Prologue
Lord Philip Pembroke, Marquis of Ashton, had a rather particular reputation about him. A fellow who had only been on market once, before vanishing from every social season then onward. A tall, well built, by all means handsome fellow, who held both station and wealth, and yet despite it all he had failed to bring home a wife. A matter which the dowager Ashton grew weary of with every passing year. Wondering when her bright eyed boy would finally be ready to enter the fray once more.
It wasn’t that the ton had any issue with him, and any member of polite society that did have a complaint kept it to themselves. It was that almost every single person that had interacted with him had the same singular thought.
‘What an odd fellow Lord Pembroke is.’
He’d sequestered himself away, back to his estate in the countryside, and his mother had finally felt her scales tipping. The young man was four and twenty as of a month ago, and with his younger sister soon entering the market this upcoming season, the Dowager found she could no longer sit idle.
