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Delawney sat on a stool before an easel in a narrow aisle hemmed
in on either side with lush green foliage. Beside her stood a small table filled with brushes and tablets of watercolors.

“There you are,” was all she said as he walked between the potted plants, the moist air enveloping him.

“I hope I haven’t held you up.”

Instead of replying, she asked, “What do you think?” Moving aside, she held up her brush to allow him to view the watercolor she was working on.

It was a picture of the vine that grew from a pot she had placed beside the easel. Along its stem, a pink flower resembling a morning glory blossomed at intervals.

He’d brought it back from Bengal. “Exquisite,” he said, satisfied that she’d reproduced it accurately. “The colors are perfect.”

“I’m glad you approve.”

“I do.”

She let out a breath. “Good. I just need to put a few finishing touches on it.” She glanced up at him. “How are your notes coming?”

He grimaced. “Slower than your watercolors.”

“It’s because you are spending all your time chasing after Harold, trying in vain to stop him from his certain destruction.”

“Don’t say that!”

She raised an eyebrow at his retort.

“Nothing is ‘certain’ in this life,” he said more gently.

Her lips thinned in an uncompromising line. “You must let Harold squander his life as he wishes. Your preaching to him shan’t change him, you know.”

Lancelot contemplated the soft tones of the watercolor. “I can’t just stand back and see him run headlong to that destruction. It’s time he matured.”

She snorted. “Why should he? Mama turns a blind eye, and Papa thinks that’s the way any gentleman of the ton behaves.”

Lancelot ran a hand through his hair. “Actually, it was Papa who asked me to try and curb his excesses.”

“If he wants you acting as his guardian angel, it’s only to curb his behavior, not to stop it entirely.” She set her brush into the water jar and got up to stretch. “And Mama feels only a tragic sympathy, believing he is only trying to hide the failure of still being childless after so many years of marriage. What a burden,” she said with exaggerated sorrow.

Lancelot fingered the edges of his journal he’d brought with him. “Yes, since my return I feel an ever-increasing pressure to marry and fill the lack.”

Delawney picked up the brush and swished it in a watercolor to dab on a spot. “They have given up on me—besides which, a child of mine couldn’t inherit.”

She cocked an eyebrow at him. “Any progress on that front? Mama hinted that you’d met someone the other night.”

Lancelot stared at his sister, feeling like a cobra caught by a snake charmer’s flute.

4

A
spurt of annoyance rose in Lancelot’s chest at his mother’s indiscretion. “Don’t tell me you are going to join Mama and Papa in their campaign.”

Delawney chuckled. “If it means they leave me in peace, I shall do so wholeheartedly.”

His sister was an attractive woman, especially when she smiled. Her hair was a tawny shade like their mother’s, but she kept it carelessly pulled back in a knot, sometimes with only a pencil holding it up. She wore a faded muslin gown with a ruffled white kerchief along its neckline. A wide white apron splotched with watercolors covered most of her gown. Her fingers, nicely shaped, were stained brown and gray from the amalgamation of colors.

“What is it?”

He shook his head, realizing he’d been staring. “Nothing. I still fail to understand your refusal to go out into society at all.”

“If you don’t understand it, then it is useless to try to explain.”

“Just because I have little use for ton parties does not mean I renounce society completely. Our Lord commands us to take the message of salvation to everyone. How are we to do that if we shut ourselves from the world?”

She had no reply to that. His heart went out to her. She was
not yet five-and-twenty, but it was doubtful she would ever marry. Instead of a young lady’s usual pursuits of parties, shopping, and outings, she devoted herself to her gardens and watercolors of every specimen she discovered, which at present included the ones he had brought back from India. She had eagerly assented to his plan to put everything into a folio to be published.

“Which plant should I attempt next?”

Seeing she wanted the subject changed, he opened his notebook, leafing through it to the page he desired. “I thought perhaps this one the natives call ‘tulsi.’” He walked over to the plant he referred to. It had grown to a few feet high and was now sprouting small pink flowers. “It’s very aromatic, and they use it in both cooking and religious ceremonies. It’s similar in coloring to the morning glory you just finished.”

She touched one of the spindly clusters of tiny whitish-pink flowers gracing a stalk. “Very well. I shall begin it as soon as I’m satisfied with the other.”

