The words sounded imperious even to his ears.

Ralston straightened, making slow work of coming to his full height, almost as tall as Leighton. “I shall certainly try. After all, you have plenty of your own family dramatics threatening to come crashing down on the doorstep, do you not?”

There was nothing about Ralston that Simon liked.

He would do well to remember that.

He exited the study and headed for the library, opening the door with more force than necessary and coming up short just inside the room.

She was asleep in his chair.

With his dog.

The chair she had selected was one that he had worked long and hard to get to the perfect level of comfort. His butler had suggested it for reupholstering countless times, due in part, Simon imagined, to the fraying, soft fabric that he considered one of the seat’s finest attributes. He took in Juliana’s sleeping form, her scratched cheek against the soft golden threads of the worn fabric.

She had taken off her shoes and curled her feet beneath her, and Simon shook his head at the behavior. Ladies across London would not dare go barefoot in the privacy of their own homes, and yet here she was, making herself comfortable and taking a nap in a duke’s library.

He stole a moment to watch her, to appreciate how she perfectly fit his chair. It was larger than the average seat, built specifically for him fifteen years prior, when, tired of folding himself into minuscule chairs that his mother had declared “the height of fashion,” he had decided that, as duke, he was well within his birthright to spend a fortune on a chair that fit his body. It was wide enough for him to sit comfortably, with just enough extra room for a stack of papers requiring his attention, or, as was the case right now, for a dog in search of a warm body.

The dog, a brown mutt that had found his way into his sister’s country bedchamber one winter’s day, now traveled with Simon and made his home wherever the duke was. The canine was particularly fond of the library in the town house, with its three fireplaces and comfortable furniture, and he had obviously made a friend. Leopold was now curled into a small, tight ball, head on one of Juliana’s long thighs.

Thighs Simon should not be noticing.

That his dog was a traitor was a concern Simon would address later.

Now, however, he had to deal with the lady.

“Leopold.” Simon called the hound, slapping one hand against his thigh in a practiced maneuver that had the dog coming to heel in seconds.

If only the same action would bring the girl to heel.

No, if he had his way, he would not wake her so easily. Instead, he would rouse her slowly, with long, soft strokes along those glorious legs . . . he would crouch beside her and bury his face in that mass of ebony hair, drinking in the smell of her, then run his lips along the lovely angle of her jaw until he reached the curve of one soft ear. He would whisper her name, waking her with breath instead of sound.

And then he would finish what she had started all those months ago.

And he would bring her to heel in an entirely different way.

He fisted his hands at his sides to keep his body from acting on the promise of his imagination. There was nothing he could do that would be more damaging than feeding the unwelcome desire he felt for this impossible female.

He simply had to remember that he was in the market for the perfect duchess.

And Miss Juliana Fiori was never going to be that.

No matter how well she filled out his favorite chair.

It was time to wake the girl up.

And send her home.

Chapter Three

Ladies’ salons are hotbeds of imperfection.

Exquisite ladies need not linger within.

—A Treatise on the Most Exquisite of Ladies

Surely there is no place more interesting in all of London than the balcony beyond a ballroom . . .

—The Scandal Sheet, October 1823

“I thought that your season was over and we were through with balls!”

Juliana collapsed onto a settee in a small antechamber off the ladies’ salon of Weston House and let out a long sigh, reaching down to massage the ball of her foot through her thin slipper.

“We should be,” her closest friend Mariana, the newly minted Duchess of Rivington, lifted the edge of her elaborate blue gown and inspected the place where her hem had fallen. “But as long as Parliament remains in session, seasonal balls will be all the rage. Every hostess wants her autumnal festivity to be more impressive than the last. You only have yourself to blame,” Mariana said wryly.

“How was I to know that Callie would start a revolution in entertaining on my behalf?” Calpurnia, Mariana’s sister and Juliana’s sister-in-law, had been charged with smoothing Juliana’s introduction to London society upon her arrival that spring. Once summer had arrived, the marchioness had recommitted herself to her goal. A wave of summer balls and activities had kept Juliana in the public eye and kept the other hostesses of the ton in town after the season was long finished.

Callie’s goal was a smart marriage.

Which made Juliana’s goal survival.

Waving a young maid over, Mariana pulled a thimble of thread from her reticule and handed it to the girl, who was already crouching down to repair the damage. Meeting Juliana’s gaze in the mirror, she said, “You are very lucky that you could cry off Lady Davis’s Orange Extravaganza last week.”

“She did not really call it that.”

“She did! You should have seen the place, Juliana . . . it was an explosion of color, and not in a good way. Everything was orange—the clothes . . . the floral arrangements . . . the servants had new livery, for heaven’s sake . . . the food—”