CHAPTER ONE

The drawing room was empty, the town house quiet, but Flora tiptoed over dark wooden floorboards and sumptuous Persian rugs. She did not linger at the Duke of Vernon’s collection of glistening china or at the immaculate portraits of people who would be horrified to discover her in the duke’s parlor. The ebony and ivory keys of the piano gleamed enticingly from one corner of the room, but Flora settled instead in an armchair, conscious the velvet upholstery and gilded fluting were intended for aristocrats and not servants.

Flora removed a book she’d hidden with her sewing. Her heart thrummed a nervous rhythm, and she fought her inclination to flee. Flora favored working in the quiet of her bedroom, but that would leave her subject to discovery. Servant quarters offered little privacy. The other servants would gossip if they read the title of her book, and that was an impossibility.

The book’s scarlet binding glared at her. La Grammaire Française. Flora opened it and forced herself to study the rows of nouns and verbs.

If only she’d devoted time to French when she was younger.

If only she hadn’t convinced her father to let her pursue Italian.

If only she hadn’t needed to acquire a new identity, and if only she hadn’t chosen to pretend to be a French maid.

The only thing anyone knew about her was that she was French. How could she admit her lie?

Feigning being French had seemed clever. What better way to explain a lack of references than to declare herself a refugee? And what better way to ensure her identity remain secret than to give herself a new name and a new past?

Now Flora was no longer a maid in a vicarage in Norfolk, but a lady’s maid to a duchess in the very capital in which her father had died. Even worse, the Duchess of Vernon intended to move to Guernsey with her husband, and she’d hinted frequently at the large number of French speakers on the island.

No, only one solution existed: Flora had to learn French. She firmed her gaze. Je suis, tu es, il est…

The words blurred together. Most students didn’t commence studying after a full day of service, and Flora swallowed back a yawn. Unfortunately no subject approached music in magnificence, and no subject surpassed French in dullness. Some people lauded the language, expressing a strange enthusiasm for its nasal sounds, but some people also had supported Bonaparte. She concentrated on the words. Nous sommes, vous êtes, ils sont…

Music flowed through her, as if inspired by the rhythm of the words. Flora’s fingers itched, and she resisted the urge to jot down notes to the melody. That life was over.

She had a new life, one that involved cleaning and sewing and French grammar books. Her life might not be ideal, but at least she was alive. There were worse things than French verbs.

A creak sounded, and she stiffened. The softness of the armchair, expertly created by some artisan, did not lessen her sudden discomfort.

Please let no one find me.

Footsteps approached, and before Flora could decide whether she should pretend to be cleaning, even though a lady’s maid shouldn’t be in this room, a shadow fell over her. Fear prickled her spine, and she braced herself for a chiding from the butler or housekeeper.

Slowly she lifted her gaze.

No scowling upper servant stood before her.

Instead, a man attired in gentlemen’s clothes arched an eyebrow.

He was tall and imposing and exuded aristocratic charm. Flora’s stomach tumbled downward.

The quality of his clothes was impeccable. Flora knew. She’d become an expert in attire. She knew all about mending and sewing and cutting patterns. She knew which fabric lasted, and which didn’t.

Flora slammed her book shut. She rose hastily, and the book clattered to the floor with a thud worthy of the most horrendous compilation of subjunctive verbs, lengthy lists of nouns, and headache-inducing grammatical explanations.

“La Grammaire Française,” the man read, and his lips curled into a smirk and amusement danced in his dark eyes. “I could have sworn the Duchess of Vernon mentioned you were French.”

Fiddle-faddle.

Out of all the people to see her reading, it had to be the Earl of McIntyre, the Duke of Vernon’s best friend. Wolfe.

Flora forced her eyelashes down, resisting the urge to peer at him. He was taller than she remembered, and his figure seemed composed of muscular planes. His voice had deepened, though his particular shade of caramel colored hair and the exact shade of brown in his eyes remained the same.

He’d always been handsome, and familiar butterflies settled into her chest, even though the last time butterflies had roamed there, they’d been in Scotland, and she’d been seven.

When she dared glance at him again, he was still surveying her with mild amusement.

“You’re the first French maid I know who reads French grammar books, lassie.”

“It eez my half day,” Flora said hastily, forcing herself to use the French accent she’d adopted when she’d first arrived at the Butterworth vicarage. “I can read anything I like. I wanted to see how ze teach French to ze English.”

“Ze English?” Wolfe’s eyes twinkled. The man’s presence was unnerving.

Confessing was impossible. She rather wished maids were given fans, and not only for their cooling purposes, even though heat surged within her, and their cooling purposes would be welcome. Having an object with which to hide one’s face at sudden notice would be magnificent. Instead, she grabbed her feather duster and angled it to obscure her face. “You are most charming, my lord.”

He lifted his eyebrows and opened the grammar book. “Je suis, tu es, il est, elle est, on est, Nous…” He paused. “Tell me, what comes after?”

“Sommes,” she said hastily. “Naturellment.”

He put the book down. Thankfully, he stopped smirking. “That’s correct.”

“Of course, it is,” she said, and her heart sang.

