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“I thought it showed a refreshing honesty. He’s a vicar and a missionary. He probably doesn’t care about his appearance.”

“Yes, a vicar.”

“What’s wrong with being a vicar? Your father is one.”

Jessamine shuddered. “I’m not interested in meeting a vicar.” Nor in giving her heart to anyone else.

“But to think he’s been to India. I wonder who his family is,” Megan mused, “if they have a house in town and in Hampshire.”

Jessamine concentrated on maneuvering past a dawdling couple in front of them before she replied. “He can be the Duke of Marlborough’s son for all I care. His hair is unruly, he has a bran-faced complexion, and he sports his spectacles at a rout!” A vicar was the last man she would look at. Not after having lived life by the rules and having it turn to ashes. With her words, she reached the doorway and grabbed the jamb as if arriving at a finish line.

Megan looked around. “I thought you wanted to greet someone?”

Jessamine blushed again, looking away, ashamed of having told a fib to her friend. “It was just an excuse to get away from Mr. Marfleet.”

Megan’s eyes widened. It was no wonder. Jessamine had never told such a fib. But those days were over. Being good got one nowhere.

“I’m sorry,” Megan said. “I didn’t realize you were uncomfortable with him. I was so relieved to be talking to someone closer to our age.”

“He looked closer to Rees’s age—” she blurted out then stopped, realizing she was the one who had brought up Megan’s brother this time.

Megan laid a hand on her arm. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think. He just seems so different from Rees. I didn’t think he resembled him at all.”

He didn’t. Mr. Marfleet was nowhere near as handsome as Rees Phillips with his dark looks and gray eyes, so like his sister Megan, but in a tall, masculine form. Try as she would to blot out the hurt, it still lay behind her heart like a smoldering acid and turned her every thought acrimonious.

“I found him old,” she said abruptly, turning away from Megan. “How long do you think Lady Bess will be?”

“A few hours if we’re fortunate.”

Jessamine’s lips turned downward. “Too bad she has nowhere else to visit tonight.”

“It would only mean hopping in and out of a hackney in the rain to do the same thing we’re doing now.”

The night loomed before them. Jessamine’s shoulders slumped as she admitted defeat in the face of her friend’s realistic assessment. “I wish we could play cards.”

“It wouldn’t matter. Young ladies are not expected to sit like dowagers at the card table here in London the way we do back home.”

“Instead we are supposed to be standing like storks, to be seen by eligible bachelors who happen by.” She pasted a false smile on her face and batted her eyelashes.

Only to have her glance land squarely on that odious redhead and find him observing her across the room. She flushed, realizing her falsehood had been discovered.

Once again, she took Megan by the elbow. “Come along, let’s find Lady Bess and pray she’s on a losing streak.”

2

L
ancelot descended the hack chaise and faced the nondescript door in the nondescript town house in a row of others like it. After visiting the reputable gentlemen’s clubs along St. James’s Street, he invariably ended up at one of the private gaming rooms in barely reputable neighborhoods. They showed their wear in the peeling paint of their doors and window frames and odor from the kennels lining the streets.

These gaming rooms were usually located in some widow’s upstairs drawing room.

With the head of his walking stick, he rapped on the door.

“Good evening,” he said to the footman who was eyeing him to determine if he was a regular or a newcomer. “Is Mrs. Smith holding an open house this evening?”

“Yes, sir.” The footman, after a last careful look, stepped back and allowed him entry.

Knowing it was useless to ask the man if he’d seen Harold, since discretion was key in these gaming saloons, he stepped inside the vestibule. “Dashed cold this evening.”

“That it is, sir. Don’t hardly seem as if spring is even here.”

Lancelot removed his hat and cloak, hoping he wouldn’t have
to go through this routine much more this evening. By now he was beginning to know Harold’s favorite haunts.

He paused on the threshold of the upstairs drawing room and scanned the tables. The men gathered around the tables didn’t even look up.

He could understand why his brother favored Mrs. Smith’s establishment whenever he was tired of the play at Brooks’s, Boodle’s, or White’s.

The four-story town house on Duchess Street, though not in a fashionable part of town, was nevertheless tastefully furnished within. Its interior was warm and well-lighted. A buffet of varied dishes was replenished frequently by a couple of footmen.

