“I suppose you are right.”

“And he has exquisite taste,” Annabel continued. “Did you see the little fringes on his boots? I’m certain I’ve never seen anything so elegant at home. Without doubt he will know all the best modistes in London.”

“I am surprised that you don’t make a greater play for his hand yourself,” Tess said a trifle irritably. “Since you view him as an archetype of taste.”

“While I find Mayne’s taste in black velvet irreproachable,” Annabel said with honest surprise, “and I also find his legs rather appealing in those tight pantaloons—” She ducked the small cushion that Tess threw at her—“I am quite certain that London is full of men of precisely the same qualifications as the earl. He shows a preference for you, and one must be careful not to make decisions based on unseemly enthusiasm for a man’s legs.”

“You make it all sound so mundane,” Tess said with a sigh, drawing her brush through her hair again.

Her sister was grinning at her. “Not that I intend to ignore the matter when it comes to choosing my own husband, naturally.”

“Hush up, you wicked thing!” Tess scolded.

“I must go,” Annabel said, jumping to her feet. “I am trying to teach Elsie, my maid, how to braid my hair, and I must say, it’s rather a chore. Elsie may have made an excellent nursemaid, but she can’t seem to manage hair.”

“She must be Gussie’s sister, then,” Tess said rather gloomily. “I keep waiting until Gussie leaves, and then quickly brushing out my hair and repinning it.”

Annabel looked shocked. “I’m never pinning up my own hair again—ever! I don’t mind if Elsie has to do it twelve times.”

At that moment the aforementioned Gussie herself arrived, so Annabel left. Gussie was a robust young woman who was prepared for nursemaid duties, having watched her mother pop seven small children into the world, but was rather less prepared for the duties of being a lady’s maid.

She was making a game try at it though. “Mrs. Beeswick says that I should wash your forehead in camomile,” she said cheerfully. Without a second’s pause she tipped Tess’s head back and sluiced a thoroughly wet cloth on her forehead.

Tess felt cold water trickling down her neck and wondered whether she should say something acerbic. But Gussie had launched into her favorite activity—talking—and Tess felt it would be rather rude to cut her off.

“Being a lady’s maid is such a lot of work,” Gussie confided. “It’s not merely what I do in your room, miss. It’s what I have to do downstairs that’s the worst of it. Ironing. Ironing, ironing, ironing!”

“I’m sorry,” Tess murmured. The soggy facecloth slopped against her lips as she spoke.

“It’s not your fault, Miss. It’s the position. And Lord knows, I do understand what an opportunity this is!”

“Wonderful,” Tess murmured. There was icy water inching its way down her breastbone. “Wonderful.”

Chapter 11

Next morning

R afe woke with a bitter taste in his mouth, the sensation that his eyelids would not open, and a feeling of sick apprehension. Two minutes later he remembered why that was. Today marked the arrival of Miss Pythian-Adams, the cultivated paragon, and he had agreed to accompany his wards to some benighted hole in the ground thought to be a Roman ruin. If Maitland accompanied his fiancée, there was likely to be yet another dustup between Lady Clarice and her son. It was enough to make a man break his rule of never drinking before the sun was over the yardarm.

He dragged himself out of bed and washed in a foul temper. To this point, he had quite enjoyed having wards, especially Tess. But Imogen was another kettle of fish. To be blunt about it, he didn’t like Imogen. She was too passionate for her own good, what with the way she almost visibly shook at the very sight of Mailand. Had the girl no pride? And her adoration was a mystery in itself: the man was a rakehell, for all he spent his blunt on horses rather than hussies. He lived for speed and the race.Rafe shuddered. One overly passionate young lady and a loose fish like Maitland was a recipe for disaster.

His valet entered his room and held out a frothing drink without a comment. Rafe drained it in one gulp. One of these days he had to stop hitting the brandy with such vigor. Just not today.

Stoically he climbed into an ice-cold tub of water and poured a bucket over his head. When he stopped shaking, and the frothing stopped in his stomach, he felt considerably better.

Try as he might, he couldn’t remember Miss Pythian-Adams, although surely he’d met her on some occasion or other. He vaguely thought she might have red hair. Since Peter had died and he became a duke, he’d spent the majority of his time trying to avoid anyone who might be a marriageable female, so it was no wonder he had no memory of the girl.

Naturally, he was not the only person in the house thinking of Miss Pythian-Adams.

“I just don’t understand how she managed to catch Draven,” Imogen was telling Tess. They had sent Gussie down to the kitchens on an errand, and Imogen was currently occupied in removing all of the hairpins that Gussie had stuck around Tess’s head, preparatory to recombing her hair and putting it up again. “Draven is the last man on earth to appreciate literary cultivation. Do you suppose that his mother obliged him to ask for Miss Pythian-Adams’s hand?”

“I doubt it,” Tess replied.

“Well, why not?” Imogen said, putting down the brush. “Parents do enforce their children’s choice of spouse, you know. Do you think—do you think she’s more beautiful than I?”

Tess met her little sister’s anxious eyes in the mirror. She felt horribly torn. On the one hand, it seemed cruel to encourage Imogen in any fashion. But it was so heartrendingly difficult to squash her hopes. “I doubt that Miss Pythian-Adams is more beautiful than you are, Imogen,” she said finally. “But on a practical front, beauty may be the least of Miss Pythian-Adams’s traits. She’s an heiress, and she has Lady Clarice’s approval.”

Imogen’s eyes flared. “You’re saying that Draven would marry for lucre!”

“I’m saying that we do not know why Maitland asked for Miss Pythian-Adams’s hand in marriage,” Tess said a bit wearily. “But we do know that the question was asked. It would be best if you could resign yourself to the fact.”

“I’m tired of resigning myself!” Imogen said, snatching up the brush again. “He should love me, not her!”

There was nothing much to say to this nonsense, so Tess held her tongue.

“If only Papa had been more provident, we might have had a governess, and I would know just as much as she does about poetry, and Romans, and sketching, and the rest.”

“Of course you would,” Tess said.

“I didn’t know precisely which fork to use last night,” Imogen went on angrily. “And that is Papa’s fault too. He should have thought that we would have to compete with—with women of this nature!”

“Papa didn’t think that way.”

Imogen started pinning up Tess’s hair. “When Draven sees the two of us together, he’ll turn to me,” she said after a moment.

But Tess refused to play along. She had come to the conclusion that their indulgence of Imogen’s hopeless adoration had been a mistake. “I very much doubt that.”