Kitabı oku: «Silk And Seduction Bundle 2»

London, 1814

A season of secrets, scandal and seduction in high society!

A darkly dangerous stranger is out for revenge, delivering a silken rope as his calling card. Through him, a long-forgotten past is stirred to life. The notorious events of 1794 which saw one man murdered and another hanged for the crime are brought into question. Was the culprit brought to justice or is there still a treacherous murderer at large?

As the murky waters of the past are disturbed, so is the Ton! Milliners and servants find love with rakish lords and proper ladies fall for rebellious outcasts, until finally the true murderer and spy is revealed.

REGENCY

Silk & Scandal

From glittering ballrooms to a smuggler’s cove in Cornwall, from the wilds of Scotland to a Romany camp and from the highest society to the lowest…

Don’t miss all eight books in this thrilling new series!

Regency Silk & Scandal
The Viscount and the Virgin

by

Annie Burrows
Regency Silk & Scandal
Unlacing the Innocent Miss

by

Margaret McPhee
Regency Silk & Scandal
The Officer and the Proper Lady

by

Louise Allen
Regency Silk & Scandal
Taken by the Wicked Rake

by

Christine Merrill

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

Before you start reading, why not sign up?

Thank you for downloading this Mills & Boon book. If you want to hear about exclusive discounts, special offers and competitions, sign up to our email newsletter today!

SIGN ME UP!

Or simply visit

signup.millsandboon.co.uk

Mills & Boon emails are completely free to receive and you can unsubscribe at any time via the link in any email we send you.

Other Books By

REGENCY

Silk & Scandal

COLLECT ALL EIGHT BOOKS IN THIS WONDERFUL NEW SERIES

The Lord and the Wayward Lady

Louise Allen

Paying the Virgin’s Price

Christine Merrill

The Smuggler and the Society Bride

Julia Justiss

Claiming the Forbidden Bride

Gayle Wilson

The Viscount and the Virgin

Annie Burrows

Unlacing the Innocent Miss

Margaret McPhee

The Officer and the Proper Lady

Louise Allen

Taken by the Wicked Rake

Christine Merrill

Regency Silk & Scandal
The Viscount and the Virgin

by

Annie Burrows

About the Author

ANNIE BURROWS has been making up stories for her own amusement since she first went to school. As soon as she got the hang of using a pencil she began to write them down. Her love of books meant she had to do a degree in English literature. And her love of writing meant she could never take on a job where she didn’t have time to jot down notes when inspiration for a new plot struck her. She still wants the heroines of her stories to wear beautiful floaty dresses and triumph over all that life can throw at them. But when she got married she discovered that finding a hero is an essential ingredient to arriving at ‘happy ever after’.

Chapter One

January, 1815. London

Imogen Hebden knew it was no use blaming the Veryan sisters when her first ball ended so disastrously.

Not that it was all that much of a ball. There was scarcely anyone in town so soon after Christmas. But that, as her aunt had pointed out, was all to the good. Imogen could experience the flavour of a select Ton gathering at Mrs Leeming’s soirée without exposing herself to anyone that really mattered.

Still, Imogen had been really pleased when a gentleman had actually asked her to dance. Even though it was with the rather wooden expression of a man bent on doing his duty by the night’s resident wall-flower.

Mr Dysart had looked bored throughout the set, and the moment the music had ended, accorded her a very stiff bow, and hightailed it to the card room.

That had been when she noticed that one of the three sets of ruffles on her skirt had come adrift and was hanging down in an untidy loop at the back. She did not think Mr Dysart had been responsible. She would have felt it if he had trodden on her hem. Besides, he had maintained a good arm’s length from her at all times. No, it was far more likely that she had snagged it on the chair leg when she had leapt up in response to her first invitation to dance at her first, sort of, ball.

She had begun to make her way to the retiring room so she could pin it up, when the Honourable Miss Penelope Veryan, flanked on one side by her younger sister Charlotte, and on the other by her friend Lady Verity Carlow, had moved to block her path.

‘I do hope you enjoyed your dance with Mr Dysart,’ Penelope had cooed, with a smile that did not reach her eyes. ‘But I do feel I should warn you not to place too much hope in that quarter. He is a particular friend of mine, and only asked you to dance because he knows we are taking an interest in you.’

Mr Dysart’s behaviour now made perfect sense. Lots of people were keen to curry favour with the wealthy and influential Veryan family. It was a little disappointing to learn that Mr Dysart had not sought her out for her own sake. But at least now, she would not have to pretend to like him when she ran across him again. It was strange, but during the whole year she had been living with Lady Callandar, though she had been introduced to a great many people, she could not say she liked any of them all that much.

‘I suppose you expect me to thank you,’ mused Imogen aloud, though she was not at all sure she was grateful for Penelope’s interference. She thought it might have been preferable to have sat on the sidelines all night, rather than have a man dance with her only because he sought Penelope’s good opinion or, rather, that of her father, Lord Keddinton.

There had been a flash of anger in Penelope’s eyes, but with her customary poise, she quelled it almost at once.

‘How is your court dress coming along?’ hastily put in Lady Verity.

Imogen turned to her with relief. Although she had absolutely nothing in common with the supremely fashionable Lady Verity, who never seemed to think about anything but dresses and parties, at least there was not an ounce of malice in her.

‘I have had the final fitting,’ Imogen replied.

‘Do you not like it?’ Charlotte pounced on Imogen’s less than enthusiastic response. ‘I heard that Lady Callandar hired the very best modiste, and spent an extortionate amount on yards and yards of the most exquisite Brussels lace!’

Imogen could not help bristling at Charlotte’s implication that no matter how much money was spent on her, or how skilled the dressmaker, she would never manage to look anything but a sad romp. Especially since Charlotte was correct.

The flimsy muslin gowns that Imogen’s aunt dressed her in, with their straight skirts and delicate ruffles, permitted no activity more strenuous than strolling to the shops. And in Imogen’s case, not even that. Why, she seemed to be able to part a shoulder seam between leaving her bedroom and arriving in the breakfast parlour. And as for her hair…

Well, it went its own way no matter how often Pansy, the maid her aunt had provided her with, was called to rearrange it. Charlotte’s ringlets, she noted enviously, fell decoratively around her face, not into her eyes. If only her aunt would permit her to just keep her hair long and braid it as she had done before! But no. Fashionable young ladies had their hair cut short at the front. And so poor Pansy had to wield the curling tongs, tie in the bandeaus and jab in the pins.

Which reminded her: that torn flounce still needed pinning up.

‘I look perfectly frightful in my court dress,’ admitted Imogen with a wry smile. ‘Now, if you will excuse me…’ And she began once more to press towards the exit.

The other girls fell into step beside her, Charlotte linking her arm, which obliged her to match their languid pace.

‘Just wait until you try walking backwards with that train!’ chortled Charlotte. Penelope uttered a tinkling little laugh, shaking her head at the impossibility of Imogen performing such a feat.

‘Oh, I am sure you will manage it, given time and plenty of practice,’ put in Lady Verity kindly.

Penelope made a noise which expressed her extreme doubt. They all knew Imogen could not survive half an hour in a ballroom without tearing her gown. How on earth was she going to cope with all the rigmarole of a court presentation? Sidling through doorways with panniers strapped to her hips, backing away from the royal presence with yards and yards of lace train just waiting to trip her up?

Imogen was still managing to hang onto her composure, when Penelope brought up the subject of her headdress.

‘Have you practised getting into a carriage yet?’ she asked, all feigned solicitude. ‘I presume you have bought your feathers. Or at least—’ she paused, laying a hand on her arm, obliging Imogen to come to a complete standstill ‘—you do know how tall they usually are?’

And that had been the moment when disaster struck. Irritated by Penelope’s patronizing attitude, Imogen had swung round, replying, ‘Of course I do!’

Charlotte had let go of her arm, and naturally, Imogen had taken the opportunity to demonstrate exactly how tall those infernal plumes were.

‘They are this high!’ she said, waving her free arm in a wide arc above her head.

And her hand had connected with something solid. A man’s voice had uttered a word she was certain she was not supposed to have understood. She had whirled round, and been horrified to discover that the solid object which her hand had struck had been a glass of champagne, held in the hand of a man just emerging from the refreshment room. All the champagne had sprayed out of the glass, and was now dripping down the front of an intricately tied cravat, onto a beautifully embroidered, green silk waistcoat.

‘Oh! I am so sorry!’ she had wailed, delving into her reticule for a handkerchief. ‘I have ruined your waistcoat!’ It really was a shame. That waistcoat was very nearly a work of art. Even the stitching around the buttonholes had been contrived so that the buttons resembled jewelled fruit peeping out from lush foliage.

She pulled out a square of plain muslin—highly absorbent and just the ticket for blotting up the worst of the spill. So long as not too much soaked into the gorgeous silk, his valet would be bound to know of some remedy to rescue it. Why, Pansy could make the most obdurate stains disappear from even the most delicate of fabrics!

But her hand never reached its intended target. The gentleman in the green waistcoat grabbed her wrist and snarled, ‘Do not presume to touch my person.’

Stunned by the venomous tone of his voice, she looked up, to encounter a glare from a pair of eyes as green as the jewels adorning his waistcoat. And just—she swallowed—as hard.

It was only the hardness of those eyes, and perhaps the cleft in his chin, that prevented her from immediately applying the word beautiful to the angry gentleman. She took in the regular, finely chiselled features of his face, the fair hair cut in the rather severe style known as the Brutus, the perfect fit of his bottle-green tailcoat, and the immaculately manicured nails of the hand that held her wrist in a bruisingly firm grip. And all the breath left her lungs in one long, shuddering sigh. She had heard people say that something had taken their breath away, but this was the first time it had ever happened to her.

But then she had never been so close to such a breathtakingly gorgeous specimen of masculinity before.

She pulled herself together with an effort. It was no use standing there, sighing at all that masculine beauty. A man who took such pains over his appearance was the very worst sort of gentleman to have spilled a drink over! Determined to make some form of reparation for her clumsiness, Imogen feebly twitched the handkerchief she was still clutching in fingers that were beginning to go numb.

‘I only m-meant—’ she began, but he would not let her finish.

‘I know what you meant,’ he sneered.

Ever since he had arrived in town, matchmaking mamas had been irritating him by thrusting their daughters under his nose. But worse, far worse, were the antics of enterprising girls like this one. It was getting so that he could not even take a walk in the park without some female tripping over an imaginary obstacle and stumbling artistically into his arms.

By the looks of her, she was yet another one of those girls from a shabby-genteel background, out to snare a wealthy husband who could set her up in style. Definitely not a pampered lady who had never done anything more strenuous than sew a seam. He could feel the strength in her wrist, as he held her determined little fingers away from their target.

It never ceased to amaze him that girls could think that running their hands over him would somehow make a favourable impression. Only two nights earlier, he had been disgusted by the apparently prim young miss who was seated next to him at dinner running her hand along his thigh under cover of the tablecloth. Just as this hoyden was attempting to run her hands over his torso, under cover of mopping up the drink she had thrown over him.

He glared down into her wide grey eyes, eyes which told him exactly what she was thinking. They were growing darker by the second. And her lips were still parted from that shuddering sigh.

To his shock, he experienced a reckless urge to yank her closer and give her the kiss those parted lips were begging him for.

Instead, he flung her from him. ‘I am sick to death of the lengths your kind will go to in order to attract my notice.’ And sickened to find that, in spite of his better judgement, his body was responding to this girl’s far-from-subtle approach.

‘My kind of…attract your…what?’ she sputtered.

‘Do not think to dupe me by a display of outraged innocence, miss. And do not presume to approach me again. If you were a person worthy of notice, you would have been able to find a more orthodox way of effecting an introduction and making me aware of your charms.’

Imogen stood, open-mouthed, while those hard green eyes raked her quivering form from top to toe with such insolence she felt as though he might just as well have stripped her naked.

‘Such as they are,’ he finished, with a sneer that left her in no doubt of his low opinion of her.

‘Well!’ she huffed.

One of his companions raised a lavender-scented handkerchief to his lips to conceal his smirk as the green-eyed exquisite turned and stalked away. The others sniggered openly.

Penelope and Charlotte flicked open their fans and raised them to their faces, but not before Imogen caught a glimpse of a pair of smiles that put her in mind of a cat that has a live bird under one paw.

‘Oh, dear,’ said Lady Verity, a frown creasing her normally placid brow as her friends turned their backs on Imogen and sauntered away, their noses in the air. ‘How unfortunate. He seemed to think…’

‘Yes, he made it quite plain what he thought. Odious man! Who does he think he is?’

‘I have no idea, but he seems to be someone of consequence…’

‘Someone who thinks a great deal of his own consequence, you mean,’ Imogen muttered darkly, taking in the arrogant set of the blond man’s shoulders as he strode towards the exit. ‘How dare he talk to me like that!’

Lady Verity was beginning to look perturbed. And Imogen realized she was clenching her fists and breathing heavily and, worst of all, scowling. All three things a lady should never do. Particularly not in a ballroom.

Oh, heavens, she thought, swinging to look towards the chaperon’s bench, where her aunt was sitting, monitoring her every move.

She took a deep breath, smiled grimly at Lady Verity and said, ‘I think I had better go and rejoin Lady Callandar.’

Lady Verity dipped a curtsy and went off after her friends, while Imogen braced herself to face her aunt’s exasperated brand of censure.

Not that her aunt’s face showed so much as a hint of disappointment that her niece had just demonstrated she was completely unfit to mix in polite Society. Nothing, but nothing would induce the woman to betray any kind of emotion in a public place. No, the unbearably gentle scolding would wait until they were in their carriage and on their way home, where nobody could overhear.

It began, as Imogen had known it would, the very moment the flunkey closed the carriage door on them.

‘Oh, Imogen—’ her aunt sighed ‘—I had such hopes for you when Mrs Leeming extended you an invitation to this small, select gathering—and what must you do but squander this opportunity by making an exhibition of yourself with one of, if not the most eligible bachelor in town! Everyone took notice of the way Viscount Mildenhall stormed out—’ she shook her head ruefully ‘—and by now I am sure nobody is in any doubt that it was because you threw your glass of champagne over him!’

She wished her aunt would give her space to explain that far from throwing anyone’s drink over the rude, arrogant fop, the whole thing had been an accident…although now she came to think of it, she wondered if it really had been an accident that she had been standing there, waving her arms about, at precisely the moment a supremely eligible viscount had been emerging from the refreshment room with a drink in his hand. Given the cruelty of the smiles as they had strolled away, she wouldn’t be a bit surprised to learn that Penelope Veryan had set the whole thing up. With Charlotte’s help.

