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When Garrett Lynch bursts the glittering Raynewood ballroom a Wild mail, a hapless footman clinging to each powerful arm, Lucinda Devering is equally appalled and impressed. How uncivilised! How barbaric! How... stirringly strong and manly! Then she learns he's the long-lost heir of the Duke of Raynewood -- and that it's her job to transform him into a proper Englishman. And if she fails this impossible task, the duke will reveal her desperate secret, ruining her forever.

Lucinda Devering may be the loveliest woman Garrett's laid eyes on, but her eternal rules and regulations about proper behaviour are enough to drive a man mad. Which should he believe? That stiff spine, or those soft curls and big brown eyes? One thing is certain: that lush, prissy mouth needs loosening up -- and he knows just the way to do it! But soon he wonders which is more important: winning this game, or winning, Lucinda's hand?

Chapter One...

Raynewood Abbey, Hampshire
1816

All hope hinged upon tonight's success. As Lucinda Northcott Devering walked through the ballroom of the Duke of Raynewood's ancestral estate, every conversation died as she approached. The silence lasted just long enough for her to pass by before the whispers rose again in her wake. Gossip swept through the room like a gust of wind up from the London docks, rank with the stench of rumor.

"...died in his mistress's bed..."

"...no one was surprised..."

"...barren, the poor thing..."

"...really couldn't blame him, I suppose..."

Lucinda held her head up high, her impeccable breeding evident in the board straightness of her spine and her dignified poise. The calmest of smiles played about her lips, as if everyone were not talking about Harry Devering's ignominious death in the bed of his mistress, or the fact that his widow was making her first social appearance in over a year.

The skirt of her shimmering gold dinner dress swished in gentle accompaniment to her unhurried pace as she made her way toward the dance floor. It was a small assemblage, only forty people, made up mostly of local gentry. The duke had arranged the intimate dinner party with dancing to follow as the debut for his American granddaughter. An informal affair, it was merely to give the girl a chance to practice the manners she had learned from Lucinda these past several weeks. The real thing, Meg's grand debut in London, would follow.

For Lucinda, it was a test that must be passed at all costs. Her very future depended on it.

For an instant, as she stood watching the couples on the dance floor, she experienced a pang of regret. Once she, too, had danced so gaily without a care in the world. Before she had been so foolish as to believe herself in love. Before she had married and discovered that she had nothing to offer a man, but her sterling breeding. Over the past eleven years she had become known as a paragon of dignified propriety, and never again would she deviate from that course. The cost was much too high.

Still, her heart ached with the longing to dance and flirt with a man. More than that, to be held by a man, kissed by him, made love to by him. But it was not to be. Lucinda Devering was not a woman who drove men to passion.

Shaking off her despondent thoughts, she turned her gaze to the dance floor, where Miss Margaret Stanton-Lynch, the granddaughter of the Duke of Raynewood, danced with the young Earl of Coucherton.

Meg was all that mattered now. With Meg's success would come her own.

On the other side of the dance floor, the elderly duke was watching his granddaughter dance with a fond smile on his sharp-boned face. Despite the fact that Meg had only recently made the acquaintance of her grandfather, there was genuine affection between the two that warmed Lucinda's heart. Meg was as sweet-natured as she was pretty, and both qualities would make her quite sought-after in the marriage mart.

That, and the fact that she was the granddaughter of one of the wealthiest and most prestigious noblemen in England.

The duke looked over and met Lucinda's gaze, then gave her a subtle nod of approval. Lucinda let out a relieved sigh. Meg had made no social blunders; perhaps this madcap plan would work after all. Perhaps Lucinda's future would be assured, despite her dire straits.

Then a crash sounded in the hallway, and the doors to the ballroom slammed open.

"Get your damned hands off me!"

A huge man burst into the room, long dark hair flying about his face and his jaw shadowed with a day's growth of beard. A footman clung to each arm, trying to stop the brute, but he dragged them along with him into the ballroom. Blood trickled...

Debra Mullins is the author of several historical romances for Avon. Her work has been nominated for the Golden Heart and RITA awards from Romance Writers of America and the Holt Medallion from Virginia Romance Writers. In 2003, she won the Golden Leaf Award from NJ Romance Writers for her book A Necessary Bride. A native of the east coast, she now lives in California.