A Summer to Remember

Chapter 1

London’s Hyde Park was decked out in all the splendor of a May morning. Sunlight beamed down from a clear blue sky and twinkled off a million dewdrops, giving a fresh, newly washed appearance to trees and grass. It was a perfect setting for the customary promenade along fashionable Rotten Row, the riders cantering along the wide stretch of turf that ran from Hyde Park Corner to Queen’s Gate, the pedestrians strolling on the footpath beside it, separated from the equestrians by a sturdy rail.

Perfect except for one discordant detail. In the middle of an open stretch of grass well within sight of the Row some sort of commotion was rapidly drawing a crowd of the curious. That it was a fight became quickly evident. Not a duel—there were four participants instead of two and the morning was far too well advanced—but an indecorous outbreak of fisticuffs.

Gentlemen, and a few ladies too, rode closer to see what was transpiring. Many of the gentlemen stayed to watch the progress of the fight, their interest in the morning considerably piqued. A few, those unfortunate enough to be escorting ladies, were obliged to ride hastily onward since it was most certainly not a genteel sight for female eyes. Some pedestrians too approached the scene along the path that ran close by and either hurried on past or drew closer, depending largely upon their gender.

“Scandalous!” one haughty male voice declared above the hubbub of the crowd gathered about the empty square in which the brawl was proceeding apace. “Someone ought to summon a constable. Riffraff should not be allowed into the park to offend the sensibilities of decent folk.”

But although the shabby garments and generally grubby, unkempt appearance of three of the participants in the fight proclaimed them to be undoubtedly of the very lowest classes, the elegant though scant clothing and general bearing of the fourth told an entirely different story.

“It is Ravensberg, sir,” the Honorable Mr. Charles Rush explained to the outraged Marquess of Burleigh.

The name was apparently explanation enough. The marquess raised a quizzing glass to his eye and from the vantage point of his position on horseback peered through it over the heads of those on foot at Viscount Ravensberg, who was stripped to the waist and at that particular moment was having much the worst of the encounter. He had an assailant clamped on each arm while the third pummeled him with hearty enthusiasm in the stomach.

“Scandalous!” the marquess declared again, while all about him gentlemen cheered or jeered, and two or three were even engaged in laying wagers upon the outcome of such a seemingly unequal contest. “I did not believe I would live to see even Ravensberg stoop so low as to brawl with riffraff.”

“Shame!” someone else called as the red-haired giant who was doing the pummeling changed the direction of his assault and planted a fist in his victim’s undefended right eye, snapping his neck back in the process. “Three against one is no fair odds.”

“But he would not accept our assistance,” Lord Arthur Kellard protested with some indignation. “He made the challenge—and insisted that three against one suited him admirably.”

“Ravensberg challenged riffraff?” the marquess asked with considerable disdain.

“They dared to be insolent after he rebuked them for accosting a milkmaid,” Mr. Rush explained. “But he would not simply chastise them with his whip as the rest of us suggested. He insisted— oh, I say!”

This exclamation was occasioned by Lord Ravensberg’s response to the punch in the eye. He laughed, an incongruously merry sound, and suddenly lashed out neatly with one slim leg and caught his unwary assailant beneath the chin with the toe of his boot. There was a loud cracking of bone and clacking of teeth. At the same moment he took advantage of the astonishment of the two who held his arms and twisted free of them. He spun around to face them in a half crouch, his arms outstretched, his fingers beckoning. He was grinning.

“Come on, you buggers,” he invited profanely. “Or do the odds suddenly appear less to your advantage?”

The opponent whose jaw had just been shattered might have thought so. But although his eyes were open, he appeared more intent upon counting stars wheeling in the morning sky than considering odds.

There was a roar of appreciation from the ever growing crowd of spectators.

Viscount Ravensberg showed to far better advantage without his shirt than with it. A gentleman of medium height and slender grace, he had doubtless appeared an easy mark to the three thugs who had taken him on with a collective smirk of insolent contempt a few minutes before. But the slim legs, encased in fashionable buff riding breeches and top boots, showed themselves to be impressively well muscled now that he had descended from the saddle. And his naked chest, shoulders, and arms were those of a man who had exercised and honed his body to its fullest potential. The white seams of numerous scars on his forearms and chest and one the length of the underside of his jaw on the left side proclaimed the fact, as his clothes did not, that at one time he had been a military man.