But she knew it would be pointless to say a word against the Veryan girls. Her aunt was bound to simply point out that if she were not such an ill-disciplined, hurly-burly creature, who could be so easily goaded into waving her arms about like a windmill, the viscount’s waistcoat would have got away scot-free.

And her uncle, she huffed, folding her arms in exasperation, was even more blind where the sisters were concerned. He was always telling Imogen to observe their manners, and use the example of those ‘perfect’ young ladies as her pattern. It was because they always listened to him with their heads tilted to one side, their eyes wide with admiration, whatever nonsense he spouted. And because they moved gracefully, dressed beautifully and had such polished manners. Oh, yes, they were exceptionally careful to conceal, from powerful men like Lord Callandar, their love of playing spiteful tricks on those less fortunate than themselves!

Well, if that was what it meant to be a young lady, she was glad her new guardians thought she was not one! She would never sink to the kind of unkind, sneaky behaviour those cats indulged in!

‘And when I think of the lengths,’ her aunt went on, ‘Mrs Leeming went to, to get him there at all! She will be furious with me! He has only recently come into his title, and is up in town for the express purpose of finding himself a bride with all due speed to ease the last days of his poor dear father, the Earl of Corfe. And Mrs Leeming has two daughters she particularly wished to bring to his notice.’

No wonder he was a bit conceited, thought Imogen, if he was the son of an earl on his deathbed. Especially if he was used to females flinging themselves at him because they all knew he was in town in search of a wife. But to bracket her in their company, just because she had waved her arm about…why, she had not even known he was standing behind her! What, did he think she had eyes in the back of her head?

He might be breathtakingly handsome to look at, but if he could not tell a genuine accident from a deliberate ploy to attract his notice, he obviously had the brains of a peacock, as well as the strutting gait of one!

‘What were you thinking?’ her aunt continued. ‘No—’ She closed her eyes, and held her hands up in a gesture of exasperation that had become all too familiar to Imogen over the past year. ‘On second thoughts, it is pointless asking you that! Not after the constant stream of excuses you have come up with ever since Lord Callandar brought you into our home on the death of your stepfather.’ She opened her eyes, eyes that were now filled with such sadness it brought a lump to Imogen’s throat.

‘It is such a pity my husband did not remove you from—’ she took a quick breath, and mouthed the words ‘That House,’ before continuing in a normal tone ‘—much sooner. You should have come to us the moment your mother died. Or even a year or so later, when it was the proper time to bring you out. Then I might have been able to do something with you. You were young enough then, perhaps, to have had some of your faults ironed out.’

She heaved a sigh. ‘Of course, although one can sympathize with your poor dear mother, for she never really recovered from—’ she pursed her lips and squeezed her eyes shut again ‘—that Dreadful Tragedy, nevertheless—’ her eyes snapped open ‘—she should not have permitted you to run wild with those Bredon boys.’

‘My brothers,’ Imogen could not help blurting. She knew that girls were not supposed to argue with their elders and betters. But sometimes she felt so strongly that she simply could not hold her tongue. Her uncle had informed her, less than one week after taking her in, that it was her most deplorable fault.

‘Properly reared young ladies,’ he had said, the corners of his mouth pulling down in chagrin, ‘should never set their own ideas above that of any gentleman. In fact, they should not even have them!’

‘Not have ideas?’ Imogen had been astounded enough to reply. ‘How can that be possible?’ She and her brothers had been used to having the liveliest of conversations around the dining table when they were all home. Even her stepfather had enjoyed what he termed a stimulating debate from time to time.

‘Stepbrothers,’ her aunt was firmly correcting her. ‘They are not blood relations.’

Imogen flinched. When Hugh Bredon—the scholarly man she had grown up to regard as her father—had died, his second son, Nicomedes, had done his utmost to disabuse her of the notion she had any legal claims on him.

‘My father never adopted you,’ he said coldly. ‘In the eyes of the law, you are not my sister. And therefore it would be quite inappropriate for you to make your home with me now.’

Nick, who was training for the law, had already given her the devastating news that the Brambles—the house where she had grown up, the place she had thought of as her home—would have to be sold to pay off the debts Hugh had racked up in the latter years of his life.

‘What is left over is to be divided equally between myself, Alaric and Germanicus.’

She had felt as though Nick had struck her. ‘What about me?’ she had asked in a scratchy voice. How could he have left everything equally between the three sons who had left her to nurse their father through his last, protracted illness? Not that she blamed any one of them. Nick was too busy with his law books. Alaric was away with his regiment, fighting in the Peninsula. And Germanicus was a naval lieutenant serving with his squadron in the Caribbean.

No, it was Hugh’s attitude she found hard to swallow.

She had listened with mounting hope as Nick proceeded to witter on about widow’s jointures and marriage settlements, slowly grasping the fact that her mother, at least, had not intended her to be left completely penniless. She had, in fact, bequeathed her only surviving child quite a tidy sum.

Though Nick had not been able to quite meet her eye as he explained that it was to have been hers when she reached her twenty-fifth birthday.

‘Unfortunately, my father somehow got access to it and made some rather unwise investments.’

From the look on Nick’s face, Imogen had gathered he had squandered the lot.

‘What must I do then, Nick?’ she had asked with a sinking feeling. ‘Seek employment?’ She would probably be able to get work in a school. One thing about growing up in the household of a man who devoted his life to studying antiquities was that there had never been any shortage of books. She could teach any number of subjects, she was quite sure, to boys as well as girls.

‘No, not as bad as that,’ Nick had assured her. ‘Your mother’s family have agreed to take you in and, once your period of mourning is over, to give you a Season. If you can make a match your uncle approves of, he will make up what you would have received from your mother upon your majority into a respectable dowry.’

And so, though the prospect of having to endure even a single Season had her shivering with dread, she had been packed off to live with Lord Callandar, her mother’s brother, and Lady Callandar, his wife.

At least it had not been like going to live with total strangers. Though she had never met them, Lord Callandar had written to his sister Amanda punctiliously on her birthday and Imogen’s, every year.

It had never crossed anyone’s mind to approach her real father’s family, not considering their obdurate attitude towards her mother. They had laid the blame for what her aunt termed the Dreadful Tragedy firmly at her door. Imogen had never had any contact with them at all.

‘Are you attending me, Imogen?’ her aunt snapped, rapping her wrist with her fan so smartly that it jerked her out of her reverie. ‘And sit up straight. Hands in your lap, not folded in that insolent manner!’

Imogen flinched to hear her aunt sounding so annoyed, and dutifully corrected her posture. She was truly sorry that she had turned out to be such a disappointment to her aunt and uncle, who had each shown her a great deal of kindness, in their own way. Her uncle had spent an extortionate amount of money trying to make up for what he saw as the deficiencies in her education. He had paid for deportment lessons and dancing lessons, and encouraged her aunt to buy her more clothes than she had believed it was possible for one girl to wear in a lifetime. And that had just been to cover her mourning. They had shopped all over again when she went into half mourning, and again when it was time for her to begin moving about in society a little.

And yet she had never felt at all happy in the Herriard household. It might have had something to do with the fact that she still had vague, shadowy memories of the short time she had lived there before, in the aftermath of the Dreadful Tragedy. Her grandfather seemed always to have been angry, her mother always weeping. And nobody would tell her where her big brother Stephen had gone. Her grandpapa had roared at her that she was a naughty girl for even mentioning him, and said that if she so much as spoke his name again, he would have her beaten. A feeling of utter isolation had frozen her to the spot on a part of the landing that she could still not pass without a shiver. For Stephen had always been the one to scoop her up when the grown-ups were fighting and take her away somewhere she could not hear the raised voices.

There was nobody to stand between her and this large, angry man, and it had terrified her. Even the nursery had been no refuge for the frightened little girl. Without Stephen, it had just become a bleak and empty prison cell. She had the impression of being left for days on end behind locked doors, although she was sure even her grandfather could not have been that cruel. He must have ensured she had at least a nursery maid bring her something to eat!

But no matter how hard she tried to resist them, those unhappy memories came swirling round her every time she crossed the threshold of the grand house in Mount Street.

It was not helped by the fact that once her mother had married Hugh Bredon, her life had undergone such a drastic change. Instead of incarceration and isolation, she had spent her first years at the Brambles learning to fish and shoot and ride, so that she could keep up with her magnificent new big brothers. She did not think she had run wild, precisely, over the ensuing nineteen years, though towards the end of her time there, she definitely had far more freedom than her aunt and uncle deemed appropriate for a young lady. She had thought nothing of saddling up her mare or harnessing the gig to go on errands or visit friends, entirely unaccompanied. And then, after her mother had died, she had taken over the running of Hugh’s household.

Her Uncle Herriard, she knew, would never have trusted a sixteen-year-old girl to run his household for him. Her stepfather might never have shown her much affection, but he had reposed a great deal of confidence in her abilities. Hugh had only checked the household accounts for the first few months she was in charge, and though he never praised her, he never complained about the way she ran things, either. All he wanted was to be left in peace to get on with his studies, and she had taken great pride in ensuring that he could do so.

But she had to face facts. When it came right down to it, Hugh Bredon had never quite thought of her as his own daughter. It was as though he was unable to forget that she was the result of his wife’s first disastrous marriage to Baron Framlingham.

Imogen’s shoulders slumped. ‘I am sorry to be such a disappointment to you, Aunt,’ she said dejectedly. ‘It is not that I am not trying to behave as you would wish…’

‘I know,’ her aunt agreed. ‘That is what is so particularly exasperating. It is so hard to discipline you for faults you just cannot help having! They are so deeply ingrained, that…’ She sighed. ‘If only you were as pretty as your mother,’ she said, for what seemed to Imogen like the thousandth time.

The very first time Lady Callandar had seen her, she had blanched and said, ‘Oh, dear! How very unfortunate!’

With her wildly curling hair and intelligent grey eyes, Imogen was, apparently, the very image of her father, Kit Hebden.

‘Knowing eyes,’ her uncle had said disparagingly. ‘That was the thing about Framlingham. Always looking at you as though he knew something you didn’t.’

‘Anyone who knew him will take one look at her,’ Lady Callandar had wailed, ‘and say she is bound to turn out exactly like him!’

‘Then you will just have to make sure,’ her uncle had said sternly, ‘that she never gives anyone cause to think it!’

‘Imogen, dear,’ her aunt had said sympathetically, once her uncle had stormed from the room, ‘you must not let your uncle’s manner upset you. You are—’ she had floundered for a moment, before her face lit up with inspiration ‘—just like a lovely rose that has rambled in all the wrong directions. Your uncle may seem to be severe with you, but it is only because he wants to see you blossom.’

And from that day forward, her aunt had set about pruning her into shape.

‘If you could only learn to carry yourself with the poise of Penelope or Charlotte!’ her aunt had advised her, time after time. ‘People might gradually stop talking about the thorny issue of your mother’s Dreadful Disgrace!’

Although the shocking scandal in which her mother and father had been involved had happened over twenty years earlier, Imogen’s emergence into Society had reminded people of it.

Her mother had taken a lover. Not that there was anything unusual in that, in her circles. But feelings between William Wardale, Earl of Leybourne, and Baron Framlingham had apparently run high. They had got into a fist fight. And only weeks later, the earl had brutally stabbed Imogen’s father to death. As if that were not bad enough, it turned out that both men had been involved in some form of espionage. The Earl of Leybourne had been found guilty not only of murder, but treason. He had been stripped of land and titles, and hanged.

No wonder people stared at her and whispered behind their fans, whenever she walked into a room!

She was not pretty, she was not rich, she lacked poise and she had a scandal attached to her name. Mrs Leeming had been one of the very few Society matrons prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt. But Imogen had just ruined her chance to demonstrate she was nothing like either of her parents, by getting embroiled in that scene with Viscount Mildenhall.

The promises of invitations her aunt had managed to cajole, bribe or bully from her other intimates would probably dwindle away altogether now.

‘Perhaps,’ she ventured timidly, ‘we should abandon the attempt to find me a husband.’

She had already begun to suspect that she would be completely miserable married to the kind of man her uncle would approve of. The more she learned about fashionable Society, the more she understood her mother’s willingness to accept her banishment to the wilds of Staffordshire under the aegis of the somewhat reclusive Hugh Bredon. He may have had his faults, but he had never treated Amanda like a piece of topiary that needed constant clipping to maintain an artificially decorative shape.

Her aunt shot her a darkling look, but made no reply, for the carriage was slowing down.

If she ever did have any children, Imogen decided, mutinously, ignoring the footman’s outstretched hand and jumping down from the carriage, she would make sure each and every one of them knew they were loved exactly as they were, be they boys or girls. She would never try to stifle their personalities or make them feel they had to constantly strive for her approval.

Though, she thought despondently as she trailed up the front steps behind her aunt, it was not likely that she ever would have children of her own.

No man that Lord and Lady Callandar considered eligible would want to ally himself to a girl who could bring so little credit to his name. She only had to think of the disdain she had read in the viscount’s eyes, the mockery in those of his friends, to know she was never going to measure up.

‘In here, if you please,’ said her aunt, making her way across the hall to the sitting room. She waited in silence while a footman hastily lit some candles, banked up the fire, enquired if they wanted any refreshment and then withdrew.

‘Sit up straight,’ she then urged Imogen, who had slumped down on the sofa. ‘Just because you have suffered a little setback, there is no excuse for forgetting your posture!’

Imogen sat up straight, mentally bracing herself for yet another lecture about how young ladies ought to behave.

‘Now, Imogen, I have not taken you into my home and drilled you into the ways of Society, only to have you fall at the first hurdle! I do not despair of seeing you make a creditable alliance before the end of the Season.’

Imogen had a depressing vision of endless balls where she sat on the sidelines, watching the prettier, wealthier girls whirling round with their admiring partners. Or dancing with dutiful, bored men like Mr Dysart. Of picnics and breakfasts where she endured the spiteful comments of girls like Penelope and Charlotte, while the matrons whispered about her father’s terrible fate, and the bucks sniggered about her mother’s scandalous conduct. Of always having to rein herself in, lest she betray some sign that she took after either of her scandalous parents.

And then she looked at the determined jut of her aunt’s jaw. Her poor, beleaguered aunt, who had so determinedly taken up the cudgels on her behalf.

The last thing she wanted was to become a lifelong burden on her aunt and uncle. ‘If…if I have not received a proposal by the end of the Season, though, I could always go and teach in a school somewhere. For you surely cannot want me living with you indefinitely.’

‘That is for Lord Callandar to decide. Though I am sure it would make him most uncomfortable to think of a Herriard teaching in a school!’

