Tillie was most trying to ignore, what she
in fact would have fled the room to avoid, had she been able to figure
out a way to do so without causing a scene, was the man standing next
to her.

“Jolly fellow, he was,” boomed Robert Dunlop, with
that joviality that comes from having consumed just a hair more wine
than one ought. “Always ready for a spot of fun.”

Tillie smiled tightly. He was speaking of her
brother Harry, who had died nearly one year earlier, on the battlefield
at Waterloo. When she and Mr. Dunlop had been introduced, she’d been
excited to meet him. She’d loved Harry desperately and missed him with
a fierceness that sometimes took her breath away. And she’d thought
that it would be wonderful to hear stories of his last days from one of
his comrades in arms.

Except Robert Dunlop was not telling her what she wanted to hear.

“Talked about you all the time,” he continued, even though he’d already said as much ten minutes earlier. ” ‘Cept…”

Tillie did nothing but blink, not wanting to encourage further elucidation. This couldn’t end well.

Mr. Dunlop squinted at her. ” ‘Cept he always described you as all elbows and knees and with crooked braids.”

Tillie gently touched her hand to her expertly coifed chignon. She couldn’t help it. “When Harry left for the Continent, I
did
have crooked braids,” she said, deciding that her elbows and knees needed no further discussion.

“He loved you a great deal,” Mr. Dunlop said. His
voice was surprisingly soft and thoughtful, enough to command Tillie’s
full attention. Maybe she shouldn’t be so quick to judge. Robert Dunlop
meant
well.

He was certainly good at heart, and rather
handsome, cutting quite a dashing figure in his military uniform. Harry
had always written of him with affection, and even now, Tillie was
having trouble thinking of him as anything other than “Robbie.” Maybe
there was a little more to him. Maybe it was the wine. Maybe …

“Spoke of you glowingly. Glowingly,” Robbie repeated, presumably for extra emphasis.

Tillie just nodded. She missed Harry, even if she
was coming to realize that he had informed approximately one thousand
men that she was a skinny gawk.

Robbie nodded. “Said you were the best of females, if one could look beneath the freckles.”

Tillie started scouting the exits, searching for an
escape. Surely she could fake a torn hem, or a horrible chest cough.
Robbie leaned in to look at her freckles. Or death. Her thespian demise
would surely end up as the lead story in tomorrow’s
Whistledown,
but Tillie was just about ready to give it a go. It had to be better than
this.

“Told us all he despaired of you ever getting
married,” Robbie said, nodding in a most friendly manner. “Always
reminded us that you had a bang-up dowry.”

That was it. Her brother had been using his time on
the battlefield to beg men to marry her, using her dowry (as opposed to
her looks, or heaven forbid, her heart) as the primary draw.

It was just like Harry to go and die before she could kill him for this.

“I need to go,” she blurted out. Robbie looked around. “Where?” Anywhere.

“There you are!”

Tillie turned around to see who had managed to pull
Robbie’s attention off of her. A tall gentleman wearing the same
uniform as Robbie was walking toward them. Except, unlike Robbie, he
looked … Dangerous.

His hair was dark, honey blond, and his eyes
were—well, she couldn’t possibly tell what color they were from three
yards away, but it didn’t really matter because the rest of him was
enough to make any young lady weak in the legs. His shoulders were
broad, bis posture was perfect, and his face looked as if it ought to
be carved in marble.

“Thompson,” Robbie said. “Dashed good to see you.”

Thompson,
Tillie thought,
mentally nodding. It must be Peter Thompson, Harry’s closest friend.
Harry had mentioned him in almost every missive, but clearly he’d never
actually
described
him, or Tillie would have
been prepared for this Greek god standing before her. Of course, if
Harry had described him, he would have just shrugged and said something
like, “Regular-looking fellow, I suppose.”

Men never paid attention to details.

“D’you know Lady Mathilda?” Robbie said to Peter.

“Tillie,” he murmured, taking her proffered hand
and kissing it. “Forgive me. I shouldn’t be so familiar, but Harry
always called you such.”

“It’s all right,” Tillie said, giving her head the
tiniest of shakes. “It’s been rather difficult not to call Mr. Dunlop
Robbie.”

“Oh, you should,” Robbie said affably. “Everybody does.”

“Harry wrote of us, then?” Peter inquired.

“All the time.”

“He was very fond of you,” Peter said. “He spoke of you often.”

Tillie winced. “Yes, so Robbie has been telling me.”

“Didn’t want her to think Harry hadn’t been thinking of her,” Robbie explained.

“Oh, look, there’s my mother.”

Both Tillie and Peter looked at him in surprise at the sudden change of subject.

“I’d better hide,” he mumbled, then took up residence behind a potted plant.