“Atrocious language to use in a public place,” the marquess remarked disdainfully. “And an unseemly display of flesh. And all over a milkmaid, you say? Ravensberg is a disgrace to his name. I pity his father.”

But no one, not even Mr. Rush, to whom his remarks were addressed, was paying him any attention. Two of the bullies who had thought to amuse themselves by coaxing unwilling kisses from an unaccompanied milkmaid in the park were taking turns rushing at the viscount, who was laughing and repulsing them with his jabbing fists every time they came within range. Those who knew him were well aware that he spent a few hours of most days at Jackson’s boxing saloon, sparring with partners far his superior in height and weight.

“Sooner or later,” he said conversationally, “you are going to put together your two half-brains to make one whole and realize that you would stand a far better chance against me if you attacked simultaneously.”

“This is not a sight for ladies,” the marquess said sternly. “The Duchess of Portfrey is walking past with her niece.”

But although one gentleman detached himself hastily—and perhaps reluctantly—from the crowd at mention of the duchess’s name, his lordship’s disapproving voice was largely drowned out by a roar of enthusiasm as the viscount’s remaining two assailants took his advice and charged him in tandem, only to find their progress checked when he reached out his arms and cracked their heads together. They went down as if their four legs had turned to jelly, and they remained down.

“Bravo, Ravensberg!” someone called above the chorus of whistles and cheers.

“’E’s bloomin’ broke my jaw, ’e ’as,” the third young man complained, clutching it with both hands and turning over on the grass to spit blood and at least one tooth onto the grass. He had abandoned counting stars but did not look as if he were about to resume the fight.

The viscount was laughing again as he wiped his palms on his breeches. “It was too easy, by Jove,” he said. “I expected better sport from three of London’s choicest laboring men. They hardly merited my getting off my horse. They were definitely not worth stripping down for. If they had ever been in my regiment in the Peninsula, by thunder, I would have put them in the front line to shield the worthier men behind them.”

But the morning had one more incident of interest to offer—both for him and for the cheering spectators. The milkmaid who had been the unwitting cause of the fracas came hurtling across the grass toward him—the crowd parted obligingly to let her through—flung her arms about his neck, and pressed her person against his.

“Oh, thank you, thank you, your worship,” she cried fervently, “for saving a girl’s virtue. I’m a good girl, I am, and they would of stole a kiss or p’raps worse if you ’adn’t ’appened along to save me. But I’ll kiss you, I will. For a reward, like, being as you earned it an’ all.”

She was plump and shapely and ruddily pretty and drew shrill whistles and admiring, bawdy comments from the spectators. Viscount Ravensberg grinned at her before dipping his head and availing himself of her offer with lingering thoroughness. He tossed her a half sovereign along with a wink from his good eye when he was finished, and assured her that she was indeed a good girl.

There were more whistles as she made her unhurried departure, all dimples and saucily swaying hips.

“Scandalous!” the marquess said one more time. “In broad daylight too! But what can one expect of Ravensberg?”

The viscount heard him and turned to sketch him an ironic bow. “I perform a public service, sir,” he said. “I provide topics for drawing- room conversation that are somewhat more lively than the weather and the state of the nation’s health.”

“I believe,” Mr. Rush said with a chuckle as the marquess rode on, his back ramrod straight and almost visibly bristling with disapproval, “you are barely whispered about by the more genteel, Ravensberg. You had better come to White’s and get a beefsteak on that eye. That rascal gave you one deuce of a shiner.”

“Hurts like a thousand devils,” the viscount admitted cheerfully. “Egad, life should always be so exhilarating. My shirt, if you please, Farrington.”

He looked about him after taking it from the hand of Lord Farrington, to whom his clothes had been entrusted at the start of the fight. The crowd was dispersing. He raised his eyebrows.

“Frightened all the ladies away, did I?” He squinted off in the direction of Rotten Row as if searching for one in particular.

“It is an alarmingly public place, Ravensberg,” Lord Farrington said, laughing with him. “And you were bare to the waist.”

“Ah,” the viscount said carelessly, taking his coat from his friend and shrugging into it, “but I have a reputation for wild living to live up to, you see—though I believe I must have done my duty by it for one morning.” He frowned suddenly. “What the devil are we to do with these two slumbering bodies, do you suppose?”

