AN ACQUIRED TASTE [A BRIDGERTON STORY]

Every drawing room in England has a story about Lord Lynmouth.

The Right Honourable Xavier Julius Devereux, Fourth Earl of Lynmouth. Brilliant, enigmatic and impossibly eligible, he is the man mothers covet, debutantes admire and society cannot stop talking about. At forty, he has become less a gentleman and more a legend.

Cordelia Bridgerton has known those stories for years.

A broken engagement, persistent illness and seasons spent away from the heart of London left the quiet Bridgerton twin watching society from its edges. So she stitched together whispered conversations, scandal sheets and second-hand tales until she knew Lord Lynmouth without ever having met him.

Then the legend walks into her life.

The man behind the myth is kinder than the rumours, stranger than the gossip and infinitely more captivating than the fantasy she had built around him. As old expectations crumble beneath glittering ballrooms, impossible conversations and a love neither of them saw coming, Cordelia discovers that the rarest things in life are never adored at first glance.

Some people are simply an acquired taste.