She’d catalogued her flaws as though they were a change in the weather. She’d nearly confessed it all, even the bits she’d never confessed to anyone else. The bits she held close in the darkness. Because it hadn’t felt like confession. It felt like he’d already known everything. And maybe he had. Maybe he wasn’t a man in the darkness. Maybe he was the darkness itself. Ephemeral and mysterious and tempting—so much more tempting than the daylight, where flaws and marks and failure shone bright and impossible to miss.

The darkness had always tempted her. The locks. The barriers. The impossible.

That was the problem, wasn’t it? Felicity always wanted the impossible. And she was not the kind of woman who received it.

But when that mysterious man had suggested that she was a woman of consequence? For a moment, she’d believed him. As though it wasn’t laughable, the very idea that Felicity Faircloth—plain, unmarried daughter of the Marquess of Bumble, overlooked by more than one eligible bachelor because of her own ill fortune and properly unfit for this ball, where a long-lost handsome duke sought a wife—might be able to win the day.

The impossible.

So she’d fled, returning to her old habits and stumbling into the darkness because everything seemed more possible in the darkness than in the cold, harsh light.

And he’d seemed to know that, too, that stranger. Enough that she almost hadn’t left him in the shadows. Enough that she’d almost joined him there. Because in those few, fleeting moments, she had wondered if perhaps it wasn’t this world she wished to return to, but a new, dark world where she might begin anew. Where she might be someone other than Finished Felicity, wallflower spinster. And the man on the balcony had seemed the kind of man who could provide just that.

Which was mad, obviously. One did not run off with strange men one met on balconies. First off, that was how a person got murdered. And second, her mother would not approve. And then there was Arthur. Staid, perfect, poor Arthur with his We cannot afford another scandal.

And so she’d done what one did after a mad moment in the dark; she’d turned her back and made for the light, ignoring the pang of regret as she turned the corner of the great stone facade and stepped into the glow of the ballroom beyond the massive windows, where all of London shifted and swirled, laughing and gossiping and vying for the attention of their handsome, mysterious host.

Where the world she’d once been part of spun without her.

She watched for a long moment, catching a glimpse of the Duke of Marwick on the far side of the room, tall and fair and empirically handsome, with aristocratic good looks that should have set her to sighing but in fact made no impact.

Her gaze slid away from the man of the hour, settling briefly on the copper gleam of her brother’s hair on the far side of the ballroom, where he was deep in conversation with a group of men more serious than their surroundings. She wondered what they were discussing—was it her? Was Arthur attempting to sell another batch of men on Finished Felicity’s eligibility?

We cannot afford another scandal.

They couldn’t afford the last one, either. Or the one prior. But her family did not wish to admit that. And here they were, at a duke’s ball, pretending that the truth was not the truth. Pretending that anything was possible.

Refusing to believe that plain, imperfect, tossed-over Felicity was never going to win the heart and mind and—more importantly—the hand of the Duke of Marwick, no matter what kind of potentially addled hermit he was.

There had been a time when she might have, though. When a hermit duke might have collapsed to his knees and begged Lady Felicity to notice him. Well, perhaps not so much collapsing and begging, but he would have danced with her. And she would have made him laugh. And perhaps . . . they might have liked each other.

But that was all when she’d never even dreamed of looking at society from the outside—when she’d never even imagined society had an outside. She’d been inside, after all, young and eligible and titled and diverting.

She’d had dozens of friends and hundreds of acquaintances and invitations for visits and house parties and walks along the Serpentine in spades. No gathering was worth attending if she and her friends weren’t in attendance. She’d never been lonely.

And then . . . it had changed.

One day, the world had stopped glittering. Or, more aptly, Felicity had stopped glittering. Her friends faded away, and worse, turned their backs, not even attempting to shield her from their disdain. They’d taken pleasure in cutting her directly. As though she hadn’t once been one of them. As though they’d never been friends in the first place.

Which she supposed they hadn’t. How had she missed it? How had she not seen that they never really wanted her?

And the worst of all questions—why hadn’t they wanted her?

What had she done?

Foolish Felicity, indeed.

The answer did not matter anymore—it had been long enough that she doubted anyone even remembered. What mattered was that now barely anyone noticed her, except to look upon her with pity or disdain.

After all, no one liked a spinster less than the world that made her.

Felicity, once a diamond of the aristocracy (well, not a diamond, but a ruby perhaps. A sapphire, surely—daughter of a marquess with a dowry to match), was a proper spinster, complete with a future of lace caps and invitations offered out of pity to look forward to.

If only she’d marry, Arthur liked to say . . . she could avoid it.

If only she’d marry, her mother liked to say . . . they could avoid it. For as embarrassing as spinsterhood was for the spinster in question, it was a badge of shame for a mother—especially one who had done so well as to marry a marquess.

And so, the Faircloth family ignored Felicity’s spinsterhood, willing to do anything to land her a decent match. They ignored, too, the truth of Felicity’s desires—the ones the man in the darkness had instantly queried.

The truth. That she wanted the life she’d been promised. She wanted to be a part of it again. And if she couldn’t have that, which, frankly, she knew she couldn’t—she was not a fool, after all—she wanted more than a consolation of a marriage. That was the problem with Felicity. She’d always wanted more than she could have.

Which had left her with nothing, hadn’t it?

Felicity heaved an unladylike sigh. Her heart wasn’t pounding any longer. She supposed that was positive.

“I wonder if I might leave without anyone noticing?”

The words were barely out of her mouth when the massive glass door leading into the ballroom opened, and out spilled half a dozen revelers, laughter on their lips and champagne in their hands.

It was Felicity’s turn to press into the shadows, tucking herself against the wall as they reached the stone balustrade in breathless, raucous excitement. Recognition flared.

Of course.

They were Amanda Fairfax and her husband, Matthew, Lord Hagin, along with Jared, Lord Faulk, and his younger sister, Natasha, and two more—another couple, young and blond and gleaming like new toys. Amanda, Matthew, Jared, and Natasha liked to collect new acolytes. They’d once collected Felicity, after all.

She’d once been the fifth to their quartet. Beloved, until she wasn’t.

“Hermit or not, Marwick is terribly handsome,” Amanda said.

“And rich,” Jared pointed out. “I heard he filled this house with furnishings last week.”

“I heard the same,” Amanda said with near-breathless excitement. “And I heard he’s doing the rounds of the doyennes’ tearooms.”

Matthew groaned. “If that doesn’t make the man suspect, I don’t know what does. Who wants to drink tea with a score of dowagers?”

“A man in need of a bride,” Jared replied.

“Or an heir,” Amanda said, wistfully.

“Ahem, wife,” Matthew teased, and the whole group laughed, making Felicity remember for half a second what it was to be welcome in their jokes and jests and gossip. A part of their glittering world.

“He had to meet the dowagers to get London here tonight, no?” the third woman in the party interjected. “Without their approval, no one would have come.”

There was a beat of silence, and then the original foursome laughed, the sound edging from camaraderie into cruelty. Faulk leaned forward and tapped the young blond woman on her chin. “You’re not very intelligent, are you?”

Natasha swatted her brother on the arm and offered a false, scolding, “Jared. Come now. How is Annabelle to know how the aristocracy works? She married so far above herself, the lucky girl never required it!” Before Annabelle could experience the full lash of the stinging words, Natasha leaned in and whispered, loud and slow as though the poor woman were unable to understand the simplest of concepts, “Everyone would have come to see the hermit duke, darling. He could have appeared in the nude and we all would have happily danced with him and pretended not to notice.”

“With how mad everyone’s made the man out to be,” Amanda interjected, “I think we were all half-expecting him to appear nude.”