“You exactly resemble—”
A raven-haired Botticelli? Venus di Milo, but with arms and a head?
“Who?” she breathed.
“Miss Davina Dalhousie.”
Juliet blinked, and whatever dreamy expression she’d been directing at him froze on her face.
Miss Davina Dalhousie.
Of course.
The lady who had rejected his proposal of marriage before he’d hied off to Italy. Yet…
For a moment, the possibility had existed that his infatuation for Miss Dalhousie had faded—apparently, the young lady had been quite definite in her rejection—and Juliet herself had, at last, caught his eye.
But, alas, that wasn’t the reality.
In an instant, she knew what she needed to do. First, get as far away from this man as quickly as possible. Second, have a good, cleansing cry. And, lastly and most importantly, write a verse where the villain of the piece tragically slips and falls off a Scottish mountain or is rammed in the bum by a het up Highland coo.
The latter scenario held a particular appeal as the butterflies in her stomach were replaced by bats—the sort that gnawed.
“Like Miss Dalhousie?” she said around the unresolved sob in her throat. Somehow, her voice sounded remarkably like hers—cool and composed.
In other words, she sounded remarkably—blessedly—like herself.
“Her hair is dark, like yours,” he said, apparently oblivious to the murderous narrowing of Juliet’s eyes.
“The resemblance sounds uncanny.”
His eyebrows gathered. He might’ve caught the note of sarcasm. “Have I said something to offend you?”
“Of course not.” She pressed a palm to her forehead. “My head has begun to ache, and I would like a lie down.”
It wasn’t a complete fib. She would like to lie down.
He nodded and let it pass.
Amongst the whirl of other emotions, Juliet experienced relief. She simply wanted to ask where he was going and leg it in the opposite direction.
She offered a mumble of farewell and fled, determination pushing through embarrassment and irritation and settling solid and deep inside her gut.
She would leave this secret infatuation with the Viscount Kilmuir here, in this Italian olive grove, and never again give it light to grow.
She’d been an utter fool.
Never again.
Chapter One
Scottish Highlands
April 1822
Rory rushed intothe receiving hall of Dalhousie Manor and tried not to feel like the conspicuously ill-mannered guest that he was.
The hall, a grand, square room surrounded on all four sides by three levels of open corridors with a large skylight above, was blessedly empty.