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Peregrine Ashby was incredibly grateful for the protection of his domino as he watched the crowds flow across the ballroom in Lady Germain’s grand manor house. The mask allowed him to move through the well-dressed people with more anonymity than he’d had in the last few weeks.
As the new Earl of Rutland, he’d risen from a somewhat obscure gentleman to a man with far too much popularity, in his opinion. Most of it had to do with the Lady Society column posted in the Quizzing Glass Gazette. She’d told the unmarried ladies of London far too much about him, despite her attempt not to name him directly.
After his great-uncle Frederick had died, the earldom had passed to him. It was entirely unexpected. There had been at least three other gentlemen ahead of him, yet all of those men had als
