The assembly rooms decorated not for lackluster marriage mart dances, but as a place where Carole and her friends could drink brandy and play billiards and wager their future trousseau on the turn of a card. Happy families gathered about a supper table. Painstakingly precise recreations of her house, her street, the castle upon the hill… reimagined to reflect the world she really wished she lived in. It wasn’t a collection of bad poetry or Carole + His Grace curlicue doodles, but something even closer to her heart: There wouldn’t be a better time, but she had to act quickly.

The soldier was gone, the house was empty, the neighbors were all indoors enjoying afternoon tea. She would have retrieved her sketchbook by now, but until recently, the duke’s normally vacant cottage had been housing a recovering soldier. She reached for a boot and yanked on the laces. Dark tousled hair and deep brown eyes were all well and good on most occasions, but she needed to be in and out without anybody paying too much attention. He’d be her next-door neighbor… if he were here. Last summer, the Duke of Azureford had purchased the adjoining property. It was a brisk, late spring day with no clouds in sight, but in a mountaintop village nicknamed Christmas, ’twas best not to venture out-of-doors without sturdy boots. Could it truly be considered theft, if the object Miss Carole Quincy intended to filch from the Duke of Azureford’s summer cottage had belonged to her all along?Ĭarole sat on the edge of her fourposter bed to tug off her worn leather slippers.

The Duke's Embrace by Erica Ridley