“Leave them to sleep it off?” Lord Arthur suggested. “I am late for my breakfast, Ravensberg, and that eye is crying out for attention. The mere sight of it is enough to threaten one’s appetite.”

“You, fellow.” The viscount raised his voice as he drew another coin out of his pocket and tossed it onto the grass beside the only one of his opponents who was conscious. “Revive your friends and take them to the nearest alehouse before a constable arrives to convey them elsewhere. I daresay a tankard or two of ale each will help restore you all to a semblance of good health. And bear in mind for the future that when milkmaids say no they probably mean no. It is a simple fact of language. Yes means yes, no means no.”

“Bloody ’ell,” the man mumbled, still holding his jaw with one hand while setting the other over the coin. “I’ll never so much as look at another wench, guv.”

The viscount laughed and swung himself up into the saddle of his horse, whose bridle Mr. Rush had been holding.

“Breakfast,” he announced gaily, “and a juicy beefsteak for my eye. Lead the way, Rush.”

A few minutes later Hyde Park in the vicinity of Rotten Row was its usual elegant, tonnish self, all traces of the scandalous brawl vanished. But it was one more incident to add to the lengthy list of wild indiscretions for which Christopher “Kit” Butler, Viscount Ravensberg, had become sadly notorious.

“I cannot tell you,” the Duchess of Portfrey had been saying to her niece a few minutes earlier, “what a delight it is to have your company, Lauren. My marriage is proving more of a joy than I ever expected, and Lyndon is remarkably attentive, even now that I am in expectation of an interesting event. But he cannot live in my pocket all the time, the poor dear. We were both pleased beyond words when you accepted our invitation to stay with us until after my confinement.”

The Honorable Miss Lauren Edgeworth smiled. “We both know,” she said, “that you are doing me a far greater favor than I can possibly be doing you, Elizabeth. Newbury Abbey had become intolerable to me.”

She had been in London for two weeks, but neither she nor the duchess had touched upon the underlying reason for her being here until now. Elizabeth’s supposed need for Lauren’s company while she awaited the birth of her first child two months hence had been merely a convenient excuse. Of course it had.

“Life does go on, Lauren,” Elizabeth said at last. “But I will not belittle your grief by enlarging upon that theme. It would be insensitive of me, especially when I have never experienced anything to compare with what you have suffered—and when I have finally found my own happiness. Though that fact in itself may be of some reassurance to you. I was all of six and thirty when I married Lyndon last autumn.”

The Duke of Portfrey was indeed attentive to his wife, with whom he was clearly deeply in love. Lauren smiled her acknowledgment of the words of intended comfort. They strolled onward through Hyde Park, as they had done each morning since Lauren’s arrival, except for the three days when it had rained. The broad, grassy expanses on either side of the path looked enticingly and deceptively rural despite the frequent glimpses they afforded of other pedestrians and riders. It was as if a piece of the countryside had been tossed down into the middle of one of the largest, busiest cities in the world and had survived there, untainted by commerce.

They were approaching Rotten Row, from which Lauren had shrunk in some alarm the first time Elizabeth had suggested they walk there two weeks before. The morning gathering was nothing like the crush of the fashionable afternoon promenade in the park, it was true, but even so there were too many people to see and—more significant—to be seen by. She had thought she would never find the courage to face the beau monde after the fiasco of last year.

Last year half the ton had been gathered at Newbury Abbey in Dorsetshire to celebrate the wedding of Lauren Edgeworth to Neville Wyatt, Earl of Kilbourne. There had been a grand wedding eve ball, at which Lauren had thought it was impossible to feel any happier—and how horrifyingly prophetic that thought had proved to be! And then there had been the wedding itself at the village church, which had been packed to the doors with the crиme de la crиme of the beau monde—a wedding that had been interrupted just as Lauren was about to step into the nave, on her grandfather’s arm, by the sudden appearance of the wife Neville had thought long dead and of whose very existence Lauren and his whole family had been totally unaware.

Lauren had come to London this spring because she could no longer bear to be living at the dower house with the dowager countess and Gwendoline, Neville’s sister, while Neville and his Lily lived at the abbey a mere two miles distant. Unfortunately, there had been few avenues of escape. She had grown up at Newbury Abbey with Neville and Gwen after her mother married the late earl’s brother and went off with him on a wedding journey from which they had never returned. She had read Elizabeth’s letter of invitation, then, with enormous gratitude. But she had come on the assumption that since Elizabeth was increasing, they would not be taking part in any of the social activities of the Season. She was right about that, but Elizabeth did like to take the air.