In return for the convivial atmosphere, gentlemen came to spend their money, and Mrs. Smith, a lady of indeterminate years, was able to live comfortably and in a style she desired without compromising her standards. A young gentleman’s losing his parents’ money was not considered a sin, merely a rite of passage.

The fair-haired woman, who was still quite attractive, approached him with a smile. “Ah, Mr. Marfleet, how nice of you to join us this evening. Care to try your hand at a bit of whist or faro?” She chuckled, knowing he didn’t play faro nor whist at the stakes played at her establishment.

“Thank you, no,” he said, summoning a polite smile. “I’m simply looking for my brother. Ah, there he is.” Pretending an affability he didn’t feel, Lancelot excused himself and crossed the carpeted room.

Reining in both exasperation and relief at seeing Harold hunched over one of the tables, Lancelot cast about in his mind what reasoning to use to drag him away. Several other gentlemen ringed the round table, their eyes intent on the player sitting in the curved indented space reserved for the banker.

Lancelot’s jaw tightened. Baccarat. Judging by the pile of chips in front of Harold, his brother would not be leaving anytime soon. It would be useless to remonstrate. He consoled himself that at least
he wouldn’t have to track him down to a cockfight or rat-catching ring in less savory neighborhoods.

Harold didn’t glance up at Lancelot’s approach, his gaze fixed on the cards laid out on the green baize.

With a sigh of resignation, Lancelot looked around for an empty chair. He retrieved one along the wall and placed it near his brother, nodding to those present who chose to acknowledge him. Most were too intent on the cards being dealt.

Upon his return from India, Lancelot had been grieved to see Harold had not changed from the man he’d left two years ago. He continued to live the life of a young gentleman about town rather than a married man of thirty with an estate to learn to manage.

Even though he knew he could do little to influence his older brother, still he kept hoping his presence might compel his brother to get up from the gaming tables before he lost everything.

As the hour dragged on, Harold’s pile of counters diminished then grew high again and now was once again on the ebb. He wouldn’t leave unless convinced he was on a losing streak.

The wait gave Lancelot ample time to relive his earlier fiasco with the two young ladies at Lady Abernathy’s rout. If Harold hadn’t matured in two years, Lancelot acknowledged ruefully that neither had he himself grown any more attractive to the fairer sex.

Lancelot imagined the scene with Miss Barry and Miss Phillips if Harold had been there in his stead. With his dark blond curls arranged à la Brutus and his innocent blue eyes, Harold had inherited all the looks in the family. With a mere lift of his lips, he would have had Miss Barry gazing in adoration.

Lancelot shifted in his chair to ease the stiffness in his legs. He had long ago stopped railing at the fate that had brought him into the world with a thatch of pale-red hair. No one in his immediate family had it—only his paternal grandfather whom Lancelot had never known but whose portrait graced the gallery at Kendicott Park. At least no one could question his birthright.

He observed Harold’s intent profile now, comparing the strong, evenly proportioned features to his own longish face—all cheekbones, jaws, and knobbly nose. His mother always used to say, “Poor dear, never mind, it’s your mind and heart that people will notice. You were born with all the brains and sensibility your brother seems to lack. He is all Marfleet, excelling at physical prowess but thoughtless and careless about people’s feelings.”

The comparison had been no comfort to Lancelot during his first years of adulthood. Thankfully, he was past that now, having found solace, as his mother had predicted, in his books and then at Cambridge under the inspirational preaching of Charles Simeon. That encounter had changed his life.

Lancelot was roused from his reminiscences by his brother’s lazy smile. “That you, Lancelot? Got tired of playing the wallflower at Lady Abernathy’s?”

Lancelot grimaced. “Especially when you dumped me there and absconded before the coachman had even gone around the block.”

Harold’s grin only deepened. “I’m only discharging my duty toward you, as I promised Mama. I have no need to procure a wife by the end of the season. It’s enough I take you to these functions. You can’t expect me to endure them.” He picked up his cards and examined them. “Nor is it my fault if you refuse to lift a finger on your own behalf.”

