The Worth of an Earl is out in Hot Duke Summer on 24th August, and I don’t think I’ve given you a lot of excerpts from the story. So here is one.

In London, Lady Eloise soon realized that Jen had been raised to be a lady. Then the stones she had brought away in the lamp proved to be uncut gems. “You are a lady and wealthy,” Lady Eloise declared. “We shall find you a chaperone, and you shall enter Society. Why not?”

Jen had grown up on her mother’s stories of Society balls, and something in her must have believed them, even as she doubted, for she was thrilled to attend her first. It looked to an observer exactly like Mammi’s stories. And an observer was what Jen was, at the first ball and each that followed.

No one asked her to dance. No one spoke to her except for Mrs. Bartley, the distant cousin of Aunt Eloise hired to be her chaperone. No one acknowledged her when she spoke, or in any way indicated they were aware she existed and was present.

One night, unable to sleep after yet another dismal and disappointing evening, she stomped downstairs. The library might have a book to distract her, and better yet, she knew there was brandy in a decanter on the sideboard.

It wasn’t fair. Jen could have bought most of the other guests a dozen times over with the money from the stones she’d bundled into the lamp—they turned out to be uncut gems of a very high quality. But because —or any discernable family at all—she was invisible, except to men who were so obviously fortune hunters that she did not need Mrs. Bartley to warn her not to encourage them.

Frome was at the ball again tonight, which was somehow worse than all the rest. Repellent, miserable, squint-nosed worm!

Except only one of those words was true. Frome was even more handsome in evening dress than he was dressed for riding, and when he smiled—as he did to everyone, except Jen—he was utterly compelling.

He had charm, too. Jen had seen him applying it with a ladle to men and women alike, and they all adored him, from the newest debutante to the oldest dowager—from the youngest cub fresh on the town to the elderly uncles. Again, everyone except Jen.

Miserable numb-brain.

The library was in darkness except for a glow from behind the fire-guard and a shielded candle almost guttering inside its protective cover. Jen used the flame from her lamp to light the candles on the mantlepiece and then on the sideboard. She turned one of the waiting glasses up the right way and poured a finger of brandy. Then, with the lamp in one hand and the brandy in the other, she turned to the bookshelves.

She jumped when a voice spoke from the corner near the guttering candle. “Be careful with that lamp near the books.”

Frome.

Her simmering anger at the man made her voice sharp. “See to your own candle, Lord Frome, and I shall see to my lamp.”

Frome moved into the candlelight to glare at her. Why did the man have to be so Dag bland gorgeous? Even when frowning? Even when she was furious with him? Even when he had removed his coat and waistcoat so the neat darns on his shirt showed how hard he was trying to fool the ton into thinking that all was well with his estates?

Which wasn’t the point, and Jen tried hard never to lie to herself. It wasn’t the darns that had her attention, but all the hard muscle shifting under the shirt. To give the devil his due, Frome had apparently been working alongside his tenants ever since his brother died and left a reeking pottle of mess for Frome to inherit. Or so Lady Eloise claimed.

He spread his arms, his own brandy glass dangling from one hand. “Like what you see, do you, Miss Ward?”

She did, but she wasn’t going to tell Frome that. “You think a lot of yourself, do you not, Lord Frome?” she asked.

“Not particularly. But I do think I belong here and you do not.”

“You have made that perfectly clear,” Jen agreed. “However, in this house, your grandmother’s is the opinion that counts.” But not outside this house. Lady Eloise Ainsworth was Frome’s mother’s mother and the daughter of an earl. But she was also the widow of Henry Ainsworth the merchant. In the wider world, she was not nearly as important as a dozen twit-brained crows who happened to have married people with titles.

Frome, who possessed a title and plenty of charm besides, had more influence than any of them. Jen’s indignation frothed up and overflowed. “Outside of this house, you have made certain I will not be accepted. Can you not be satisfied with that, instead of attacking me at every turn?”

By the look of affront on Frome’s face, he had not expected the attack. “I have never said a word against you.”

“Hah!” As if he did not know perfectly well what he had done. Jen would spell it out so he would see that she knew, too. “What conclusion did you expect people to draw when you, the darling of the ton, refuse to dance or even talk with the girl your grandmother is sponsoring? When you stay away from the few entertainments to which I am invited? When, if you cannot avoid being in the same room with me, you ignore me as if I do not exist? I never stood a chance.”

She couldn’t say anything else, for the hurt had bubbled up and was leaking from her eyes. She turned her back on him, facing the bookshelves, though she could not see them through the tears.