Page 1 of Bound By her Earl

PROLOGUE

“Should we try to…talk to people?” Miss Emily Rutley asked her friend Lady Frances Johnson.

Frances’ wide-eyed look of horror spoke volumes.

“Yes, well,” Emily said, feeling only thetiniestbit defeated. It wasn’t that she felt any desperate need to go mix with the assembled members of theton. She’d been fortunate enough to gather a small, close group of friends at the start of the Season and felt little need to expand that circle, especially when so many of the other debutantes felt it abidingly necessary to comment upon Emily’s height.

Did they think she didn’tknowshe was tall? Did they really, truly think she’d moved through life for twenty years not realizing that she was head and shoulders taller than most other young ladies?

And if it wasn’t her height, it was her age. Yes, twenty was a bit older than your average debutante, but she was hardlydecrepit. And her sisters had needed her.

They still needed her, of course, though now they needed her for a different matter.

Now they needed her to marry.

Hence her interest—such as it was—innotcontinuing to linger near this wall with its hideous hangings.

But she couldn’t abandon Frances, could she? No, certainly not.

“We’ll wait for Grace,” she said, even though she knew this was an excuse to remain safely at the edges of the room for a few minutes longer. “You know Grace always has someone new to introduce.”

Lady Grace Miller was the shining star of the Season, a luminous beauty who not only was the daughter of a duke but who had (as rumors held it) a prodigious dowry. She was also, despite all this, another member of Frances and Emily’s small group of friends.

According to the rules of Society, it hardly made sense, but, then again, Grace was just like that; no matter that the world had given her a dozen reasons to be petty, spoiled, or snobbish, she was genuinely kind and clever and sought kindness and cleverness in her friends instead of things like wealth and pedigree.

Not that Emily, daughter of a viscount, or Frances, daughter of a marquess, lacked pedigree, but nobody would claim that they were up to Grace’s level of perfection.

“Good idea,” Frances said, even though she looked faintly green at the idea. Frances was a lovely, charming, wonderful girl…who clammed up the instant anyone whom she didn’t consider a close friend was within earshot.

“My goodness!” came a teasing cry from a few paces away. “If it isn’t the very wallflowers I was hoping to see!”

This was Lady Diana Fletching, daughter of the Earl of Preston and the fourth in their quartet. Her dark green eyes gleamed with feisty humor, even as her expression held the lingering tension that suggested she’d just escaped her mother’s clutches. The Countess of Preston was matrimonially minded to an aggressive degree, and Diana had no intention of marrying that Season.

None of Emily’s friends were seeking marriage that year, actually. Frances was terrified of the prospect, and Diana preferred books to men. Grace, meanwhile, intended to have as much fun as she could before she settled down.

Only Emily approached the thing with any seriousness…not that this had helped her garner any prospects.

“Really, Diana,” she chided gently, “you oughtn’t call us ‘wallflowers.’ Someone might hear you.”

Diana made a pointed, skeptical gesture at the wall. “And think I’m wrong?” she asked.

“And diminish our popularity,” Emily corrected. “We needn’t give others any reason to consider us undesirable.”

To considermeundesirable,she amended mentally though she couldn’t bear to say it out loud. It sounded far too self-pitying.

It was the truth, though. Although the others had no interest in marrying yet, they were all better poised for it. Diana’s golden hair made her a beauty even if she didn’t seem to know it, and Frances’ diminutive figure lent her the kind of feminine stature that men supposedly found more appealing than Emily’s willowy height.

Plus, there were her dratted curls, she recognized as she felt the telltale pull of one threatening to spring free from its pins. Fashion dictated that hair should be meticulously curled with a hot iron into neat, manageable waves. Emily’s hair was a force of its own, constantly threatening to break free.

But Diana knew how Emily felt about all this; she didn’t need to be told. She came to stand next to Emily, peering at her dance card.

“How’s your card looking this evening, Em?”

Emily sighed. “Not good. I’ve only two dances spoken for, and they’re both country dances. Hardly helpful for striking up conversations.”

Emily tried not to think too hard about just how far Diana had to reach up in order to deliver a sympathetic pat to her shoulder.

“We need Grace to come make introductions to some gentlemen,” Frances said, picking up the thread of their conversation. She stood on her toes to look out over the crowd; the effort still put her eyeline lower than Emily’s. “WhereisGrace?”

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