Then Comes Seduction

8

KATHERINE was in the drawing room with Margaret when the butler came up with a visitor’s card on a silver salver. They already had one visitor-Constantine had been with them for almost half an hour, having returned with Stephen from a long morning spent together at Tattersall’s. They were not expecting anyone else. Indeed, they had been about to go walking in the park when the men had arrived.

“It is Lord Montford,” Margaret said after lifting the card from the tray. She looked directly at Katherine and raised her eyebrows.

“Monty,” Stephen said gladly. “Oh, show him up by all means. He was at the ball last evening, Con. Did I tell you?”

“Was he?” Constantine said. “I suppose he spent all evening in the card room relieving a few of the other guests of their fortunes.”

“Not all evening,” Stephen said. “He actually danced once.”

Oh, please, Stephen, say no more.

Katherine wished fervently that she could obliterate that dance from both fact and memory. It had kept her awake half the night. She had been able to think of little else all day. Goodness, she had almost been goaded into agreeing to that ridiculous and horribly improper wager he had suggested. She could not believe she had almost agreed. With Lord Montford of all people.

But just imagine how it would be, Miss Huxtable, if we were both to win. We could have a grand wedding at St. George’s in Hanover Square with every member of the ton in attendance and then proceed to a lifetime of sleepless nights, making babies and passionate love, not necessarily in that order.

Oh!

And now, just as those words were popping into her mind for surely the dozenth time-at a conservative estimate-since they had been spoken, he was stepping into Stephen’s drawing room, looking handsome and immaculately elegant. He was escorting a young and exquisitely pretty lady.

Oh, how dared he come like this after last evening-and after three years ago. Except that he had declared last evening that he had a wager to win, and he could not do that without contriving meetings with her.

He bowed and the young lady curtsied deeply.

“Miss Huxtable,” he said, focusing his attention-and his charm-upon Margaret. “I have come to tell you how delighted I was to make your acquaintance last evening, even if I was not fortunate enough to secure a dance with you. And I have been presumptuous enough to bring my young half sister, Charlotte Wrayburn, with me in the hope that you will allow me to present her to your notice and Miss Katherine Huxtable’s.”

He oozed respectability and perfect good manners, Katherine noticed in some indignation.

“But of course.” Meg hurried across the room, reaching out her right hand to the girl as she went. “Miss Wrayburn. How delightful! Meet my sister too, and our brother, the Earl of Merton. And our cousin, Mr. Constantine Huxtable.”

The girl blushed and made a series of curtsies as Meg indicated each of them in turn.

“I have not yet made my come-out,” she explained, “because I am not quite eighteen. But Jasper and Miss Daniels, my companion, have said that it is unexceptionable for me to make a few carefully selected acquaintances this year.”

“And since I wished to call here anyway,” Lord Montford said, “and Miss Daniels is otherwise occupied this afternoon, I suggested that Charlotte accompany me.”

“I am delighted you did, Monty,” Stephen said, smiling and bowing. “I shall be sure to reserve a set with you at your come-out ball next spring, Miss Wrayburn-well in advance and on the strength of a prior acquaintance.”

She laughed and blushed.

“Charmed, Miss Wrayburn,” Constantine said with a smile.

“And I am delighted too,” Margaret said. “Do come and sit here beside me, Miss Wrayburn. Constantine, pull the bell rope beside you, if you will, and I will have more tea and cakes brought up. Lord Montford, please have a seat.”

Katherine, who had got to her feet on the entry of the visitors, sat down on the half of the love seat she had been occupying before. Before Constantine could pull the bell rope and rejoin her on the other half, Lord Montford took it. And as he did so, he looked at her for the first time since he had entered the room-with a very direct, very intense, very… sizzling glance that was hidden from all the other occupants of the room.

It was a glance quite deliberately intended to discompose her, of course, and announce to her that he had not for a moment forgotten last evening or his determination to win his wager.

Neither his shoulder nor his thigh touched her own after he had seated himself, but she could feel both, and her heart raced, half with indignation and half with an awareness of his physical proximity even stronger than she had felt last evening when they had actually been touching.

