“We must make sure then she doesn’t retire so early tonight.”

“We’ll do that,” said Lady Kingsley. “And I can invent a reason to keep her with me for a while even after the ladies retire, but not for too long.”

Miss Kingsley reappeared at the top of the stairs. “Lord Vere, could I borrow my aunt a moment? Miss Melbourne simply can’t decide what to wear today.”

“You do what you can and I will take care of the rest,” Vere said with just enough volume for Lady Kingsley to hear. Then he raised his voice. “Of course you may have her, Miss Kingsley. Here, she is all yours, with my compliments.”

It was a good talk, about the places in London and the surrounding countryside where Lord Frederick liked to paint. But it was not an exciting conversation. Not that Elissande was overly familiar with exciting conversations, but still she felt the missing spark.

Lord Frederick did not look at her as if he were a hungry head of cattle and she a fresh, fragrant bale of hay—and goodness, why was she thinking in terms of animal husbandry when she’d never done so in her whole life? Lord Frederick was polite and obliging, but he betrayed no sign of a preference for Elissande.

She blamed it all on Lord Vere, especially when he returned much too soon, still wearing the same egg-stained garments. His endless discourse on mutton sheep must have drained all life and verve from Lord Frederick, who’d had to listen to him for God only knew how many thousands upon thousands of hours over a lifetime.

“Penny, you forgot to change your trousers,” Lord Frederick pointed out.

“So that’s what!” Lord Vere cried. “I got up to my room and for the life of me I couldn’t remember why I went. Bother.”

Idiot!

“Perhaps you should give it another try?” Elissande suggested, curving her lips and wishing that smiles were arrows. Lord Vere would be more perforated than St. Sebastian.

“Oh, no use now. I’ll just forget again,” Lord Vere dismissed her idea breezily. “I might as well wait until I change for the shooting. And how is the shooting here, by the by, Miss Edgerton?”

Was he looking at her bosom again? His eyes certainly did not meet hers. “I’m afraid we don’t keep a game park, sir.”

His eyes remained precisely where they were. “No? Hmm, I suppose we shall have to play tennis.”

“I’m sorry, but we lack a tennis court also.”

“How about archery? I’m not so terrible as an archer.”

Beside him Lord Frederick squirmed.

“With my aunt’s health and my uncle’s consideration of it, we do not have anything that would produce noise or excitement about. Perhaps you’d like to go for a walk instead, my lord?”

“I already went for a walk before breakfast—do you not remember, Miss Edgerton? I suppose I could settle for a game of croquet instead.”

How did he do that? How did he carry on a conversation with her while his eyeballs were firmly ensconced between her breasts?

“I apologize. We do not have the necessary equipment for croquet.”

“Well,” said Lord Vere, finally exasperated enough to return his gaze to her face. “What is it you do around here then, Miss Edgerton?”

She sent him a smile that should have damaged his vision. “I look after my aunt, sir.”

“That is exceedingly admirable, but unbearably tedious, is it not, with no amusements nearby whatsoever?”

She managed to sustain her smile but not without putting some effort into it. How he irked her, like a rock in her shoe.

“Tedium does not enter into it at a—”

She stopped. The dreaded sound: a carriage arriving. “Excuse me,” she said, rising.

“Are you expecting someone?” Lord Vere followed her to the window.

She said nothing, wordless with relief. It was not her uncle. She did not recognize the carriage. She also did not recognize the middle-aged, sharp-featured woman in a blue traveling dress who exited the carriage.

“Is that not Lady Avery, Freddie?” said Lord Vere.

Lord Frederick came swiftly to the window. Lord Vere yielded his place.

“What is she doing here?” Lord Frederick growled. He swore under his breath, then remembered himself and turned to Elissande. “I beg your pardon, Miss Edgerton. I did not mean to speak so rudely of your caller.”

What a perfect gentleman he was. “You may speak as rudely of her as you wish, sir. I assure you I have never met this particular caller.”

“Oh, look. She has brought luggage,” said Lord Vere, unperturbed. “Think she’s come to stay?”

Lord Frederick smacked his palm against the windowsill, then again begged Elissande’s pardon.

“It’s quite all right,” said Elissande. “But who is she?”

Lady Avery was a Gossip.

Elissande was not entirely unfamiliar with the idea of a gossip: Mrs. Webster in the village had been one, carrying on about the butcher’s wife or the vicar’s new gardener. But Lady Avery regarded herself quite above such provincial rumormongers as Mrs. Webster: She was a woman of the world with entrée to the very best Society.

With her arrival, Lord Frederick promptly disappeared. To Elissande’s mounting despair.

To be sure, she had begun to despair even before Lady Avery’s unannounced arrival: Lord Frederick was in no rush to appropriate her hand, while her time, already as limited as Lord Vere’s intelligence, shrank second by rapid second.

Lady Avery did not help matters by immediately setting out to grill Elissande on the provenance of the Douglases, and refusing to believe that Elissande in truth knew nothing of her uncle’s origins and only a little more of her aunt’s.

“The West Cheshire Douglases?” Lady Avery asked. “Surely you must be related to the West Cheshire Douglases.”

Was Lady Avery a student of Lord Vere’s particular school of genealogical exploration?

“No, ma’am. I’ve never heard of them.”

Lady Avery harrumphed. “Most irregular. Who are your family then? The Edgertons of Derbyshire?”

Well, at least this she did know. “The Edgertons of Cumberland, ma’am.”

Lady Avery’s brows knitted. “The Edgertons of Cumberland. The Edgertons of Cumberland,” she mumbled. Then, triumphantly, she cried, “You are the late Sir Cecil Edgerton’s granddaughter, aren’t you? By his youngest son?”

Elissande stared at her in shock. She’d believed Lady Avery’s expertise in gossip to be about as valid as Lord Vere’s knowledge of animal husbandry. “Sir Cecil was my grandfather, yes.”

“Ah, I thought so,” said Lady Avery, satisfied. “Quite the scandal when your father ran off with your mother. And such an unhappy end, both of them dead within three years.”

Lady Kingsley, Miss Kingsley, and Miss Beauchamp entered the drawing room. Elissande was suddenly as alarmed as Lord Frederick must have been. Her parents’ story had not only been tragic, but also not fit for polite company, as her uncle had repeatedly impressed upon her. What if Lady Avery decided to disclose the less savory details to everyone present?

“Lord Vere says you frightened his brother away, Lady Avery,” Miss Kingsley called out cheerfully.

“Nonsense. I’ve already extracted everything out of Lord Frederick during the Season. He has nothing to fear from me at the present.”

Miss Beauchamp sat down next to Lady Avery. “Oh, do tell, dear lady. What did you extract from Lord Frederick?”

“Well…” Lady Avery drew out that syllable for a good three seconds, obviously relishing her role as the dispenser of juicy tidbits. “He did see her in June, when she was in town to marry off that American heiress, Miss Van der Waals. And you would not believe this, but they have also met in Paris, in Nice, and in New York.”

Everyone looked shocked, including, Elissande imagined, herself. Who was this “she”?