“Oh, goodness,” the duchess said suddenly as they topped a slight rise in the path and came within sight of Rotten Row, “I wonder what the reason is for that crowd. I do hope no one has been taken ill. Or been thrown from a horse.”

There was indeed a large gathering of horses and people on the grass beside the path, directly on their route to the Row. They were mostly gentlemen, it appeared to Lauren. But if someone had indeed been hurt, the presence of ladies might be welcome. Ladies could be far more practical in emergencies than gentlemen. They both increased their pace.

“How absurd of me,” the duchess said, “to be remembering that Lyndon went out riding this morning. Do you suppose . . .”

“Indeed I do not,” Lauren said firmly. “And I do not even believe there has been any accident. They are cheering.”

“Oh, dear.” The duchess touched Lauren’s arm to slow her down again and sounded suddenly on the verge of laughter. “I do believe we have stumbled upon a fight, Lauren. I think we must walk on past as if we had noticed nothing untoward.”

“A fight?” Lauren’s eyes widened. “In such a public place? In broad daylight? Surely not.”

But indeed Elizabeth was quite right. When they drew closer Lauren confirmed it with her own eyes before she could avert them and hurry decently by. Although the crowd of men and horses was really quite dense, one of those inexplicable gaps appeared for a moment, allowing her a view of what was happening in the hollow center of the square. A shockingly clear view.

There were three men there, although she thought there might have been a fourth too, stretched out on the grass. Two of them were dressed decently, if shabbily, in the clothing of laboring men. But it was upon the third that Lauren’s eyes riveted themselves for a few startled moments. He was crouched ready for action and was apparently taunting the other two by beckoning with both hands. But it was not his actions that startled her as much as his state of dress—or rather, his state of undress. His supple top boots and his form-fitting buff riding breeches proclaimed him to be a gentleman. But above the waist he was quite, quite naked. And very splendidly and alarmingly male.

Before she looked sharply away in blushing confusion, Lauren became aware of two other details, one visual and one aural. He was fair-haired and handsome and laughing. And the words he spoke to accompany the beckoning hands fell unmistakably upon her ears despite the hubbub of voices proceeding from the many spectators.

“Come on, you buggers,” he said without any apparent shame at all.

She hoped fervently, even as she felt the uncomfortable heat of a blush spread up her neck to blossom brightly in both cheeks, that Elizabeth had not heard the words—or seen the half-naked man who had uttered them. Rarely had she felt such embarrassment.

But Elizabeth was laughing with what sounded like genuine amusement. “Poor Lord Burleigh,” she said. “He looks as if he might have an apoplexy at any moment. I wonder why he does not simply ride on by and leave the children to their play. Men can be such foolish creatures, Lauren. Even the slightest disagreement must be settled with fists.”

“Elizabeth,” Lauren said, truly scandalized, “did you see . . . ? And did you hear . . . ?”

“How could I not?” Elizabeth was still chuckling.

But before either of them could say more, they were distracted by the appearance of a tall, dark, handsome young gentleman, who stepped onto the path before them, bowed with hasty elegance, and offered an arm to each of them.

“Elizabeth,” he said, “Lauren. Good morning. And what a lovely morning it is too. It bids fair to being unseasonably warm later today. Allow me to escort you to Rotten Row and earn the envy of every other gentleman there.”

Joseph Fawcitt, Marquess of Attingsborough, was a cousin, nephew of the Dowager Countess of Kilbourne. He had been one of the spectators of the fight, Lauren realized, but had seen them and had come to hurry them away. She took his arm gratefully. Actually, she thought, hearing the echo of his words, it was probable that there was no other gentleman on Rotten Row. Surely they were all clustered about the brawling men.

“How provoking it is sometimes to be a lady, Joseph,” Elizabeth said, taking his other arm. “I suppose if I were to ask you who that gentleman is who is fighting and why he is doing so, you would not answer me?”

He grinned down at her. “ What fight?” he asked.

Elizabeth sighed. “As I thought,” she said.