“I trust, Miss Huxtable,” he said, turning his head to address Katherine, “you enjoyed the ball last evening?”

“I did, indeed, my lord, I thank you,” she said. Despite the fact that one particular waltz ruined it, she would have added if there had not been the chance that someone else might have overheard the words.

“So did I,” he said. “It is always a pleasure, is it not, to discover some of one’s dearest friends at any social entertainment.”

His manners were impeccable. His eyes smiled. Only she, who was looking into them from the distance of a mere foot or so, could see the merriment and the mockery lurking in their depths. He was enjoying himself.

Miss Wrayburn, who was at first blushing and silent, soon relaxed under the combined kind ministrations of Meg and Stephen, and chattered happily upon any topic that was suggested to her. Katherine smiled warmly at her.

“Ah,” she said as Margaret poured the tea and Stephen offered the cakes, “so you have a love of the country too, Miss Wrayburn. So do I. Much as I enjoy the occasional visit to London, I am always more than happy to return home.”

She talked determinedly about Warren Hall and even about Throckbridge. She talked about Isabelle and Samuel, her niece and nephew, and about Vanessa, her sister. She did not monopolize the conversation-that would have been discourteous-but she did talk more than she usually did.

And at every moment she was aware of the man who sat almost silently at her side and at whom she did not once glance. But she knew he was amused. She knew he was aware of her awareness and was deliberately causing it. How he did it she did not know, but after sitting beside him for ten minutes or so she felt as if her left side were on fire and as if her heart were running a footrace uphill against a stiff wind.

She deeply resented all this. Why had she not simply refused to dance with him? But she had done so, had she not? And had danced with him anyway?

Lord Montford, she concluded, was a master puppeteer, and she was his helpless marionette.

It was a thought that made her bristle and turn her head to glare at him. He was looking politely back at her, a benign smile on his lips.

“Your sister being the Duchess of Moreland,” he said.

“I suppose you have not met her,” Katherine said, turning back to Miss Wrayburn. “Perhaps we may have the pleasure of taking you to call on her one day. She would enjoy that, and I am sure you would like her. She has the sunniest nature of us all, does she not, Meg?”

The girl was delightful. Even so, it was perhaps not the best of ideas to prolong their acquaintance with her since she had the distinct misfortune to be a half sister to Baron Montford. The words had been spoken now, though.

“A duchess,” Miss Wrayburn said, looking suddenly nervous again. But then she smiled brightly. “I would indeed like it.”

“And perhaps,” Meg said, “you would care to accompany Kate and me on a walk in Hyde Park tomorrow afternoon, Miss Wrayburn-if you do not have other, more interesting plans, that is.”

“Oh, I do not,” the girl assured her, leaning forward in her chair. “I am not out yet and have been hardly anywhere except to a few shops and galleries. And I have met hardly anyone except ladies as old as my mother, though some of them do have daughters like me, it is true, and sons. Walking in the park with you sounds very interesting indeed to me. I will come. May I, Jasper? I do hope it will not rain.”

“I shall escort you, Char,” he said, “if the company of a male will not offend Miss Huxtable and her sister. I will certainly be the envy of every other gentleman in the park when I am seen with three of the loveliest ladies in town.”

They had, of course, Katherine realized, played right into his hands. He must have hoped for just this sort of chance to see them-or her-again. He had not even had to exert himself beyond coming here to introduce his young sister.

“Jasper!” Miss Wrayburn laughed gleefully. “How silly you are.”

“What?” he said. “I ought to have said with two of the loveliest ladies, then, Char? I have overlooked all sorts of imperfections in your appearance, have I, because you are my sister and I am partial to you?”

He spoke to the girl with a lazy affection in his voice, Katherine noticed grudgingly. She did not want to discover that there was any goodness in him.

“You have certainly not, Monty,” Stephen said. “There are no imperfections in either my sisters or yours. And not all the other gentlemen will envy you. You are not to be allowed to have the pleasure of walking with the ladies entirely to yourself. I will come along too.”

“That will be lovely, Stephen,” Katherine said. “It always gives me the greatest pleasure to walk on your arm and watch all the young ladies expire with envy as they pass.”

