Chapter One

      ‘What! my dear Lady Disdain, are you yet living?’

      Shakespeare

      ‘So, Lord Axforde didn’t suit?’

      Miss Louisa Landen’s question came out idly as she applied herself diligently to her canvaswork. It seemed almost to be an afterthought.

      But was it? Stacy Blanchard, seated at her desk in the main office of Blanchard’s Bank, situated in the heart of London’s financial centre, raised her dark head suspiciously.

      ‘Was that a question, Louisa—or a statement?’

      ‘Whichever you please, my dear,’ Louisa returned placidly, without taking her eyes from the peacock she was stitching. ‘I must say that I wasn’t surprised that you refused him—you have refused all offers made to you so far—but…’ And she stopped, apparently lost in confusion over the important question as to whether the wool she now required was light or dark blue.

      Stacy wrote down the date, October 24th, 1818, before flinging down her quill pen, fortunately now empty of ink. ‘But what, Louisa? Lately you seem to have developed the most distressing habit of not finishing your sentences.’

      Louisa looked over the top of her work at her one-time pupil, now a handsome woman in her late twenties. Not pretty, or even conventionally beautiful perhaps, but something better. She possessed the oval ivory face of the Blanchards, their brilliant green eyes, and their dark, lightly curling hair, even if the curls were severely drawn back into a large knot at the nape of her neck—which merely served to enhance the pure lines of a classic profile.

      ‘But, my dear, Lord Axforde is, after all, such a tulip of fashion, seems to possess a considerable understanding, and is so rich in his own right that one could hardly claim that he was marrying you merely to get at the wealth of Blanchard’s Bank. All in all you could scarcely do better. A handsome, reasonably clever man, and a marchioness’s coronet—what more could you ask?’

      It was no more—and no less—than the answer Stacy had expected. Louisa had, indeed, made something of a litany of lamentation of it, repeating it, with variations, over Stacy’s last six offers—except the one made by Beverley Fancourt, of course. Now he really had been an open fortune-hunter.

      Louisa might be her oldest, indeed, if truth were told, her only friend, but that didn’t give her the licence to choose Stacy’s husband for her. She was perfectly capable of doing that for herself—if she wanted a husband, that was. She rose from the desk and crossed the beautiful room, more like a great house’s salon than an office, a room which her late father had created and which she had left unchanged.

      She stopped before the window to pull back deep green velvet curtains, the colour of the dress which she wore, and to stare at the dome of St Paul’s, before saying a trifle satirically, ‘Really, Louisa, really? D’you know I gained the distinct impression from the manner of Lord Axforde’s proposal that it was to the Bank he was making it, and not to me as a woman?’ She gave a short laugh, and continued to inspect St Paul’s as though she had never seen it before.

      ‘Do not exaggerate, my dear.’ Louisa’s reply was coolly judicious. ‘I told you not to do that as long ago as the nursery. I am sure that Lord Axforde said everything that was proper.’

      Stacy’s lips thinned, and, unseen by Louisa, her fists clenched. ‘Oh, quite proper, I assure you. A regular commercial transaction was taking place—no doubt about it. Why, I half expected that he would ask me whether the Bank’s interest rate would continue to remain high if we married!’ She shook her head at Louisa’s pained expression. ‘Worse, from his expression—that of a man taking medicine—I thought that he was prepared to pay any price to get at Blanchard’s money to buy himself a dukedom—even if that price included marrying someone as undesirable as myself!’

      ‘Oh, come!’ Miss Landen at last looked up from her stitchery. ‘You do not do yourself justice, my dear. You misunderstood him, I am sure. Few prospective brides are as handsome and as comme il faut as you are.’

      ‘And few lack as much pedigree as I do,’ retorted Stacy briskly, returning to her desk and sitting down again. The desk was another of her father’s innovations; previously the office had been furnished with an old-fashioned lectern at which one stood.

      She looked across at a row of oil-paintings on the opposite wall. The older ones were hack-work, done by travelling colourmen for a few shillings; the last two were fine things, one by a pupil of Gainsborough and the other by Romney.

      ‘My great-grandfather began life as a Huguenot pedlar who turned himself into a prosperous back-alley moneylender.’ She waved her hand at the oldest painting. ‘My grandfather built up the business until he was able to found Blanchard’s