Chapter One London, June 1817 Blackberry glaze. Biting the inside of her cheek, Amelia d’Orsay suppressed a small cry of jubilation. Even at a rout like this one, a well-bred lady’s abrupt shout of joy was likely to draw notice, and Amelia did not care to explain herself to the crush of young ladies surrounding her. Especially when the reason for her delight was not a triumph at the card table or a proposal of marriage, but rather the completion of a dinner menu. She could imagine it now. “Oh, Lady Amelia,” one of these young misses would say, “only you could think of food at a time like this.” Well, it wasn’t as though Amelia had planned to stand in a ballroom, dreaming of menus for their family summer holiday. But she’d been puzzling for weeks over a new sauce for braised pheasant, to replace the same old applejack reduction. Something sweet, yet tart; surprising, yet familiar; inventive, yet frugal. At last, the answer had come to her. Blackberry glaze. Strained, of course. Ooh, perhaps mulled with cloves. Resolving to enter it in her menu book later, she swept the imaginary dish aside and compressed her grin to a half-smile. Summer at Briarbank would now officially be perfect. Mrs. Bunscombe brushed past in a flounce of scarlet silk. “It’s half-eleven,” the hostess sang. “Nearly midnight.”