A Seduction in the Stars - Jess Michaels

Chapter 1

London, December 1814

“Lady Evangeline, you should smile more! There is peace!”

Lady Evangeline lifted the corners of her lips in only the barest sense as one of the diamonds of the previous season spun by her on the arm of some duke or earl or one of their sons. What did it matter? The lot of them were the same, they even dressed in identical style.

She sighed as she turned back to the table and drew another ladle of wassail into her cup. It seemed her enthusiasm for the season would not be found until she had drunk some more. And she supposed she did need to find that enthusiasm. After all, it was true—for the first time in over a decade, the world teetered on peace. There had been a terrible cost, which hadn’t seemed to occur to most of the titled, rich fops around her.

Of course, it was a cost most of them had not paid. They and their sons and grandsons were too important to fight in wars. They only benefitted from them.

She sighed and shook her head. No, this sour mood would not do. She couldn’t even place the cause of it. Normally she didn’t hate a party. She was often the center of them. But tonight it all felt so very…stale. Like this year that was circling the drain with 1815 looming large behind it.

Would the next year be any different for her? She feared the answer was no. And perhaps that was the cause of the dreary malaise she couldn’t seem to shake.

The noise of the crowd behind her lifted, and she turned in time to see a group of men bringing out a bowl brimming with brandy. She let her eyes come shut as someone shouted out, “Ah yes, it’s about time we played Snapdragon! Dim the candles there!”

She folded her arms as the silver bowl was placed on a low table that had been dragged to the center of the room. The lights went down and, with great pomp and circumstance, one of the men brought over a candle and laughed as he lowered it to the liquor. Flames leapt from the brew, nearly singeing off the man’s hair as he yelped in surprise.

“I suppose a game of Snapdragon can’t be counted a success until at least one idiot has lost an eyebrow.”

Evangeline jerked her head to her right. She had been so caught up in the foolishness going on around her, she hadn’t noticed that another lady had stepped up near her. She recognized her. Miss Thomasina Lesley, eldest daughter of Colonel Lesley. She was a pretty enough girl, with an air of reserve that was put down to modest country manners. But with her wide blue eyes, fair hair and petite features, she had been proclaimed a diamond just as Evangeline was.

And right now she had as judgmental an expression on her face as Evangeline felt down to her soul.

“Sometimes two,” Evangeline added.

Miss Lesley jumped and pink lifted to her cheeks, as if she hadn’t realized Evangeline could hear her. “I do beg your pardon,” she said. “I fear I should not be so critical of the fun, especially at this time of year.”

Evangeline snorted out what could only be described as a very unladylike laugh. “Do not go back now, I need an ally. You are utterly correct that they are all idiots. They’re not the sort of fellows one wants for a husband, are they?”

“Heavens, no.”

They watched in silence as those very idiots now stood around the flames, faces dancing in shadow and light as they tossed raisins into the cauldron. Evangeline had never liked this game. Her older brothers had made her play as a little girl and she’d always known it was foolish. Who thought it fun to toss perfectly good fruit into a flaming bowl of hell, then snatch them out with bare fingers and toss them into one’s mouth? Her tongue had never fully recovered, she was certain of that.

And yet here was a group of adults—titled, supposedly respectable men—doing just that. One by one they reached into the fire, forever shocked that they were getting burned.

“Lord, grant me the confidence of a man of supposed education who knows absolutely nothing in truth,” Evangeline sighed.

“Indeed. If this is what’s on offer, I don’t think I want any sort of a husband at all. It seems a devil’s bargain at best.”

“True, but what sort of life can one have without one?” She asked the question sarcastically,