Jack’s disgust was back. “After a year of looking, I can truthfully inform you that not one candidate made me look twice. They’re all so alike—young, sweet and innocent—and quite helpless. I need a woman with backbone and all I can find are clinging vines.”
Silence filled the room as they both considered his words.
“Sure Lenore can’t help?” Harry eventually asked.
Jack shook his head. “Eversleigh, damn his hide, was emphatic. His duchess will not be gracing the ton’s ballrooms this Season. Instead,” Jack continued, his eyes gently twinkling, “she’ll be at home at Eversleigh, tending to her firstborn and his father, while increasing under Jason’s watchful eye. Meanwhile, to use his words, the ton can go hang.”
Harry laughed. “So she’s really indisposed? I thought that business about morning sickness was an excuse Jason drummed up to whisk her out of the crowd.”
Grimacing, Jack shook his head. “All too true, I fear. Which means that, having ploughed through last Season without her aid, while she was busy presenting Eversleigh with his heir, and frittered away the Little Season, too, I’m doomed to struggle on alone through the shoals of the upcoming Season, with a storm lowering on the horizon and no safe harbour in sight.”
“A grim prospect,” Harry acknowledged.
Jack grunted, his mind engrossed once more with marriage. For years, the very word had made him shudder. Now, with the ordeal before him, having spent hours contemplating the state, he was no longer so dismissive, so uninterested. It was his sister’s marriage that had altered his view. Hardly the conventional image, for while Jason had married Lenore for a host of eminently conventional reasons, the depth of their love was apparent to all. The fond light that glowed in Jason’s grey eyes whenever he looked at his wife had assured Jack that all was well with his sister—even more than Lenore’s transparent joy. Any notion that his brother-in-law, ex-rake, for years the bane of the dragons, was anything other than besotted with his wife was simply not sustainable in the face of his rampant protectiveness.
Grimacing at the dying fire, Jack reached for the poker. He was not at all sure he wanted to be held in thrall as Jason, apparently without a qualm, was, yet he was very sure he wanted what his brother-in-law had found. A woman who loved him. And whom he loved in return.
Harry sighed, then stood and stretched. “Time to go up. You’d best come, too—no sense in not looking your best for Lady Asfordby’s young ladies.”
With a look of pained resignation, Jack rose. As they crossed to the sideboard to set down their glasses, he shook his head. “I’m tempted to foist the whole business back in Lady Luck’s lap. She handed us this fortune—it’s only fair she provide the solution to the problem she’s created.”
“Ah, but Lady Luck is a fickle female.” Harry turned as he opened the door. “Are you sure you want to gamble the rest of your life on her whim?”
Jack’s expression was grim. “I’m already gambling with the rest of my life. This damned business is no different from the turn of a card or the toss of a die.”
“Except that if you don’t like the stake, you can decline to wager.”
“True, but finding the right stake is my problem.”
As they emerged into the dark hall and took possession of the candles left waiting, Jack continued, “My one, particular golden head—it’s the least Lady Luck can do, to find her and send her my way.”
Harry shot him an amused glance. “Tempting Fate, brother mine?”
“Challenging Fate,” Jack replied.
* * *
WITH A SATISFYING SWIRL of her silk skirts, Sophia Winterton completed the last turn of the Roger de Coverley and sank gracefully into a smiling curtsy. About her, the ballroom of Asfordby Grange was full to the seams with a rainbow-hued throng. Perfume wafted on the errant breezes admitted through the main doors propped wide in the middle of the long room. Candlelight flickered, sheening over artful curls and glittering in the jewels displayed by the dowagers lining the wall.
“A positive pleasure, my dear Miss Winterton.” Puffing slightly, Mr. Bantcombe bowed over her hand. “A most invigorating measure.”
Rising, Sophie smiled. “Indeed, sir.” A quick glance around located her young cousin, Clarissa, ingenuously thanking a youthful swain some yards away. With soft blue eyes and alabaster skin, her pale blond ringlets framing a heart-shaped face, Clarissa was a hauntingly lovely vision. Just now, all but quivering with excitement, she forcibly reminded Sophie of a highly strung filly being paraded for the very first time.
With an inward smile, Sophie gave her hand and her attention to Mr. Bantcombe. “Lady Asfordby’s balls may not be as large as the assemblies in Melton, but to my mind, they’re infinitely superior.”
“Naturally, naturally.” Mr. Bantcombe was still short of breath. “Her ladyship is of first consequence hereabouts—and she always takes great pains to exclude the hoi polloi. None of the park-saunterers and half-pay officers who follow the pack will be here tonight.”
Sophie squelched a wayward thought to the effect that she would not really mind one or two half-pay officers, just to lend colour to the ranks of the gentlemen she had come to know suffocatingly well over the last six months. She pinned a bright smile to her lips. “Shall we return to my aunt, sir?”
She had joined her aunt and uncle’s Leicestershire household last September, after waving her father, Sir Humphrey Winterton, eminent paleontologist, a fond farewell. Departing on an expedition of unknown duration, to Syria, so she believed, her father had entrusted her to the care of her late mother’s only sister, Lucilla Webb, an arrangement that met with Sophie’s unqualified approval. The large and happy household inhabiting Webb Park, a huge rambling mansion some miles from Asfordby Grange, was a far cry from the quiet, studious existence she had endured at the side of her grieving and taciturn sire ever since her mother’s death four years ago.
Her aunt, a slender, ethereal figure draped in cerulean-blue silk, hair that still retained much of its silvery blond glory piled high on her elegant head, was gracefully adorning one of the chaises lining the wall, in earnest conversation with Mrs. Haverbuck, another of the local ladies.
“Ah, there you are, Sophie.” Lucilla Webb turned as, with a smile and a nod for Sophie, Mrs. Haverbuck departed. “I’m positively in awe of your energy, my dear.” Pale blue eyes took in Mr. Bantcombe’s florid face. “Dear Mr. Bantcombe, perhaps you could fetch me a cool drink?”
Mr. Bantcombe readily agreed. Bowing to Sophie, he departed.
“Poor man,” Lucilla said as he disappeared into the crowd. “Obviously not up to your standard, Sophie dear.”
Sophie’s lips twitched.
“Still,” Lucilla mused in her gentle airy voice, “I’m truly glad to see you so enjoying yourself, my dear. You look very well, even if ’tis I who say so. The ton will take to you—and you to it, I make no doubt.”
“Indeed the ton will, if your aunt and I and all your mother’s old friends have anything to say about it!”
Both Sophie and Lucilla turned as, with much rustling to stiff bombazine, Lady Entwhistle took Mrs. Haverbuck’s place.
“Just
