Chapter One

      December 1814

      ‘Ho, there, Chepstow! Need some advice.’

      Lord Chepstow, who’d been sauntering across the lobby of his club, paused, recognised Lord Havelock and grinned.

      ‘From me?’ He shook his head ruefully. ‘Lord, you must be in the suds to want my advice.’

      ‘I am,’ said Lord Havelock bluntly. Then glanced meaningfully in the direction of the club’s servant, who’d stepped forward to take his coat and hat.

      Chepstow’s grin faded. ‘Need to find somewhere quiet, to talk in private?’

      ‘Yes,’ said Lord Havelock, feeling a great weight rolling off his shoulders. Not that he had much hope that Chepstow, of all men, would come up with any fresh ideas. But at least he was willing to listen.

      As soon as they’d passed through the door to the library—the one room almost sure to be deserted at this, or any other, time of the day—he said it.

      Out loud.

      ‘Got to get married.’

      ‘Good grief.’ Chepstow’s jaw dropped. ‘Would never have thought you the type to get some girl into trouble. Not one you feel you have to marry, at any rate.’

      Havelock clenched his fists in automatic repudiation of such a slur on his honour, causing Chepstow to raise his own hands in a placatory gesture.

      ‘Now I come to think of it...’ Chepstow said, carefully moving a few feet out of his range, ‘sort of thing could happen to anyone.’

      ‘Not me,’ Havelock insisted. ‘You know I’ve never been much in the petticoat line.’ He lowered his fists as it occurred to him that, actually, Chepstow might be the very chap to help him, after all.

      ‘You have been though, Chepstow. You’ve had some really high-flyers in keeping, haven’t you? And still managed to stay popular with ladies of the ton. How d’ye do it, man? How d’ye get them all eating out of your hands, that’s what I need to know.’

      ‘By opening my purse strings to the high-flyers,’ said Chepstow candidly, ‘and minding my manners with the Quality. It’s perfectly simple....’

      ‘Yes, if all you are looking for is something of a temporary nature. But if you had to get married, what kind of woman would you ask? I mean, what sort of woman do you think would make a good wife? And how would you go about finding her, if you only had a fortnight’s grace to get the knot tied?’

      Chepstow froze, like a stag at bay. ‘Me? Married?’ He slowly shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t. The trick is avoiding the snares they lay for a fellow, not deliberately walking straight into one.’

      ‘You don’t understand,’ Havelock began to say. But Chepstow wasn’t listening. He was looking wildly round the room, like a hunted animal seeking cover. And then, with obvious relief, he found it in the form of a pair of young men just barely visible above an enormous mound of books on one of the reading desks, engaged in earnest conversation.

      ‘Let’s ask Ashe,’ he said, grabbing Havelock by one arm and towing him across the floor with an air of desperation. ‘Kind of chap who reads books when he don’t need to is bound to know something worth knowing about matrimony.’

      Which was rot, of course. But Chepstow was clearly panicking. Anybody who thought they could get away with manhandling him across a room, whilst babbling about books, had obviously lost his wits.

      But then the topic of matrimony was apt to do that to a fellow. He wouldn’t willingly put his head in the noose if there was any alternative. But, having racked his brains for hours, Havelock simply couldn’t find one.

      So he’d decided that the only thing to be done was to see if he couldn’t somehow sugar-coat the pill he was about to swallow. Find some way, unlikely though it seemed, to find a woman who wouldn’t oblige him to alter his entire way of life.

      Who wouldn’t try to alter him.

      ‘Ashe, and, um...’ Chepstow floundered as he shot a blank look at the second man at the table with Ashe.

      ‘Morgan,’ said the Earl of Ashenden, waving a languid hand at his companion. Havelock had seen Morgan about, at the races, Jackson’s, this club and various social events, though had never had cause to speak to him before. Son of some sort of nabob, if memory served him. Nothing wrong with him, so far as he knew. Just not out of the top drawer.

      Not that he cared a rap for any of that. Not at a time like this.

      Introductions dealt with, Chepstow thrust Havelock into a chair, then perched on the edge of his own as though ready to take flight at a moment’s notice.

      ‘Havelock has decided he wants to get married,’ he announced, rather in the manner of a man who has just tossed a hot potato out of his burnt fingers. Then he practically pounced on the waiter, who’d ventured into the library to see if any of the young gentlemen needed refreshment.

      ‘We need a bottle of wine,’ declared Chepstow with feeling.

      ‘Not want to,’ Havelock explained once the waiter was out of earshot. ‘Have to. Need to. And before you start questioning my ton, no, it isn’t because I’ve suddenly started seducing innocents,’ he growled, shooting Chepstow a resentful look. ‘That’s not it at all.’

      ‘Steady on,’ said Chepstow, pushing enough books aside that the waiter would have room to put a bottle and some glasses down when he returned. ‘Sort of mistake anyone could make. With you looking so...out of sorts. And then broaching the topic the way you did.’

      ‘Gentlemen,’ said Ashe in that quiet way he had that somehow made everyone listen. ‘Perhaps the best thing to do would be to let Havelock explain, in his own words, just what his problem is and how he thinks we may be of assistance? Before he feels compelled to call on his seconds.’

      At Morgan’s look of alarm, Ashe chuckled quietly. ‘It is a foolish man who casts a slur on Havelock’s honour these days.’

      ‘I don’t, and never have, challenged my friends to duels.’

      ‘You shot off half of Wraxton’s ear,’ put in Chepstow.

      ‘He wasn’t my friend.’ Havelock folded his arms over his chest and glared across the table at Ashe. ‘And it wasn’t me he insulted. But...a lady.’

      ‘Oho! And I thought you said you weren’t in the petticoat line.’

      ‘I’m not. Never have been. It wasn’t like that—’

      ‘From what I heard,’ put in Ashe mildly, ‘if it hadn’t been you, it would have been her husband