Impatience rising in him, Lancelot blurted out, “You needn’t trouble yourself anymore. I have met two charming”—at least Miss Phillips fit the description—“young ladies. I think I shall ask Mama to invite them to her dinner party. That should satisfy her.”

Harold’s golden brows lifted. “What’s this, not one but
two
young ladies? Don’t tell me, one is cross-eyed and slack jawed and the other weighs fourteen stone.” He guffawed before turning to place his bet.

Lancelot bit back a retort. It annoyed him that even after all these years, Harold had the ability to rouse his ire. Since boyhood,
Harold’s teasing had always gotten a rise out of Lancelot, which only made people point out that his temper matched his hair.

Only years of disciplining himself through prayer and Scripture reading had helped curb his temper. It was disheartening to think how little he’d progressed and that any self-possession had more to do with having been away from his big brother than any spiritual maturity.

Exclamations around the table drew Harold’s attention back to the play, and Lancelot was forced to sit back once more and wait.

An hour later when Harold was ready to leave, his pockets flush, he brought the subject of the two young ladies up again.

In the meantime, Lancelot had had plenty of time to repent his loose tongue. What had he been thinking of? Of course he wouldn’t invite the two young ladies to dinner. As they drove home in his brother’s curricle, Harold chuckled. “So, you’ve set your eyes upon two lovelies? Do give me the particulars.”

“I’ve done no such thing.” Lancelot turned away with little hope that Harold would let the matter rest. “They are just two young ladies in London for the season and scarce know a soul. I took pity on them.”

Harold’s lips curled upward. “Always the compassionate clergyman.” He glanced sidelong at him, clucking his tongue. “Taking pity on them won’t fadge with Mama. You’d best take my advice and tell her you fancy yourself violently in love with at least one of them. It will put her in alt, and you may do as you please for the rest of the season.”

Lancelot shoved his hands in his pockets, resigned to hearing Harold’s unwelcome advice until he tired of the topic.

Jessamine and Megan joined Lady Bess in the breakfast room late the next morning. The older lady greeted them with a cheerful smile from her place at the round table at the back of the comfortable town house in the parish of Marylebone, London.

Though her real name was Lady Beasinger, when Jessamine had first met her godmother, the name had been too much for her child’s tongue to pronounce, so her godmother had suggested Lady Bess as a satisfactory substitute, and the diminutive form had stuck.

As they poured themselves coffee or tea, they responded to Lady Bess’s inquiries of how they’d slept. Jessamine felt tired, her body still not used to town hours. She usually awoke too early after a late night and had difficulty going back to sleep again.

“What a crush last night!” Lady Bess’s aqua-green eyes twinkled at them across the table. Her graying brown hair curled around her face beneath a sheer lawn cap.

Thankfully Megan’s enthusiasm for the rout made up for Jessamine’s less vocal murmurings of assent. As they made their way to the sideboard to serve themselves from the hot dishes, Lady Bess read to them from her morning papers.

“There will be a Queen’s Drawing Room later in the month. What a pity you are not going to be presented.”

Jessamine glanced at Megan, hoping the remark did not hurt her feelings. While Jessamine as a vicar’s daughter was eligible for court presentation, Megan as a merchant’s daughter was not. Of course Jessamine had no intention of being presented, having neither the funds nor connections to do so, and not wishing to do anything her best friend would be excluded from.

But Megan seemed not to be bothered as she heaped some eggs onto her plate. When they sat down with their plates, Lady Bess was riffling through the morning post. “A letter for you, my dear,” she said, handing a sealed missive to Megan with a compassionate smile to Jessamine. “Nothing for you today, dear.”

“I expected none, since I owe my mother a letter.” It was getting more difficult to write home since there was so little to tell. Having jumped at the chance to escape to London, she disliked now having to pretend to her parents that her days were crammed with activities.

How different from two years ago, when she and her mother
had come with Megan to London for a fortnight. Brimming with all the hopes and expectations of an eighteen-year-old, she had spent the days shopping and sightseeing, awed and thrilled with everything she saw.

Now she only felt guilt at all her parents had sacrificed to provide for her season. As a vicar in a small village, her father had a modest income. At least she was an only child, she consoled herself, so they didn’t have other offspring to provide for.