Lover Awakened J.R WARD

Mary Balogh is the New York Times bestselling author of numerous books, including the acclaimed Slightly and Simply novels and the first five titles in her Huxtable series: First Comes Marriage, Then Comes Seduction, At Last Comes Love, Seducing an Angel, and A Secret Affair. A former teacher, she grew up in Wales and now lives in Canada.

The Duchess of Bridgwater, formidably elegant in her purple satin evening gown with matching turban and tall plumes, bedecked and sparkling with the family jewels, looked Miss Cora Downes over with slow and methodical care, beginning at the top of her elaborate coiffure, and ending at her slippers, which were already cramping her toes.

The slippers were cramping her toes because she had unwisely taken the advice of Lady Elizabeth Munro, the duchess’s elder daughter, to buy the smaller of two sizes in footwear when in doubt, as gentlemen did not admire large feet. Cora’s feet were not extraordinarily large, she had decided, holding them out in front of her, unshod, as she sat on the edge of her bed soon after the advice had been given. And really she did not care much for gentlemen’s strange preferences in such matters. Did they crawl around on hands and knees examining a lady’s feet before going to any other lengths to discover if she was someone with whom they would not mind dreadfully spending the rest of their days on this earth? But there was no escaping the fact that her feet were somewhat larger than Elizabeth’s and decidedly larger than those of Jane, Elizabeth’s younger sister. But then Jane was more than usually small and dainty.