“For my part,” Lauren assured him fervently, “I have no wish to know.” She was still flushed at the memory of the gentleman fighter, naked from the waist up. And of his words— come on, you buggers.

Joseph turned his head to look down at her, a twinkle in his eyes. “Mother intends to call at Grosvenor Square this afternoon,” he said. “She has plans for you, Lauren. Be warned.”

Some rout or concert or ball, doubtless. It was proving extremely difficult to convince Aunt Sadie, the Duchess of Anburey, Joseph’s mother, that she simply did not wish to join in any of the activities of the Season. Having seen her daughter, Lady Wilma Fawcitt, eligibly betrothed to the Earl of Sutton before the Season even began in earnest, Aunt Sadie had turned her well-meaning matchmaking eye upon Lauren.

Joseph turned to address a remark to Elizabeth, and Lauren, despite herself, looked back over her shoulder. She had heard a loud cheer a moment before. The fight was over. The crowd had parted along her line of vision, and she could see that the gentleman with the naked torso was still on his feet. But if she had been shocked before, she was doubly horrified now. He had a woman in his arms—his were right about her waist and hers were wrapped about his neck—and he was kissing her. In full view of a few dozen spectators.

He lifted his head just as Lauren looked, and in the fraction of a second before she could whip her head about to face front again, his laughing eyes met hers.

Her cheeks were on fire again.

“You are looking thoroughly blue-deviled, Ravensberg,” Lord Farrington commented late the following night, crossing the room to the sideboard and replenishing the contents of his glass before resuming his seat. “Foxed, are you? Or is it the eye? It has turned marvelous shades of black, purple, and yellow. Not to mention the bright scarlet slit through which you are peering out at the world.”

“I tell you, Ravensberg,” Lord Arthur added, “I could scarce swallow the kidneys on my plate this morning for looking at that eye—or do I mean yesterday morning?”

“If I could just be sure,” Charles Rush said, “that this mantel would stay upright when I push away from it, I would pour myself another drink. What the devil time is it?”

“Half past four.” Lord Farrington glanced at the clock six inches from his friend’s head.

“The devil!” Mr. Rush exclaimed. “Where has the night gone?”

“Where all nights go.” Lord Arthur yawned. “Let’s see—I believe I started the evening at m’aunt’s rout—a deuced flat affair, but family duty and all that. I did not stay long. She looked over m’shoulder to see if Ravensberg was with me and then, even though he wasn’t there, read me a lecture on the company I keep and the nasty tendency rakish reputations have of rubbing off on a fellow’s companions. It seems I ought to stay away from you, Ravensberg, if I know what is good for me.”

His friends shared the joke by roaring with hearty mirth. All except Kit, that was, who was sprawled with casual elegance in a deep chair beside the fireplace in his bachelor rooms on St. James’s, gazing vacantly with his one healthy eye into the unlit coals.

“You won’t have to put up with my wicked influence for much longer,” he said. “I’ve been summoned to Alvesley.”

Lord Farrington sipped his drink. “By your father? Redfield himself?” he asked. “A summons, Ravensberg?”

“A summons.” Kit nodded slowly. “There is to be a grand house party this summer in honor of the seventy-fifth birthday of the dowager, my grandmother.”

“An old dragon, is she, Ravensberg?” Mr. Rush asked sympathetically. “ Do you suppose the mantel would collapse if I stopped holding it up?”

“You are three sheets to the wind, old chap,” Lord Arthur informed him. “It’s your legs, not the mantel.”

“I have always had a soft spot for the old girl, you see,” Kit said, “and my father knows it. Oh, for God’s sake, Rush, just look down into your glass, will you? It is still half full.”

Mr. Rush looked with pleased astonishment at the glass in his hand and drained off its contents. “What I really need,” he said, “is my bed. If my legs would just carry me there.”

“Egad,” Kit said, his gloomy stare back on the unlit fire. “What I really need is a bride.”

“Go to bed,” Lord Arthur advised him hastily, “and sleep it off. The feeling will go away by morning—guaranteed.”

“My father’s birthday gift to my grandmother is to be the betrothal of his heir,” Kit said.

“Oh, I say! You are the heir.”

“Jolly rotten luck, old chap.”

Lord Arthur and Mr. Rush spoke simultaneously.

“A pox on all fathers!” Lord Farrington exclaimed indignantly. “Does he have someone picked out for you, Ravensberg?”

