“I’m not sure my father could handle you.” Vivi laughed. “But, in all honesty, I’m not planning to avoid anyone’s simpering wish for my hand. My plan is to gain as many proposals as possible. I need to hone my flirting skills if I’m going to catch The One.”

The One. Vivi had always been the only girl in the threesome who believed in “The One.” Ella speculated that it was the result of her being the product of a love match. Alex felt she knew better, however, and could never shake the idea that Vivi had already set her sights on the man she wanted. Vivi, ever mysterious, refused to respond to any prodding or cajoling for more information on the subject, leaving her friends with a simple: “Everybody has a One. We just aren’t all willing to wait for Him.”

Alex snorted indecorously. “I don’t think it is unwillingness to wait, Viv…I’m more than willing to wait. Years! Decades even!” Her eyes twinkled with laughter.

Ella chimed in with, “Centuries! Millennia!”

“There is just one problem.” Alex leaned forward and, with a wink to Ella, she spoke with grave seriousness, “Mothers.” All three girls burst out in giggles.

“ALEXANDRA ELIZABETH STAFFORD! WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING?”

“Uh-oh.”

“Speaking of…” Ella said drily.

Alex’s feet came off the chaise and she sat up. “Mother…”

For a petite woman, the duchess could appear as regal and enormous as her title suggested. “What did I tell you about that dress? What would possess you to come down here and lie about in it as if it were your nightgown and this your bedchamber? Leaving aside your unladylike behavior for the moment…do you have any idea how long it took Madame Fernaud and her assistants to turn that dress into something worthy of your coming-out? It is a ball gown…not a riding habit!”

“But…” Alex tried to get a word in.

The duchess was not in the mood to hear her daughter’s feeble explanations. “No buts, young lady. March up to your chamber, apologize to Eliza for her having to bother with you at this hour of the day, and Remove. That. Dress.”

Ella was suddenly and vastly interested in the weave of the upholstery on the armchair in which she was seated. Vivi could have been searching for treasure in her tiny reticule for the amount of attention she was giving to the contents of the bag, likely a handkerchief, some lip rouge, and a traveling comb. Neither girl wanted to be the next recipient of the duchess’s wrath.

“And you two.” The two in question looked up, then stood. “Do you think I haven’t noticed that you were both encouraging her ridiculous behavior?”

Vivi’s mouth opened. She thought better of it. It closed.

“Excellent choice, Vivian. I rely on the two of you to keep Alex from losing hold of all of her decorum. I do not expect to be disappointed by you.”

Ella risked speech. “Yes, Your Grace.”

“I feel confident that I will not be disappointed in you again…especially during your first season.” Contrary to the wording, this was not a theory the duchess had shared, but rather an order she had decreed.

Vivi spoke this time. “No, Your Grace.”

From behind her mother’s back, Alex gaped at her friends. “Traitors!”

The duchess did not turn to look at her daughter. “Good friends know not to cross mothers, Alexandra.” There was a merry glint in her eye as she studied her daughter’s closest confidantes.

Vivi knew the storm had passed. “Especially when the mother in question is a duchess.”

Alex groaned. The duchess smiled.

“Are you girls staying for tea?”

three

When Alex returned to the drawing room, she was in more suitable attire for an afternoon with her friends. The Empire gown she wore was a lovely shade of pale blue, falling to her matching slippers. It was comfortable and fashionable—another one of her new gowns, designed to make her seem more adult and less ungainly.

Of course…no dress could actually make Alex more ladylike—she burst through the door of the room with a “What did I miss?”…only to realize that her friends were no longer alone.

And they were outnumbered.

Alex’s brothers had arrived. Towering well over six feet—all broad shoulders and long legs—the boys never failed to dwarf even this larger-than-average room.

With satin-covered chairs and dainty chaises, the room was designed in the most fashionable of ways; which, of course, meant it was designed for a more foppish and less…enormous group of men. Not that the men in question seemed to care. They were sprawled out, long legs extended, leaning back on the petite furniture with no notice of its size—or their own.

For generations, the Stafford men had been known throughout the ton for their appearance—the epitome of tall, dark, and handsome. Alex’s father was a mere six feet tall, and was teased relentlessly by his brothers and cousins as “the diminutive duke.” His sons did not suffer the same fate—all standing taller than six feet, four inches, proving that the next crop of Staffords would reclaim their statuesque heritage. The sons in question—William, twenty-three, Nicholas, twenty-one, and Christopher, nineteen—shared other familial qualities with their father, however: They were devilishly handsome, with the dark-as-midnight hair, strong jaws, regal noses, and full lips that had made the Staffords legendary since the early days of the kingdom.

But it wasn’t their good looks that stopped women in their tracks. It was the famous Stafford eyes. For as long as anyone could remember, Stafford men had been blessed with eyes the color of clearest emeralds. One could get lost in those eyes—they were windows on emotion, glittering with humor, flashing with anger, fiery with passion.