Rachel Besborough was also a widow, though not so repeatedly as Victoria, having been married to the same marquis for some fifty years before he passed on. She had quite a large family in her children and their offspring, though none still lived with her, so she was more often than not a guest of one of her friends.

Elizabeth Jennings, now, having never married, was quite likely the oldest “old maid” in existence, or so she said with a chuckle about herself. Not that she seemed to mind. She was Rachel’s older sister, and so had never lacked having a large family to dote on.

This morning they were all gathered in Lady Victoria’s large sitting room in her house on Bennet Street, where William and Anastasia had been staying since they’d arrived in London last week. Anastasia was standing up on a chair, undergoing her second and hopefully last fitting by Victoria’s personal seamstress, the wardrobe of fancy gowns that William had promised her almost complete.

Those clothes were all that the ladies were waiting for to “launch” Anastasia on London society. Lady Rachel was keeping a written record, added to daily, of all the fashionable places Anastasia needed to be “seen at.” Lady Elizabeth had formed a list of her own, of well-known gossips whom she had already begun visiting.

“Nothing like setting the stage in advance,” she had said after returning from her first gossipy visit. “Lady Bascomb is just dying to meet you now, gel, and by tomorrow, so will be most of her friends. I swear, she can manage to call upon at least forty different members of the ton in a single day. Do not ask me how, but she can.”

They had decided a little confusion would be just the thing to spark curiosity, and so each gossip Elizabeth paid a visit to was told something entirely different about Anastasia’s history. With her mother supposedly being William’s younger sister, who really had run off in her youth and had never returned to England, any and every background they created for Anastasia would be completely plausible.

The three ladies had in fact stayed up very late one night having a great good time designing some pretty outlandish scenarios, from her being the daughter of an illegitimate heir to a throne in Eastern Europe, to the daughter of a rich Turkey slave trader, to the truth, that her father was a Russian Prince. All of which got confided, in absolute secrecy, of course, to the many known gossips on Elizabeth’s list.

It became William’s task to find out when the marquis arrived in London, and to discover his habits, or at least his normal haunts. After all, this whole scheme was for his benefit, and wouldn’t do much good if he didn’t hear the gossip, or have a chance to see Anastasia in her new finery.