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rubbing his twitching nose with the back of one hand, making him twice as likely to sneeze. ‘But you’ve just got to see...’
‘Come on,’ said Mary, taking his dough-encrusted hand in hers. ‘You can show me whatever it is that’s got you so fired up. And later, when these visitors have gone, I’m sure your mama will want to see, as well.’
The boy glared at him, then at Morgan, then turned his floury little nose up at his sisters, as though roundly condemning them for considering the state of their clothes more important than whatever exciting development had occurred in the kitchens.
‘Oh, thank you, Mary,’ said her aunt.
‘Not at all,’ she replied, with what looked suspiciously like heartfelt relief.
* * *
‘Did you see that?’ he asked Morgan later, as they were going down the front steps. ‘Her reaction to the floury boy?’
‘Indeed I did,’ he replied. ‘Another item on your list ticked off. Or two, perhaps. She’s not totally selfish and appears to be kind to children. Unless...well, I suppose she could have been using the child to make her escape.’
‘Blast.’ He peered out from under the front porch into the teeming rain. ‘She might not have been thinking of the child at all. She might have just wanted an excuse to bolt. And she might well have given him a good scolding for spoiling her gown, once she was safely out of our sight. You see, that’s the trouble with women. They put on a mask in public that makes you think they have the nature of an angel, but it comes straight off when they think nobody’s watching. If only there was some way I could be sure of getting a genuine reaction from her.’
‘Our trip to the Abbey tomorrow would be a perfect opportunity,’ said Morgan as they dashed across the pavement into his waiting carriage, ‘to set up some kind of scene,’ he said, wrenching open the door, ‘where she will be obliged to react without thinking too much about it.’
In the time it took Lord Havelock to get into the carriage as well and slam the door on the filthy weather, he’d gone from wanting to tell Morgan he hadn’t been serious—for what kind of man deliberately set a trap to expose a lady’s faults?—to realising that too much was riding on his making a successful match, in the shortest possible time, for him to take the conventional route.
So when Morgan said, ‘Best if you leave the details to me’, he raised no objection.
‘I’ll stage something that will take you as much by surprise as her,’ said Morgan. ‘So that if she’s clever enough to work out what’s afoot, the blame will fall upon me, not you.’
‘That’s...very decent of you,’ he said. And then wondered why Morgan was being so helpful. They’d only met, properly, a couple of nights ago. And Morgan had sneered, and mocked, and generally behaved as though he’d taken him in immediate dislike.
‘What’s your lay, Morgan?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I mean, why are you so keen to get involved in my affairs?’
‘Just what are you accusing me of?’
‘Don’t know. That’s the thing. But it seems dashed smoky to me. When you consider that Chepstow, a man I’ve known all my life, skipped town rather than risk getting tangled with females intent on marriage.’
‘You can’t know that. He could have left town for any number of reasons.’
‘He’s running scared,’ Havelock insisted. ‘He would have bolted from the club after foisting me on to Ashe, if he’d thought he could get away with it.’
Morgan looked out of the window. Sighed. Looked back at Havelock. Lifted his chin so that when he spoke, he did so down his nose.
‘I have a sister,’ he said defiantly. ‘Who is of an age to get married. And I would walk over hot coals rather than see her married to a man like you.’
‘A man like me?’ His voice came out rapier sharp. ‘What, precisely, do you mean by that?’ He was from one of the oldest families in the land. Everyone knew him. He was welcome everywhere. Not a scandalous word had ever been whispered about him.
Except, perhaps, about the duels he’d fought.
Though he’d fought them over matters of honour, not dishonour.
‘A man,’ said Morgan in an equally chilling tone, ‘who won’t love his wife. The last thing I want is for my sister to get drawn into a loveless marriage.’
‘Oh.’ He shrugged. ‘That puts a different complexion on the matter. I have a sister myself. Well, half-sister, to be precise. But even so, I would walk over hot coals for her.’ In fact, that was very nearly what he was doing.
‘So you see why I’m keen to get you off the marriage mart, before she comes to town?’
‘Oh, absolutely. Would do the same myself, if I thought Julia was in danger of getting tangled up with an unsuitable man. Like a shot.’
They nodded at each other with grudging respect.
‘Westminster Abbey, though? Really, Morgan, could you not have thought of somewhere a little more conducive to courtship?’
Morgan’s craggy face relaxed into something resembling a smile. ‘You are the only one thinking in terms of courtship. I have no intention of taking a risk with either of those Pargetter girls. But it will be out of the wind and rain, at all events. And large enough that our two parties may drift apart...’
‘So that I can get Miss Carpenter to myself while you play the elder off against the younger,’ he said. ‘Morgan, you’re as cunning as a fox.’
‘Not really,’ he said diffidently. ‘Just well versed in the ways of women. I have,’ he added with a wry twist to his mouth, ‘two half-sisters, and a stepsister under my guardianship. There’s not much you can tell me about tears and tantrums, scenes staged to persuade me to do something against my better judgement, campaigns designed to wear a man down...’
‘I get the picture,’ he said with an appreciative shudder. ‘You clearly know exactly how the female mind works.’ And thank God for it. And for Morgan’s willingness to see him safely married before his own sister came to town for her Season.
* * *
‘Come on, Mary,’ Dotty urged. ‘That’s Mr Morgan and Lord Havelock knocking on the front door now and you haven’t even chosen which bonnet you’re going to wear.’
The girls, determined they should all look their best for this outing with the most eligible men it had ever been their good fortune to come across, had spent the previous evening, and the best part of this morning, ransacking their wardrobe for items to lend Mary.
‘The brown velvet,’ said Lotty firmly, ramming the bonnet on to Mary’s head. ‘Sober colour, to suit your sense of what you should be wearing for mourning, yet the bronze satin rose just takes the plainness off. And if you say you don’t care what you look like one more time,’ she said, tying the ribbons deftly under her chin, ‘I shall go off into strong hysterics.’
There was no arguing with the sisters. And if she persisted, she was afraid she was going to take the shine off their own pleasure in the outing.
Resigned to her fate, Mary trailed the girls down the stairs, hanging back while they launched themselves with great gusto, this time, at both of the gentlemen who’d come to take them out.
For Mr Pargetter, upon hearing Lord Havelock’s name, had divulged that though he was only a viscount, and never likely to be an earl, he was very well-to-do.
While that information had sent his daughters into raptures, it had just made Mary wonder, again, what on earth he’d been doing at such an unfashionable event as the Crimmers’ annual Advent ball. If he was as wealthy as Mr Pargetter thought, he couldn’t have been searching for an