Alexandra

Prologue

Cainewood Castle, the South of England
Summer 1812

It was almost like touching him.

Lady Alexandra Chase usually sketched a profile in just a few minutes, but she took her time today, lingering over her work in the darkened room. Standing on one side of a large, framed pane of glass while Tristan sat sideways on the other, she traced his shadow cast by the glow of a candle. Her pencil followed his strong chin, his long, straight nose, the wide slope of his forehead, capturing his image on the sheet of paper she'd tacked to her side of the glass. Noticing a stray lock that tumbled down his brow, she hesitated, wanting to make certain she caught it just right.

Someone walked by the open door, causing Tris's shadow to flicker as the candle wavered. "Are you finished yet?" he asked from behind the glass panel.

"Hold still," she admonished. "Artistry requires patience."

"It's just a profile."

Alexandra flushed, though she knew better than to take offense. He was simply impatient. He'd always been an admirer of her work.

As well he should be. Alexandra made excellent profile portraits.

"You promised you'd sit still," she reminded him, injecting authority into her girlish voice. "Just this once before you leave." She'd been asking Tris to sit for her for months, but he never seemed to have the time. This would be her only chance.

"I'm sitting," he said, and although his profile remained immobile, she could hear amusement in his tone.

She loved his good-humored forbearance, just like she loved everything about Tris Nesbitt.

She'd been eight when they first met. Her favorite brother, Griffin, had brought him home between school terms. In the six years since, as he and Griffin completed Eton and then Oxford, Tris had visited often, claiming to prefer his friend's large family to the quiet home he shared with his father.

Alexandra couldn't remember when she'd fallen in love, but she felt like she'd loved Tris forever.

Of course, nothing would come of it. Now, at fourteen, she was mature enough to accept that her eminent father, the Marquess of Cainewood, would never allow her to marry plain Mr. Tristan Nesbitt.

But that didn't stop her from wishing. It didn't stop her stomach from tingling when she heard his voice, didn't stop her heart from skipping when he looked at her with his silver-gray eyes.

Not that he looked at her often. After all, as far as he was concerned she was little more than Griffin's pesky younger sister.

Knowing Tris couldn't see her now, she skimmed her fingertips over his silhouette, wishing she were touching him instead. She'd never touched him, not in real life. Such intimacy simply didn't occur between young ladies and gentlemen. Most especially between a marquess's daughter and a commoner.

The drawing room's draperies were shut, and the low light seemed to enclose them together—alone!—in the room. She desperately wanted to say something clever or diverting, something he would remember after they parted. But she could think of nothing. "Where are you going again?" she asked instead, although she knew.

Let him think she'd barely noticed he was leaving.

"Jamaica." He sounded excited. "My uncle wishes me to look after his interests there. I'm to learn how his plantation is run."

"Is that what you wish to do with your life?"

"He doesn't mean for me to stay there permanently. Only to acquaint myself with the operation so I can manage it from afar."