“Thank you.”

“My pleasure.”

He smiled at her, and she returned his smile. Sometimes it felt as if she was the only one in the family he had anything in common with. “I shall be in my room endeavoring to do some more work on my notes, before the lecture at the Royal Society.”

“Don’t let me keep you.”

Accepting the dismissal, he bowed and left her, glad that everything was right between them.

“A pity there was no time for new gowns,” Lady Bess said with a sigh. Jessamine had lost count of how many times Lady Bess had emitted an audible sigh in the stuffy hackney they had been obliged to hire for the drive to the Marfleet residence.

Across the shabby coach, Lady Bess eyed Megan and Jessamine through her quizzing glass in the fading light. “You do look very
pretty, I’m sure. There is nothing like youth, which no gown or adornment can improve or take away from.” She sighed again, as if remembering her own vanished girlhood.

“The sea green suits your dark hair and green eyes,” she said to Jessamine, “and the pink your complexion and gray eyes,” she said with an approving nod at Megan.

They murmured their thanks to their hostess, even though she’d already given them the same compliment upon first seeing them this evening.

“The important thing is that Mr. Marfleet will find you charming,” Lady Bess said for the dozenth time. “I have been asking around about him, and he seems the opposite of his rakish brother. He’s had the best of education—Harrow, Eton, then Cambridge to take orders, as a younger son, naturally, and one who didn’t seem suited for the military.”

She paused, her lips making a small moue of distaste. “I did hear that it was while at Cambridge that he came under the influence of one of that Clapham Sect with all their evangelical zeal. The next thing, he tells his poor parents he is becoming a missionary and heading off to Calcutta or some such place.” She shuddered. “It’s a wonder—a miracle—he didn’t perish. Most do, you know. And some take their poor wives, who don’t last long.”

Jessamine couldn’t help smiling, contrasting Lady Bess’s account with Mr. Marfleet’s.

“Lady Villington-Rhodes—she’s cousin to Lady Marfleet—says the family didn’t expect him to survive the fever he succumbed to. He was all winter recovering on their estate in Hampshire. Did he look ill?”

“Yes,” said Jessamine at the same time Megan said, “No.”

Lady Bess looked from one to the other and smiled. “Ah, I see how it is. Well, at least you shan’t have to fight about him. Let us hope his mother seats you beside him, Megan. Perhaps there will
be another young gentleman there for you, Jessamine. I won’t be satisfied till you both end the season with a betrothal.”

Giving them no chance to respond, Lady Bess pushed down the carriage window. “Good, we are almost there. It’s a pretty street, one I rarely travel since it is not a main thoroughfare.” She sat back against the squabs. “I wonder what the older brother is worth? I must inquire. A pity he’s married. As for your Mr. Marfleet, I was informed he has no living at present since he was in India. I should think his father would be able to find him a competence on one of his own estates. Likely they are all filled.” She shook her head, setting the lacy trim around her cap atremble. “I do hope his evangelical zeal has dimmed.”

Jessamine leaned toward the window just as the carriage came to a halt. They were behind a line of carriages making their way to the Marfleet residence.

Megan was looking out the other window. “I should say there are at least a dozen carriages, Lady Bess, and they look so grand. Some even have a crest on them.”

Lady Bess leaned forward once more, trying to see over her shoulder. “Can you see the color of the hammer-cloth or the footmen’s livery?”

“I see blue with gold on a carriage two ahead of us.”

Lady Bess pondered, sitting back and flicking open her peacock-feathered fan, which matched the color of her gown. “That could be the Earl and Countess of Withycombe or perhaps the Marquess of Grenfell.”

Unable to stifle her own curiosity, Jessamine put her spectacles on and peered out her window again. The coaches did indeed look grand, many with the coats of arms upon their doors and elegant liveried footmen on the footboards. Her heart began to thud as the reality of a dinner party sank in. “How many guests will there be, do you think? There seem to be an awful lot of carriages pulled up.”

Lady Bess closed her fan and said with satisfaction, “Any respectable dinner party will have at least a dozen guests. This one, by the number of coaches here already, will have at least twenty, I’d wager.”

A heavy, leaden sensation settled into the pit of Jessamine’s stomach.