“She’ll find him,” Peter said, a wry smile glancing across his lips.

“Mothers always do,” Tillie agreed. Silence fell
across the conversation, and Tillie almost wished that Robbie would
come back and fill the gap with his friendly, if slightly inane,
chatter. She didn’t know what to say to Peter Thompson, what to do in
his presence. And she couldn’t stop wondering—a pox on her brother’s
surely laughing soul—if he was thinking of her dowry, and the size
thereof, and of the many times Harry had trotted it out as her most
shining attribute.

But then he said something completely unexpected.

“I recognized you the moment I walked in.”

Tillie blinked in surprise. “You did?”

His eyes, which she now realized were a mesmerizing
shade of gray-blue, watched her with an intensity that made her want to
squirm. “Harry described you well.”

“No crooked braids,” she said, unable to keep the tinge of sarcasm out of her voice.

Peter chuckled at that. “Robbie’s been telling tales, I see.”

“Quite a few, actually.”

“Don’t pay him any mind. We all talked about our
sisters, and I’m quite certain we all described you as you were when
you were twelve.”

Tillie decided then and there that there was no
reason to inform him that Harry’s description had fit her to a much
later age. While all her friends had been growing and changing, and
requiring new, more womanly clothing, Tillie’s shape had remained
determinedly childish until her sixteenth year.

Even now, she was boyishly slender, but she did have a few curves, and Tillie was thrilled with each and every one of them.

She was nineteen now, almost twenty, and by God she was no longer “all elbows and knees.” And never would be again.

“How did you recognize me?” Tillie ask.

Peter smiled. “Can’t you guess?”

The hair. The wretched Howard hair. It didn’t
matter if her crooked braids had made way for a sleek chignon. She and
Harry and their elder brother William all possessed the infamous red
Howard hair. It wasn’t strawberry blond, and it wasn’t titian. It was
red, or orange, really, a bright copper that Tillie was quite sure had
caused more than one person to squint and look away in the sunlight.
Somehow their father had escaped the curse, but it had returned with a
vengeance on his children.

“It’s more that that,” Peter said, not even needing
her to say the words to know what she was thinking. “You look a great
deal like him. Your mouth, I think. The shape of your face.”

And he said it with such quiet intensity, with such
a controlled swell of emotion, that Tillie knew that he had loved
Harry, too, that he missed him almost as much as she did. And it made
her want to cry.

“I—” But she couldn’t get it out. Her voice broke,
and to her horror, she felt herself sniffle and gasp. It wasn’t
ladylike, and it wasn’t delicate; it was a desperate attempt to keep
from sobbing in public.

Peter saw it, too. He took her elbow and expertly
maneuvered her so that her back was to the crowd, and then he pulled
out his handkerchief and handed it to her.

“Thank you,” she said, dabbing at her eyes. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”

Grief, he thought, but he didn’t say it. No need to state the obvious. They both missed Harry. Everyone did.

“What brings you to Lady Neeley’s?” Peter asked, deciding that a change of subject was in order.

She flashed him a grateful look. “My parents
insisted upon it. My father says her chef is the best in London, and he
wouldn’t allow us to decline. And you?”

“My father knows her,” he said. “I suppose she took pity on me, so newly returned to town.”

There were a lot of soldiers receiving the same
sort of pity, Peter thought wryly. A lot of young men, done with the
army, or about to be, at loose ends, wondering what it was they were
supposed to do now that they weren’t holding rifles and galloping into
battle.

Some of his friends had decided to remain in the
army. It was a respectable occupation for a man such as him, the
younger son of a minor aristocrat. But
Peter had had enough of military life, enough of the killing, enough
death. His parents were encouraging him to enter the clergy, which was,
in truth, the only other acceptable avenue for a gentleman of little
means. His brother would inherit the small manor that went with the
barony; there was nothing left over for Peter.

But the clergy seemed somehow wrong. Some of his
friends had emerged from the battlefield with renewed faith; for Peter
it had been the opposite, and he felt supremely unqualified to lead any
flock upon the path of righteousness.

What he really wanted, when he allowed himself to dream of it, was to live quietly in the country. A gentleman farmer.

It sounded so … peaceful. So completely unlike everything his life had represented during the past few years.

But such a life required land, and land required
money, which was something Peter had in short supply. He’d have a small
sum once he sold his commission and officially retired from the army,
but it wouldn’t be enough.

Which explained his recent arrival in London. He
needed a wife. One with a dowry. Nothing extravagant—no heiress would
be allowed to marry the likes of him, anyway. No, he just needed a girl
with a modest sum of money. Or better yet, a tract of land. He’d be
willing to settle almost anywhere in England as long as it meant
independence and peace.