From the very first, her heart had gone out to the lonely young lieutenant, serving alongside her brother. Fancy being in a strange country, fighting battles, and nobody from home writing to him!
Later, as she had got to know him better through Rick’s accounts of his exploits, she began to think there was no finer or braver officer than Lieutenant Monty, saving her own dear Rick, of course. She was genuinely pleased for him when he got made up to captain and asked Rick to tell him so. In his turn, he had sent her, via Rick, his condolences when first her mother and then her stepfather had died.
But then, not long after making major, he had sold out. And for the past few months, she had heard no news of him at all.
‘Yes, he is in town, and a good job too. Entirely thanks to him we are enjoying this outing. Told me exactly how to turn your aunt up sweet—you know, sending round a note, applying in writing for permission to take you out—oh, how to do everything in form! Capital fellow, Monty!’
‘I do wish I could meet him—’ she sighed ‘—though I don’t suppose Uncle Herriard will think him a suitable person for me to associate with. Not if he is one of your friends.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Rick darted her a sideways look. ‘He comes from a very respectable family. And he has money. Dash it, you must be able to tell that at least from the pair harnessed to this rig!’
She observed the paces of the high-stepping matched bays for several minutes before venturing, ‘I don’t suppose he will be anything like I have imagined him anyway. I am bound to be disappointed.’
He had probably run to fat now that he was not on active service. Not that she would hold that against him. No, she would prefer him not to be as handsome as she had always imagined him. Handsome men, her mother had warned her over and over again, were not to be trusted. Particularly if they had charming ways about them. A girl could easily be deceived by such a man. Her own father was a case in point. By the time Amanda had become a widow, she told Imogen, she had learned it was better for a woman to look for the worth of a man in his character, not in his appearance. Hugh Bredon may have been much older than her, and somewhat dull, but he would never have dreamed of breaking a woman’s heart just for sport.
‘You won’t be disappointed by Monty,’ Rick assured her, his grin spreading. ‘Tell you what, why don’t I see if I can get up a party with him and some of the other officers kicking their heels in town this week. Do you think your uncle would permit you to come to the theatre with us? Monty’s family has a private box.’
‘Oh, I do hope so. That sounds wonderful!’ An evening spent with Rick’s friends! For a few hours, she might be able to be herself, rather than her aunt’s prim and proper creation.
‘I will see what I can do then. Hope I am not speaking out of turn,’ he said, his shoulders stiffening, ‘but it does not seem to me as though you are very happy, living with your aunt and uncle.’
Imogen sighed again. ‘Their one ambition is to see me married well. But because of the scandal attached to my name, I am not getting many invitations to the kind of places where I might meet the sort of man they would think eligible. And when I do go, I nearly always manage to disgrace myself.’
‘You? I cannot believe that!’
‘Oh, Rick, it is kind of you to say that. But it is the truth. Why, only last week, I knocked a full glass of champagne all over a viscount.’
‘Well, that’s hardly disgraceful behaviour,’ Rick objected. ‘Anyone can have an accident.’
Imogen wanted to hug him for dismissing the incident so lightly. But she needed to make him understand why it had preyed on her mind so much.
‘Yes, but the viscount was furious with me for ruining his splendid waistcoat. He…he swore at me, and stormed out of the ballroom, which in turn made the hostess angry too. He was a much sought after guest, while I am just…’
‘Popinjay!’ Rick interrupted. ‘He cannot be much of a man if he gets in a miff over a little bit of drink spilled on his clothing. And what kind of blackguard swears at a female, I should like to know!’
‘Quite,’ Midge mused. She had always accepted she had been at fault in spilling the drink, but his behaviour had certainly not been that of a true gentleman.
She began to feel a little better about herself and sat up straighter She might be a sad romp, but Viscount Mildenhall had the most abominable manners. But just because he was wealthy and titled, nobody would call him to book for his boorish behaviour.
She knew that for a fact. In the days since what she thought of as the champagne incident, she had glimpsed him at one or two functions. He was always surrounded by a court of fawning females and obsequious males. If ever he caught her looking at him, his face would twist into an expression of contempt that made something inside her shrivel.
Well, she was not going to waste another minute trying to work out how she could counteract the viscount’s mistaken impression of her. Viscount Mildenhall was exactly the kind of man her mother had warned her about. Too handsome by half. Full of his own consequence. And to be avoided like the plague.
Men like Rick or Monty would never bother about getting a little bit of champagne on their clothes. Why, they must have been covered in mud, and blood, and worse, time without number. And men like that, real men who had fought and bled and starved to serve their country would not go strutting about a ballroom rigged out in satins and silks, either, looking down their noses at lesser mortals with expressions of disdainful boredom.
‘Well, I will only have to endure a few more months in town, anyway,’ she confided. ‘I will only be having one Season. It is pointless for my aunt and uncle to persist in trying to marry me off. Even apart from the scandal attached to my name, I am a bit long in the tooth to attract a husband.’
At five and twenty, she was long past the age most girls had their first Season. No wonder certain people assumed she was so desperate she would deliberately knock a drink over an eligible man just to attract his attention.
‘Nonsense!’ scoffed Rick. ‘You are just a slip of a girl.’
‘To you, perhaps, but not to men on the hunt for a bride. Anyway, enough talk about marriage. I will probably never get married. It was not my first plan, you know. I told Nick I would rather look for work. And that is what I shall do.’
‘You would rather work than marry?’ said Rick, aghast. ‘And what as, might I ask?’
‘Oh, as a governess, I expect. I…I like children.’
‘Yes, but you should have your own, not get paid to mind somebody else’s! Midge, have you got some aversion to marrying? Have your mother’s experiences frightened you that much?’
Imogen wondered if that could be true. It struck her that whenever the question of her having a Season had cropped up, she had always declared she would rather stay at the Brambles and look after her family. But after a moment’s reflection, she shook her head. ‘It is not marriage itself I am afraid of. Mama was content with Hugh. As content as she could have been with anyone, after what she went through.’
Imogen sighed. Amanda had been grateful, all her life, for Hugh’s willingness to offer her the protection of his name, in return for a generous settlement from Grandpapa Herriard. She always felt that he had rescued her
