A girl who is flirting with a prince is generally excused from flirting with other men, who understand exactly why, so it isn’t as if she is being rude. Besides, in her spare moments, Linnet generally twinkled at them, to keep a whole crowd about her. It made her feel as if she were on stage, à la Zenobia.

Who would have thought that the biggest thing of all—that quality of her mother’s that had practically defined her—would be so definitively missing in Rosalyn’s only daughter?

And yet, so it was.

Not only did she not desire men, she didn’t even like them very much.

They were big, and hairy, and tended to smell. Even her father, whom she loved, acted like a little boy. He complained and whined and carried on in the most tiresome fashion. They were all like little boys, she thought. And who could desire a little boy?

Her mother’s voice sounded in her head and she answered it irritably: hung like a horse or not, men were still pitiful creatures.

But it made her think of something. If the earl was incapable, then . . .

Then he was incapable.

They wouldn’t have to kiss. She wouldn’t have to put up with all that was implied by a man hung like a horse, which (thank you, Mama!) had revolted and horrified her for years.

All she had to do was appear to be carrying a child long enough to marry him, and then pretend to have lost the babe.

She’d never met a man yet whom she couldn’t charm into a good temper. She’d learned at the feet of a master, after all. Her mother had kept her father sweet-tempered—even after he had to throw Linnet’s French tutor out of the house, and roust another lover out of his new bed.

In fact, she could make a rational argument for marriage to Piers. She would never cuckold him, for one thing. (A man with his problem had to be afraid of that possibility.)

She was the best he could have hoped for: both beautiful and chaste. Practically sainthood material, really.

She stood up and took a last look around her mother’s room. “I miss you,” she told the laughing portrait on the wall. “I do miss you.” But the words pulled at her heart, so she hurried from the room.

Chapter Six

That night at supper, Linnet’s father reported that the Duke of Windebank had leaped on his proposal with undignified speed. “He apparently knew all about you. And Zenobia, it was clear you were right. He was unshaken—if not privately delighted—at the sound of Linnet’s little scandal.”

“Linnet was the talk of the ton,” Zenobia said, “long before last evening’s unfortunate events.”

“He wasn’t nearly as interested in her beauty as in her education, if you can believe it. I told him Linnet had about as much education as any girl should, and that she was the cleverest woman I knew, and that shut him up. I can’t think why he didn’t ever marry again. His wife took off for France years ago, didn’t she? Took the lad with her as well.”

“She was French, of course. He got a divorce,” Zenobia said. “The rumors were that it cost him two thousand pounds sterling to buy his freedom. And then he never did a thing with it.” She shook her head. “He could have had any number of possible heirs by this time.”

“What I don’t like is all this royalty-mongering,” Lord Sundon said. “Absolutely cracked on the subject of monarchy, if you ask me. He told me that a great-great-great aunt on his father’s side was intimate with Henry VIII.”

“Wasn’t he the king who had six wives?” Linnet asked.

“Had ’em and murdered ’em,” Zenobia said with relish, waving her fork. “Just like the story of Bluebeard, except it was all true.”

“At any rate, Windebank is happy because he’s got the blood of the Tudors in his veins, and now he’s getting the blood of the Hanovarians as well, through our Linnet.”

The viscount was looking a good deal happier than he had that morning. “All’s well that ends well,” he said, finishing his glass of wine. “Someday we’ll look back on this whole episode and laugh.”

Linnet couldn’t quite imagine that.

“I suppose you sent the prince a note,” Zenobia said to Linnet.

She nodded, though she had done nothing of the sort. “I’m meeting him in Vauxhall tonight.” In reality, she planned to have a nice nap in the carriage while it tooled around London.

“Vauxhall?” Zenobia asked dubiously. “Luckily it’s a warm night, but it seems an odd place for an assignation. One would think that he could whisk you away to some sort of royal lodge.”

“He probably will,” her father said. “Just be sure you’re back here in the morning. Windebank wants to meet you. I told him we wanted to send you off to Wales as soon as possible. No point in hanging around London.”

In their household, her mother had drawn all the fire for her improprieties. But sometimes Linnet thought her father was just as improper, in a different way. A shabbier way, if the truth be told.

“I think this will all work out better than it might have otherwise,” her father went on. “After all, Augustus could never have married you. And there isn’t a single duke on the market this year. Someday Marchant will be a duke.”

“She could have done better than a limp lily,” Zenobia pointed out. “I assume the duke is obtaining a special license?”

The viscount nodded. “Of course. He’s bringing it with him tomorrow. And he sent a messenger to Wales this very afternoon, so his son will have some warning. It isn’t in the normal course of things to acquire a wife and a child without notice, you know.”

“You’ll have to make sure the marriage takes place quickly,” Zenobia said, “just in case Linnet’s visit to Vauxhall tonight doesn’t have the desired effect.”

“Well, as to that . . .” her father said.

At the note in her father’s voice, Linnet stiffened. She knew it, had heard it a million times. “Papa, you can’t simply send me to Wales without a chaperone!” she said fiercely.

“Hate to bring up a painful truth, but you’ve got no further use for a chaperone,” he said evasively. “Though we might we able to persuade Mrs. Hutchins to accompany you if you insist.”

Zenobia narrowed her eyes. “Do you mean to tell me, Cornelius, that you are thinking of sending your only daughter into the wilds of Wales without your escort?”

“It’s not a good time for me to leave London,” Lord Sundon said, starting to bluster.

“I do not feel comfortable taking a journey of that length by myself, especially when I am going to meet a Beast,” Linnet said. She kept her voice light but firm, precisely as her mother would have done. And just to make absolutely sure that he understood her, she fixed him with a glare that she’d learned from her aunt.

“The Earl of Marchant has been unfairly maligned,” the viscount said. “Heard all about it from his father. He’s a brilliant physician, don’t you know. You remember his mother stole him away to France; well, he got a university degree over there. Then he returned here and did the same at Oxford and then he was admitted to the Royal College of Physicans at the age of twenty-three, which is practically unheard of, and then he went off to Edinburgh and did something or other there, or maybe he did that before the Royal—”