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  He was on hailing terms with the king and all the royal dukes and had been more sought after than ever socially. He had already patronized the best tailors and bootmakers and haberdashers and barbers and such, but he was bowed and scraped to at a wholly elevated level after he became m’lord. He had always been popular with them all since he was that rarity among gentlemen of the ton—a man who paid his bills regularly. He still did, to their evident astonishment. He spent the spring months in London for the Parliamentary session and the Season, and the summer months on his own estate or at one of the spas, and the autumn and winter months at home or at one of the various house parties to which he was always being invited, shooting, fishing, hunting according to whichever was most in season, and socializing. The only reason he was in London at the start of February this year was that he had imagined the sort of thirtieth-birthday party his mother would want to organize for him at Castleford. And how did one say no to the mother one loved? One did not, of course. One retreated to town instead like a naughty schoolboy hiding out from the consequences of some prank.

  Yes. To summarize. He was the most fortunate man on earth. There was not a cloud in his sky and never really had been. It was one vast, cloudless blue expanse of bliss up there. A brooding, wounded, darkly compelling hero type he was not. He had never done anything to brood over or anything truly heroic, which was a bit sad really. The heroic part, that was.

  Every man ought to be a hero at least once in his life.

  “Yes, everything,” he agreed with a sigh, referring to what his cousin had said a few moments ago. “I do have it all, Cyril. And that, dash it all, is the trouble. A man who has everything has nothing left to live for.”

  Photo by Sharon Pelletier

  Mary Balogh grew up in Wales and now lives with her husband, Robert, in Saskatchewan, Canada. She has written more than one hundred historical novels and novellas, more than thirty of which have been New York Times bestsellers. They include the Slightly sestet (the Bedwyn saga), the Simply quartet, the Huxtable quintet, and the ongoing seven-part Survivors’ Club series.

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