pardon?’
‘I mean, why are you so keen to get involved in my affairs?’
‘Just what are you accusing me of?’
‘Don’t know. That’s the thing. But it seems dashed smoky to me. When you consider that Chepstow, a man I’ve known all my life, skipped town rather than risk getting tangled with females intent on marriage.’
‘You can’t know that. He could have left town for any number of reasons.’
‘He’s running scared,’ Havelock insisted. ‘He would have bolted from the club after foisting me on to Ashe, if he’d thought he could get away with it.’
Morgan looked out of the window. Sighed. Looked back at Havelock. Lifted his chin so that when he spoke, he did so down his nose.
‘I have a sister,’ he said defiantly. ‘Who is of an age to get married. And I would walk over hot coals rather than see her married to a man like you.’
‘A man like me?’ His voice came out rapier sharp. ‘What, precisely, do you mean by that?’ He was from one of the oldest families in the land. Everyone knew him. He was welcome everywhere. Not a scandalous word had ever been whispered about him.
Except, perhaps, about the duels he’d fought.
Though he’d fought them over matters of honour, not dishonour.
‘A man,’ said Morgan in an equally chilling tone, ‘who won’t love his wife. The last thing I want is for my sister to get drawn into a loveless marriage.’
‘Oh.’ He shrugged. ‘That puts a different complexion on the matter. I have a sister myself. Well, half-sister, to be precise. But even so, I would walk over hot coals for her.’ In fact, that was very nearly what he was doing.
‘So you see why I’m keen to get you off the marriage mart, before she comes to town?’
‘Oh, absolutely. Would do the same myself, if I thought Julia was in danger of getting tangled up with an unsuitable man. Like a shot.’
They nodded at each other with grudging respect.
‘Westminster Abbey, though? Really, Morgan, could you not have thought of somewhere a little more conducive to courtship?’
Morgan’s craggy face relaxed into something resembling a smile. ‘You are the only one thinking in terms of courtship. I have no intention of taking a risk with either of those Pargetter girls. But it will be out of the wind and rain, at all events. And large enough that our two parties may drift apart...’
‘So that I can get Miss Carpenter to myself while you play the elder off against the younger,’ he said. ‘Morgan, you’re as cunning as a fox.’
‘Not really,’ he said diffidently. ‘Just well versed in the ways of women. I have,’ he added with a wry twist to his mouth, ‘two half-sisters, and a stepsister under my guardianship. There’s not much you can tell me about tears and tantrums, scenes staged to persuade me to do something against my better judgement, campaigns designed to wear a man down...’
‘I get the picture,’ he said with an appreciative shudder. ‘You clearly know exactly how the female mind works.’ And thank God for it. And for Morgan’s willingness to see him safely married before his own sister came to town for her Season.
* * *
‘Come on, Mary,’ Dotty urged. ‘That’s Mr Morgan and Lord Havelock knocking on the front door now and you haven’t even chosen which bonnet you’re going to wear.’
The girls, determined they should all look their best for this outing with the most eligible men it had ever been their good fortune to come across, had spent the previous evening, and the best part of this morning, ransacking their wardrobe for items to lend Mary.
‘The brown velvet,’ said Lotty firmly, ramming the bonnet on to Mary’s head. ‘Sober colour, to suit your sense of what you should be wearing for mourning, yet the bronze satin rose just takes the plainness off. And if you say you don’t care what you look like one more time,’ she said, tying the ribbons deftly under her chin, ‘I shall go off into strong hysterics.’
There was no arguing with the sisters. And if she persisted, she was afraid she was going to take the shine off their own pleasure in the outing.
Resigned to her fate, Mary trailed the girls down the stairs, hanging back while they launched themselves with great gusto, this time, at both of the gentlemen who’d come to take them out.
For Mr Pargetter, upon hearing Lord Havelock’s name, had divulged that though he was only a viscount, and never likely to be an earl, he was very well-to-do.
While that information had sent his daughters into raptures, it had just made Mary wonder, again, what on earth he’d been doing at such an unfashionable event as the Crimmers’ annual Advent ball. If he was as wealthy as Mr Pargetter thought, he couldn’t have been searching for an heiress. She peered up at him, perplexed, as he handed her into the carriage. Could he possibly be thinking of going into politics? Perhaps he’d decided to mingle with the kind of men whose votes he would have to canvass and find out what they thought about various issues. Climbing boys, for instance.
Only, that didn’t explain why he’d wasted so much time with her, when he could have been mingling with the men, who were the ones who had the votes.
It was only when he smiled at her that she realised she’d been staring at him with a puzzled frown all the while he’d been taking his own seat opposite her.
Swiftly, she averted her gaze and peered intently out of the window. She had to stop making conjectures about what drove Lord Havelock and make the most of her first foray out of the immediate vicinity of Bloomsbury to see if she could spot an employment agency. But no matter how she strained her eyes, she simply couldn’t make out what might be engraved on any of the brass door plates of the buildings they passed. And it wasn’t the kind of thing she could ask.
Lotty and Dotty wouldn’t understand her desire for independence. The yearning to be able to stand on her own two feet and not have to rely on a man for anything.
Though at least they weren’t making any attempt to include her in the flirtatious sallies they were directing at Mr Morgan and Lord Havelock. They’d drawn the line at getting her dressed up smartly and practically bundling her into the carriage.
And so intent were they on dazzling the two gentlemen that they didn’t appear to notice when she started lagging behind them the minute they got inside the Abbey.
She’d started hanging back more out of habit than anything, but before long she was craning her neck in genuine awe at the roof, wondering how the builders had managed to get stone looking like acres of starched lace. She barely noticed their chatter gradually fading into the distance.
‘Miss Carpenter?’
Lord Havelock was standing watching her, a concerned expression on his face. And she realised she ought to have made an effort, for once, to stay part of the group. Loitering here, obliging him to wait for her, might have made it look as if she wanted to be alone with him. And she didn’t want him thinking that!
‘It has just occurred to me,’ he said, preventing her from stammering any of the excuses that leapt to mind, ‘that it wasn’t particularly tactful of us, was it, to arrange an outing to a place like this. With you so recently bereaved?’
Goodness. It wasn’t like a man to consider a woman’s feelings.
‘I can clearly recall how it felt to lose my own mother,’ he said, when she carried on gaping at him in complete shock. ‘I was only about...well, a similar age to the floury boy of yesterday...’
‘You mean Will?’ The mention of her favourite cousin brought a smile to her lips without her having to make any effort whatever.
Lord Havelock smiled in response, looking very relieved. It was a warning that she really ought to make