It Started with Lust ®️ (sneak peek)

Prologue

A child's entrance into the world is said, by some, to set the precedent for the remainder of their time in it.

Sophie-Claudette Marie FitzAllen-Saint-Luc's entrance into the world was no exception. Born in the midst of an autumn storm on a night believed to be the domain of ghosts, unpredictable and untameable certainly proved to be traits the girl possessed in abundance.

Across all the fashionable drawing rooms of Town and the parlours of their country neighbours, her maman's complaints could not go unheard. And it is true that young Sophie was a wild thing, chasing her older brothers through lakes and across country fields and preferring, above all else, to be basking in the sun until a despairing Apoline FitzAllen-Saint-Luc forbore to comment on her youngest daughter's unseemly proclivity towards freckles.

Sophie did, in the gangly, awkward years that precede one's entrance into society, develop some of those more feminine qualities expected of a lady. The daughter of a viscount could hardly do otherwise. She could play the piano and sing and paint and embroider tolerably well. She adored dances and none more so than the scandalous waltz, which her mother thought not so terribly untoward at all and which her very severe governess protested all mention of. Her french was exceptional and her Latin exceptionally poor.

But, for all her appearance of being everything proper in a young, respectable lady, she would never make a prime example of simpering, girlish passivity. Certainly no one who knew even a little of her character would make any claim to the contrary. Sophie would sooner be found flying across the fields of the country astride her uncommonly large horse with unbound hair whipping about her head in the wind and trailing in her wake. To her parents' great relief, she took prodigious care never to be caught.

There was little that pleased her so well as the freedoms she enjoyed at Thorndyke Park and more so yet on her innumerable visits to her great-aunt Marie.

Willowbrook Hall, with it's decided lack of domestic energy, provided a ready escape from the discordant pressures of her parents and the ever-present presence of those five of her siblings who were not yet married and settled in households of their own. It would, in the years following her debut at the tender age of seventeen, be an escape she sought with growing frequency.

For when a young lady reaches such an age, there can be no escape from her mother's well-meaning, but no less interfering, intentions and manipulations. Not even the end of the Season brought a lull in those attentions.

If there were one thing Sophie deplored above all else, it would be the bemoanings that were sure to follow a fruitless trip to Town.

And fruitless they all proved.

Admittedly, by her own design.

Why should Sophie feel compelled to accept the hand of any man who asked? Why should Sophie settle for less than an equal marriage? Why should Sophie not dream of happiness? Of meeting a man (a Lord if her maman had anything to say about it) who would respect and cherish her. Who would worship the ground she walked upon.

Why should she not strive for the very model of felicity that was bestowed upon her by her own loving parents?

Should she have cared to listen, Lady Apoline would have been the first to tell her wayward, dreaming daughter that Love was not always guaranteed. That only the very fortunate knew Love from the very beginning.