Summary: Marlcaster brings Briar to a house party thrown by the widowed Duchess Karlington as a kindness, so that she may find a new patron. But in a world where reputation is currency, fortunes will change hands and secrets will be revealed...
Rating: N*FW chapters will have a 🔥
Featuring cameo MCs from @breaumonts and @debramcg1106 from one of my giveaways.
"'I had been tricked by the Cheat called love, but now the Game was over...'" Lisette places the book down on the table and leans back against the back of the chaise. "This is your favorite book, Cousin Rosamund? Moll Flanders?"
Rosamund pauses to lick her fingers and turn a page at the pianoforte, thinking with a sudden sharp pain how strange it is not to have Annabelle sitting there beside her, helping her turn the pages. They wrote this piece together, the arpeggios the sound of the wind as it tugged the fine little ivory pins from the goose girl's hair, swaying this way and that until she would cross back under the gate, and whisper to Falada's head hanging under it,
If your mother only knew, her heart would surely break in two.
"Yes, Moll Flanders. Why?" Rosamund pushes away all thoughts of Annabelle, her only comfort during those dark days under the Duke's roof after Crispin's birth, gone to dust now in the Hazelvale boneyard, frost and shimmer in the gloaming.
Lisette shrugs, wide green eyes like lanterns in the firelight. "She was a whore, like us, est-ce pas?"
"Pardon me, but I am not a whore!" Felicity squawks in affront. "Shall I ask the bishop to make a call upon your household, Rosamund? It seems you are in need of some absolution!"