‘But I am not a Herriard,’ Imogen pointed out. ‘I am a Hebden.’ It was why Hugh Bredon had not wished to adopt her, after all. Because she was the spawn of the notorious Kit Hebden.

‘Nobody will be in the least surprised that you could not make anything of me. Though I am sure everyone can see that you have done all you could to try and make me more…’ she waved her hands expansively, then frowned ‘…make me less…’

Her aunt sighed. ‘That is just the trouble, is it not? You are what you are, niece, and I am beginning to think no power on earth will ever make a jot of difference.’

‘I am sorry, Aunt.’ She bowed her head as she tugged off her evening gloves, one finger at a time. The backs were sticky with dried champagne. ‘I do not want you to be ashamed of me. I do not ever wish to cause you any trouble.’

‘I know that, dear,’ her aunt replied on yet another sigh. ‘But trouble seems to find you, nonetheless.’

Chapter Two

Imogen was in the sitting room, with her tambour on her lap, trying extremely hard to look as though she did not think decorative embroidery was the most pointless exercise ever foisted upon woman-kind.

Sitting indoors on a sunny day, embroidering silk flowers onto a scrap of linen, when real crocuses would be unfurling like jewelled fans in the park not two hundred yards from her door…just in case somebody chose to pay a visit! Not that anybody ever came to see her. Still, when her aunt was ‘at home’ a steady flow of callers made their way through this room. And her aunt insisted that they saw Imogen sitting quietly in her corner, applying herself to her embroidery, so that they could go away with a favourable impression of her.

Not that Imogen could see what was so praiseworthy about stitching away at something that was never going to be of any practical value.

‘Lady Verity Carlow,’ her aunt had explained, as though delivering a clincher, ‘sits for hours at a time plying her needle.’

Well, huffed Imogen, so had she, back in Staffordshire, when she had some useful sewing to do. She had made all her brothers’ shirts, hemmed miles of linen and darned thousands of socks. And she had not minded that at all. Particularly not when one of the boys came to read aloud to her while she did it.

Her mind flew back to the days when she and her mother would sit with the mending basket, by the fire in the cluttered little parlour of the Brambles. And just as she was recalling how the boys would lounge like so many overgrown puppies around their feet, her uncle’s butler, Bedworth, stunned her by opening the door and intoning, ‘Captain Alaric Bredon.’

While Imogen was still reeling from the coincidence of having the butler announcing a visitor with a name so like that of the boys she was thinking of, Bedworth opened the door a little wider, and she saw, just beyond his portly figure, in the scarlet jacket with the yellow reveres and cuffs of his regiment, his shako held under one arm, and a broad grin creasing his weather-beaten face, her oldest—and favourite—stepbrother.

‘Rick!’ she squealed, leaping to her feet, scattering her silks, tambour and pincushion in all directions.

Captain Bredon met her halfway across the room, dropping his shako as he spread his arms wide to sweep her into his embrace.

‘Midge!’ he laughed, lifting her off her feet and twirling her round as she flung her arms round his neck.

‘Oh, Rick, c-can it really be you?’ She was so happy to see him. It was absurd to find tears streaming down her face.

‘When did you get back to En-England?’ she hiccupped. He had missed his father’s funeral. The letter informing him of Hugh Bredon’s death had not caught up with him for several weeks. She had hoped he might have been permitted time to come home, but his commanding officer had thought pushing Bonaparte’s troops back into France had been far more important. ‘You have Nick there,’ he had written back to her. ‘Trust him to do what is best for you. After all, he is the legal brains of the family.’

And Nick had dealt with everything with extreme punctiliousness. But, oh, how she wished Rick had been there on that day when she had felt as though she had lost everything at a stroke!

Now that he was here, she found herself burying her face in his shoulder, letting go of all the grief she had bottled up for so long.

‘Rick, Rick,’ she sobbed. ‘I have m-missed you so much.’

‘Imogen!’ shrieked her aunt, preventing Rick from making any reply. ‘Have you lost all sense of decorum?’

‘But this is Rick, ma’am, Rick, my brother—’

‘I had gathered that,’ her aunt snapped. ‘But that is no excuse for indulging in such unseemly behaviour! And as for you, young man, I will thank you to put my niece down!’

Rick did so with alacrity. He had just tugged his jacket back into place and taken a breath as though to tender an apology for offending his hostess, when they all heard a carriage drawing up outside.

Lady Callandar flew to the window, said a rather unladylike word, then rounded on Imogen and Rick.

‘Up to your room, this instant!’ she barked at Imogen. ‘And as for you—’ she swooped on Captain Bredon’s shako and thrust it into his hands ‘—out! Now! No arguments!’

Imogen had caught a glimpse of the carriage when her aunt had twitched back the curtains, and she recognized Lord Keddinton’s crest on the door panel. The very last people she wished to face, in her present state, were Penelope and Charlotte Veryan. Hitching her skirts up in one hand, while dashing tears from her face with the other, she ran from the room and up the stairs.

She heard booted feet echo on the hall’s marbled tiles, then Rick’s bewildered cry of ‘Midge?’

She turned and looked down. Rick had one foot on the bottom step, as though he meant to follow her.

‘Oh, no you don’t!’ said her aunt, erupting from the drawing room in a froth of Brussels lace and righteous indignation. ‘This is a respectable household. I will not permit Imogen to have young men in her room.’

‘But I am her brother, ma’am,’ he protested.

‘No! You may think of yourself in those terms. But you are not related in the slightest.’

Somebody rapped on the front door, making them all freeze for a second. Rick took one last questioning look up at Imogen, who shook her head, silently begging him to understand. She could see him weighing up his options and in the end, choosing discretion. He removed his foot from the lower step, then made for the front door, his expression grim.

Torn between gratitude he was not making a stand and grief that he was retreating, Imogen backed noiselessly along the landing.

Bedworth, who had been biding his time beside the porter’s chair, opened the front door to permit Rick to leave and the visiting ladies to enter.

Imogen tiptoed to her room, where she sank onto her bed, guiltily aware that only her aunt’s quick thinking had saved her from becoming the subject of yet more gossip.

The next morning, when Imogen went down to breakfast, she found a carefully worded note from Rick beside her plate. With some trepidation, she passed it to her aunt.

‘He wishes to take you out for a drive in the park this afternoon?’ she said, squinting at the letter through her lorgnette. ‘Quite unexceptionable. You may send him back a note to the effect that you accept his invitation.’

Imogen felt faint with relief. She had spent the whole of the previous night in a state of sleepless agitation. What if her aunt had taken such exception to Rick’s lack of manners, she had reported the whole scene back to her uncle? He might forbid her stepbrother to call ever again! Even though Rick was an officer now, he was not exactly what Lord Callandar would call ‘top drawer.’ Her mother had, she learned soon after coming to live in Mount Street, married beneath what he expected of a Herriard on both occasions. First to an impecunious baron with an unsavoury reputation, and then to a mere ‘mister.’

Though at least it had shed some light on Nick’s apparent defection. He must have been astute enough to realize he would not receive a warm welcome in such an elevated household as Imogen now inhabited. That was why he had never called!

‘You will wear the dark blue carriage dress, with the silver frogging. And the shako-style bonnet with the cockade. It will make a charming picture, beside his own uniform.’

Imogen blinked at her aunt in surprise. She knew Lord Callandar disapproved of her stepbrothers, and had thought Lady Callandar shared his opinion. Whenever she mentioned them, it was as ‘those Bredon boys’ with her nose wrinkling up in distaste.

She gave Imogen a straight look. ‘I can see how fond of each other you are. I do not wish to make you unhappy, niece, by preventing you from seeing something of him during the short time I daresay he has on leave.’

‘Thank you, Aunt,’ said Imogen as meekly as her thundering heart would permit.

‘Besides,’ said her aunt, laying the note down next to her plate, ‘I cannot see how even you could manage to get into trouble, sitting beside a gentleman in his carriage. Do you happen to know what kind of carriage he has?’

Imogen was certain he had no carriage of any description. He would hire something. Her stomach turned over. She only hoped he had the funds to procure something that was not too run-down. Nor too dashing. It would have to strike just the right balance to satisfy her aunt’s notions of propriety.

‘And I hope,’ her aunt said with a hard gleam in her eye, ‘that now you are over the initial excitement of seeing him, you will manage to behave with the requisite decorum. You cannot go letting young men pick you up and swing you about in drawing rooms like a bell. Nor is it seemly to weep all over them. You know how very important it is that you do nothing to increase the speculation already rife about you!’

‘I won’t, I promise you,’ said Imogen, leaping to her feet and going to give her aunt a swift kiss on the cheek. Her poor, dear aunt was doing her utmost to protect her from malicious gossip. She fully accepted that Lady Callandar could have done nothing but send her to her room the day before and explain to the visitors that she was indisposed. And to get rid of Rick before he said or did something that would have provided those cats with ammunition to have used against her.

‘I shall be as prim and proper as…as Lady Verity Carlow!’

‘That I very much doubt,’ said her aunt tartly, her hand going to the spot on her cheek that Imogen had kissed. But there was a softening to her eye which told Imogen that though she might say a proper lady should not indulge in such unmannerly displays of affection over the breakfast cups, she was not unmoved by it.

It seemed to take forever before Bedworth was finally announcing the arrival of Captain Alaric Bredon and showing him into the sitting room.

He bowed stiffly to her aunt, his normally laughing brown eyes wary. Lady Callandar accorded him a regal nod. Imogen dipped a curtsy and managed to walk across the room to his side.

And then they were off.

Rick led her to a sporting curricle whose paintwork gleamed golden in the wintry sunshine. A wizened groom was holding the heads of two magnificent matched bays.

‘Oh, Rick.’ Imogen sighed, taking his arm, and rubbing her cheek against his shoulder, after he had settled her on the bench seat and tucked a rug over her knees. ‘I am so glad you have come back.’ The groom sprang up behind and the horses shot forward, giving her the excuse to clutch his arm tighter. ‘I was half afraid, after the reception you got yesterday, that my aunt had scared you off.’

Rick gave a contemptuous snort, which the horses interpreted as a signal to go a bit faster. Imogen kept a firm hold of his arm while he brought them back to a pace more suited to the traffic they were negotiating.

Then he said with mock severity, ‘I have held raw recruits steady in the face of an approaching column. Do you think a frosty reception from a lady of a certain age could rout me? No, I just decided upon a tactical retreat. It went against the grain to leave you when you were so terribly upset. But I know your aunt has the power to banish me from your life permanently, should I truly offend her. Couldn’t risk that! Thought it best to regroup.’

‘You did so brilliantly,’ she said, giving his arm an affectionate squeeze. Then she remembered she was supposed to be behaving with extreme propriety at all times, and straightened up guiltily, looking about her to see if there was anyone who might have recognized who she was and start tattling.

‘I say, Midge, do you get scolded like that all the time? Just for hugging a fellow?’

Imogen coloured up. ‘I cannot go about hugging gentlemen, Rick. Have you forgotten what tales my father’s family spread about my mother?’

‘Pompous toad, the man who took the title after your father,’ growled Rick. ‘Has done his damnedest to erase the association your father brought to the name by being exceptionally priggish. And as for slandering your mother all over town—don’t know how he thought he could get away with that! Why, anyone who ever met her would know it was ridiculous! Amanda have affairs!’ He snorted again, in spite of the effect it had on the horses before. ‘A beautiful woman married off to a dry old stick like my father might have been excused for looking for a bit of excitement elsewhere, but there was never any such thing, and well you know it!’

‘Yes, but that is just it,’ she countered. ‘Very few people ever did meet her after she married Hugh. She never showed her face in Society again. It left Baron Framlingham free to say whatever he liked.’

Rick frowned, either because he was at a loss to know what to say or because he was concentrating on getting through the park gates.

Once they were safely bowling along the broad carriageway and there was no further risk to the gleaming paintwork, Imogen continued in a subdued voice, ‘There is no escaping the truth, though, that she did take a lover.’

‘Only the one!’ he retorted, as though that made it acceptable. And then, hot in defence of the woman who had mothered him throughout his formative years, ‘And only because your father drove her to it by making her so miserable! My father never blamed her for any of it. Said she would have done better to have married the Earl of Leybourne in the first place. Courted her at one time, so he told me. Why didn’t she marry him? After all, she must have carried a torch for him for years, if she…’

He petered out, with the look of a man who had just realized he was engaging in a rather improper conversation with an innocent young female.

‘My father swept her off her feet,’ replied Imogen dryly. ‘Not only did it satisfy his sense of mischief to win her from a man of higher rank, he had his eye on her fortune. Then again, he hoped marrying into such a respectable family might hoodwink certain people into believing he would reform. But of course, he did no such thing. Mama said—’ And then she realized it was not at all the thing to repeat any of the stories her mother had told her. They had been delivered as a warning, when Amanda knew she was not going to live long enough to steer her daughter through the shoals of the Marriage Mart herself.

‘He was a shocking rake,’ was all Imogen could bring herself to say. ‘Very indiscreet.’

At that moment, they passed a barouche carrying a group of particularly haughty matrons, whose eyes widened to see her riding in a sporting curricle—with a dashing military man as her only escort.

‘People watch me with their beady little eyes—’ she indicated the retreating vehicle with a wave of her hand ‘—just hoping to see some signs of flightiness in me. With my mother branded as some kind of temptress who lured two noblemen to their doom, and my father notorious for his legions of mistresses, it is hardly surprising people expect the worst of me. Aunt Herriard has to be extremely strict with me, Rick. To make sure nobody has even the slightest reason to say I am tarred with the same brush.’

‘I am amazed she let you come out with me this afternoon, then,’ he said wryly.

‘I was not sure, until the moment we saw you draw up in this rig, that she might not think better of it, either!’ Imogen laughed. ‘But it hit exactly the right note. Wherever did you get it?’

‘Oh, I borrowed it off Monty. You remember Monty?’

‘Remember Monty! Of course I do!’

Rick had not been on active service for long before Monty’s name began to crop up in his correspondence to Midge. It turned out that whenever a packet of mail arrived for the officers, they tended to share news from home with each other. Right from the first, she had scattered little sketches throughout her text, to illustrate the events she was describing. The pictures of the butcher chasing a recalcitrant pig through several paragraphs before meeting its inevitable fate beneath her signature had proved a particular hit. After that, everyone in Rick’s unit began to look forward to his receiving letters from his dear little Midge. Especially Monty, who never seemed to receive any mail of his own at all.

Appalled to learn that a young man who was serving his country had no support from his family, Midge had begun to include short messages specifically for him. And he had returned his own personal greetings.

‘He is in town?’ she said, half turning to him.

