Chapter One
Liverpool, June 1835
“What about her? She looks fast, doesn’t she?”
“Hmmm… Aurelia,” Ian Alexander Ross-Mackeever, grandson of the Earl Mackeever, mused as he strolled alongside his friend, Lucky Gualtiero, brother of the Duchess of Caversham. “She may look fast, but she’s not built the way I like. Something about her shape… too curvy if you ask me. It looks like she might fall apart before the ordeal is over.”
“What about that one? Evangeline,” his dark, olive-skinned friend asked.
Ian turned his gaze to where Lucky motioned. “Too top-heavy, and her bottom’s too narrow to support her. She’ll tip over in a stiff wind.”
“What about that one?”
“Her bottom’s too broad. She’ll be too slow to tack.”
“Well, you can’t say the same about that one over there. She has a nice, wel