She was aware, even though she did not look directly at Lord Montford, that he pursed his lips and looked amused.

“I would come too,” Constantine said, “but I have another commitment for tomorrow, alas.”

Lord Montford rose to his feet and raised his eyebrows in his sister’s direction, and they proceeded to take their leave.

“I shall look forward with the greatest of pleasure to tomorrow afternoon,” he said as he bowed over Meg’s hand. He favored Stephen and Constantine with an affable nod. He ignored Katherine, whose hand Miss Wrayburn was shaking.

Except that he had somehow conveyed the message that the words spoken to Meg were intended for her.

Oh, how did he do it?

And was it just her imagination? Was she being ridiculous?

She knew she was not.

He had set himself the task, purely for his own amusement and because he was a very bored gentleman indeed, of making her fall in love with him.

Even though she had assured him it could not be done in a billion years.

That assurance, of course, had merely goaded him on.

“It was a waltz Monty danced last evening,” Stephen said after the visitors had left. “With Kate. He dances as well as he seems to do everything else. I could not waltz, alas. I was obliged to sit out with Miss Acton because she has not yet been granted permission to waltz.”

Constantine was looking steadily at her, Katherine was aware. She turned her head and smiled more fully at him.

“And Monty brought his half sister to call upon you this afternoon,” he said to her, shaking his head slightly, “even though she has not yet made her come-out. I can remember warning you against him once a long time ago, Katherine. Nothing has changed, you know. Monty is one of my closest friends, but if I had a sister, I would not allow her within five miles of him unless she had a chaperone chained to each wrist.”

She laughed.

So did Stephen.

“Constantine!” Margaret said reproachfully. “Lord Montford is a gentleman. His manners are more than pleasing. And his fondness for Miss Wrayburn is to be commended.”

“I am no green girl, Constantine,” Katherine said-just as she had said last evening to Lord Montford himself.

“I suppose not,” Constantine admitted. “I forget that by now you are almost elderly, Katherine. You are… what? Three-and-twenty? Do remember, though, that he is not safe company for any unescorted lady.”

“And you are, Constantine?” she asked with a laugh.

He winced deliberately. “Sometimes,” he said, “it takes one rakehell to recognize another. Not that I am making any admissions that might incriminate me.”

She loved him dearly-he was a second cousin they had discovered late in life. He had always been kind to them. Yet she was aware that she really did not know him at all. He hardly ever came to Warren Hall, and he was not often in London either-neither were they, of course. He had a home and estate in Gloucestershire but had never invited them there or told them anything about it. And he had a long-standing quarrel with Elliott, Duke of Moreland-his first cousin and her brother-in-law-that had somehow drawn Vanessa in too a few years ago. Neither of them spoke to him whenever they could decently avoid doing so. Katherine had no idea why. There was, in fact, an intriguing aura of mystery surrounding Constantine that was, she supposed, part of his appeal.

Was he a rakehell? He was a friend of Lord Montford’s and every bit as dashing and handsome as he was, even if his looks did narrowly escape perfection because of his nose, which had been broken at some time in the past and not quite straightened afterward. Though actually the bend in his nose made him look more attractive than perfection would have done.

“Enough of this,” Margaret said firmly. “You will stay for dinner, Constantine? Bar the doors, Stephen, lest he say no.”

“Coercion succeeds with me every time,” Constantine said. “But so does a friendly invitation. I will be delighted to stay.”

And so, Katherine thought, she was surely doomed to another disturbed night. She was to go walking with Lord Montford tomorrow-and Meg and Stephen and Miss Wrayburn. She must make a determined effort to walk with one of them.

She must also pray very fervently that it would rain tomorrow.

The five of them went walking as planned the following afternoon, which was fortunately fine, even sunny, after a damp, unpromising morning. Jasper walked with Miss Huxtable while Merton had Charlotte on one arm and Miss Katherine Huxtable on the other. After they had all spent a while down by the Serpentine, admiring the swans and watching a young boy sail his small boat on the water under the eagle eye of his nurse, they walked back again with Merton between Charlotte and his eldest sister and Jasper with the younger.

