'Could that be because in the past year you have been three times the sister of the groom rather than being the bride?' drawled Darius Wynter, the Duke of Carlyne.

Arabella looked up sharply, intending to give him a set-down for the mockery she detected in his cynically bored tone. That was her intention, but instead Arabella found her attention caught and held by the hard and perfect male beauty of his face—a face Arabella had once described to one of her sisters-in-law as being that of an angel. Or a devil…

Six or seven inches taller than her own five feet and eight inches in stockinged feet, Darius Wynter had stylishly overlong golden hair, which gleamed in the candlelight, and his eyes were of dark cobalt-blue, edged by long lashes of that same gold. His nose was long and aristocratic, his cheekbones hard, and he possessed perfect sculptured lips above a square and determined jaw.

The stark black of his jacket over snowy-white linen emphasised rather than hid the width of his shoulders, his muscled chest and taut abdomen, and the lean elegance of his hips and thighs was defined by tailored black pantaloons.

Yes, Darius Wynter, Duke of Carlyne, was certainly elegance personified—and he was also the most com-pellingly handsome man Arabella had met since her coming out the previous year.

Until a few short months ago he had been Lord Darius Wynter, a man we