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 from an intolerable situation. Her world had been lying in ruins. The shock of having her lover arrested for murdering her husband had caused her to lose the baby she was carrying. She had lost her independence, too, when Imogen’s grandfather had hauled her back to the house in Mount Street when, to cap it all, somebody had broken into the Framlingham residence and ransacked part of the ground floor. She could not show her face in public, for the gossips were tearing her reputation to shreds. Almost out of her mind with grief and guilt, Amanda had submitted to the family doctor who had administered copious quantities of laudanum.

Imogen thought that it was probably during those days that she had been left for such lengthy periods in the nursery. It was certainly about that time when her baby brother, Thomas, contracted the illness that killed him.

The doctor’s response was to sedate her mother even more heavily.

That was when Grandpapa Herriard had taken the drastic measure of writing to his widowed friend Hugh to beg him to get his only daughter out of town.

‘He had three young sons,’ Amanda had often told her, her eyes welling with tears, ‘for whom he had little time and even less patience. They missed their mother, and I missed my boys. We all comforted each other.’

‘She was a wonderful mother to us,’ said Rick, as though completely attuned to her thoughts, ‘and I know you would be too. The way you took us all on after she went…’

‘I did not take you on, as you put it. I just love you all. You are my brothers,’ she declared, lifting her chin mutinously.

‘How would you like it if your brother took you to Gunter’s for some hot chocolate?’ He smiled down at her. ‘Would your aunt think that was improper?’

‘I expect so.’ Imogen grinned sheepishly. ‘But I should love it above all things. What will you do with the curricle, though?’

‘Oh, Monty’s groom can take it back. You won’t mind walking home, will you?’

‘Not with you,’ she smiled. ‘I know you will set a spanking pace. I have not had a good brisk walk for months!’

‘Ah, Midge,’ said Rick. ‘What was Nick thinking, to send you to live with a parcel of relatives who seem to want nothing more than to crush you?’

‘He did not have a lot of choice. They were the only ones who would have me. Oh, don’t let’s talk about such gloomy things. Tell me what you have been up to.’

So he spent the rest of their time together regaling her with anecdotes of his time with the forces occupying Paris.

‘You would like Paris, Midge,’ he said reflectively. ‘Pity we cannot find you a serving officer to marry while I am over here, and then you could come back with me.’

‘I should love that! But—’ her face fell abruptly ‘—I do not think my uncle would grant me permission to marry a soldier.’

Rick let the subject drop, but a thoughtful frown creased his brow as he made his way to Monty’s house in Hanover Square, after escorting Imogen home.

A footman took him straight upstairs to a dressing room, where he found his friend lounging on a sofa, a valet on a low stool before it, buffing his nails.

‘Ah, Rick!’ Monty smiled, nodding towards a side table that held a selection of crystal decanters. ‘You won’t mind helping yourself, while my man finishes?’

Rick made for the table, but then paused, fiddling with one of the stoppers, his frown deepening.

‘Not had a pleasant afternoon with Midge?’

‘Not entirely,’ Rick scowled, pouring himself a small measure and then walking with it to the window. ‘I need your advice.’

Monty dismissed his valet. ‘How may I be of service?’

Rick flung himself into a chair and gazed moodily into his glass.

‘My family has left Midge in a pickle. Up to me to get her out of it. Thought I could trust Nick to handle things, but what must the stupid cawker go and do but tell her the truth. You know our house had to be sold to cover my father’s debts? Well, anyone with an ounce of sense would have split the proceeds four ways and let Imogen think she was entitled to it. It isn’t as if the money makes all that much difference to us. We all have our careers. We can make our own way in the world. But no. Nick had to tell her that father left her with next to nothing! Then packed her off to a set of starchy relatives who seem intent on crushing all the spirit out of her. And now she says she’s too long in the tooth to attract a decent sort of husband with such a paltry dowry, and she’s thinking about becoming a governess!’

‘A fate worse than death,’ Monty agreed, only half joking. ‘My brothers have seen off three of the poor creatures since I sold out, and the Lord alone knows how many they dispatched before that!’

‘Midge would be wonderful with boys like your brothers, I should think. Probably thoroughly enjoy taking ‘em birds—nesting. That’s half the problem. Grew up following us around like a little shadow…well, you know that’s how she got her nickname. Nick said she was like a cloud of midges you just couldn’t shift no matter how many times you swatted them away!’ He chuckled. ‘Plucky little thing, she was. Gerry said she must have rubber bones. Why, when I think of the trees she fell out of, and the horses she fell off and the streams she fell into…and never cried! That was why, when she burst into tears all over me yesterday…well, it shook me up, I can tell you.’

Monty poured himself a brandy, and took the chair opposite Rick’s.

‘Well, I am not going to let her become a governess. Going to find her a husband myself! That is why I came to you.’

‘Indeed?’ said Monty coldly.

‘Well, her aunt’s not going to succeed, not by throwing her in the way of society types who want a wife to be a decoration to hang off their arm.’

‘I take it you are warning me that Midge is not very decorative.’

Rick looked affronted. ‘She is pretty enough. In her own way. It is just that she doesn’t go in for all that fluttery feminine nonsense. You know, batting her eyelashes and sighing up at you and so forth. She would never do anything that smacks of insincerity. Straight as a die, she is.’

‘Let me get this straight,’ said Monty. ‘She has no dowry to speak of, she is past the first flush of her youth, and is happier climbing trees than dancing quadrilles. Is that it?’

Rick grinned. ‘That just about sums her up!’ Then his expression grew serious. ‘Monty, you have been in town for a while now. You know who is about. And you said you were bored. Well, this will give you something worthwhile to do. Dammit, Monty, you know what a warm, sweet, loving girl she is. We need to find her someone who will appreciate her for what she is.’

Monty gave him a peculiar look.

‘Are you suggesting that I should fill the role?’

‘You!’ Rick’s jaw dropped. ‘Absolutely not! Not now you’ve sold out. A bit above our touch now you’ve stepped into your brother’s shoes. Your family will want you to marry somebody with money and connections, won’t they? And I’m sure you will be holding out for a diamond of the first water. All Midge has to offer any man is a warm heart. No, no, the kind of fellow that would suit Midge would be a serving officer. You would never hear her complaining about the hardships of following the drum. She would just fling herself into the role of taking care of her household on the march, and relish every challenge.’

Something about the set of Monty’s shoulders altered. ‘Forgive me. For a moment I thought you were trying to set me up with your sister.’

Rick burst out laughing.

Monty grinned sheepishly. ‘I know. It is just that recently, I have begun to feel…’ he shivered ‘…hunted. You have no idea the lengths some females will go to in order to hook a viscount on their line. The most mousy, unkempt of creatures fling themselves in my path…’

Rick looked very pointedly at Monty’s silk knee breeches, then at the rings that sparkled from almost every finger. ‘If you will dress so extravagantly, what can you expect?’

‘Oh—’ his expression soured ‘—for people to show their true colours, of course.’

Monty had still been seething from the interview he had endured with his father, when he had first arrived in town. He had spent months trying to prove that he was well able to take up his position as his father’s heir. But nothing he did or said had made any difference. Nor would his father listen to a word of criticism against the steward, who was bleeding the tenants dry to line his own pockets. So far as he could see, it would take only one more bad harvest to have the lot of them rising up in protest at their lot.

‘You have spent too long abroad.’ The earl had sneered when he had voiced his concerns. ‘This is England, not revolutionary France. Your brother knew these people, and he never noticed anything amiss.’

His older brother had been cut from the same cloth as his father, though, that was the trouble. Piers had been indulged and pampered from the day of his birth. He felt the whole world existed only to provide his pleasures, so saw nothing wrong with letting his tenants endure hardship, so long as the rents that funded his luxurious lifestyle came in on time.

‘You would do better to go up to town to get yourself a wife. It is heirs I need from you, not interference in the management of my estates!’

He had never felt so worthless in his life.

And it might have been perverse of him, but his reception in town had made him feel ten times worse. People knew he had a title and wealth, and that was all they cared about. Dandies aped every ridiculous kick of fashion he instigated. The more jewellery he wore, the more the women’s eyes lit up. The more obnoxiously he behaved, the more they fawned round him, until it was hard to know who he despised more: them or himself. It was only with an effort that he managed to shake off the feelings of disgust with himself—and the world in general—and say to Rick, ‘Will you dine with me before coming on to Lady Carteret’s rout? A tedious affair, but for several reasons, I am obliged to go. Once I have shown my face, we can go on to Limmer’s.’

‘Why not?’ Rick replied, draining his glass and setting it down on the table. ‘I have no other engagements tonight. And I have heard you keep an excellent cook.’

‘It is one of the few benefits of civilian life,’ agreed Monty, ‘that I can now have as much to eat as I want, as often as I want.’

‘Then let us get started, Monty,’ said Rick. ‘Or am I being presumptuous? Do I need to My Lord you these days?’

Monty shuddered eloquently. ‘You cannot believe how glad I am to have somebody in town who knows me as Monty. Whenever anybody calls me by my title, I get the urge to turn round to see if my brother has walked into the room. And I find myself going to greater and greater lengths to demonstrate that I am nothing like the former Viscount Mildenhall.’

‘So that explains why you are playing the dandy these days.’ Rick grinned, eyeing his friend’s brocaded waistcoat. ‘Can’t tell you how relieved I am. Was beginning to think I didn’t know you any more!’

‘Sometimes, lately,’ he admitted, thinking of how very tempted he had been by that chit who had thrown her drink over him, ‘I hardly know myself.’

If it had been on just that one occasion, he could have put it down to a momentary aberration. But since that night, he always knew when she was at any function he attended. The nape of his neck would prickle, and he would turn and find those knowing eyes fixed on him, and instead of feeling the contempt for her that her behaviour deserved, he would want to stalk across the room, free all that luxuriant hair from the pins that were scarcely restraining it, yank her into his arms and yield to the temptation of those seductively parted lips. He was beginning to think she, or some woman like her, could offer him a temporary respite from his torment. If he could just bury himself in that tempting little morsel for an hour or two…But then what?

By making such a girl his mistress, he would only prove his father right. Only a worthless rogue would ruin a girl from his own class.

Even if she was asking for it.

Chapter Three

‘Now, Imogen, I need hardly tell you that it is quite a feather in your cap to receive an invitation to Lady Carteret’s. Nor how important it is that you do absolutely nothing to raise eyebrows tonight.’

‘No, Aunt,’ replied Imogen meekly.

She was quite sure she would have no problem at all tonight affecting the slightly bored expression that was de rigueur for young ladies. She would be bored! Nobody talked about anything but dresses, and who was the latest arrival in town and how much money they had.

How on earth her aunt expected her to find out enough about a man to decide she wanted to marry him, when nobody spoke about anything that mattered, she had no idea!

As soon as they entered the house, Imogen understood why she had been invited. Lady Carteret was obviously one of those women who would enjoy boasting that her event had become a sad crush, even though the Season had not yet properly begun. The rooms were already crowded and hot, but since it was only just February, nobody dreamed of opening any windows. All she could do was ply her fan as energetically as she dared.

‘Midge!’ cried a beloved voice, making her glance up from her perusal of her so-far-empty dance card. ‘I thought it was you! My, don’t you look splendid!’

Imogen ignored the reference to her appearance, which was entirely due to her aunt’s generosity and good taste. Tonight’s white gown, the debutante’s uniform, had been lifted above the ordinary by the addition of a silver gauze overdress. The material was so delicate that Imogen was scared to sit down, never mind fling her arms round her brother, which was what she really wanted to do.

‘Oh, Rick! How glad I am to see you.’ She smiled. ‘You won’t mind dancing with me, just the once, will you?’

‘I should love to,’ he replied gallantly, ‘And I am quite sure Monty will do the same. He is here tonight, you know. That is how I come to be mixing in such exalted company. Hanging on his coat-tails!’

‘Really?’ Imogen’s heart lifted still further at the prospect of finally coming face-to-face with her brother’s friend.

‘Really,’ Rick assured her. He scanned the crowded room rapidly, a frown darkening his features. ‘Can’t think where he has got to, though. Was stood just over there a minute or so ago. Tell you what, Midge, you wait here, while I go and find him.’

‘Even better, Rick, why don’t I go and wait out on the terrace and you can bring him to me there. I need some fresh air.’

‘Yes, dashed stuffy in here,’ he agreed, running his finger round the inside of his rigid stock. ‘Tell you what, I will fetch you a glass of champagne, while I am at it. In fact, that is probably where Monty’s gone—to get a drink. He was complaining about the crush and the heat himself.’

Imogen smiled at the sight of Rick shouldering his way through the throng. It was amazing how heartening it was to have a gentleman eager to fetch her a drink. And to know there was another one, to whom she would shortly be introduced, who was already kindly disposed towards her.

Having enquired of a footman how she could make her way outside, she ambled along the corridor that led to the back of the house, picturing to herself what Monty would look like. He would be neatly and soberly dressed, she was sure. Even though he was now quite well off, according to Rick, she could not see a man who had been a serving soldier ever leaning towards dandyism. She pushed open the door that led outside, deciding he would definitely be slightly portly by now. After the deprivations of campaigning, he would probably make the most of having as much food as he wanted. She would not mind that at all. He would be…cuddly, she decided, trailing her way dreamily across the flagstones to rest her hands on the balustrade. He might have a limp, given the number of times he had been wounded. Not, of course that Rick had ever told her the specific nature of any of those wounds. But he would definitely have scars upon his person. He might be a little self-conscious about them. But she would tell him they did not make him any less attractive to her. She would tell him they were his badges of courage…

A slight movement from the garden below alerted her to the fact she was not alone outside.

‘Why, if it isn’t the girl who ambushed me with a champagne glass,’ a hated voice drawled, as Viscount Mildenhall emerged from the shadows and made his way up the steps to her side. ‘How very persistent you are.’

‘Persistent? Oh!’ She gasped as it dawned on her that the viscount had assumed she had come outside in pursuit of him. ‘How dare you!’

‘I dare because women like you will stop at nothing!’ He came right up to her, his eyes flashing green fire. ‘Set up one more scene like this, just one—’

‘I have not set up any scene, you arrogant pig! Are you so vain you think the whole world revolves around you?’

‘So, what is your excuse for coming out here, not two seconds after I left the ballroom?’ He laughed mockingly. ‘Discovered that you show to advantage in moonlight, have you? But it is too late to attempt to charm me with those starry eyes and that dreamy air. You may think you look like some kind of romantic vision in silver tissue, Miss Hebden. But I have seen you watching me with a calculating gleam in your eyes—’

The only thing she had been calculating was how to right the wrong impression he had gained of her. But since her drive with Rick, she had decided she no longer cared what the arrogant fop thought of her.

