The Duke of Ravenscroft was not, Miss Cecily Ashworth had been told, a man who received visitors on a Tuesday morning.
She presented herself at his townhouse in Grosvenor Square regardless. She was twenty-one years old, recently orphaned, and possessed of exactly seventeen pounds and four shillings standing between herself and a very particular variety of disaster. The morning calls of dukes could accommodate themselves.
The butler conveyed no visible alarm at a young woman in a sensible wool pelisse announcing she had private business with His Grace. He showed her to a small waiting room and returned in twelve minutes to escort her to the study.
Edmund Hartwell was standing at the window when she entered—tall, dark-coated, his attention apparently occupied by the square below. He did not turn immediately. Cecily recognised it as the specific theatrical technique of men who wished to establish command before a conversation began.
