The Scot’s Perfect Match (Distinguished Scots #3)

Prologue

The Ladies’ Marriage Prospects Bulletin

Above all, a lady must remember: a gentleman is the hunter, she is the quarry.

The deer does not chase the stag.

How fortuitous for Lady Ava Woodmoor that her eighteenth birthday also happened to be the very day she was making her debut in society. What better way to mark such a monumental year than stepping out into the world where she might claim the love of her life and live happily ever after?

She had been giddy all morning, and now here she was at Strathcael’s assembly rooms, her father, the Earl of Heatherfield, at her side as he presented her to the matronly ladies of this little village in the Scotland she so dearly loved.

Ava curtsied to the old dragons, ignoring their assessing gazes, while her eyes swept the room for the one gentleman she most longed to see.

There he was, Gavan Douglas, son of Baron Darkwood, and the love of her life.

She had adored him since the age of seven, when he chased away every bee from her fistful of flowers, and when one still managed to sting her, he squashed it and took her hand as she wailed all the way back to Heatherfield Castle.

Gavan had hinted that tonight was important, and the only conclusion Ava could draw was that a proposal was imminent. After all, he had kissed her for the first time just yesterday beneath the willow on her father’s estate, where they played cards every Sunday after mass.

Oh, the kiss had been a dream. Even now the warm press of his lips was seared into her soul. After tonight, she told herself, she would be able to kiss him whenever she pleased.

But when Gavan entered the assembly room, he didn’t even glance at her.

Instead, he strode past her toward the dance floor and promptly asked Lady Emma Trentham for a dance.

At first, Ava thought he was teasing her, prolonging the suspense of his proposal.

Yet then he asked Lady Gabriella McGregor, and Lady Rebecca Mars, and Lady Wilhelmina Paisley, even the Dowager Cochrane.

Every woman within reach of the dance floor was asked—except her.

Her father remained oblivious to the slight, but her friends, Miss Poppy Featherstone and Miss Freya Grysham, noticed at once. Just as Ava was about to burst into tears, they guided her into the garden, where the cool air soothed her torrent of emotions.

“I hate him,” she muttered. No doubt there would be some cruel snippet in this week’s Ladies’ Marriage Prospects Bulletin about her humiliation, and when she saw it, she would toss it into the hearth and watch it burn, like her dreams.

“What game is he playing?” Freya asked, eyeing the well-lit windows of the assembly room where laughter and music spilled out into the night.

“A terrible one,” Poppy replied indignantly.

“He promised tonight would change my life,” Ava said with a trembling breath. “And he was right.”

Her two friends exchanged skeptical looks as Ava vowed, with all the earnestness of a broken heart, never to love again.