‘I wanted,’ she replied, drawing herself up to her full height, ‘to get some fresh air. If I looked starry-eyed, it was because I was thinking of another gentleman. Had I known you were out here, it would have been the last place I would have come. All you have to do, if you do not wish to remain in my presence, is to return to the ballroom.’

He took one pace in the direction of the doors, then stopped and whirled back to her with a face like thunder.

‘And I suppose you will come in right behind me, with your gown disarrayed, telling tales that I have taken advantage of you. Hoping to force my hand…’ The only way Miss Hebden was going to get a husband was by utilising such unscrupulous means. It infuriated him to think she had made him her target. That she had somehow sensed, in spite of the pains he had taken to conceal it, that she might have some chance of success. Because, even though he despised her methods, he could not deny that she was never very far from his thoughts. And that those thoughts were, invariably, highly salacious.

Imogen had taken all she could stand. The accusation, coupled with the expression of contempt on his face was like a bellows, fanning her simmering antipathy into searing flame. She lashed out at him, her open palm cracking across his cheek with a noise like a whiplash.

It silenced him, but only for a second. ‘You vicious little…’ His hand went to his reddening cheek. ‘You will pay for that.’

Before she could make a move to stop him, Viscount Mildenhall pulled her into his arms and kissed her. Her cry of protest was swallowed under the insistent pressure of his mouth. His arms clamped her own to her sides, so that although she struggled with all her might, she was quite unable to break his hold.

At first she was far too angry to feel scared. Then after only a few seconds, she discovered that there was something wickedly fascinating about being kissed, thoroughly kissed, by an utterly determined man. She stopped struggling as some essential, deeply buried aspect of her femininity came leaping to life in acknowledgement of his masculinity. Her lips softened and parted. With a low growl, Viscount Mildenhall plunged his tongue into her mouth, taking the experience onto a whole new level.

Her mind reeled. Her heart pounded. Her stomach did an excited little flip.

And Viscount Mildenhall, sensing her capitulation, brought one hand round to the front of her gown and cupped her breast.

His audacity shocked her.

‘What are you—’ She gasped, her eyes widening in dismay. ‘You cannot—’

‘It is what women who pursue men get,’ he sneered. ‘Exactly what they deserve. Since the night you made a play for me at Mrs Leeming’s, I have made it my business to find out about you. Did you know that men are making wagers about how long it will be before you follow—’ he delved inside her bodice ‘—in your mother’s footsteps?’

Then he fastened his lips to her neck.

Imogen felt as though she was splitting in two.

She hated the scathing way he had spoken of her mother. She knew the casual way he was fondling her breast, as though she was a light skirt, was grossly insulting.

Yet the sensuality of that caress was sending rivers of desire coursing through her veins. Her body wanted to arch into his, entwine itself around him.

‘Please, please,’ she heard herself moaning. ‘Kiss me again.’

The viscount raised his head and smiled at her. With such contempt it roused what remained of her pride.

When he lowered his mouth to take the kiss she had begged for, she bit him.

‘What the—!’ He reared back, and Imogen, who had been taught well by Rick, struck him in the face, first with her right fist, and then her left.

There had not been room for her to take a really good backswing. It was shock, she expected, that sent him reeling backwards. And a stroke of luck that his shoulder slammed into an ornamental urn—that turned out to be full of sandy loam. Which cascaded all over him as it rocked on its plinth.

She made good her escape while he was still struggling to prevent it from toppling onto the flags below the terrace.

She had only just got inside when she careered full tilt into Rick, who had a glass of champagne in each hand. He did not spill a single drop when she crashed into him, she noted somewhat hysterically as she clung to him. He merely raised his arms in the air, absorbing the impact of her body with a slight grunt.

She felt him turn and put the drinks down, then put his arms round her as he asked, ‘What the devil has happened?’ He put her from himself, then looked down at her with concern. His eyes snagged on the front of her gown, and narrowed. ‘Has some man tried to take advantage of you?’

For the first time, Imogen noticed that the flimsy material was torn. It must have happened when she wrestled herself out of the viscount’s hold.

His face darkened. ‘I shall kill him,’ he growled, making for the outside door.

‘No, Rick! Don’t say such a thing!’ She grabbed his arm and hauled him round. ‘If you get into a fight over this, everyone will say I am just like my mother, luring good men to their doom! Don’t you see?’

His eyes flicked from her to the door and back again.

‘Dammit, Midge,’ he growled, ‘it’s my job to bring the fellow to book.’

‘No,’ she countered. ‘It is your job to protect me. And you won’t do that by making a fuss about…about…’ she swallowed down her outraged pride ‘…a mere trifle. All you will do is stir up even more gossip.’

She glanced over her shoulder then, fearful that the viscount would come storming into the house after her. He would be bound to act in such a way that nothing she could say would stop Rick from murdering him!

‘It won’t be just my chances for a good marriage I will lose. I won’t even be able to get employment in a respectable household. Oh, please, Rick, can you not just take me home and pretend this never happened?’

He reached out and, with one gloved finger, touched a spot on her cheek.

‘I say, is that blood?’ he hissed through gritted teeth. ‘If the fellow has really hurt you, Midge, no matter what you think, I will have to call him out!’

‘Blood?’ She blinked, bewildered for a second. ‘Oh, I should think that is probably his. I bit him.’

‘You…bit him?’ Rick looked startled.

‘Yes, and then I hit him, both hands, just as you taught me. One—two!’ She mimed the punches for his edification.

He looked a little mollified. ‘Don’t suppose you laid him out, by any chance?’

‘No,’ she admitted ruefully. ‘Though I have put a mark or two on his face, and ruined his coat.’ She remembered the look on his face when soil had rained down on him, and couldn’t help smiling. She had hit his most sensitive spot. His vanity. No wonder he had not come indoors yet. He would not want anyone to see him covered in dirt!

She came out of her daze to find Rick rearranging her shawl so that it concealed her torn bodice.

‘Come on then,’ he said, putting one arm comfortingly about her shoulders. ‘I shall take you home.’

It was only then that she realized she was going to have to give an excuse for leaving so suddenly.

‘My aunt!’ she cried, stopping dead in her tracks. ‘I cannot go back into the ballroom looking like this!’

‘Don’t you worry,’ Rick said, ushering her inexorably along the corridor that led towards the front hall.

‘I shall tell her you have a headache or something. Females are always falling ill at events like this, aren’t they?’ Rick pressed Imogen into a chair, and strode across to a footman who was eyeing them indolently. ‘Hi, you, fellow! Take a message to Lady Callandar, will you? Tell her I’ve had to take Miss Hebden home. Sudden indisposition.’ He lowered his voice. ‘And tell Viscount Mildenhall I will catch up with him later, at Limmer’s. Had to escort my sister home.’

‘Lady Callandar that Miss Hebden is indisposed,’ repeated the footman, pocketing the coin Rick pressed into his palm. ‘And Viscount Mildenhall that you will be at Limmer’s, after taking your sister home.’

Satisfied he had the message correct, Rick hurried back to Imogen’s side.

She barely registered him shepherding her out of the front door and into a waiting cab.

Oh, how right her mother had been to warn her to beware of exchanging furtive kisses with rakes by moonlight! She hated the viscount. She really did. And yet, when he had swept her into his arms, the emotion that had been uppermost had not been revulsion at all. But excitement.

The feel of Viscount Mildenhall’s tongue sweeping into her mouth had been as intoxicating as champagne. Exhilarating bubbles had fizzed through her whole body, bringing it to life in a way she had never imagined could be possible.

She raised her fingers to her mouth, suddenly understanding her mother’s downfall in a way that had always, until tonight, completely baffled her.

Because she had never experienced the power of desire before. This was why Amanda had turned down the chance of a match with her worthy suitor! Because she could not resist the thrill of Kit Hebden’s wicked brand of lovemaking!

She shivered, suddenly scared. For it was not only her mother’s blood that ran through her veins. She was Kit Hebden’s daughter too. Kit, who never once tried to subdue that side of his nature, but had given it full rein. Kit, who was never content with one woman, especially not the one he had married.

Were the gossipmongers right about her, after all?

She reached for Rick’s hand across the seat, and grasped it.

Now that she was exposed to handsome, experienced rakes like Viscount Mildenhall, would it only be a matter of time before everyone found out that she really had inherited Kit Hebden’s lascivious nature, after all?

Once Viscount Mildenhall had finished brushing the dirt from his jacket he sat down on the stone coping of the balustrade. It was over. He surrendered. When Miss Hebden came back outside, no doubt with her chaperon and any other witnesses she managed to round up, he would inform anyone who cared to listen that yes, he would marry the hussy.

It scarcely mattered what he thought of her. It had not been the behaviour of a gentleman to half ravish an unmarried girl. He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket, keeping his eyes fixed on the door through which Miss Hebden had fled, and dabbed at the blood seeping from his lower lip. Now he must pay the price for letting the base side of his nature get out of hand.

He grimaced. It would serve his father right. The earl had given him a lengthy lecture about the type of female he wanted him to bring back to Shevington as his bride. Though his father, with three abysmally miserable marriages under his belt, was the last person qualified to dish out marital advice.

How ironic it was that his father had already specified that on no account was he to marry for love! ‘If she should die in childbirth, you will feel like a murderer,’ he had said. ‘And if she proves faithless, it will break your heart. Just pick a woman with the right connections that you feel interested in bedding. And then, once you have got her pregnant, you may leave her here, return to town and reward yourself by taking a pretty mistress. Or two.’

Well, he was interested in bedding Miss Hebden all right! Yes, it would serve his father right if he did bring her into the family. He would positively enjoy flaunting that scandalous creature under his father’s nose!

He shifted his weight as the cold from the stone parapet seeped through his silken breeches. Where was the girl? It could not have taken her this long to round up reinforcements, could it?

He got to his feet, and began to pace up and down. He did not like the feeling of being played like a fish on Miss Hebden’s line. But in a way, it would be a relief to get the issue of marriage settled. Once he had her name on the marriage lines, he would have reason to return to Shevington, and this time, he would brook no nonsense from his father’s steward. He would let the man know that he knew what he was up to. He would visit every single tenant on all his father’s vast holdings and let them know that things would change once he was in the saddle. That until that time, he would do his damnedest to see that none of them suffered unnecessarily. And as for the matter of his brothers…

Yes, marrying Miss Hebden would have its advantages. Not least of which would be getting her flat on her back, where she belonged.

But he was damned if he was going let her think he would dance to her tune! He cocked his ear to listen to the strains of the music filtering out onto the terrace; if she did not get herself back out here by the time the minuet was finished, he was leaving! Why should he freeze to death, awaiting her pleasure? He had given her a sporting chance to get the matter resolved tonight.

The last strains of the minuet faded away, and Viscount Mildenhall strode to the door, his face set. He had an appointment to meet Rick at Limmer’s. He would enjoy one last night of freedom, and then, in the morning, he would make an appointment with her guardian, when he would offer to make an honest woman of her.

If such a thing were possible.

Imogen passed a restless night.

She may have escaped Lady Carteret’s house with nobody any the wiser, but the vile viscount was bound to want to exact some form of revenge for his waistcoat, his jacket and his lower lip. She could not see him doing it by simply telling everyone what had passed between them on the terrace, since he might come out of the re-telling looking a little ridiculous. But he would think of something.

She would never dare show her face at any Tonnish gathering again!

But she could not just sit back and wait for the viscount’s next move.

She had not fully appreciated, until he had hauled her into his arms, just how close to the brink of disaster she stood. But now she understood her nature better. She would have to take drastic steps to prevent herself from tipping over the edge.

It would mean leaving London. To protect her uncle and aunt. Because, while she resided under their roof, everything she did reflected on them.

She could, she eventually decided, seek Lord Keddinton’s help. He had, after all, made a point of taking her to one side, not long after she arrived in London, and telling her in an undertone that if ever she found herself in difficulties, she could apply to him for assistance. He explained that this was because he felt a particular fondness for her, on account of the close friendship he had enjoyed with her father.

She had not, she recalled ruefully, been all that grateful for such an assurance at the time. For one thing, she had felt offended at his assumption she would get into the kind of trouble her aunt and uncle might not be able to deal with. For another, his claim to have been a friend of her father had set her back up. She had never heard anything good about the man who had sired her. And then again, if Lord Keddinton was such a good friend, why had she never even heard of him before arriving in town?

She had mouthed all the right words, but had not been able to repress a shiver as she had shaken his long white fingers from her arm. There was something so very…dessicated about the man. His smile had held no warmth. She had not been able to look straight into his cold, pale eyes for more than a fleeting moment. On top of everything else, his faintly supercilious air had made her aware how very gauche and countrified and ignorant she was.

But since that first, inauspicious meeting, she had revised her opinion of him. For he had demonstrated the friendship he claimed, by instructing his daughters to include her in their social set. Which, considering her reputation, was a risk in itself. And while she had never warmed to either Penelope or Charlotte, there was no denying that they had become frequent callers. The fact that all their ‘helpful hints’ made her feel wretched was hardly their father’s fault.

And he had not exactly been a friend of her father’s either.

‘I expect,’ her aunt had explained, ‘he began to feel responsible for your welfare after he worked with Lord Narborough to smooth things over after the Dreadful Tragedy. Robert Veryan, as he was then, only held a junior post in the Home Office when your father was called in to help with some mystery that others were finding hard to solve. Say what you like about Kit Hebden—’ she had nodded sagely ‘—his mind was exceptionally sharp. As is Lord Keddinton’s. He has risen to his present exalted office solely due to the brilliance of his mind and the energy he devotes to his work. It is whispered—’ she had lowered her voice conspiratorially, though there were only the two of them in the room ‘—that he is soon to receive an earldom. If he declares he is your friend, Imogen, you may think yourself a very lucky girl. Just a hint from him, in the right quarters, and, well…’ She had spread her hands expansively.

Yes, Imogen decided, just as dawn was breaking, she would take Lord Keddinton up on his offer of assistance. With all the connections he was supposed to have, he was bound to be able to find her a post somewhere as a governess. And deal with her uncle’s objections. It would mean confiding in him something of what had happened. And her fears of creating havoc in the Herriard household. But somehow, she sensed that he was a man well used to receiving—and keeping—secrets.

She was not sure exactly when she would be able to arrange an interview with Lord Keddinton, though. She yawned. Nor how long it would take him to arrange for her departure from London.

The next morning, when she found a note from Rick beside her breakfast plate, her heart leapt into her throat. Had he challenged the viscount to a duel after all? With trembling fingers, she broke the seal, and discovered that all he wanted to tell her was that Monty was arranging a trip to the theatre for that very evening. With immense relief, she passed the note to her aunt.

