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CHAPTER ONE

STANDING AT THE LIBRARY , staring nura Antinori scarcely registered the footsteps approaching from behind her

“So this is where you’ve been hiding”

Wincing at the breathy, little-girl voice—so at odds with the venora reluctantly turned to gaze into the hard blue eyes of Uncle Robert’s wife

Twitching her expensive, jet-tri woht have been too ill these last fewabout, but it’sand go help Hobbs bring the trays ofroo shortly”

After weeks spent at her uncle’s bedside as he slowly slipped toward death, Allegra was too drained and forlorn to challenge, as she would have otherwise, the woman’s petty tyranny “Very well, Aunt Sapphira”

Those gentle blue eyes shot her a look that would have frozen the Thames “It’s Lady Lynton to you noench I may have been forced to humor Robert and take you in after your parents died last fall, but you’ll stay on ive yourself, you’re not really aotherwise”

Devastated as she was by the loss in quick succession of the three people dearest to her, Allegra could not allow that claio uncontested “Uncle Robert may not have been my uncle, but he was my mother’s dearest cousin—no matter how much you’d like to deny it,” she said

“Perhaps by birth, but everyone knows Lady Grace’s whole family disowned her when she ner, no less! I suppose she learned so Italian ways froed so her family run tame in his house whenever they caer If you wish to keep a roof over your head, you’ll abandon those pretensions or I’ll send you packing, see if I won’t! Now, go about your work”

Sra vowed she would be thrown out on the street tonight before she would curtsey to this female barely older than herself or call her “Lady Lynton”

“I should be happy to help provide for the guests…Aunt Sapphira,” she replied, holding her ground and staring directly into the eyes of the woe a mere six months after the death of his beloved first wife

Apparently realizing she could push Allegra only so far—or not wishing to lose a free extra servant when she expected a houseful of guests—Sapphira looked away first

“Make sure you do whatever else Hobbs needs,” she said, turning to inspect herself in the library mirror “And I’d better not see your dark face in the parlor while the guests are here Why Robert acknowledged any connection to a chit who looks irl, I’ll never understand”

With that parting shot, Sapphira sold curls off the porcelain perfection of her brow and walked out

Her ra sank down on the sofa She’d rest for a few o help Hobbs

For the hundredth time she deplored the susceptibility of the entian-blue eyes and blond curls above a well-curved figure She only hoped that in the year her uncle had been married to Sapphira, he’d never learned how selfish and ruthless was the heart under that outwardly perfect form

Suddenly released by her uncle’s death yesterday frora had been drifting in a fog of lassitude and despair Better to have so, to fill the empty time now heavy on her hands, since she was still too weary and heartsick to decide what she should do next

For autterly alone in the world overwhelmed her How she wished Uncle Robert’s son Rob had made it home to see his father one ony of his loss, as with elder-brother affection he had befriended her during her childhood visits

But the cousin Rob she had always—and secretly still—idolized was Captain Robert Lynton now, gone these three years with Wellington’s arhter of Waterloo, he was presently on staff duty in Paris

Surely when the news of Uncle Robert’s death reached hiht, her spirits brightening