“In my experience, the French refrain from pronouncing the ‘s’ at the end. And the word does not contain two syllables.”

“Oh.” The joy that cascaded through her promptly halted, as if she were a musician who’d played the wrong note and was now subjected to a conductor’s glare.

Wolfe’s glare seemed sufficiently intimidating.

Flora swallowed hard. She had to fix this. If he mentioned this to the duke…

“That’s just the—er—accent of my people, monsieur. We were not part of ze high society. That’s why you must be unfamiliar with it.” She forced herself to laugh. “I am flattered I have adjusted so well to this country zat you think me English. I am very proud. You should have heard me when I first arrived.”

“I don’t believe you,” he said flatly. “You’re not French.”

The words jolted her from her carefully constructed world. She’d heard the words before, but only uttered in nightmares. Her throat dried, and she felt faint, as if she were once again witnessing a knife plunging into flesh.

Flora had never considered going on stage, but she’d been pretending to be French for years. No one had doubted her before.

“You’re not who you say you are,” Wolfe said.

“N-nonsense,” Flora stammered. She shifted her legs. The Persian carpet might be more luxurious than anything in the servant’s quarters, and it might even be more luxurious than anything in the former house in which she’d worked, but now it brought no comfort.

“You’re pretending.” Wolfe fixed his eyes on her, and Flora felt at risk of being mesmerized.

She forced her gaze away quickly, conscious her cheeks seemed to be on fire. The man must have been cavorting with Hephaestus, the Greek god of fire, himself.

Or Hades.

Perhaps the earl had not been referring solely to the god of the underworld when he’d named his gaming hell Hades’ Lair. Perhaps he’d referred to himself.

Wolfe knew.

Her heart adopted a faster rhythm.

She only had to wait until a sufficiently dull break in a conversation, someone else’s casual reference to servants, or perhaps to someone venturing onto the subject of deception, for the earl to mention that Flora was not really French and for her whole world to shatter.

It shouldn’t have mattered.

She was not the only maid here pretending to be French. Everyone knew women paid French servants more than English ones. French maids were bestowed with all the glamor of Paris, even if they came from remote villages in Brittany.

Flora raised her chin and widened her stance, but the movements did not change the fact that perhaps her falsehood would matter, and the new duchess or her husband would dismiss her.

The earl still held the despised French grammar book in his hands.

“The Duke of Vernon has no fondness for liars.” Wolfe’s mouth twisted, and Flora was reminded of rumors that Wolfe’s father had been a poor guardian to the duke. For a moment, the earl was a little boy again, raised beside his father’s more lauded charges.

It didn’t matter. Flora and Wolfe hadn’t been close as children, and they certainly wouldn’t be now. He hadn’t even recognized her.

“Is there something I can help you with?” Flora asked, retaining her French accent.

Wolfe flushed, perhaps remembering he should not be in the duke’s parlor either. “I’ll leave. I left an invitation to a Christmas ball on the silver platter by the door.”

“Very well, my lord.” Flora curtsied.

Wolfe didn’t bother to smile, and there was no kindness in his eyes. He turned and exited the room. The action should have been calming, but her heart raced even after the door to the parlor closed, and it continued to race even after the main door shut.

Flora has masqueraded as a French maid for years. Though she despises hiding her skill at the piano and has no innate fondness for mending, she is happy to no longer be on the run. When a handsome earl who sent butterflies fluttering through her chest as a child discovers her French is atrocious, Flora requires a new position, lest her true identity be discovered.

Christmas has never been Lord Wolfe McIntyre’s favorite season. His parents never celebrated it, and he never imagined he would succumb to sentimentality as an adult. After all, he runs a gaming hell. But when his sister’s engagement is broken, Wolfe vows to host a magnificent holiday ball so she can find a husband before the next season. The only problem? His lack of knowledge about the holiday. 

Wolfe is shocked when his friend’s maid appears at his manor house in Scotland. When he hired a Christmas consultant, he expected a stern Bavarian woman with a knowledge of Yule logs, not an alluring young woman whom he last saw claiming a blatantly false identity and who seems distressed at seeing him. Wolfe is even more shocked when he discovers he... desires her. Earls are not supposed to find their servants appealing, no matter how much they fill their homes with Yuletide joy and music. But perhaps there’s a reason Flora looks familiar...

USA TODAY Bestselling Author Bianca Blythe has written over twenty fun and frothy Regency-set historical romances, filled with wallflowers, spinsters, dukes, and rogues. On occasion, she also writes historical mysteries under the name Camilla Blythe.

Born in Texas, Bianca earned her bachelor's degree from Wellesley College and completed a graduate degree in her beloved Boston. She spent four years in England, working in a fifteenth-century castle. Sadly she never spotted dukes and earls strutting about in Hessians.

Bianca credits British weather for forcing her into a library, where she discovered her first Julia Quinn novel. She remains deeply grateful for blustery downpours. 

After meeting her husband in another library, she moved with him to sunny California. On occasion she still dreams of the English seaside, scones with clotted cream, and sheep-filled pastures. For now, she visits them in her books.