‘A trip to the theatre?’ Her aunt regarded her doubtfully while Imogen fiddled nervously with her teaspoon. ‘Are you sure you are quite up to it? You had to leave Lady Carteret’s early last night. And you still look a little wan. If your head is still paining you…’

‘I am feeling much better, thank you, Aunt. And providing I have a rest this afternoon, I am sure I shall be quite well by this evening.’

She so wanted to see Rick and assure herself he was not going to get mixed up with the vile viscount. And he was not going to be in the country for very long.

‘This Monty person, whose box it is, does he come from a good family?’

‘Rick says so, Aunt. It was his curricle Rick borrowed to take me driving in the park.’

‘Must be well-to-do, if his family has a box. And his address?’

‘Hanover Square.’

‘Hmm. I suppose it can do no harm, so long as I accompany you.’

Imogen exhaled the breath she had been holding. If she had to go out anywhere tonight, she would feel far safer in the theatre, with Rick and his friends, than at some Ton gathering where she might run into the viscount again! And as the day wore on, she began to wonder if Rick’s notion—to match her up with a serving soldier who could remove her from England altogether—might not have some merit.

It would not be the match they had hoped for, but surely her aunt and uncle would prefer to tell people she was married, rather than working as a governess in some rural backwater?

And most of Rick’s friends, she suspected, would be younger sons from the kind of families that were not likely to care very much about scandals that had happened twenty years ago.

It might work! If only, she thought despondently, she could induce one of them to propose to her. She did not have much confidence in her own powers of seduction. But she only had to drop a hint to Pansy that there was likely to be a special gentleman at the theatre that night for the girl’s eyes to light up with missionary zeal. She pulled out the evening gown whose bodice was so low, Imogen had never agreed to wear it before. Even now, she eyed it with some trepidation. Then lifted her chin. Desperate straits called for desperate measures. Besides, the gown could not be as shocking as she considered it, or her aunt would never have purchased it for her.

It was not long before she was standing before the mirror, staring in shocked awe at the exposed mounds of her breasts and the shadowy outline of her legs through the diaphanous skirts. She flicked open her fan and looked at her reflection over the top of it, in the coquettish way she had seen other girls employ. Could she really bring herself to simper up at some poor unsuspecting gentleman like that?

Bother the viscount for forcing her into a situation where she felt obliged to resort to such stratagems! She snapped her fan shut and tossed it onto the bed as Pansy held out yet another brand-new pair of evening gloves. The ones she had worn the night before had been beyond repair. Ladies’ gloves, she sighed, were just not designed to withstand bouts of fisticuffs.

Only Rick’s response, when he saw her descending the stairs, managed to ease her conscience somewhat.

‘You look as pretty as a picture!’ he declared, bussing her cheek.

‘Really?’ Imogen flushed with pleasure. The gown could not be too revealing, then, or her brother would have certainly let her know. Of course, she did not really believe she was as attractive as he had implied. She was not a beauty, like her mother. But she knew she was not an antidote, either. She smiled wryly. By the end of the evening her hair would most likely have escaped the bandeau into which Pansy had restrained it, and would be rioting all over the place. But at least she could start the evening out feeling as though she looked like a fashionably eligible young lady.

‘Here, let me help you on with your cloak,’ he said, taking it from the footman who was hovering with it over his arm.

‘Your aunt about?’ he murmured into her ear as he draped the fur-lined mantle round her shoulders.

‘She will be down shortly, I expect.’ Her conscience niggled at her again. Would she be feeling so glad to be covered up, if her gown was not verging on the indecent?

‘Good. Wanted a word.’ He tugged her into the drawing room and pushed the door to. ‘It’s like this.’ He looked briefly uncomfortable. Then he took a deep breath and plunged in. ‘Glad you’ve made an extra effort tonight. With the dress, and the fancy thing in your hair, and all that. Because, you see, I was talking to Monty last night, and the upshot is, he’s willing to help you. Find a husband that is. The fellows he’s rounded up for tonight are both on the lookout for the kind of wife who would accept they have careers in the Army.’

‘He…what?’ She sat down quickly on the nearest chair. ‘Are you r-roasting me?’

‘No! Would not make a jest of a thing like that! He said he feels as though he knows you, through all those letters you used to write to me, and that you deserve to find happiness with a man who will appreciate you, rather than some fashionable—’ he broke off, looking guiltily towards the door, through which her aunt might enter at any moment. ‘You ain’t angry with me, with us, are you? Just trying to help.’

‘No, oh, no, I am not in the least angry,’ she exclaimed as she gave him a fierce hug. ‘How can I thank you! Best of my brothers!’

His cheeks flushed. ‘It is nothing. Sure Gerry would do something, if he were here. So would Nick, if you could get his nose out of his books long enough to alert him to the fact that all’s not right with you.’

No, she sighed. Neither of them would ever be likely to stir themselves on her behalf. Rick was the best of her brothers. He had always been the one to check her over for broken bones when she fell out of a tree, while Nick would cluck his tongue impatiently and Gerry would roar with laughter.

Before either of them could say another word, they heard her aunt coming down the stairs. They went to join her in the hall, and embarked on the kind of light-hearted chatter suitable for a party bound on an evening of pleasure. All the way to the theatre, she felt as though she was floating on air. This was the first stroke of good luck she’d had in an age. Even if the gentlemen she met tonight did not take to her, it sounded as though Monty would be prepared to help her find the kind of man she could enjoy being married to. Perhaps, he might even take one look at her, and…Her heart skipped a beat. How wonderful it would be if Monty himself, the hero of all her girlhood dreams, took a shine to her. If he proposed and whisked her away from London, just when she was most in need of rescue!

She could not stop smiling, all the way up the stairs to the upper tiers. Though her heart was beating so fast that it made her feel a little shaky. By the time they reached the door to Monty’s private box, she was clinging to Rick’s arm for all she was worth.

And it was just as well. For the first person she saw, when the door swung open, was none other than Viscount Mildenhall. He was lounging against one of the pillars that supported the gilded ceiling. Very soberly dressed, for him, in a dark coat, plain waistcoat and only one ring adorning his little finger.

The castles she had been building in the air came crashing down about her in ruins. However much Monty might want to help her, the Viscount would prevent any man he considered a friend from getting entangled with her!

Viscount Mildenhall met her horrified gaze with lowered brows. Then he looked at Rick. Then at the way she was clinging to his arm. Then back at Rick.

‘Rick,’ he drawled, pushing himself off the pillar and coming forward with his hand outstretched. ‘Welcome. And this is?’ His eyes flicked to Imogen again, his features now fixed in an expression of polite enquiry.

‘My sister!’ said Rick, as though it must be obvious.

‘Your sister,’ he repeated, looking at her long and hard.

Imogen bristled. What was he doing acting as though he was the host tonight, the arrogant pig! It was Monty who had invited them! And then, to her horror, Rick said, ‘She has been really looking forward to meeting you properly, at last.’

Imogen felt heat flood to her cheeks. If that was not enough to destroy her reputation in this man’s eyes, she did not know what would. He had already accused her of pursuing him. Though nobody else seemed aware anything was wrong, she could tell from the way his eyes glittered he thought she was so brassy she had even roped her brother into her schemes.

She lifted her chin and glared at him. ‘I was not in the least keen to meet you, Viscount Mildenhall. My brother told me he was to introduce me to an exofficer from his regiment.’ She scanned the other occupants of the box again, wondering which one of the young gentlemen it could be. Neither of them looked in the least like the Monty of her imagination.

‘You already know each other?’ Rick asked, glancing down at her in surprise.

‘We have crossed each other’s paths, once or twice. But we have never been formally introduced,’ said the viscount.

‘Well, then, Monty, let me do the honours. This is my sister, Midge. Well, my stepsister, Miss Imogen Hebden, I suppose I should say, to be perfectly accurate. And her maternal aunt, Lady Callandar.’

‘M-Monty?’ Imogen’s eyes swivelled back to Viscount Mildenhall and widened in horror. ‘You are Monty? B-but—’

At exactly the same time, Lady Callandar rounded on her. ‘This is your brother’s friend Monty?’

Finally, even Rick picked up on the fact there was something amiss.

‘Oh, ah, well, suppose I should have explained he’s Viscount Mildenhall, nowadays.’

‘The family name is Claremont, as I am sure you are aware, madam,’ he said to Lady Callandar, bowing stiffly from the waist. ‘My brother officers still tend to use the name by which they have always known me. I started off as Lieutenant Monty, then Captain Monty, and so on. In Captain Bredon’s defence, we have not seen each other since I took the title after my older brother died last year.’

Lady Callandar began to talk to him. About what, Imogen did not know. There was a funny roaring sound in her ears.

Rick led her to a chair at the front of the box, then helped her off with her cloak, while Viscount Mildenhall performed the same office for her aunt.

She felt naked without her cloak. Even more so when the viscount’s eyes swept over the curves of her exposed bosom, reminding her of the way his hands had stroked there, to such devastating effect, only the night before. He looked up, then, and their eyes met.

Imogen gasped at what she saw in them. He was remembering too!

He had raised his hand to his jaw, and was fingering his lower lip, drawing her horrified attention to the raised scab, and the purplish bruise she had put there.

She tore her eyes from his and gazed dizzily down into the stalls below. She had never been scared of heights before, but now she felt as though she was teetering right on the brink of an abyss.

All the viscount had to do was give her one little push, and she would go plunging down into social ruin.

Chapter Four

Nothing on the stage could hold Imogen’s attention. There was far too much drama playing out right there in the darkened box.

After the initial shock of meeting her, the viscount recovered his customary aplomb remarkably swiftly, introducing her to his other guests—the men she now had no hope of marrying—as though nothing was amiss.

Only she noticed something odd in the way he did not give her full name, but instead presented her as ‘The sister of my good friend, Captain Alaric Bredon,’ before correctly introducing her aunt as Lady Callandar.

He did it to prevent them knowing Rick was related to the scandalous Miss Hebden, no doubt. And she was, reluctantly, grateful to him.

Though he was still furious with her. She could tell by the way the air between them seemed to positively thrum whenever she glanced his way.

When the curtain fell for the interval and everyone rose and began to chat to each other, he took the opportunity to draw her aside.

‘You will not say one word to your brother about what has passed between us,’ he bit out. ‘He has introduced you to me, in all good faith, believing you to be the innocent young creature who grew up with him in Staffordshire. He has no idea how much you have changed, and I have no intention of being the man to disabuse him.’

She felt an overwhelming sense of relief that he was going to put aside his desire for vengeance because of his friendship with Rick.

‘Thank you,’ she breathed. ‘I would not have Rick hurt for the world. Indeed, I would never have come tonight and put him in this situation, had I known that you were Monty.’ She took a good, long look at him then, riddled with confusion. She would never have guessed that Monty could be the same man as Viscount Mildenhall. The Monty Rick had written about had been dashing, courageous and honourable. Whatever could have happened, to turn him into this vain, rude, slimy…

His eyes narrowed under her scrutiny. She wondered if he could tell what she was thinking about him. But then he nodded and said, ‘I believe you. For my part, I never connected the sister Rick described to me with the Miss Hebden I know. Why is your name Hebden—’ he frowned ‘—and not Bredon?’

‘Because Rick’s father did not care to adopt me and give me his name.’ She stared past him, to where Rick was chatting happily with one of the other young men. Out of the corner of her eye she could see her aunt quizzing the other. ‘Well,’ she added bitterly, ‘I should think you can understand that. You, above all people, know the kind of things that are said about my parents.’

When they all took their seats again, after the interval was over, Imogen found to her dismay that she had been manoeuvred into a chair next to Viscount Mildenhall.

He ignored her for the entire second act with magnificent disdain. Every time she glanced up at him, his face was turned towards the stage, his whole demeanour indicating that the actors were far more interesting than the presumptuous female who had inveigled her way into his box.

While, to her growing annoyance, Imogen could think of nothing but him. Even though he was a despicable worm, being able to feel the heat of his body—so close to hers—and smell the indefinable scent of him made her whole being thrum with awareness. She could not stop thinking about the way his tongue had swept into her mouth, the way he had held her, dominated her. It made her stomach turn over and her heart speed up. When she knew a well-brought-up young lady would feel nothing but revulsion for a man who had treated her so insultingly, it was galling to admit that merely sitting next to him in the dark was making her hanker for more of the same.

She squirmed in her chair, a seething mass of insecurity and thwarted longing, counting the minutes until she could escape from the arrogant, handsome brute lounging in the chair next to hers. As soon as the last curtain came down, she leapt to her feet and made for the sanctuary of Rick’s side.

There was the inevitable hiatus before they could leave, during which Viscount Mildenhall came across to where she was standing clinging to Rick’s arm, and said, ‘I shall call to take you for a drive tomorrow, Miss Hebden.’

Imogen’s heart sank. The expression on his face was so forbidding she could see that while he tooled his vehicle round the park he fully intended to give her a stern lecture upon her manners and morals, before warning her to forget any notion she might have of marrying any of his friends!

But she would have to endure the scold, if that was what it took to get him to abandon any plans he had to ruin her socially. And it seemed, from what he had just said, that he might let her off the hook, for the sake of his friendship with Rick.

‘Very well,’ she said, lifting her chin defiantly. ‘I shall be ready.’

Rick looked at her quizzically while he escorted her down the stairs to the exit. ‘Is something wrong, Midge? Did you not hit it off with Monty? I must say, he seemed quite taken with you.’

Yes, the viscount was a consummate actor! She knew what he thought of her. He had made it quite plain. And yet tonight, with Rick watching, he had behaved like a perfect gentleman, according her consideration and courtesy. Even the way he had occasionally looked at her, with an intensity that made her feel like a specimen under a microscope, could be interpreted by others as genuine interest in her as a woman.

‘Did he?’ she managed airily. ‘I cannot think why. When he is so handsome I dare swear he could have any female for the crooking of his finger.’ She dived into the waiting coach with more haste than grace, and flung herself into the seat corner.

Rick poked his head through the open door. ‘But he is calling on you tomorrow…’

‘I am sure it is out of courtesy to you, Rick,’ she muttered, tossing her reticule onto the seat next to her, and bending to extricate the flounce of her skirt, which had caught in the heel of her shoe. ‘There is nothing about me that would attract a man like him.’

‘Oh, I would not be so sure,’ said Rick thoughtfully. ‘He said a lot of very complimentary things about you when I met him in Limmer’s last night. Said he felt as though he knew you well, through the letters you used to write me. Said any man would be lucky to get a girl like you for a wife. A girl with integrity and loyalty and…’

That had been before he found out her name was Hebden, though. She shook her head, saying firmly, ‘I am not at all the kind of girl a future earl ought to marry.’ As if to prove her point, the flounce parted from both her heel and the body of her skirt simultaneously.

