Chapter One "What I am going to do is find a man." The speaker was Cassandra Belmont, the widowed Lady Paget. She was standing at the sitting room window of the house she had rented on Portman Street in London. The house had come fully furnished, but the furnishings as well as the curtains and carpets had seen better days. They had probably seen better days even ten years ago. It was a shabby genteel place, well suited to Lady Paget's circumstances. "To marry?" Alice Haytor, her lady's companion, asked, startled. Cassandra watched with world-weary eyes and scornfully curved lips as a woman walked past in the street below, holding the hand of a little boy who clearly did not want either to have his hand held or to be proceeding along the street at such a trot. Everything in the lines of the woman's body spoke of irritation and impatience. Was she the child's mother or his nurse? Either way, it did not matter. The child's rebellion and misery were none of Cassandra's concern. She had enough concerns of her own. "Absolutely not," she said in answer to the question. "Besides, I would have to find a fool." "A fool?" Cassandra smiled, though it was not a happy expression, and she did not turn to direct it at Alice. The woman and child had passed out of sight. A gentleman was hurrying along the street in the opposite direction, frowning down at the ground in front of his feet. He was late for some appointment, at a guess, and doubtless thought his life depended upon getting where he was going on time. Perhaps he was right. Probably he was wrong. "Only a fool would marry me," she explained. "No, it is definitely not for marriage that I need a man, Alice." "Oh, Cassie," her companion said, clearly troubled, "you surely cannot mean--" She did not complete the thought, or need to. There was only one thing Cassandra could mean. "Oh, but I do, Alice," Cassandra said, turning and regarding her with amused, hard, mocking eyes. Alice was gripping the arms of the chair on which she sat and leaning slightly forward as if she were about to stand up, though she did not do so. "Are you shocked?" "Your purpose when we decided to come to London," Alice said, "was to look for employment, Cassie. We were both going to look. And Mary too." "It was not a realistic plan, though, was it?" Cassandra said, laughing without amusement. "Nobody wants to hire a housemaid-turned-cook who has a young daughter but is not and never has been married. And a letter of recommendation from me would do poor Mary no good at all, would it? And--ah, forgive me, Alice--not many people will want to employ a governess who is more than forty years old when there are plenty of young women available. I am sorry to put that brutal truth into words, but youth is the modern god. You were an excellent governess to me when I was a child, and you have been an excellent companion and friend since I grew up. But your age is against you now, you know. As for me, well, unless I somehow disguise my identity, which would not work when it came time to offer letters of recommendation, I am doomed in the employment market, and in any other, for that matter. No one is going to want to hire an axe murderer in any capacity at all, I suppose." "Cassie!" her former governess said, her hands flying up to cover her cheeks. "You must not describe yourself in such a way. Not even in fun." Cassandra was unaware that they had been having fun. She laughed anyway. "People are prone to exaggerate, are they not?" she said. "Even to fabricate? It is what half the known world believes of me, Alice--because it is fun to belie Excerpted from Seducing an Angel by Mary Balogh All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.