As he had planned from the start, of course. One must never be too obvious in such pursuits, but one must be relentless. He had maneuvered the exchange without any of the others even suspecting that maneuverings were going on. Except, perhaps, Katherine Huxtable herself. She favored him with a tight-lipped but otherwise expressionless stare as she took his arm.

“Miss Wrayburn is charming,” she said almost vengefully.

“But sometimes anxious about how she will be received,” he said, inhaling to see if he could catch a whiff of that soap smell again. He could. It was faint but unmistakable. It must be the most seductive scent ever invented.

She looked very fetching too in a sage green, high-waisted walking dress with a straw bonnet adorned with ruched pale green silk about the crown and ribbons of a matching color beneath her chin. Her hair looked very golden beneath its wide brim.

“Oh, but she need not be anxious with us,” she said. “There is no reason to be. We are very ordinary people.”

“Indeed?” He looked down at her with raised eyebrows, but she was being quite serious. “One wonders, then, what extraordinary people would be like. One might need an eye shade just to look at them.”

She clucked her tongue and raised a reproachful face at the same time.

“That was a compliment, was it?” she said dryly. “Thank you, my lord, on behalf of Stephen and Meg.”

“Charlotte is very taken with you,” he said quite truthfully. “And with your sister,” he added to be fair. “She is flattered by your kindness and condescension in taking notice of her.”

“It is hardly condescension,” she said. “We were very ordinary mortals indeed just a few years ago and living in a small cottage in a small country village. I was contributing to our meager income by teaching at the village school a few mornings a week. The most glamorous events in our lives were the infrequent village assemblies and the annual summer fete at Rundle Park, the manor of Sir Humphrey Dew. Our circumstances have changed since then, but we have not, I hope. I liked us as we were.”

Was she deliberately making herself sound dull? He felt a wave of amusement.

“I believe, Miss Huxtable,” he said, dipping his head a little closer to hers, “I would have liked you then too. Did you dance about a maypole on the village green every spring, by any chance? There is nothing more enticing than the sight of a lovely woman weaving her ribbon about the pole, dipping and swaying and flashing her ankles as she goes.”

“No maypoles.” But she laughed suddenly. “And no flashing ankles.”

He felt enveloped by sunshine and warmth and noted with some surprise when he glanced upward that the sun was hidden behind clouds. It amazed him that he had tried to forget her for three whole years, that his memories of her had not been pleasant ones. That, of course, was because his memories of her had been all tied up with memories of humiliation.

“No maypoles or flashing ankles,” he said. “How very sad. Though perhaps not. Perhaps the males of your village from the age of twelve to ninety were thereby saved from unutterable suffering at your hands-or should I say rather, at your ankles.”

“I wonder, Lord Montford,” she said, though her face still laughed, “if you have any skill or experience with ordinary conversation.”

“But of course I have,” he said, all astonishment. “I am a gentleman, am I not? You wound me with your assumption that I have none.”

“But I have never heard any evidence of it,” she said.

“Would you say,” he said, looking upward, “that those clouds overhead presage more rain to come later? I would say not. You will observe that they are white and fluffy and really quite benign. And there is blue sky beyond them. My prediction is that in one hour’s time, or even less, the sky will be a pure blue and we will bask in the bliss of it for a short while before the pessimists among us start to worry about tomorrow. Have you noticed how good weather invariably brings on the prediction that we will have to suffer for it with some shockingly infelicitous storm in the near future? Have you ever heard anyone do the opposite? Have you ever heard anyone on a day of cold sleet and arctic gales gloomily predict that we will suffer for this with blue skies and sunshine and warmth at some time in the future?”

She was laughing out loud.

“No, I never have,” she said. “But is this ordinary conversation, Lord Montford?”

“The topic is the weather, is it not?” he said. “Could anything be more ordinary?”

She did not answer, but she continued to smile.

“Ah,” he said, “I understand. You did not mean ordinary at all, did you? You meant dull. Yes, I am capable of dull conversation too, and will demonstrate if you wish. But I must warn you that I may fall asleep in the middle of it.”

