“Hardy!” Mercy complained.

“Behave,” Honor said, and reached high above her sister to take the card from the tray. Her heart instantly did a bit of a flutter when she read the name: George Easton.

That little flutter of hesitation cost her, for Mercy was able to read it. “Who is George Easton?”

Grace gasped and stood from the writing desk, hurrying forward to have a look. “You didn’t invite him, did you?”

“No! That is, I sent a note, but I didn’t think he’d come—”

“Who is he?” Prudence demanded, crowding in beside her sisters, trying to view the card.

“Not someone you should know,” Grace said quickly, and to Hardy she asked, “Where is Augustine?”

“At his gentlemen’s club.”

“Hardy, will you please ask Mr. Easton to wait a moment while we...” She fluttered her fingers; Hardy apparently thought the gesture meant that he should quit the salon, and bowed before going out and shutting the door behind him.

Honor whirled about and stared at the windows, her heart racing as quickly as her mind. “Good Lord, he has come here!”

“Who is he?” Prudence demanded. “I’ve never heard of him.”

“Thankfully, because you are not yet out and not aware of the sort of men that lurk,” Grace said darkly.

“Grace! That is hardly fair,” Honor protested. “It’s not as if he is courting me.”

“Then why has he come at all?” Mercy asked, confused.

Honor ignored Mercy—she had just realized that her hair was down, and she was dressed in the plainest gown she owned. She quickly pinched her cheeks for a bit of color.

“And why are you doing that?” Grace demanded.

“Because she fancies him!” Mercy said delightedly.

“You’re not going to receive him,” Grace said, aghast. “Prudence and Mercy are here!”

Prudence took great umbrage to that. “I’m not a child, Grace. I’ll be seventeen in three months’ time.”

“I don’t fancy him, Mercy,” Honor said as she hurried to the sideboard and the mirror hanging over it. She needed a comb! Her hair looked wild.

“Then why are you making those faces?” Mercy demanded as Honor squinted at her hair, quickly twisting it into one long rope.

“I am hardly dressed for callers!” Honor said with great exasperation.

“Then perhaps you shouldn’t take the call,” Prudence said imperiously.

“Perhaps I shouldn’t,” Honor agreed, and whirled around, and held her arms out to her sisters. “How do I look?”

Grace sighed. “Lovely. On my word, there is hardly a thing that could make you less lovely. It’s really very irksome.”

“Thank you, darling. All right, then, now the three of you stay put. Do you understand?”

“Why?” Mercy said. “I want to see him.”

“No, Mercy. It’s none of your affair—”

Mercy suddenly darted for the door, wrenching it open and running down the corridor.

“For heaven’s sake!” Honor cried.

“If she will see him, then so will I,” Prudence said, and swept out of the room very regally, hurrying after Mercy.

Honor looked at Grace.

“Now you’ve gone and done it,” Grace said. “If you think for a moment that those two will keep your secret—”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake! For once I wish you’d tell me something that would surprise me,” Honor said, and grabbed Grace’s hand, pulling her along as she hurried to catch up to her younger sisters.



CHAPTER TEN

GEORGE WAS TAKEN aback by the sudden closing in of so many females, but he quickly regained his composure when the smallest, and presumably the youngest, peered up at him through spectacles that made her blue eyes look quite large and asked, “Are you a suitor?”

“God help me, Mercy, where the devil are your manners?” Miss Cabot said sternly, sailing in behind the girl and firmly planting her hands on her shoulders. “I do beg your pardon, Mr. Easton,” she said as she wheeled the girl about and very nearly gave her the boot. “My sister Mercy’s social graces are shockingly absent. May I introduce you? This is Miss Mercy Cabot, Miss Prudence Cabot and of course, you know my sister, Miss Grace Cabot.”

“Those are quite a lot of virtues gathered in one small room,” George quipped, inclining his head. “My pleasure, ladies.”

“Mmm,” Grace Cabot said, eyeing him suspiciously, as if it wasn’t his pleasure at all, as if he had come all this way in this deluge to fabricate his pleasure at meeting the Cabot girls.

“Have you come for Honor?” the youngest one inquired. “Or Grace? Sometimes callers really don’t care which of them will receive them.”

“Mercy!” Honor Cabot gasped, her face going a bit white. “Please, all of you, return to the salon, and, for heaven’s sake, if Augustine returns, divert him!”

“Why?” Prudence asked. “What are you going to do?”

“She’s not going to do anything,” Grace said with a dark look for one sister as she took the other by the arm. “Come on then, you two—”

“But can’t we invite him in for tea?” Prudence asked as Mercy twisted about in Grace’s grip to peer at George over her shoulder. “We always invite them in for tea.”

“He’s not that sort of caller,” Grace insisted, ushering them along. “Honor, you’ll be along shortly, won’t you?”

Miss Cabot responded with a dismissive little wave of her fingers that made her sister’s expression go even darker. When the girls had disappeared into the corridor, Miss Cabot grabbed George’s elbow and began to propel him along in the opposite direction. “Hardy, this is a private matter—”

“Aye, miss, of course, miss,” the butler said reflexively, making George think that Honor Cabot was frequently engaged in “private matters.”

“One moment, if you please, Miss Cabot,” he said, trying to stop her. “I am not calling—”

“Yes, but I need a moment of your time,” she said, urging him along. Or rather, tugging him.

She herded him into the same small receiving room he’d seen before and shut the door.

“Miss Cabot—”

“Didn’t you speak to her?” she exclaimed, whirling about from the door.

“What the devil do you mean? Of course I spoke to her!” George said, miffed that she would doubt it. “She is undoubtedly whiling away this torrential rain reliving every moment of it,” he added confidently. He knew how young women were—their imaginations were almost as ridiculously grand and expansive as their bonnets.