‘Well, that was what I thought at first,’ Rick mused. ‘For he only said he was going to help you find a husband. But once he clapped eyes on you, he did not let any of the other fellows come near you!’

No, he had not. But it was not because he felt anything like admiration for her! With fingers that were shaking with chagrin, she tied the trailing length of lace into a knot so that it would not trip her up when she got out of the coach later.

‘You know, Midge,’ Rick persisted, ‘since your aunt has had the dressing of you—’ he ran his eyes down her slender frame ‘—you look far prettier than you used to.’

Imogen managed to raise a wan smile. In truth, his blind refusal to look at her as other men did warmed her to the core. ‘When I was running about the fields in your cast-off breeches, with my hair in plaits, you mean?’

Rick grinned. ‘With your front tooth missing and a black eye from falling out of a tree. Monty should have seen you then!’ He laughed.

Imogen laughed too, but she could not think how Rick did not hear how false it sounded.

He would be so disappointed if he ever found out what his friend really thought of her.

But then, she sighed, slumping into the corner, Rick was only the latest in a long line of people she had disappointed, one way or another. Before she had become such a trial to her aunt and uncle, she had proved unworthy of inclusion in Hugh Bredon’s will. But worst of all, the deepest hurt she had to live with was knowing that she had not even been of any great comfort to her own mother.

Amanda had spent all her life in mourning. She had found some compensation in nurturing Hugh’s boys, but now it dawned on Imogen, on a fresh wave of pain: Imogen had survived babyhood, grown and thrived, yet had never been any consolation at all. Having a mere daughter had never made up for Amanda’s loss of her sons.

Imogen rubbed at a tension spot forming between her brows. Seeing how much her mother had loved Hugh’s sons, had she tried to be just like them, so that her mother would love her too? Not that it had done her any good. Her mother had focussed all her attention on them, even making Imogen promise, while she had nursed her during her final illness, that she would take care of them in her stead.

And now here she was, dressed by her aunt to resemble a young lady of fashion. With everyone expecting her to marry well. While inside she was still that girl Rick had just described. A scruffy, grubby, unwanted by-product of a loveless marriage. Desperately hoping somebody might take to her just as she was.

She almost groaned aloud. She had spent so long trying to prove she was just as good as a boy, that she had never learned properly how to be a girl. It was not just the viscount she repelled. She had already learned, from the year she had spent observing the interaction between the sexes in polite Society, that no man would want to marry such an awkward female. She may as well accept it. She had always been a misfit, and now it looked as though she always would be.

Her aunt bustled up to the carriage then, so Rick was obliged to stand aside.

‘What a stroke of luck!’ her aunt beamed as soon as the door closed and they were on their way. ‘That Viscount Mildenhall should turn out to be a friend of Captain Bredon’s. And that he is prepared to take you out for a drive tomorrow. Only think what this will mean!’

‘Aunt, please, do not get your hopes up too high. It is just a drive in the park—’

‘Yes, but with Viscount Mildenhall! Everyone will know he has forgiven you for the Champagne Incident. If he could, perhaps, be persuaded to stand up with you, for a dance or two, as well—which he might since he seems on such good terms with Captain Bredon—well, it will do wonders for your social standing!’

Imogen sucked in a sharp breath. This was an aspect to the case she had not considered. Just being seen driven about the park by the viscount would indeed be something of a coup. Her aunt would make sure everyone knew about his friendship with her stepbrother. Perhaps being considered a connection of his would outweigh the handicap of her heritage.

For once, she entered wholeheartedly into her aunt’s enthusiastic preparations for the drive the next day. So much hinged on persuading Viscount Mildenhall to put aside his animosity towards her.

They had both noticed that the viscount seemed to favour the colour green; determined to curry favour with him, Lady Callandar dressed Imogen in a carriage dress and topcoat in that colour.

Her aunt regarded the finished effect with pursed lips.

‘My chinchilla furs,’ she said, snapping her fingers at Pansy, who ran to fetch them. ‘You want to look as though you have every right to be riding next to a man renowned for the elegance of his attire,’ she finished, draping the luxurious furs round Imogen’s shoulders.

Of course, when Viscount Mildenhall arrived, he completely eclipsed her, in his voluminous driving coat, fastened with enormous mother-of-pearl buttons, and a curly brimmed beaver hat set at a rakish angle on his golden locks. But at least she knew she looked remarkably elegant, for once, rather than the hoyden he thought her!

He had come to fetch her in the very same curricle he had lent to Rick. The same wizened groom stood holding the horses’ heads while they mounted up to the seat. As Viscount Mildenhall tucked the rug round her knees, she whispered, ‘Before you say whatever you have to say, I just wanted you to know that I am truly grateful for your not saying or doing anything last night to expose my dreadful conduct at Lady Carteret’s.’

He straightened up swiftly and shot her an inimical glance. ‘Do you think I wish people to know what happened on the terrace?’

Her spirits sank. Though he obviously felt some remorse for his part in that disgraceful episode, the way he looked at her told her that he was not about to shoulder any of the blame himself.

The brisk way he told the groom to stand clear of the horses and the stern set of his mouth as he pulled out into the busy street, told her that he was not yet ready to listen to her explanations for everything that had so far gone wrong between them.

He negotiated the remaining length of Mount Street, crossed Park Lane, then pulled into the park before speaking again.

‘You are extremely fond of your brother, are you not?’

‘Yes.’

‘You would do nothing to hurt him, I trust?’

‘Of course not!’

‘Then—’ the muscles of his jaw clenched as though he was steeling himself to proceed ‘—having given the matter careful consideration, I believe the best solution for all concerned, is for us to marry.’

There! He had said it. He had already written to arrange an appointment to speak to her maternal uncle, Lord Callandar, before he had discovered she was not only the wanton Miss Hebden, but also Rick’s sister. Not that it made one jot of difference in the long run. He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. It had almost floored him to discover that the temptress whose charms he had sampled under the frosty moonlight, was the same woman one of his closest friends had always described as a paragon. A woman he had decided to help out of the difficulties she was experiencing.

He had been sure he was doomed to a miserable marriage with a scheming hussy. And as he got progressively more drunk as he saw a long, miserable future pan out before him, married to a woman he could feel no respect for, he began to wish he had not been so picky with Rick, when he had told him Midge needed a husband. He had always thought she had sounded like a really nice girl. Once upon a time, he had thought that if he ever married, he would want it to be to a girl like her. Someone who would be a loyal companion to him, even when they both grew old.

And though he had believed such happiness could now never be his, since he was committed to marrying Miss Hebden, he had decided to do what he could for Rick’s little sister. Life had been hard on her. She deserved a shot at happiness. And so he had spent the day scouring town for men he knew would appreciate what she had to bring to a marriage. When by rights, he should have gone straight to Lord Callandar’s house and sealed his own fate.

Not that it made any difference now. Miss Hebden was Midge. The girl Rick had said would enjoy romping about the estates with his neglected little brothers. The girl who would be well able to cope with his difficult father, having nursed her own cantankerous stepfather through his final illness.

The girl who, he saw out of the corner of his eye, was looking at him as though he had lost his mind.

‘What, me and you?’ She was now saying it as though the idea had never occurred to her. ‘M-marry?’

He gave her the benefit of a cynical smile. ‘Why not?’ The more he thought about it, the more sense it made. He had been attracted to her from the first moment he had seen her. Even though he had known her only as the scandalous Miss Hebden. Now that he had learned more about her background, he could perhaps understand what had driven her to employ such desperate measures to get herself a husband. And there was no denying that she would cope with the situation at Shevington far better than most women.

‘Why not?’ she glanced over her shoulder at the groom, who bore the wooden expression of a servant pretending not to eavesdrop, and lowered her voice. ‘Well, to start with, there is my reputation!’

He blinked. He had not expected her to argue. Leap up and down, and shout with triumph, perhaps. But not to argue.

‘Explain,’ he bit out curtly.

‘Oh, come! You know all about my mother and father. And I noticed that you took good care not to introduce me as Miss Hebden last night. It is quite obvious that you cannot want the daughter of such a notorious couple in your family!’

‘Don’t be absurd!’ Nothing had been further from his mind. In fact, his mind had not been engaged at all when he had first realized that Midge and Miss Hebden were one and the same person. He had just acted from some deep, visceral objection to permitting any other man to make any kind of overture towards his woman. Not that he was about to admit to the wave of possessiveness that had overwhelmed him, the moment she had removed that cloak, and revealed the lush figure he had held in his arms the night before. It would be a grave error at this stage, to let her know what a hold she had over him. She was the kind of woman who would use it to her advantage! So, in a voice that even he felt was verging on the pious, he said, ‘I was considering Rick’s feelings last night. I did not want him to be hurt. And he would be, if he knew men were making wagers about which of them—’ He stopped short.

But Imogen knew the nature of the speculation rife about her.

He allowed the horses to trot for several yards, before saying in a more conciliatory tone, ‘No family is ever free from scandal, in one form or another. My own father’s third marriage, for instance, was most unfortunate. His wife was far too young to marry a man already twice widowed, who wished to live in rural seclusion. She had—’ he paused, settling his face into a determinedly blank expression ‘—a series of very well-documented affairs. My father is still haunted by doubts about the legitimacy of my young twin brothers, though naturally, he acknowledges them as his.’

Imogen gasped, and half turned to him on her seat. ‘I do not know what to say.’

‘Just agree to marry me, that is all I want to hear you say,’ he said grimly.

‘But you surely cannot want to—’

He cut her off impatiently. ‘Rick must surely have told you how things stand for me. The earl is desperate to see me married. He cannot bear the thought I might die childless. And now you know why. He wants his own offspring to inherit his lands. Besides which, the longer I dally in town, the less chance I will have…Matters at Shevington are not…’ He shook his head. ‘I should be there.’

Imogen remembered her aunt telling her that the old man was at death’s door, and laid a hand on his sleeve. ‘I am so sorry. I forgot how unwell he is. Of course, I understand how important it is you get your future settled. But it cannot be with me…’

‘I fail to see why. Rick knows us both well, and assures me we would suit.’

Why on earth was she persisting in saying she did not want to marry him, when she had been doing her utmost to entrap him for weeks? Unless, it suddenly occurred to him, his behaviour on the terrace outside Lady Carteret’s ballroom had frightened her. He probed the inside of his bruised lower lip with the tip of his tongue. The first slap had been delivered in a spurt of temper, but those punches…

Had he really scared her so much she could no longer bear the thought of marrying him? He felt a frisson of guilt in regard to his conduct towards her. He had insulted her, manhandled her and torn her gown. He shifted uneasily in his seat. At Limmer’s, later on, Rick had told him, his face grim, that his sister had been taken suddenly ill and begged him to take her home. He had been too sunk in his own gloomy reflections to bother questioning him, particularly when Rick proved reluctant to talk. But now he saw she must have been in quite a state for Rick to have felt it was more important to take her home, than storm straight outside and demand satisfaction.

He glanced down at her, sitting rigid on the seat beside him, her hands clenched into fists in her lap as though she still wanted to hit him.

Well, it made no difference. He had made up his mind to marry her, and that was all there was to it.

‘Miss Hebden,’ he said sternly, ‘I have promised Rick I will look after you. The only effective way to do that is to marry you. He feels guilty for the way his father mismanaged your affairs, and is concerned about how unhappy your maternal relatives are making you. Surely you do not want him to go back to France with worry over your future hanging over his head? A man in his situation needs all his wits about him.’

‘His situation? You talk as though he is going straight back into battle. France is at peace now! From his letters, it sounds as though all he has done for months is attend balls and picnics and cricket matches!’

‘That is beside the point. A military man needs to be prepared for any eventuality. There has been much unrest in the capital. The Bourbons are not popular. Plenty of people are agitating for Bonaparte to return. If that should happen, Europe will be plunged back into war.’

‘That,’ she said coldly, ‘is all a matter of conjecture.’

‘What is not a matter of conjecture though, Miss Hebden,’ he said, drawing unfairly upon the most devastating weapon in his arsenal, ‘is your conduct.’

‘My conduct?’

‘Yes. It is obvious to all who know you that it can only be a matter of time before you get embroiled in some real scandal—’

‘I will do no such thing!’

‘It will be unavoidable, if you will go about kissing men on moonlit terraces.’

‘That’s a despicable thing to say! You were the one who grabbed a defenceless female and mauled her about—’

‘Hardly defenceless…’ he indicated his bruised lip with one gloved finger ‘…reckless, unscrupulous, wild to a fault…’ He ignored her outraged gasp. ‘In fact, it is past time somebody took you in hand.’

‘I do not need anyone to take me in hand as you put it…’

‘On the contrary. You need a very strong man to keep you in line. I know only too well what you are capable of, and I will make damn sure that Rick never has to so much as blush for your conduct in future.’

‘You vile worm!’ she gasped. ‘You are the very last man I would ever marry!’

‘Coming it a little too strong, Miss Hebden,’ he drawled cynically. ‘Considering how very much you enjoyed kissing me.’

‘A few fleeting kisses are one thing, marriage is quite another!’

‘You will not be going about kissing any more men, Miss Hebden. Consider the feelings of your aunt and uncle, if you will not embrace respectability for Rick’s sake. They must have spent a fortune on you, considering every time I have seen you, you have been dressed up to the nines. And I know you have not a penny to your name.’

‘You can talk! Every time I have seen you, the extravagance of your attire has taken my breath away! A more vain, shallow, selfish…peacock of a man I have never met.’

‘I am a catch, though. What do you think your uncle and aunt will say when they hear that after all they have done for you, you have turned your nose up at making such a brilliant match?’

‘Why should they hear anything of the sort?’

‘They will know. Because I have already arranged to call upon your uncle this evening. At which time, I intend to ask his permission for your hand.’ He turned and smiled at her grimly. ‘I give you fair warning, Miss Hebden. Do you think you will be able to come up with a reason for refusing my suit that will satisfy your guardians?’

She went very still.

‘Quite so. They know, as I know, that marrying me is the best solution all round. And I think that, upon reflection, you will have to agree.’

Chapter Five

Imogen was speechless.

Viscount Mildenhall sounded determined to make her his wife.

But she could not believe he wanted to marry her! Any more than she wanted to…wanted to…She bit down on her lower lip and averted her face.

She could not deny there would be all kinds of advantages for her, if she accepted his proposal.

