“Damn.”

Lady Amanda Rose Culver took intense satisfaction from uttering a word that, had they heard it, would have sent the good nuns with whom she lived into a collective swoon. Savoring the feeling of wickedness it gave her, she said the word again, louder. But it didn’t really make her feel any better. She doubted that anything could.

As if to punish her for her naughtiness, the pale ghost that was all that was left of the moon stared at her reprovingly from the still-midnight-black sky while the early-morning wind whipped her hair across her face. Muttering impatiently, Amanda dug the offending tresses out of her eyes with both hands. Her hair-a heavy, wayward mass that fell down past her hips when released from the neat braids in which the nuns insisted it be kept confined-was the bane of her existence. Even the color annoyed her. It was a deep, true red, the shade of fine old port when the sun hits it. Coupled with the porcelain paleness of her skin, the inky blackness of her winged brows and thick lashes, and the strange, smoky violet of her eyes, it could be considered striking, she supposed. Certainly the nuns were much struck by it. They seemed to feel that it symbolized everything they found fault with in Amanda. Her quick temper, her impulsiveness, the many small rebellions with which she plagued them daily, they always attributed directly to the outrageous color of her hair. Which was why, she supposed, they required her to wear it in such a conventionally schoolgirlish style-braided and wound into a coronet on top of her head-a style she loathed. Which in turn was why she unbraided it every chance she got, and why it was free to fly in her face at that moment.