“You need not worry about that,” she said. “I would be asleep before you.”

“Ah, an interesting admission,” he said, moving his head a little closer to hers, “and one I may use to my advantage at some future date.”

“You would be unable to,” she said. “You would be asleep too.”

“Hmm. A thorny problem,” he admitted.

“Besides, Lord Montford,” she said, “you cannot make me fall in love with you while I am asleep, can you? And I assume that is what this is all about? This visiting me with your sister? This walking in the park with us?”

“While you are asleep?” he said, moving his head even closer to hers.

And actually, in his attempt to arouse her interest in him, he was arousing himself to no small degree. The idea of making a sleeping woman-all warm and languorous in the depths of a soft mattress-fall in love with him had a very definite appeal. Good Lord!

“Miss Huxtable, you are quite-”

He got no further. They had progressed by this point to a more public part of the park, and the daily promenade had begun-vehicles of all descriptions, horses, pedestrians, all jostling for space on the crowded thoroughfares, all vying for attention. For the purpose was less to acquire air and exercise than it was to see and be seen, to show off new bonnets and new mounts and new beaux, to see and criticize other, inferior bonnets and mounts and beaux. It was the ton at play.

And one garishly ostentatious open barouche, which was almost abreast of Jasper and Miss Huxtable, was slowing and then drawing to a halt. Its occupants peered down at them with frowning disapproval-or at him, actually.

Lady Forester and Clarence, by thunder!

He had been hoping to avoid them for what remained of the Season, though it was admittedly a forlorn hope when they had come up from Kent for the precise purpose of displaying their displeasure with him and snatching Charlotte out of his wicked clutches.

He had not even told Charlotte about their arrival in town. Why distress her before it was strictly necessary?

“Lady Forester?” He touched the brim of his hat to the lady. He had not called her Aunt Prunella-or even Aunt Prune-since he was a boy. She was no aunt of his, for which fact he would give daily thanks if he were a praying man. “Clarrie? How do you do? May I have the pleasure-”

But apparently he might not have the pleasure of introducing Miss Katherine Huxtable to them-or her sister and brother either.

“Jasper,” the lady said in awful tones and with a swelling of the bosom that he remembered well, “I will see you in my own home tomorrow morning at precisely nine o’clock. Charlotte, step away from that man’s side this minute and come up here to sit beside me. I would have expected you to know better even if your half brother does not. I thought you had a respectable governess.”

“Aunt Prunella!” Charlotte exclaimed with a gasp and a look of open dismay.

“Oh, I say!” young Merton exclaimed at the same moment, indignation in his voice.

“Clarence,” his mother said, “get down this instant and assist Charlotte.”

“You had better stay where you are, Clarrie, old boy,” Jasper advised. “It would be a waste of effort to hop down here only to have to hop right back up again. And you stay where you are too, Char, with Miss Huxtable and the Earl of Merton. You are not footsore, are you?”

“N-no, Jasper,” she said, her eyes as wide as saucers.

“Then you do not need a ride,” he said. “She does not need a ride, ma’am. But thank you for stopping and offering. I shall do myself the honor of calling upon you in the morning, then. I may be four minutes late as the clock in the library, by which I invariably time myself, is four minutes slow. Or do I mean early? I have never quite worked it out. Which do I mean, Miss Huxtable?”

He glanced down at Katherine on his arm.

“Late,” she said. “You would be late. Or will be late as I suppose it has never occurred to you to have the clock set right.”

“It would be too confusing,” he said. “I would not know where I stood. Neither would my servants.”

“Jasper,” Lady Forester said in tones that clearly had Clarence quaking in his boots and not sure whether he should stay where he was and incur her undying wrath or whether he should hop down and risk Lord Montford’s, “I will not be spoken to thus in your usual insolent vein. Charlotte-”

“Clarrie,” Jasper said conversationally, “you are holding up traffic, old boy. I daresay there are curricles and phaetons and barouches backed up all the way to the gates and out into the street, not to mention other vehicles. You had better move on before this good coachman behind you decides to get down from his perch and knock your hat off. He is already purple in the face. So are his passengers. I shall see you both at precisely four minutes after nine tomorrow morning. Good day to you.”