She wanted to leave town before she embroiled her poor dear aunt in some scandal. And marrying would be preferable to seeking employment. Mainly because her uncle and aunt would be so hurt if she demonstrated she would rather work as a governess than live indefinitely under their care. But also because every time she had thought about approaching Lord Keddinton, she’d had the sinking feeling that if she accepted a job he arranged for her, it would place her more deeply in his debt than she would like. This feeling was usually accompanied by a vision of a large sleek cat with a live bird struggling under its claws.

No, she would not be sorry not to have to go cap in hand to Lord Keddinton.

But then, what would it be like to marry a man who held her in such contempt?

Viscount Mildenhall was mercifully silent all the way back from the park. Nor had she, in the end, voiced one more objection to his threat to make a formal offer for her hand.

‘Well?’ her aunt asked her the minute Imogen trudged in through the front door. ‘Is the matter resolved? What did he say?’

Imogen drooped into the drawing room and sank onto a chair. ‘He asked me to marry him,’ she admitted.

Her aunt shrieked, clapped her hands to her cheeks and collapsed into another chair.

‘I know,’ said Imogen, shaking her head. ‘It’s unbelievable.’

But her aunt had recovered from the initial shock, and had leapt to her feet, beaming with pleasure. ‘Oh, Imogen. Congratulations! Well done!’

It did not occur to her aunt, thought Imogen with resentment, that she might have turned down such a flattering offer. Nor her uncle, who breezed into the dining room that evening, positively gleeful over what he termed ‘Imogen’s conquest.’ The atmosphere at the table was more convivial than Imogen could ever remember it being since she had gone to live there. She had finally, she observed with a sinking heart, managed to do something they approved of.

Drat the viscount for being right about this! She did not have the heart to disappoint them. In the end, with what her aunt declared was a becoming show of modesty, Imogen had bowed her head and accepted her uncle’s congratulations in a muted voice.

‘His Lordship will be coming to dine tomorrow night, so that we may all discuss arrangements,’ her uncle informed them both as he sawed off a generous portion of game pie and tipped it onto his plate. ‘Captain Bredon will accompany him.’

‘Captain Bredon?’ Lady Callandar echoed in astonishment. ‘You have invited him to dine?’

Imogen felt as surprised as her aunt looked. But Lord Callandar quashed any further objections by stating, ‘His Lordship is bringing him, as his guest.’

‘Oh, well, in that case, of course…’ her aunt trailed off, bowing her head over her plate in dutiful submission.

Imogen was sure her aunt would never have raised any objections to having her stepbrother to dine, had she ever plucked up the courage to risk rousing her uncle’s displeasure by inviting him. It had only been surprise that had made her seem to question her husband’s choice of dinner guest. But apparently, the fact that Rick numbered a viscount among his closest friends now outweighed the ignominy of his humble birth.

Lady Callandar did look somewhat anxious when Rick breached all codes of etiquette the minute he entered the house—striding into the drawing room and enveloping Imogen in an enthusiastic hug. Fortunately, her uncle was too busy fussing around the viscount to even notice.

‘I am so pleased for you, Midge,’ Rick grinned. Then he leaned and whispered in her ear, ‘You will like being married to Monty. Always thought the pair of you would suit.’

Imogen guiltily disentangled herself from his embrace. It was hard to know which was making her more uncomfortable; deceiving her brother or exposing her aunt to one of her uncle’s tirades, by indulging in what he would term unacceptable behaviour in his drawing room.

Her aunt, seeing how uncomfortable she was, gamely tried to make light of the situation by swatting Rick playfully with her fan, and saying, ‘You are not in France now, Captain Bredon. We cannot have these continental habits creeping into our drawing rooms.’

Rick backed off, muttering apologies, a dull flush on his cheeks.

Imogen wished there was something she could say to smooth things over. It was not Rick’s behaviour she found difficult. It was the situation with the viscount.

She schooled her features into an expression of polite welcome as she made her curtsy to Viscount Mildenhall.

He bowed over her hand, the epitome of a courteous suitor, but there was a look of such cynical amusement in his eyes as he straightened up that Imogen wished she dared swat him with her own fan.

She mastered the impulse, out of consideration for her aunt’s feelings, and the evening proceeded along utterly conventional lines.

‘Do you have a date in mind for the wedding, my lord?’ asked her aunt, as they took their places at the table.

‘Before the week is out,’ replied Viscount Mildenhall tersely. ‘When Captain Bredon will be rejoining his regiment.’

‘Oh, but that will leave no time to purchase bride clothes!’ wailed Lady Callandar.

‘But you have bought me so many pretty clothes already,’ Imogen pointed out.

‘Indeed,’ Viscount Mildenhall put in smoothly. ‘Miss Hebden is a credit to your good taste. She always looks quite…lovely.’

The telling pause as he sought for a suitable epithet to describe her appearance had Imogen grinding her teeth. He did not think she was lovely at all. Though she might be the only one who noticed, he had as good as said that anything praiseworthy about her appearance was due to her aunt’s good taste, not the raw material she had to work with!

However, on one thing they were in agreement. ‘I do want to marry before Rick’s furlough is over,’ she put in, though it almost killed her to appear to side with the viscount. ‘It will mean so much to have him to walk me down the aisle.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, niece!’ blustered Lord Callandar. ‘I shall be giving you away. You are living under my roof and I am supporting you. Captain Bredon is not even a blood relative!’

‘Forgive me, Miss Hebden,’ put in Viscount Mildenhall in a voice that, though quiet, managed to cut straight through her uncle’s hectoring tones, ‘but I have already appropriated Rick for my groomsman.’ He turned then to her aunt. ‘And I am sorry to rob you of your shopping expedition, too, but I have promised my father to return to Shevington as soon as is humanly possible. However—’ and he turned on his most dazzling smile ‘—we will be returning to town after a suitable interlude, and at that time my bride will require a whole new wardrobe to befit her new station in life. I am sure she will wish to involve you in carrying out the requisite purchases.’

Both her aunt and uncle subsided, vastly pleased with the viscount’s suggestions.

Only Imogen still felt disgruntled. Nobody was making any concessions to what she wanted. It felt as though everyone she loved was ranged against her, on the viscount’s side.

But worst of all, it had just hit her that she was going to become a viscountess. The notion was so absurd, she did not know whether to laugh or cry.

Since she was at the dinner table, she naturally did neither, but let the conversation flow round her without any further input.

When the ladies withdrew, her aunt wasted no time in letting her know she had erred, yet again.

‘I know I have told you, time and time again, that it is not proper to display too much emotion in public, but I really think, on this occasion, that it would be permissible to look just a little pleased at your great good fortune. Your demeanour at table could have been interpreted as positively lukewarm.’

Imogen obediently mustered up a wan smile and, when the gentlemen joined them, set herself to being as pleasant as she could force herself to be. Viscount Mildenhall let no trace of the antipathy he felt towards her show at all; he was so charming towards her aunt and uncle, and on such very easy terms with Rick, that before long, she even began to wonder wistfully if, somewhere underneath all the finery and sarcasm she associated with Viscount Mildenhall, the Monty she had once admired so much might still survive.

How differently she would feel towards this match, if he had approached her first as Monty, the hero of her girlhood dreams. If she could believe he was spiriting her away from London because he understood how badly she wanted rescuing!

Instead of being determined to bury her in the countryside, and ‘keep her in line.’

The next morning, Lady Callandar came bustling into the drawing room with her hands full of lists she must have sat up well into the night compiling.

She wore a very smug smile as she offered the first one for Imogen’s inspection.

‘The guest list,’ she explained.

‘It is rather short,’ Imogen observed.

‘Yes,’ replied her aunt with relish. ‘It is going to be a very select gathering. Only family, and those who have shown themselves to be your friends. Oh,’ she breathed, ‘how I am going to enjoy withholding invitations from all those nasty-minded tattle-mongers who have snubbed you!’

Imogen could not help smiling. She could just see her aunt dropping Viscount Mildenhall’s name into future conversations. And dispersing tidbits of information about the massively wealthy but reclusive Earl of Corfe’s country seat of Shevington, where, she would boast, her dear, dear niece now resided!

‘I include Mrs Leeming, and Lady Carteret, you see,’ she pointed out their names on the sheet of paper Imogen now held. Rick’s name had been included, as had that of Nicodemus Bredon, though he was but a humble lawyer’s clerk.

‘Lord Keddinton, it goes without saying, and his dear daughters, who have taken such pains on your behalf.’

‘And Lady Verity Carlow,’ Imogen nodded. ‘Yes, I should like to include her. She has always been truly kind to me.’

‘And she is Lord Keddinton’s goddaughter too. It would not do to offend a man like him by omitting a connection of his.’

‘Did you know her brother, that is Captain Carlow, is in town at the moment? He is a friend of Rick’s.’

Her aunt pursed her lips. ‘That could lead to some awkwardness. If we invite the younger Carlow merely because he is in town, we shall have no option but to invite the oldest one too. You are aware that he has married,’ she swallowed, ‘Helena Wardale. The daughter of your mother’s…that is, your father’s—’

‘I know there may a little awkwardness,’ Imogen hastily put in, to spare her aunt from having to speak of her father’s gruesome murder or the part Helena’s father had played in it, ‘if she accepts the invitation to my wedding, but I truly hope she will come. She has done nothing for which she need be ashamed. It is not her fault that her father—’

‘Well,’ her aunt interrupted with false brightness before words like adultery, murder or execution could be uttered in her drawing room, ‘it is most commendable of you to take such a forgiving attitude. I am sure I would not like to be at odds with any of the Carlows—’ she lowered her voice and muttered ‘—no matter who they are married to.

‘There!’ she declared, adding the names to the list. ‘We shall invite them all.’

Imogen did not think there was anything particularly commendable about her attitude. She just felt a strong sense of kinship with the daughter of the man who had been hanged for killing Kit Hebden. Though neither girl had anything to do with the crime, they had both lived under the shadow of scandal all their lives. True, Helena now had a place in Society again, but it was only as the wife of Marcus Carlow, Viscount Stanegate. Imogen had no idea what terrible fate might have befallen Helena’s older brother and sister who, to all intents and purposes, seemed to have dropped off the face of the earth.

And far from believing she had any forgiving to do, Imogen often wondered if Helena was the one who might bear a grudge against Amanda Herriard’s daughter. Helena had lost her father, her home and her position, because of that doomed love affair.

The days until Imogen’s wedding flew by in a frenzy of organization. A Society wedding held at St George’s in Hanover Square, followed by a sumptuous reception for the select portion of Society who had merited an invitation, required a good deal of planning.

And though there was not time to shop for a complete trousseau, Lady Callandar insisted she have just one new gown. She managed to get her modiste to conjure up a wedding dress that was a dreamy confection of soft creamy lace over an ivory satin underdress. Some poor seamstress must have sat up until all hours stitching on all the tiny seed pearls that decorated the snugly fitting bodice. The full-length, narrow sleeves ended in points, which came down over the backs of her hands, were also studded with seed pearls in a swirling design.

‘It is so lovely,’ Imogen said, wishing she could give her aunt a hug when she came into her room on the eve of her wedding, to check over all her lists one last time.

‘You really have worked miracles over these last few days, Aunt.’

Lady Callandar signalled the maid who had come in behind her to deposit the tray on a console table by the door, before saying, with some satisfaction, ‘Yes. I have every confidence that even though we threw this whole thing together at the last minute, it will pass off smoothly.’ She dismissed the maid, took the glasses of rich ruby port from the tray, and carried them over to the bed, where Imogen was reclining.

‘I do not know how much your mother may have told you,’ she said, handing Imogen one of the glasses and perching on the edge of the bed, ‘about the Duties of a Wife.’

Most people would think Amanda had told her young daughter far too much about what it was like to be married to a hell-raising rake. Imogen saw her mother as she had been during the last days of her life, her eyes glittering with pain as she catalogued every detail of her own disastrous marriage and begged her not to make the same mistakes.

But she very much feared that was exactly what she had done. From the very first moment she had clapped eyes on him, she had thought Viscount Mildenhall the most compellingly handsome man she had ever seen. Even discovering what an unpleasant nature he had, had done nothing to quench the fizz that a mere glimpse of him could start running through her.

And then he had kissed her.

To such devastating effect, she had agreed to marry him. Oh, she might have told herself she was merely falling in with what everyone expected of her. But she had a niggling suspicion that there were plenty of selfish reasons for marrying him, too. She had been guilty, when he had dined with the family, of sneaking peeks at his handsome profile when she was sure nobody else was watching her. Letting her eyes linger on those full, red lips. Recalling the episode on the terrace. And experiencing a very strong wish to soothe the mark her teeth had put there. And when he had looked up from his plate, and their eyes had met, a thrill had shot right through her, rendering her breathless for several seconds.

She could not even summon up the will power to dislike him any more. Even his arrogant assertion that he was a catch now only seemed like a bald statement of the truth. He could have married anyone he wanted! Yet he had, as a gesture of friendship to Rick, made the truly noble sacrifice of marrying a girl he did not like one bit.

Seeing the downcast expression on her niece’s face, Lady Callandar took a fortifying sip from her own glass.

‘Well, I am sure it will not be so bad for you, my dear, as it evidently was for your mother. I am sure Viscount Mildenhall will be able to set your pulses racing when he kisses you.’

To hear her aunt speaking aloud of kissing Viscount Mildenhall, when that was exactly what she had been thinking about, made Imogen’s face flood with heat.

‘Ah!’ cried her eagle-eyed aunt. ‘So he had kissed you already, has he, the young rogue!’

‘Y-yes, Aunt,’ Imogen confessed. ‘I am so sorry…’

‘Well, never mind,’ she said magnanimously. ‘You are to be married, after all, and I can see that the prospect of becoming more intimate with him is not repugnant to you. Which is a good start. I should think that the first few weeks of your marriage, at least, should prove most enjoyable.’ She sighed, and a faraway look came into her eyes. ‘Ah, what it is to be a young bride, married to an energetic, well-put-together young man like that! Although—’ she gave herself a little shake ‘—you must not make the mistake of thinking, because of the amount of time he spends with you, and the level of intimacy you will share, that he may be doing anything so vulgar as falling in love with you.’

From the way her aunt’s shoulders drooped, Imogen wondered whether the older woman was talking about her own experience of marriage. There were still traces of the handsome man her uncle had once been, beneath the layers of flab that years of self-indulgence had added to his frame. She could just imagine her aunt as a young bride, marrying with high hopes, then having them dashed by her uncle’s selfish, tyrannical attitude towards her.

‘We all know,’ her aunt continued in a rallying tone, ‘that Viscount Mildenhall has chosen you primarily because you are the sister of one of his closest friends. And because you are a healthy, energetic young woman who is likely to give him the heirs his father is so keen to see him produce. For those reasons, he is prepared to overlook your lack of dowry. Or so he told your uncle.’