“Precisely as her father did,” Lucius put in, a warning in his voice.

“Most likely.”

“Or shot by an irritable husband?” Rafe inquired.

“Always a possibility.” That prospect didn’t seem to bother Mayne either.

Rafe stared at him. He didn’t know how to help his old friend, who appeared to spend all his time flitting from the bed of one married woman to another. Mayne never stayed long enough to break a heart: that was all that could be said of his nighttime activities. He was getting an edge, a sharp, twisting tongue, and a dissolute gleam in his eye that Rafe didn’t like.

And had no idea how to solve.

“If you hurt her,” he said, surprising himself yet again, “I’ll do you an injury, Mayne, for all you’re my friend. I know you think I’m a lazy—”

“Lazy?” Mayne interrupted, arching a mocking brow. “No. Just slowed to a genteel stroll by brandy knees.”

“You know what I’m saying.” Rafe turned to Lucius again. “Are you quite certain that you don’t wish to make an offer for Tess’s hand?”

“I would almost venture to guess that you’re showing prejudice against me,” Mayne interrupted, turning his glass again and again in the golden light.

“I am,” Rafe confirmed. “I think that Lucius would make Tess an admirable husband.”

“Stubble it!” Mayne said sharply. “I’ve offered for her, and Lucius doesn’t want her. Let’s leave it at that, shall we? Why don’t you start brokering the lovely qualities of whoever’s next in line? Imogen is a raven-haired beauty. You do have three more girls to get off on the market, Rafe. No rest for the weary.”

“Why are they all unmarried?” Lucius asked. “It seems peculiar, given their ages. There’s three of them in their twenties: virtual spinsters, from an English point of view.”

“The Scots are all gelded,” Mayne said. “I loathe the entire country.”

“Perhaps there were deaths in the family that postponed their debut?” Lucius asked, ignoring Mayne. “When did their mother die?”

“My understanding is that their father never had the money to bring them out,” Rafe said. “According to my secretary, Wickham, the estate is in a terrible way. Wickham stayed for a few days helping the new viscount, who’d been living off in Caithness and hadn’t seen the estate in Roxburghshire for years. Apparently it was grim. All unentailed land that might have brought in rents had been sold years ago. The house was a monstrous pile, and falling about their ears. The new viscount was beside himself when he found that the horses were willed to the girls: all the money made on the estate in the past ten years had been poured into Brydone’s stables.”

“Brydone spent all his blunt on horses?” Mayne asked.

“He wasn’t niggardly with the girls. It’s just that there wasn’t anything to give, unless he were to sell one of his horses. From what Tess told me at supper, it seems he was counting on some big purse to bring them to London for a season.”

“And until that moment arrived, his four daughters were left to molder unmarried in a tumbledown house?” Lucius asked.

“He undoubtedly didn’t live up to your standards of gentlemanly behavior,” Rafe said, draining his glass. He had a fierce headache coming on. Too much brandy: one of these days he was going to have to give up the drink, for all it made life tolerable. The splitting headache seemed to come on earlier and earlier.

“Any number of men will line up to take the other three off your hands,” Mayne pointed out. “By the time the season opens, they’ll be out of mourning. I got the impression that Maitland is taken with Imogen. He’s got plenty of blunt.”

Rafe shook his head. “The marriage to Miss Pythian-Adams was set up years ago. What’s more, Maitland has run untamed ever since his father died, and lately he’s gone from bad to worse. He’s mad for racing and belts neck-or-nothing all over the countryside at all hours of the day and night. He’ll find himself planted, one of these days.”

“Not a bad way to go,” Mayne said idly.

“Don’t be a fool,” Rafe snapped at him. “If you’re to marry Tess, you’ll have to mend your ways. No more endearing yourself to married ladies and risking your neck.”

“I vow to be a model husband,” Mayne said, and there was such a deep strain of tedium in his voice that Rafe narrowed his eyes.

But Mayne continued. “I’ve given up married women, hadn’t you noticed?”

“No,” Rafe said bluntly.

“Well, I have.” He didn’t look up, just kept flipping a quill over and over in his long fingers. “Lady Godwin—and I never had her—was the last, and that was all of four months ago. So Tess will have me all to herself, such as I am.”

“That’s not a bad bargain,” Rafe said, his deep voice falling into the silence. “For all you seem to be inclined to think it so, Garret.”

Mayne looked up. “You know I loathe my Christian name, dammit.”

“Using it always wakes you up,” Rafe said. “Now you’re awake, I’ll have you ten to a hundred on a game of billiards.”

“I’m off to bed,” Lucius said, stretching.

“Here’s hoping you find a chaperone by Sunday,” Mayne said to Rafe. “I’ll have to elope with Tess if Clarice Maitland remains in the house long. The woman gives me hives.”

“I’ll send a note to my aunt Flora,” Rafe said. “She lives in St. Albans. Perhaps she could be here as early as next week.”

“So I have your blessing, then?” Mayne demanded. “I’m to start my courtship tomorrow?”

“Unless you think it better to wait until Tess is out of her blacks,” Rafe said.

“Can’t,” Mayne said briefly. “The Lichfield Royal Plate is in a month. If I’m to race Something Wanton—” He shrugged.

“An unseemly reason to rush posthaste into marriage,” Lucius remarked.

“Gentlemanly rubbish,” Mayne said, draining his glass. “You remind me of all the sanctimonious bastards wandering around London, forever hinting that I’m a loose fish and not daring to say so to my face.”

“And aren’t you?” Lucius asked, his voice controlled.

Mayne considered it. “No. I’m lecherous, and I sleep—have slept,” he corrected himself, “with a good many married women. But I’m not an ugly customer, although I’ll be damned as to why I have to defend myself to one of my oldest friends.”

“Perhaps because you’re planning to marry a woman simply to get your hands on a horse and race it at the soonest opportunity,” Lucius said.

“There’s nothing irregular in that. Marriage is nothing more than a trading of assets, and Tess will receive far more than a horse from me. And I might say, Lucius, that all this talk of civility from you is hard to bear.”

Lucius’s jaw set. “Why so?”

“You’re not exactly a slave to society yourself. You more than dabble in stocks; you damn near control the English markets. There are those who would think my irregular courtship is nothing to some of your irregular financial maneuvers. Lord knows, no one bred with a silver spoon is supposed to engage in anything resembling commerce.”