And Clarence, after a nervous glance back at the vehicles behind him, gave his own coachman the signal to move on.

“Oh, Jasper,” Charlotte said when they were out of earshot, “you will not allow Aunt Prunella to take me away, will you? She would not stop sermonizing from dawn to bedtime. It would be like going to prison. I really do not think I could bear it.”

“There, there, Miss Wrayburn,” Merton was saying, patting her hand.

“I am so sorry,” the elder Miss Huxtable said, sounding deeply distressed, “if my invitation to Miss Wrayburn to come walking with Kate and me this afternoon has caused a problem. Is it because she is not yet out? But even children and young people need air and exercise at some time of the day, surely.”

“I daresay,” Merton said, “it is because I invited myself to come too. I suppose the very highest sticklers might argue that Miss Wrayburn ought not to be seen in company with me until after her come-out. I do beg your pardon, Miss Wrayburn, and yours too, Monty. I did not think.”

“I cannot imagine,” Jasper said, “that even the queen herself could take exception to a young girl strolling in a public park with her brother and guardian and three of his friends, two of whom are ladies older than herself. I will certainly not have any of you chastising yourselves for a nonexistent fault. I shall set Lady Forester right on the matter tomorrow morning. And no, Char, you will not be thrown into the lions’ den with Aunt Prunella and Clarence. Not under any circumstances.”

“But Clarence is one of my guardians,” she reminded him. “He always was pompous and horrible. I hated him when he was a boy and I am sure I still hate him. He has turned downright ugly too. He is fat.”

Which blunt words spelled doom for any courtship Clarence might hope to mount with his cousin.

“We will not bore Lord Merton and his sisters with our private business any longer, Char,” he said firmly. “And we had better stroll onward before we invite a wider audience.”

Which they proceeded to do-in a rather deafening silence punctuated by small bursts of bright, stilted conversation.

“This,” Miss Katherine Huxtable said when they arrived back at the gates, loosening her hold on his arm and including the others close behind them in her remarks, “has been a lovely afternoon, has it not? Thank you very much indeed, Miss Wrayburn and Lord Montford, for accompanying us.”

She and her brother and sister were going one way and he and Charlotte were going the other, so they all took their leave of one another with a flurry of cheerful farewells, just as if that damnably melodramatic interruption had not occurred.

And how many people had witnessed the scene? Not that he cared the snap of his fingers what the gossips might say about him. But there was Charlotte to think about. Good Lord, what the devil had her aunt been thinking of, exposing her thus to the public gaze and censure? She could not possibly have waited until tomorrow morning to read him a scold in the privacy of her own drawing room?

“Jasper,” Charlotte said, her small hand tucked beneath his arm, “what will Aunt Prunella say tomorrow? What will she do?”

“Let me worry about that,” he said, patting her hand. “Or not.”

“But you know what Papa said in his will,” she said, her voice thin and high-pitched with misery.

Her father had stated that she must be brought up and housed until her marriage by his sister, her aunt, if her mother should die and there were ever any question of neglect or impropriety in the way Baron Montford handled her upbringing.

“Your papa also appointed three guardians,” he said, “and fortunately Clarence is only one of them.”

“But if Great-Uncle Seth were to take his side,” she said, “then Aunt Prunella would take me away and there would be nothing you could do about it. Oh, I wish now I had stayed at Cedarhurst.”

“Great-Uncle Seth is too lazy to move out of his own shadow,” he told her. “He has never made any secret of the fact that he resented being named guardian by his own nephew-especially when that nephew had the effrontery to predecease him. I am sorry, Char. I ought not to talk about your papa in that careless way. But you need not worry about Great-Uncle Seth.”

“But I do,” she said. “He has only to say the word-” She did not complete the thought.

“It won’t happen,” he said, guiding her across the road and skirting about a pile of manure that the crossing sweep had not yet cleared. “I promise. I’ll go and call upon your great-uncle in person if I must, though he won’t like it above half.”

