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the warm golden eyes, so full of challenge, the arrogant yet feminine nose, and that flashing smile went together very nicely. There was a fascinating, vivid element about Victoria that caught and held the eye. It hinted at an underlying passion that was just waiting to be set free by the right man.
    Lucas took another glance at the smile Victoria was giving her baron and decided he would very much like to taste Victoria’s mouth. Soon.
    “Lucas, dearest?”
    Reluctantly Lucas turned away from the sight of his heiress.
His heiress
, he thought, amused as he ran the phrase through his mind again.
    “Yes, Jessica?” He looked inquiringly down at the beautiful woman he had once loved and lost due to the lack of a title and a fortune.
    “Will she do, Lucas? Truly? It is not too late to meet Miss Pilkington, you know.”
    Lucas reflected on how Jessica, bowing to the dictates of her family, had married another man to secure both a title and a fortune. At the time he had not really comprehended or forgiven her. Now, having acquired the title but still lacking the fortune he desperately needed, Lucas finally understood the position Jessica had been in four years earlier.
    He knew now that marriage was not a matter of emotion; it was a matter of duty. Duty was something Lucas understood very well.
    “Well, Lucas?” Jessica prompted again, beautiful eyes full of grave concern. “Can you bring yourself to marry her? For the sake of Stonevale?”
    “Yes,” Lucas said. “Miss Huntington will do very well.”

2

    “I s my aunt at home, Rathbone?” Victoria inquired as she hurried into the front hall of the town house. Carriage wheels clattered on the street outside as Annabella and her elderly aunt, who had accompanied Victoria to the ball, took their leave.
    Victoria was rather glad to be out of the close confines of the vehicle. Annabella’s aunt, who had acted as a chaperon for the younger women, had felt obliged to read her charges a lengthy lecture on the subject of the rather doubtful propriety of females playing cards with men at fashionable parties.
    Victoria hated lectures of that sort.
    Rathbone, a massive, distinguished-looking man with thinning gray hair and a nose that would have graced any duke, solemnly indicated the closed door of the library. “I believe Lady Nettleship is engaged with several members of her Society for the Investigation of Natural History and Horticulture.”
    “Excellent. Pray, do not look so glum, Rathbone. All is not lost. Apparently they have not yet managed to set fire to the library.”
    “Only a matter of time,” Rathbone muttered.
    Victoria grinned as she sailed past him, stripping off her gloves as she went toward the library door. “Come now, Rathbone. You have been in the service of my aunt ever since I first came to visit as a small child, and never once has she burned the place down around our ears.”
    “Begging your pardon, Miss Huntington, but there was that time you and she conducted the experiments with the gunpowder,” Rathbone felt obliged to point out.
    “What? You mean to tell me you still recall our pitiful little attempt to manufacture our own fireworks? What a long memory you have, Rathbone.”
    “Some moments in our lives are indelibly etched in our recollections, as sharp today as on the day they occurred. I, personally, shall never forget the look on the first footman’s face when the explosion occurred. We thought for one horrifying instant that you had been killed.”
    “But, as it turned out, I was only slightly stunned. It was the fact that I was covered in ashes that gave everyone pause,” Victoria noted.
    “You did look as gray as death, if you don’t mind my saying so, Miss Huntington.”
    “Yes, it was a rather spectacular effect, was it not? Ah, well, one cannot reflect too much on past glories. There are far too many new and intriguing wonders of the natural world waiting to be explored. Let us see what my aunt is up to this