He gave her his best smile. His best I-almost-died-so-how-can-you-deny-me smile. Or at least that’s how he hoped it appeared. The truth was, he wasn’t a very accomplished flirt, and it might very well have come across as an Iam- mildly-deranged-so-it’s-in-all-of-our-best-interests-if-youpretend- to-agree-with-me smile.

I cannot feel like a duchess in my mother’s sitting room.” “What do you feel like, then?” “Hmmm.” She took a sip of her tea. “Just Daphne Bridgerton, I suppose. It’s difficult to shed the surname in this clan. In spirit, that is.” “I hope that is a compliment,” Lady Bridgerton remarked. Daphne just smiled at her mother. “I shall never escape you, I’m afraid.” She turned to Gareth. “There is nothing like one’s family to make one feel like one has never grown up.

He stepped toward her, and her heart just ached from it. His face was so handsome, and so dear, and so perfectly wonderfully familiar. She knew the slope of his cheeks, and the exact shade of his eys, brownish near the iris, melting into green at the edge. And his mouth-she knew that mouth, the look of it, the feel of it. She knew his smile, and she knew his frown, and she knew- she knew far to much.

He didn’t know where the thought had come from, or what strange corner of his brain had come to that conclusion, because he was quite certain it would be nearly impossible to live with her, but somehow he knew that it wouldn’t be at all difficult to love her.

Deep inside, she knew who she was, and that person was smart and kind and often even funny, but somehow her personality always got lost somewhere between her heart and her mouth, and she found herself saying the wrong thing or, more often, nothing at all.

And if that weren't bad enough, the next sound he heard was a loud click. The damned woman had locked him out. She'd taken all the food and locked him out. "You'll pay for this!" he yelled at the door. "Do be quiet," came the muffled reply. "I'm eating.

The ranks of society are once again filled with Ambitious Mamas, whose only aim is to see their Darling Daughters married off to Determined Bachelors