Ciel had pulled together some thoughts when Maggie had left, primarily she had wondered whether the lady’s maid had always been ambitious, and that she had used her for the position and the wealth of her brother who arranged for her lessons of literacy. The thought had been dire, and had upset her ...

Ciel smiled at Maggie’s clearly insecure reaction concerning her rise in the world; at least that made two of them! Comfortable in the presence of the girl who had seen Ciel undressed, a mess and scrubbed clean, Ciel settled a little in that large room, crossing one ankle over the other beneath the ...

The house was beautiful, even exquisite, from the outside. With its manicured lawn met with rows of private gardens, the red brick was something akin to a dream and far away from the Welsh Tredegar House she had grown up in, a world in which Ciel had once hoped for when she had been a girl and still ...

Ciel looked at the reptile with supposed interest, for despite her tense maternal feelings for her only son, Ciel still tried to be a good and honest stepmother. Even when she had met the two who were meant to be her stepsons from her first marriage, those boys who were but a few years her junior ...

When Ciel had penned her letter to the maid she had once loved as a friend, she had not expected her penmanship to run the page as easily as it had done. She had been writing in her husband’s study, using his papers to do so as she scrawled her hand over the page before absconding to join him in his ...

The upbringing of Augustine Hastings had been something of a tepid misgivings. As the legal son of a man dead before his birth, and the half-brother of now adult men who wanted nothing to do with him, Augustine had only ever known his mother and his nanny. One cared for him like no other, and was ...

When Maggie had left Ciel’s employment, Ciel had been hurt terribly and deeply by the act of subterfuge. As a matter of fact, if the danger to her life had not pushed her to seek safety beneath the banner of the Fitzroys, perhaps she still would have dwelled in the dramatics of it. Still, so much ...

Ciel rushed to his side despite herself, skipping one foot ahead of the other in a girlish manner that excluded her immaturity — taking some manner of care not to trip over her skirts that she held up with one hand before the other grabbed at Rhett’s elbow, latching herself to the inner side as one ...

A letter lands in the hands of Maggie Gladwin, addressed in a neat cursive pen smelling of a lightly scented rose perfume, she may open the envelope to reveal the signature of one Cicilia Fitzroy, Duchess of Grafton. It appears that Maggie’s former employer, then known as Ciel Hastings, Dowager ...

There was no denial that Ciel found the transition from a Dowager Baroness to a sparkling Duchess jarring at most, though most if not all things remained the same (or somewhat similar), Ciel had found that marriage had delighted her quite wonderfully despite the anxious nerves that had kept them ...