“Will you?” she said. “Do you think-”

“Let’s talk about something more cheerful,” he suggested, patting her hand. “Do you like the Huxtables?”

“Oh, exceedingly.” She brightened immediately, and then she turned a laughing face his way. “You like Miss Katherine Huxtable.”

He looked at her sharply.

“I like them both,” he said. “They are Merton’s sisters, and they are genteel and charming, not to mention beautiful.”

“But I think you like Miss Katherine Huxtable,” she said with an impish smile from beneath the brim of her bonnet. “You scarcely took your eyes off her while we were walking back through the park.”

“We were conversing,” he said. “It is polite to look at the person with whom you are having a conversation. Did Miss Daniels never teach you that?”

But she only laughed.

“And I think,” she said, “she likes you, Jasper.”

“Never tell me,” he said, recoiling in feigned horror, “that she was looking at me too while we talked. How very brazen of her.”

“It was the way she was looking,” she told him. “But I daresay all ladies like you. Are you going to marry one of these days?”

“One of these very future days, perhaps,” he said. “Maybe. Probably. Possibly. But not in the foreseeable future.”

“Not even,” she asked him, “if you were to fall in love?”

“I would marry immediately if not sooner were that to happen,” he said. “I would be so startled I would not know what else to do. As startled as I would be if I were to hear that hell had frozen over.”

“I wish,” she said with a sigh, “you were not such a dreadful cynic, Jasper.”

“And what do you think of Merton?” he asked, smiling down at her.

“He is exceedingly handsome and amiable,” she said. “He looks like a god. I daresay everyone is in love with him.”

“Including you, Char?” he asked.

“Oh, no,” she assured him. “I would not be so foolish. It would be like pining for the sun. I shall look for someone altogether more… possible with whom to fall in love. But not yet. I want to be at least twenty before I marry.”

“Elderly, in fact.” He grinned fondly at her. He had not realized how practical she was, how unsure of herself, how underestimating of her own charms. There was no reason in the world why the daughter of a wealthy baronet, sister of a baron, could not aspire to the hand of an earl.

But definitely not yet.

“Perhaps,” he said, “love will take you by surprise one of these days.”

“I hope so,” she said, smiling brightly at him. “When I am old enough to be quite sure that love is what it is. And I hope it happens to you too, Jasper. Falling in love, I mean.”

“Thank you,” he said, patting her hand again. “But let me see, is it a blessing or a curse you are bestowing?”

She laughed.

“I have an idea,” she said suddenly, gazing up eagerly into his face. “A wonderful idea. Miss Daniels says we should try to add a few more names to the guest list for my house party. I think we ought to invite Miss Katherine Huxtable, Jasper. Oh, and Miss Huxtable too. After all, you will need some congenial company as well as I will.”

“And since I am an elder and those two ladies are elders too,” he said, “we can congenially entertain one another? About a crackling fire to keep our aged bones warm in July, perhaps?”

“Miss Katherine Huxtable was twenty when her brother succeeded to the title,” she said. “She mentioned it when we were walking to the Serpentine. And that was three years ago. She is not so very old, Jasper, though it is surprising that she is not already married. Especially when she is so beautiful. Perhaps she has been waiting for someone special. I admire her for that.”

“Char,” he said, looking sidelong at her, “you are not matchmaking by any chance, are you? I warn you it is an impossibility.”

“Is it?” She gave him a wide-eyed, innocent look.

He had, in fact, just got exactly what he wanted without having to try very hard at all. Katherine Huxtable still had to accept the invitation, of course.

“Then I will have to play this game too,” he said with a sigh. “If the Misses Huxtable are to be invited, Char, then it would be quite ill-mannered not to invite Merton too.”

She turned her head sharply to face front again until the poke of her bonnet hid her flushed cheeks.

“Oh, would it?” she said. “But I daresay he has far more interesting things to do.”

“Probably,” he agreed. “Let’s find out, shall we?”

And to the devil with the fact that perhaps she really ought not even to be acquainted with Merton yet. What strange gothic notions some people had. Good Lord, Aunt Prunella and her ilk would probably have young girls locked in a high tower with their spinning wheels if they had their way.