A coach-and-four barreled down the street, much too fast for the narrow way. Several people leapt out of the way of the horses with cries of alarm, but the crowds forced the coachman to finally slow his headlong dash, right where Alethea stood pressed against a shop wall.

“Why are we slowing?” a deep male voice demanded from the depths of the coach.

Alethea had been breathless on account of being forced to the side, but now the air stopped in her throat.

It couldn’t be him. Not here, in Bath.

She glanced up just as a man from within the coach looked out—and met her eyes.

Dark eyes, shadowed, solitary. He had always reminded her of a hawk, its power and beauty, its lonely existence. But she now noticed that there was a dark pain, something that had aged him beyond the eleven years since she’d seen him last.

His eyes flickered, and she tensed. Surely he wouldn’t recognize her. She had been one woman in a crowd of hundreds at his concert in London, who had danced at the same balls, attended the same operas. Fallen half in love with dashing Mr. Terralton, son and heir to Baron Dommick.

No, he was Lord Dommick now—she had read that his father died last year, three months after Mr. Terralton returned to England, injured from fighting Napoleon on the continent.

But his gaze didn’t leave hers for a few heartbeats, as if trying to place her.

--Excerpt from Prelude for a Lord by Camille Elliot