Kit laughed and draped his hands over the arms of his chair. “Oh, yes, indeed,” he said. “Along with everything else, I am to inherit my late elder brother’s betrothed.”

“Who the devil is she?” Mr. Rush forgot his inebriated state sufficiently to straighten up and stand unassisted.

“Bewcastle’s sister,” Kit said.

“Bewcastle? The Duke of?” Lord Arthur asked.

“I have obliged my father by withdrawing from the Peninsula and selling my commission,” Kit said. “I’ll oblige him further by going back to Alvesley after almost three years even though I was banished for life the last time I was there. I’ll even oblige him on the matter of the birthday gift. But I’ll do it all on my terms, by Jove. I’ll take with me a bride of my own choosing, and I’ll be married to her before I go so that there will be nothing Redfield can do about it. I have been sorely tempted to pick some vulgar creature, but that would not do. It is just the sort of thing Redfield would expect of me. I’ll choose someone above reproach instead. That will gall him more than anything else because he won’t be able to complain about her. She is going to be dull, respectable, prim, and perfect.” He spoke with grim satisfaction.

For a moment his friends regarded him in fascinated silence. Then Lord Farrington threw back his head and laughed. “ You are going to marry a dull, respectable woman, Ravensberg?” he asked. “Just to spite your father?”

“Not wise, old chap,” Mr. Rush said, treading a determinedly straight path toward the sideboard. “You would be the one married to the woman for life, not your father. You would find such a wife insupportable, take my word on it. The vulgar wench might afford you more amusement.”

“But the thing is that one has to marry sometime,” Kit explained, cupping one hand over his aching eye for a moment. “Especially when the death of one’s elder brother has made one the reluctant heir to an earldom and vast estates and a fortune to boot. One has to do one’s duty and set up one’s nursery and all that. Who better to do it with than a quiet, dull, worthy woman who will run one’s home competently and without fuss and will dutifully present one with an heir and a few spares?”

“But there is a very real obstacle to such a scheme, Ravensberg.” Lord Farrington was frowning when he spoke the words, but he grinned and then chuckled outright before continuing. “What respectable woman would have you? You are a handsome enough devil, it is true, or so I understand from the way females look at you. And of course you have your present title and your future prospects. But you have established an impressively notorious reputation as a rakehell since you sold out.”

“And that would be stating it mildly,” Lord Arthur muttered into his glass.

“As bad as that, is it? What a devilish stuffy world we live in,” Kit commented. “But egad, I am serious about this. And I am Redfield’s heir. That fact alone will outweigh all else when it is perceived that I am shopping in earnest for a wife.”

“True enough,” Mr. Rush admitted, seating himself on an upright chair after refilling his glass. “But not necessarily the sort of wife you are looking for, old chap. Parents with lofty principles and daughters to match steer clear of gentlemen who mill with foul-smelling laborers within sight of Rotten Row and then kiss milkmaids without their shirts on for all the world to witness. And men who on a wager drive along St. James’s in their curricles past all the gentlemen’s clubs, a painted doxy squeezed onto the seat on either side of them. And men whose names appear in all the betting books in connection with every disreputable and outrageous dare anyone cares to wager on.”

“Who are the possibilities?” Kit asked, ignoring this dire prediction and returning his attention to the coals in the fireplace. “There must be hordes of new arrivals in town now that the Season has begun in earnest. Hordes of hopeful misses come shopping for husbands. Who is the dullest, most prudish, most straitlaced, most respectable of them all? You fellows will know better than I. You all attend tonnish events.”

His companions gave the matter serious thought. Each threw out a few names, all of which were rejected out of hand by the others for a variety of reasons.

“There is Miss Edgeworth,” Lord Arthur said at last, when they appeared to have run out of suggestions. “But she is too long in the tooth.”

“Miss Edgeworth?” Lord Farrington repeated. “Of Newbury Abbey? The Earl of Kilbourne’s abandoned bride? Lord, my sister was at that wedding. It was the sensation of last year. The bridegroom waiting at the front of the church, the bride in the porch ready to make her grand entrance. And then the arrival of a ragged woman claiming to be Kilbourne’s long-lost wife—and telling nothing short of the truth, by gad. The Edgeworth chit fled from the church as if the hounds of hell were at her heels, according to Maggie, who is not normally prone to exaggeration. Is she in town this year, Kellard?”

