“You deserve their attentions. You are a lovely young woman.”

She was, I observed with a pang. I’d lost Gabriella when she’d been only two years old, a chatty, adorable girl who ran fearlessly about army camps or our tiny backstreet house in Paris.

I’d not seen her from the day her mother took her and fled until Gabriella had returned to London last year, a young lady of seventeen. She was grown now, and beautiful, but I still saw in her restlessness the quick mind and curiosity of that baby girl.

Gabriella blushed under my praise, made herself cease fluttering, and came to sit beside me.

“Father, I know that the attentions to me—the dancing instructions, the music masters, the endless lessons on how to address everyone from a scullery maid to a duchess—are to make me presentable enough to gain the favor of a gentleman once I am out. I am to marry whoever that gentleman is.” Gabriella lost her delight. “Only, I am not certain I wish to marry. Not yet. I am very young.”

Ladies in Donata’s and Aline’s circles wed at Gabriella’s age and younger. I knew both women worried that if Gabriella did not “take” this Season, she might be left on the shelf.

The ladies and gentlemen not in the aristocratic circle, however, such as Gabriella and myself, might wait a bit longer for matrimony. A prudent father in the country gentry would seek the very best match for his daughter, even if it took some years.

I tried to sound comforting. “Do not let my wife and Lady Aline goad you into a marriage you do not want. Marriage is for life. Be careful whom you choose.”

My words brought back her eagerness. “Oh, I shall, sir. I have no wish to run headlong into wedlock with a spindly gentleman with no chin, a hawk nose, and a sour disposition simply because he is the Baron of Nonesuch.”

I could hear Lady Aline’s decided opinions ringing in her words. Gabriella admired Lady Aline—a determined spinster—very much.

“There,” I said. “You see? You have a sensible regard for these things.”

Her face fell again, her moods as changeable as the wind. “But I hate to disappoint Lady Donata. She has been so kind to me.”

Donata had devoted herself to Gabriella’s come-out with the zeal of a Methodist trying to convert the masses of London from a street corner. I did not know whether Donata was enjoying herself because she might never have a daughter of her own to indulge, or because her first marriage had been so unhappy that she wished to guide Gabriella down a different path.

Whatever the reason, Donata had certainly thrown herself into the task.

“Donata only wants to see you content,” I said. “She would be the last person to wish you married to the Baron of Nonesuch, unless he made you very happy indeed.”

The smile returned. “Well, that would be a relief. She does give me reams of information every day on this gentleman or that, who his family is, why he’d make a good husband. No one too lofty, mind. Apparently, I am quite the nobody.”

I raised my brows. “Donata said that?”

“She does not have to. Pedigree is all important in this endeavor, I believe. While I am a gentleman’s daughter, I have neither title nor vast wealth to make me much of a catch.”

Donata had already explained this to me, somewhat apologetically; Aline with her brisk no-nonsense approach to life.

“They wish to marry you off, because that is what ladies of their acquaintance do,” I said. “A woman either marries and becomes a grand hostess or does not marry at all and lives quietly in a back room. But neither path must be for you. I am surprised at Lady Aline—she is quite proud of avoiding the married state herself.”

“But she is the sister of a marquis, has much wealth, and many connections,” Gabriella said. “I asked her, point blank, why she wishes me to marry, when she so adamantly did not. Things are different for her, she said. She has the leisure to never marry if she does not want to. Her father saw to that by settling a large amount of money on her.”

Something I could never do. “Even so,” I said. “Do not marry to please Donata and Lady Aline. It is a step to be considered carefully.”

Gabriella leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek. “You are a wise man, sir. I will heed your words.”

Again restless, she leapt up, ready to run from the room. Gabriella seemed to remember, at the last moment, that a young lady should not dash away from her elders until she had leave, and she hovered at the door.

I had risen from my seat when she hopped up, and I gave her a nod. “Go on, then.”

Another sunny smile, a hurried curtsey, and Gabriella whirled from the room, her footsteps rapid on the stairs.

She left me with a lighter heart. I loved her so.

***

I did not hear from Grenville all day. Presumably he had not returned home—I felt certain he’d have sent a rapidly penned note, or turned up on the doorstep himself, when he learned of the corpse in his wine cellar.

I did journey to the cavalrymen’s club in St. James’s after I had told Donata of my failed quest to find the surgeon, to inquire about surgeons there. The elderly colonels I’d found only looked at me blankly, and I left disappointed.

That evening, I would attend the opera at Covent Garden with my wife and Lady Aline. As Gabriella was not officially “out” yet, she would remain home, which I thought ridiculous, but Donata was firm. Last year, when Gabriella had visited, we’d taken her about, but at the time, she’d been considered more of a tourist and a child than a young lady being readied to be presented to the ton.

I would be glad when Gabriella’s come-out ball, planned for next week, was done with, and we could all breathe out again.

We traveled to Covent Garden in Lady Aline’s coach, that tall, white-haired lady saying she felt honored to have such a handsome gentleman escorting her. She thoroughly approved of me, she said, since I was not tiresome and actually knew how to be polite to a woman of her advanced years. Donata only looked on, pleased that Aline, one of her mother’s closest friends, and I got along so well.

Donata’s box was lavish, and as usual, full of guests. At the interval, plenty of ladies and gentlemen visited to gossip away. Donata, in one of her extravagant headdresses, sat happily in the middle of it.

I slipped out, seeking a moment away from the chaos. Donata saw me go, and understood. She was in her element here, but knew I was not.

Under the colonnade outside, hopeful ladies of the demimonde smiled at me, but they recognized me and knew I was a devoted husband. That did not prevent them teasing me, however.

“Now then, Captain,” one young lady said, slipping her hand into the crook of my arm. “Walk with me a bit, will you?”

She was several steps above a street girl—the kind Black Nancy had been. She reminded me more of Marianne Simmons, an actress who had taken up with protectors for survival.

This young woman had black hair and blue eyes, wore plenty of rouge on cheeks and on her bosom, and dressed in an elegant gown of blue lace and silk worthy of Donata.

“I emerged only to take the air,” I said to her. “Nothing else. I would rather walk alone.”

“No, you would not,” she said, steering me from the piazza with a surprisingly strong hand.

“If you are dragging me off to rob me, I must warn you I have very little,” I said. “My watch fob was given to me by my wife, so I must ask to keep that, though you are welcome to the few coins in my pocket. And to my handkerchief. My valet is quite adamant about keeping me in linens.”

The young woman laughed. “Ain’t you a one? I wish you weren’t so interested in your wife, sir. You’d be lively. Perhaps when you grow tired of married life, you’ll seek me?”

“If my wife shows me the door for hurrying away with you now, I will be back in my rooms above a bakeshop and hopelessly poor again,” I said. “Shall you risk it?”