Arabella, known to her friends as Bell, was blessed with an almost perfect face and figure—and

Arabella Fermor was looking at herself in the glass, considering on which side of her cheek the morning’s beauty patch should be placed. She stepped back so that Betty, her maid, could tighten the robings on her stays.

“The popular press has named her as one of London’s ‘Reigning Beauties’ for the last two years. Her name is Arabella Fermor.”

“Ladies are a good deal more willing when they are disguised,” he said with a smile. “Tell me about these glorious creatures you keep gathered about you,” Alexander said, abandoning his thoughts of Douglass, and stepping up to one of the finished canvases.

So Petre was not married. But everybody was in love with him. Alexander frowned, thinking of Teresa.

“Lord Petre must have inherited a vast fortune.” “I believe that he has,” Jervas replied. “And yet he is unattached—uncommonly selfish of him. Not a woman in London will spare the rest of us a glance until Lord Petre has been claimed.”

“Douglass is lately returned from abroad,”

Jervas was wearing a housecoat with velvet slippers and no wig,

elegantly furnished, with a robust masculine taste; excellent paintings in the hall and the reception rooms; a good cook and fine servants; and a light studio at the top of the house where Jervas painted. It was exactly what a gentleman’s establishment should be.