The Rogue Not Taken

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WORD HAS IT that notorious recluse, the Duke of Lyne, is nearing his end. What’s more, a confidential source tells Scandal & SCOUNDREL that his heir (the RAPSCALLION and Riveting “Royal Rogue”) has been summoned north for a FINAL face-to-face with his frail father. Will Eversley extricate himself from the embrace of his latest lady love to hasten HOME? Signs suggest so, indicating inheritance trumps inamorata.

MORE TO COME.

Chapter 1

SOPHIE’S SOCIETY SPLASH

London

June 1833

If only the Countess of Liverpool hadn’t been such an admirer of aquatic creatures, perhaps things would have turned out differently.

Perhaps no one would have witnessed the events of the thirteenth of June, the final, legendary garden party of the 1833 season. Perhaps London would have happily packed itself into myriad coaches that would have spread like beetles across the British countryside into summer idyll.

Perhaps.

But one year earlier, the Countess of Liverpool had received a gift of a half-dozen pretty orange-and-white fish that were said to be direct descendants of those beloved of the Shogun of Japan. Sophie thought the tale wholly unbelievable—Japan being notoriously insulated from the rest of the world—but Lady Liverpool was exceedingly proud of her pets, caring for the things with near-fanatical passion. Six had turned into two dozen, and the overlarge bowl in which the creatures were delivered had been traded for a container that could only be described as pondlike.

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