“Twenty,” breathed Megan, excitement sparkling in her eyes.

Why hadn’t Jessamine pleaded indisposition and stayed home? Why had she insisted on a London season and not been content to remain in her small village where she knew everyone and was comfortable with them all?

“The baronet has a seat in the House of Commons, so there will be other members present, I’m sure. He is a Tory, so I wouldn’t expect any Whigs.”

Before Lady Bess could launch into another summary of all she’d gleaned in the past two days about the Marfleet family, the coach lurched again, sending her forward.

As she settled herself once more upon her seat, the coach moved only a short way before stopping. They waited in silence, tense. Even Lady Bess looked subdued, her fan clutched in her pudgy, beringed hands.

“At least we are not the first nor, hopefully, the last guests to arrive,” she said when the coach moved forward.

After a quarter of an hour of stopping and starting, their hired coach pulled in front of the entrance. Jessamine leaned over Megan’s shoulder, recognizing the fluted pilasters on either side of the door, which stood wide open this evening. A red carpet led down the steps onto the pavement to the carriage.

“Take off those hideous spectacles!” hissed Lady Bess.

Hurriedly, Jessamine complied, having seen enough, and stuffed them through the drawstring of her beaded reticule with shaking fingers. She quickly pulled the twisted silk cords closed just as a footman opened their door.

Wearing blue velvet livery and a powdered wig, he let down the step and handed out first Lady Bess then Megan and lastly Jessamine, who had deliberately hung back.

This would be her first real foray into London society. What would she say and do? How to behave? Would she meet someone to take her mind and heart off Rees Phillips for the first time since he’d dropped her for that Frenchwoman?

As these thoughts scurried through her mind like a mouse over a dining table, never stopping for long at any one dish, the footman handed her down, and she smoothed her gown before proceeding up the wide carpet behind her godmother and Megan.

Another footman met them at the door. He looked identical to the first, both tall and broad shouldered. He took their wraps, though Lady Bess retained her shawl, declaring one never knew when there would be a draft, even in the best of houses.

This footman led them up a wide, semicircular staircase to the first floor, where an older man, undoubtedly the butler, met them and took them into a room brightly lit by dozens of wall sconces and a chandelier hanging from the plastered ceiling.

He announced, “Lady Beasinger, Miss Barry, Miss Phillips.”

A sea of faces seemed to turn their way. How many were titled ladies and gentlemen, members of Parliament or high-placed officers, she wondered, spotting a red coat in the midst.

It was not quite a sea, she amended, seeing not a crowd but well over at least two dozen individuals. Lady Bess turned to greet their hosts. At the same time, Mr. Marfleet came up to them with a hesitant smile.

“Good evening.” He bowed to both Jessamine and Megan as Lady Bess spoke to Sir Geoffrey and his wife. “I’m glad you could come. May I present my parents, Sir Geoffrey and Lady Marfleet? And my sister, Miss Delawney Marfleet?”

Jessamine faced a distinguished-looking couple and a young lady at their side. She made her curtsy alongside Megan.

Sir Geoffrey reminded her of Sir Harold in a mature, fiftyish way, his dark blond, wavy hair graying at the temples. Still handsome, his chiseled features were ruddy as if he spent time out-of-doors, hunting perhaps. Blue eyes stared into hers, a blond eyebrow raised appraisingly.

Lady Marfleet was a tall woman with upswept hair a shade darker than her husband’s under a diamond and sapphire tiara. Miss Marfleet was tall like her mother, her hair a similar shade, but the resemblance ended there. She wore no jewels, and her hair was pulled back tightly, doing nothing to soften strong features like her father’s.

“How lovely to meet you two young ladies. Lancelot tells me this is your first season,” Lady Marfleet said in a cultivated voice.

As they murmured their polite affirmatives, Jessamine felt every detail of their toilette taken in by those seemingly warm brown eyes. Fleetingly she remembered her conversation with Mr. Marfleet about his being a foundling on the doorstep, and almost burst into laughter. She stifled it just as Lady Marfleet dismissed her and Megan with a slight movement of her patrician chin.

They followed Lady Bess farther into the room. The carpet was so plush that Jessamine’s slippers sank into it without a sound.