They whispered that a woman past forty had already lived out every chapter worth reading, that whatever story she had left was merely an epilogue nobody asked for.
Lady Margaret Ashworth had spent twenty years being filed away under that particular verdict, watching younger women glance at her the way one glances at a chair no one plans to sit in.
But the most powerful, most sought-after duke in England did not read her that way at all. He turned the page anyway, and found the best chapter had not been written yet.
The Hollingsworth ballroom was ablaze with three hundred candles, and every single one of them seemed aimed directly at Margaret's face, illuminating the fine lines beginning to gather at the corners of her eyes.
She stood near the refreshment table, a glass of watered wine untouched in her hand, and she did the thing she had trained herself to do at every one of these wretched affairs: she made herself small. She made herself forgettable. It rarely worked, but it was the only armor she had left.
"There she is," came a voice behind her, pitched just loud enough to carry. "The spinster of Grosvenor Square. Forty years old and still attending balls as though a husband might fall out of the chandelier."
Margaret did not turn. She recognized the voice. Lady Priscilla Denham, twenty-six years old, recently married to a viscount twice her age for the sole crime of possessing a title, had made it something of a personal hobby to remind Margaret of her failures at every social gathering they both attended. Beside Priscilla stood two other young matrons, their fans fluttering like nervous birds, their eyes bright with the particular cruelty of women who had never been told no.
"Perhaps she prefers her books to a husband," one of them offered, not quite lowering her voice enough. "They say she reads Latin. Imagine. What man wants a wife who corrects his grammar?"
"What man wants a wife with gray in her hair?" Priscilla said. And the group dissolved into soft, tittering laughter.
Margaret set her glass down on the table with a small, precise click. She had learned long ago that the worst thing she could do was flinch. Flinching told them the arrow had landed.
She turned instead, and she looked at Priscilla with the same flat, patient expression she might have given a poorly behaved dog.