“Staying with Portfrey,” Lord Arthur said. “The duchess is Kilbourne’s aunt, y’know. And Miss Edgeworth is connected to her too in some way.”

“I had heard she was in town,” Mr. Rush admitted. “But she doesn’t go about much, does she? Hedged around by the Portfreys and dozens of other relatives, I daresay, all trying to get her married off quietly—and respectably.” He snickered. “She is doubtless dull enough to set one to yawning at the mere thought of her. You don’t want her, Ravensberg.”

“Besides,” Lord Arthur added with what proved to be the fatal challenge, “you would not get her even if you did want her, Ravensberg. Portfrey, Anburey, Attingsborough— none of her relatives would allow someone of your reputation within hailing distance of her. And even if you did slip past their guard, she would give you the cut direct. Turn you into an icicle on the spot, I daresay. You are just the sort none of them would want for her, least of all the lady herself. We will have to think of someone else for you. Though why you would want—”

But Kit was laughing gaily as he turned his face from the fire again. “Was that a challenge, by any chance?” he asked, cutting his friend off midsentence. “If it was, you could scarce have made it more irresistible if you had tried. I will not be allowed within hailing distance of Miss Edgeworth, you say, because I am the sort of rake and rogue from whom such a delicate and aging bloom must be protected at all costs? And she would freeze me with a single glance from her severe, maidenly eye, would she? Because she is incorruptible and I am corruption incarnate? By Jove, I’ll have her.” He slapped the arm of his chair with one open palm.

Lord Farrington flung back his head and shouted with laughter. “I smell a wager,” he said. “A hundred guineas on it that you cannot do it, Ravensberg.”

“And a hundred more of mine,” Lord Arthur added. “She is very high in the instep, Ravensberg. Someone just last week, though I can’t for the life of me remember who, likened her to a marble statue, except that she came out the colder of the two.”

“I might as well throw in my hundred too,” Mr. Rush said, “though I should know better where Ravensberg is concerned. It was Brinkley, Kellard, who is forever scouting out prospective new mothers for his orphaned brood. That’s how I knew she was in town—I remember now. She told Brinkley right straight out as soon as he broached the subject of wedlock with her—when he was strolling with her on Rotten Row one morning, if you can imagine it—that she has no intention of marrying anyone ever. He believed her. Apparently she is not the sort of lady whose word one doubts. That was when he made the remark about marble statues. Brinkley is eminently respectable, Ravensberg.”

“And I am not.” Kit laughed again. “Well, for three hundred guineas and to annoy my father into the bargain I’ll have to change her mind, won’t I? Shall we say by the end of June, when I have to leave for Alvesley? A marriage before the end of June, that is. Between Miss Edgeworth and yours truly, of course.”

“Less than six weeks? Done.” Lord Farrington got resolutely to his feet. “Now I am for my bed, while I can still find it and convey myself toward it unassisted. Come along, Rush, I’ll steer you in the direction of yours at the same time. I would not begin the campaign for at least another week if I were you, Ravensberg. Any delicately nurtured female would swoon outright at the sight of that eye. That will give you approximately five weeks.” The thought amused him considerably.

“A marriage to Miss Edgeworth by the last day in June, then,” Lord Arthur said, summing up the wager as he joined his friends on their way out of the room. “It cannot be done, Ravensberg. Not even by you— especially not by you. This will be the easiest hundred guineas I have made this year. But of course you will try.”

“Of course.” Kit grinned at his friends. “And I will succeed. With what event shall I begin the campaign? What is happening a week or so from now?”

“Lady Mannering’s ball,” Lord Farrington said after a moment of consideration. “It is always one of the grand squeezes of the Season. Everybody attends it. Miss Edgeworth may well not, though, Ravensberg. I have not seen her at any balls—or any other entertainment for that matter. Not that I would recognize her if I saw her, of course, but someone would surely have pointed her out. She is still news.”

“Lady Mannering’s ball,” Kit said, hoisting himself out of his chair in order to see his friends on their way. “I must find out if she will be there. Is she a beauty, by the way? Or is she an antidote?”

“Now that,” Lord Farrington said firmly, “you must discover for yourself, Ravensberg. It will serve you right if she resembles a gargoyle.”