Sometimes the turn of a card changes your life.
Two years ago, Isabella Harrington defied her parents and society, and ran off with her lover to Milan. They thought they'd conquer the world at the gaming tables. But her dream of happily-ever-after led to nothing but debts and a shattered heart.
Abandoned and left on her own in a foreign city with little but her wits and skill, Isabella managed to survive. Survive and thrive, commanding the cards until she won enough to send for a very particular matchmaker.
Isabella needed a way back into the society she shunned and what better way than through a proper, aristocratic marriage? And this matchmaker of note would be her key back home to England.
Traveling the Continent, Jonathon, Duke of Strathmore, agreed to meet the mysterious Miss Harrington. Wary of the rumors surrounding her, a woman who vanished from London with only scandalous tales left in her wake, he hadn't counted on the intriguing Isabella to thoroughly capture his attention.
Will a game of cards change both their fates? Will she become a mistress or a duchess?
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Chapter One
Milan, Italy
May 1817
“Merciless animals stalk and devour their prey,” Isabella
Harrington muttered. She watched a large, ragged dog slip down an alleyway
across from her townhouse. He was surely hunting and some poor creature would
soon meet its end.
Isabella now understood just how
merciless Manning Bradford, like the wild dog, had truly been. He’d left her
injured and beaten. If not in body then in spirit and heart.
His vicious words still taunted
her, and when he left her, alone in a foreign city, only then had she seen that
she’d never been his love. She was simply, always, his prey.
The lesson had been hard learned
and hard lived.
But that lesson also taught her,
prepared her, to relinquish the young girl Isabella had been for the woman who
refused to allow the mistake of loving Manning Bradford to define her life.
The bracelet pinched her left
wrist. She’d fastened it too tightly. Again. Isabella pushed and pulled the
offending gold and peridot adornment but refused to loosen it. No, she wore it
to serve as her reminder, a reminder of the man who gave the piece she once
considered beautiful, but now saw as a testimonial to her own weakness.
Thirteen months since he’d left.
Thirteen months living alone. The man she’d trusted with her future, her life,
gone.
Loneliness and hurt clung to her
like the stench of cheap tallow candles clung to her parlor walls. Isabella
wanted nothing more than to be able to go back to her youthful self and choose
differently.
She’d spent months wrenching
herself free of the muck and mire. Months wallowing in self-pity, but needing
to survive.
Survive was all she’d done.
The pungent scent of lemon oil
permeated the front parlor, almost but not quite strong enough to hide the
tallow used in their candles. The mixture of lemon and tallow made her stomach
churn.
Turning from the window, she let
the curtains fall and quickly crossed her small parlor to the nook beside the
fireplace and retrieved the bottle of lemon oil. Isabella splashed some onto
the rag and, with an energy born of nerves, wiped down the mantle.
She pressed hard into the wood,
moving the rag over it again and again, trying to wipe her mind clear from her
past as she did so. She rubbed the oil into the wood until only the scent of
fresh polish filled the room. Until her stomach calmed and the sickening scent
of tallow faded.
Just as she’d done the day she
realized she hadn’t enough money to live out the month, as she realized she’d
nowhere to go, as she’d forced herself out of bed to wash away the tears she’d
shed over Manning, now Isabella forced herself to take the next step forward.
She ignored the nerves dancing
through her, squashing them until all that remained was her pride, her
determination, and her will to not merely survive, but to thrive. This was her
fresh start, and she’d not allow anyone to hold her back, not any longer.
The front door creaked open and she
heard, her one manservant, Nicolo usher her guest into the foyer.
This was it, the first step in
reclaiming her life and in putting the mistakes of her youth behind her.
Isabella nearly laughed at that — she’d experienced more in the previous two
years than most young women of her stature experienced in their entire lives.
And she would create a life where
she held her head high with pride and dignity against all the gossips and
vicious stories. End this cold and lonely existence.
Isabella smoothed a hand down her
gown. With her chin high, as regal as her respectable upbringing taught her,
she watched Mrs. Camilla Primsby enter the sparsely furnished parlor. Mrs.
Primsby was the tool Isabella planned to use as her reintroduction to proper society.
She was well known for her successful — and more importantly discreet —
matches.
So much so that at no small
expense, won from many nights spent at the Milanese gaming tables, Isabella
sent for Mrs. Primsby. If she were to polish her tarnished reputation, to
salvage what was left of it, she needed someone of Mrs. Primsby’s esteem.
Still, she found it difficult to
trust her future to such an unknown quality. Isabella had heard much about the
renowned matchmaker before she’d left London.
However, Isabella had spent the last thirteen months and ten days trusting no
one save herself.
“Signora Primsby,” Nicolo announced
with a bow.
Miss Lillian Norwood’s life changed completely. No longer the mistress of a formidable estate, she survives by the kindness of a distant cousin who wants little to do with her and the barely livable stipend from her childhood home’s heir. Now living in a new village, far from home, she volunteers to help with a Christmas feast for returned soldiers.
Wassail is hot mulled cider. See random picture from the internet I pasted in here. Maybe I'll try it this Christmas and see how the family likes it!
There's a scene in Improper Match where Selina needs to take money from the bank. However, women weren't allowed to do so. Even though two separate banks were owned and very successfully run by women, the laws of the time forbade them from actually retrieving their own money (theirs or their husband's) themselves.
The daughter of a successful merchant, Selina Lyndell never expects to marry an earl. But that’s exactly what is about to happen. Their first meeting is entirely unconventional but the moment Edmund Pembroke, the Earl of Granville, lays eyes on Selina, he’s enchanted. 
Sometimes the turn of a card changes your life.
