them with jovial ruthlessness. The elderly and the married remained seated on the sofas, the unmarried were chivvied into the middle of the room. ‘You begin, Miss Gladman. Chose your victim.’
Miss Gladman went pink, but turned readily enough to Mr Steading on her right. ‘What is your worst nightmare, sir?’
‘Playing round games where pretty young ladies put me to the blush,’ he said without hesitation.
‘That is a fib, sir,’ Miss Gladman said severely. ‘What forfeit shall I impose?’
The unfortunate Mr Steading was forced to stand in the middle of the circle and sing all the verses of God Save the King in his wavering tenor, but he was greeted with loud applause when he sat down.
‘My turn again,’ Miss Gladman announced, looking to her other side. ‘Lord Hastings, what was your childhood nickname?’
‘Podger,’ the reed-thin viscount replied. ‘Believe it or not, I was a fat child.’ That was accepted as being so unflattering it had to be the truth and Lord Hastings chose the next person to question. ‘Lady Amelia, what characteristic do you admire most in a man?’
She swept the room with her wide blue gaze, lingering for a moment on Avery’s face. ‘Why, integrity, of course.’
Laura would have liked to challenge that. Wealth and status would have been nearer to the mark, but there was no way of disputing the answer.
‘Now, who shall I...? Lady Laura, what do you desire most in the world?’
Taken off guard, Laura realised she did not have a believable, safe answer. What do I want, most of all? Why, Alice, of course. And she would do anything to have her, she realised. Anything. A murmuring in the room jerked her attention back and she found that she was staring at Avery and that everyone was staring at her.
‘Something that was stolen from me years ago,’ she answered directly to Amelia.
‘Whatever was it?’ Amelia demanded. Laura realised she must have hoped the answer was a gentleman, and, probably, Avery, which would have produced blushing confusion and no answer.
‘I will not say.’
‘Forfeit, forfeit!’ one of Amelia’s friends called. ‘What shall it be?’
‘A poem,’ Avery said. ‘We cannot expect Lady Laura to exert herself, not with an injury to her ankle.’
Amelia pouted. I expect she hoped for something embarrassing, Laura thought. ‘I will recite a verse a young friend of mine wrote,’ she said. ‘I wish I was a little star, Right up in the sky very far. I would twinkle with all my might, And make everybody’s dreams come right.’ She finished off the piece of doggerel with a flourish, amidst general laughter and applause. From across the room Avery’s mouth curved into a smile. Alice had written that out in her very best handwriting and drawn stars at the top and a sleeping figure of her papa at the bottom and Laura had helped her paint it.
‘How charming,’ Lady Amelia murmured.
I shall have to be careful, Laura thought. She is so suspicious of Avery and me. The slightest indiscretion and she will make a scandal.
Make a scandal... What do I desire most in all the world? Alice. And how can I have her without any scandal that would risk hurting her? By marrying Avery, of course.
The thought was so shocking she almost gasped aloud. The game continued, but she heard none of it, laughing and clapping when the others did, joining in the choruses of disbelief like an automaton. Avery desired her physically, but that was all. For some reason she could not fathom, he held her in implacable dislike. Yet he had liked her when she had been Mrs Jordan. If she was living with him, surely she could convince him that his prejudice against Laura Campion was misguided and that he could find again what he had enjoyed in the company of Caroline Jordan?
Could she simply ask him to marry her? No, he had made it clear that the only union he could imagine with her was an irregular connection, so she would have to entrap him. Laura shifted uncomfortably on her seat at the thought. It was an unpleasant word, entrap. It was an unscrupulous thing to do.
But she was not contemplating it for material gain, to secure a title or wealth. There were three people in this: herself, Alice and Avery. She would be happy if she had Alice. Alice would be happy with a stepmama she liked and Avery, surely, would be content when he saw Alice was well looked after and flourishing. And Laura would make him a good wife. She had social poise, languages, experience in running both a large household and a country estate. She had given birth once, so there was a good chance she would give him an heir.
He was not in love with anyone else, for his feelings for Lady Amelia were surely only the result of a practical assessment of her suitability. But can I make him happy? She wanted to, she realised. She wanted Avery to be happy. She wanted him to love her and to feel loved in return. And I can do that. I can love him. I am more than halfway there already if I could only get beyond the fear for Alice and my anger at his mistrust of me.
Yes, Laura concluded, trying to put aside that tantalising fantasy of love, marriage to her would be at least as satisfactory for Avery as marriage to any of the other women assembled here for his choosing. He would be angry with her, any red-blooded man would be, but he would simply have to get over it for Alice’s sake, she told her conscience firmly. It was still making uneasy sounds, but she tried to ignore them. The discomforting thought intruded that the last time she had ignored her conscience she had ended up in bed with Piers and, ultimately, become pregnant.
She glanced across at Avery, her resolution shaken. She had liked him, admired him. He was, for all his faults, a good man and she was thinking about seducing him into matrimony. Then she saw Lady Amelia watching him and thought about her plans for Alice. I want and need him, she admitted to herself. Alice needs a mother who will love her without condition, without reservation.
‘Are you cold, Lady Laura? Or in pain?’ Lord Mellham was at her elbow. ‘You shivered.’
‘I am a trifle tired, that is all. Would you be very kind and ask a footman to fetch my maidservant so she can help me to my room?’
‘I could carry you,’ he offered with a grin.
‘I think I have been carried enough for one day, thank you, Lord Mellham.’
* * *
Even so, when Mab came in he helped Laura to her feet and supported her across the room to the door, watched with sympathetic interest by the company and by Avery, whose thoughts might have been a complete blank, judging by the absence of expression on his face.
Avery watched Laura limping from the room on Mellham’s arm, smiling up at him, leaning so that when he looked down it was at her white shoulders and the lace that scarcely veiled the swell of her breasts. She had made the man blush over dinner last night, although he was showing no discomfort in her company now. After that she had been whispering with that fribble Bishopstoke, as thick as inkle-weavers, the pair of them. And later she’d been giving Hillinger the benefit of that other low-cut gown at close quarters, the hussy.
It seemed that Scandal’s Virgin had decided to retire from the field on the arm of an eligible husband. The bachelors that Godmama had invited to give some cover for his search for a bride were providing Laura with an excellent choice of gentlemen, although she was going to have to find one who was so blinded by love or lust that he either did not notice,