But Miss Cabot gaped at him. “You are rather cheerfully assured of yourself!”

“Why shouldn’t I be?” he asked cavalierly, and took a seat on the settee, crossing one leg over the other. “It’s not as if I am new to games of courtship, Miss Cabot.” He chuckled at the idea. “Miss Monica Hargrove was not only stunned by my approach, but dare I say, delighted.”

“Delighted, was she? Then how would you explain her response when I asked after her evening? She said she’d met no one new, and suggested there was no one new but the usual crowd in attendance.”

George shrugged. “And so?”

“And so, clearly you did not make any sort of impression at all!”

George bristled at the insinuation and coolly narrowed his gaze on Miss Cabot. “I made an impression,” he said clearly. “Your friend was suitably flummoxed. Naturally she would not admit it, for it’s none of your concern.” He articulated every word for the foolish chit and tried not to ogle her figure.

“Yes, well, you don’t know Monica Hargrove as I do,” she retorted. “She would not miss an opportunity to tell me that a gentleman of your reputation had shown her the slightest regard.”

George was about to argue, but he was pulled up short by the words a gentleman of your reputation.

“Meaning,” she said hastily when she saw his expression, “that you are... Well, you are, ah...”

“Pray tell, Miss Cabot, I am what?” he drawled. Bastard. Pretender. He knew what he was, and if she thought differently, she was even more foolish than he believed.

“Ahem.” Her cheeks began to color. “Appealing. As it were,” she said, gesturing vaguely.

Appealing? That took George back. That was his reputation? Her awkward admission could not have pleased him more. He grinned. “Why, Miss Cabot, I had no idea the true depth of your esteem.”

“Don’t tease me.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he said, spreading his arm casually across the back of the settee. It was his gift, he thought with a deepening smile, the ability to bring a bloom to the cheeks of young women...as well as to the cheeks of women who didn’t bloom quite as brightly as they once had. He was a man with a calling, and that calling was to pamper and pleasure women across London.

Miss Cabot’s bloom, however, was fading quickly underneath her scowl. “You promised, Easton.”

“I did as I said I would, Cabot.”

“Then you must have done it wrong,” she said pertly.

“Wrong!” he sputtered. He had the sudden urge to turn her over his knee, lift her skirts and strike her bare bottom like a child. “By the saints, you are incurably impudent!”

“And you are positively bursting with conceit!” she exclaimed, and began to pace, her brow furrowed, her lips pursed. She suddenly stopped her pacing and faced him. “You must do it again.”

“I beg your pardon, I will do no such thing. I did it. And to my way of thinking, you owe me one hundred pounds.”

“Ninety-two pounds,” she said. “We agreed.”

“Ninety-two, then,” he snapped, and came to his feet. “You may send it to my agent, Mr. Sweeney—”

“The Prescott Ball will be held this Friday evening,” she interjected, as if he hadn’t spoken, and began to pace again. “I can secure you an invitation.”

Indignation soared in him. She spoke as if he were some underling, a charitable endeavor, and no amount of imagining her naked body writhing beneath his would ease it. “No.”

“You must dance with her,” she said, and suddenly stopped her pacing, eyeing him up and down critically.

“What are you looking at?” he demanded, glancing down his body. “Listen to me, Honor Cabot, you may send to me the ninety-two pounds as per our agreement—”

“No,” she said, lifting her chin. “Not until you have done as you promised.”

George gaped at her lovely face, her glistening blue eyes. Was she mad? Afflicted? He could not recall having ever been quite so affronted. “I find it ironic that a woman with the name of Honor would fail to do just that with her word. Or that she would toy with the happiness of two people who have done her no harm, just so that she won’t have to give this up,” he said, gesturing to the well-appointed room in which they stood.

“Is that what you think?” she asked, looking almost surprised by it.

He snorted. “I know it, Miss Cabot. Your motives are quite obvious.”

For a moment, she looked as if she were about to shout, which would not have surprised him in the least, given the bats floating about her pretty head. But she pressed her lips together, folded her arms, and said, “You need not concern yourself with my motives, sir. And do not doubt that I will honor my word,” she said confidently. “Just as soon as you honor yours. I understand that you believe you have charmed the stockings right off of Miss Hargrove, but clearly you have failed to do it. I will not hand over the money promised merely because your esteem for yourself has clouded your vision of the truth.”

One fist curled at his side, squeezing against the strange mix of angry lust rising up in him. “Good God, if you were a man I would call you out for such an insult.”

“And if I were a man, I’d be quite happy to oblige you,” she shot back. She began to pace again. “You must dance with her, and show her that you are quite earnest in your esteem. That will impress her.”

Why was she so bloody insistent? George forgot his anger a moment—he had turned Miss Hargrove’s head...hadn’t he? He tried to recall the events precisely now. He remembered the woman’s smile—quite lovely, it was. Not as lovely as this impertinent excuse for a proper English debutante, but still. Miss Hargrove had giggled and smiled and had eyed him coyly. Hadn’t she? No, Miss Cabot was wrong. George was confident he’d done as she’d asked. “No,” he said. “I don’t know what brings you to believe that you are the arbiter of seduction, madam, but I did as I promised.”

She sighed as if he were the mad one in this room. “All right, then. What did you say to her?”

George lowered his head. “Now you are making me quite cross.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“You want to know what I said?” he asked, and shifted closer, startling her as he cupped her chin and stroked her cheek with his thumb. “I said that I found her lovely.” He lifted her face to his. “And that I admired her,” he added, allowing his gaze to skim Miss Cabot’s figure. He shifted even closer, lowered his head so that his mouth was just a fraction of an inch from hers. “And that I was quite envious of Sommerfield.”