men, fools that they were, pandered to them, just as Lawrence had done. It hadn’t made Constance love him any the more; Alex suspected she despised him. In his opinion, it was the miserable state of Lawrence’s marriage and his wife’s inability to give him a child that had led to his brother’s heavy drinking and ultimate demise. Alex was determined not to let that happen to him.
He had come home after Waterloo to find his mother in mourning, his sister-in-law run off with her latest lover and the estate struggling to pay its way. But he’d be damned if he’d marry for money, which was what the family lawyer had suggested. He had taken over Lawrence’s mantle, but he was determined not to fall into the same trap his brother had. If he ever married, and he was certainly in no hurry to do so, he would need to be very, very sure…
‘So, what are you doing in London?’ Maddox’s voice interrupted his reverie.
‘I had business to transact.’ He had to bring the Buregreen estate back into profit, but, since his father had never allowed him to have anything to do with the business of running it, he knew next to nothing about how it could be done and he needed the help of a good steward. He had come to London with that in mind and had already engaged a man who had been recommended by his lawyer. ‘And my mother had an idea a little town bronze…’ he added with a wry smile.
‘Then why not come to Almack’s with me on Wednesday? It’s the place to be seen if you’re hanging out for a wife. We could take a peep at Sir George’s stepdaughter.’
‘I am not hanging out for a wife. I would as lief not marry at all.’
‘But every man must marry,’ Maddox said. ‘Any man of substance, that is. It is his duty to find himself a wife to carry on the line, someone from a good family of equal rank and with an impeccable reputation. That is of prime importance. Of course, it helps if she is also decorative…’
‘Duty?’ Alex queried. ‘I did my duty as a soldier.’
‘So you may have done, but there are other kinds of duty, don’t you know? What would happen to all the great country estates if there were no sons to inherit? They’d go to distant cousins, that’s what, and eventually be dispersed. Who would run the country then, eh? Mushrooms, jumped-up cits, men without an ounce of breeding. It wouldn’t do, my dear fellow, it simply would not do.’
Alex had heard that argument from both his mother and aunt since he had come back from Waterloo. ‘I did not expect to inherit, I wasn’t brought up even to think of it. And what I’ve seen of marriage does not dispose me towards venturing into it.’
‘You sound as if you have been bitten, my friend.’
‘Not me, but I have seen what can happen. Misery for both.’
‘So you won’t come to Almack’s?’
‘The only time I went to Almack’s, back in my green days, I hated it. It was too stiff and formal, all that dressing up in breeches and silk stockings and not a decent drink to be had. Besides, I can’t. I have a prior engagement. I promised my aunt I would accompany her to Lady Melbourne’s soirée.’
Maddox laughed. ‘That sounds as exciting as drinking ditchwater.’
‘A promise is a promise and it will be preferable to standing in line with a crowd of young hopefuls, dressed like a popinjay, hoping to be noticed. I am too long in the tooth for that. Besides, the chits who are paraded at places like Almack’s are too young and silly for my taste. And if you have some crazy notion to throw me in the way of Sir George’s stepdaughter, then I advise you to put it from your mind. I have no intention of shackling myself to someone I have never met and do not know just to give you something to dine on for the rest of the Season. It would be the worst possible start to a marriage.’
‘I wasn’t thinking anything of the sort. It was curiosity, that’s all, just to see what she’s like. Why, a man would be a fool to jump into matrimony because he felt sorry for the girl. She might turn out to be a real harridan.’
‘Quite,’ Alex said, thinking of Lawrence. ‘Away with you to your bed, young ’un. I am going home to mine.’
They parted on the corner of Mount Street and Alex strode down its length to the house on the corner of Park Lane where he was staying with his aunt, Lady Augusta Banks. He was very fond of his aunt, but he knew she had been asked by his mother to help him find a wife and she was determined to discharge that commission to the best of her ability. Already she was planning to put him in the way of every unmarried young lady in town, but searching for a life partner in that cold-blooded way went so much against the grain he had not been co-operative. It was why he had gone to Brooks’s, in order to escape yet another soirée, although he had promised to escort her to Lady Melbourne’s. There were often men in government in her ladyship’s drawing room and he had a mind to sound some of them out about a pet project of his.
He wanted to do something to help discharged soldiers coming home from the war without employment, which had been on his mind even before he became the new Viscount. It was employment they needed, not charity, and his idea was to set up workshops and small manufactories and provide them with tools so that they could make their own way and provide for their families. He could not do it alone, which was why he wanted to talk to men with influence. If he took his place in the Lords, he might be able to make a noise about the scandalous way the men had been treated. They were in dire need, which was something that could not be said of a chit worth thirty thousand a year.
Nevertheless, it was a long time before he could sleep, though he blamed it on the noises in the street from the increased morning’s traffic in the road outside his window as the business of the day progressed.
Chapter One
Lady Emma Lindsay looked at herself in the mirror, not out of vanity but simply to assure herself that the gown she wore would pass muster. It was made in pale blue mousseline de soie, with tiny puffed sleeves, a deep boat-shaped neckline edged with a darker blue satin ribbon, and a high waist marked by the same ribbon. The skirt stopped just short of her feet and revealed satin slippers. Her maid had arranged her dark brown hair à la Grecque, held with a coronet of tiny silk flowers.
‘There! You look very fine indeed,’ Rose said, as she helped Emma on with her velvet cape, handed her a fan decorated with a woodland scene and stood back, smiling at the picture she had helped to create. ‘You will have all the eligibles falling at your feet.’
‘Too late, Rose, too late. I shall soon be one and twenty, almost at my last prayers.’ She was unusually tall, but then all the Lindsays were tall, so it was hardly surprising. What with her height and her age, she despaired of finding a husband, at least not one she could love for himself and who would love her for the woman she was. And that was the problem. It was not finding a husband because her dowry was enough to ensure that, but finding the one to set her heart beating faster. Did such a man exist?
Mama said love did not come into it and she should not consider it, that a fortune and a pleasant temperament were of far more use, which was strange considering Mama had married again less than two years after losing her first husband and Sir George Tasker had neither a fortune nor a pleasant temperament.
Emma had been preparing for her come-out in the spring of 1813, when her father, Earl Lindsay, died suddenly and threw her into deep mourning. Naturally her trip to London had to be cancelled, but in truth Emma, grieving for her dear papa, had been in no mood for frivolity and had been content to spend her time quietly in the country at Pinehill, the family home in Hertfordshire. But one morning a year later, woken by bird song and