Then Comes Seduction

mounts and beaux. It was the ton at play.

And one garishly ostentatious open barouche, which was almost abreast of Jasper and Miss Huxtable, was slowing and then drawing to a halt. Its occupants peered down at them with frowning disapproval-or at him, actually.

Lady Forester and Clarence, by thunder!

He had been hoping to avoid them for what remained of the Season, though it was admittedly a forlorn hope when they had come up from Kent for the precise purpose of displaying their displeasure with him and snatching Charlotte out of his wicked clutches.

He had not even told Charlotte about their arrival in town. Why distress her before it was strictly necessary?

“Lady Forester?” He touched the brim of his hat to the lady. He had not called her Aunt Prunella-or even Aunt Prune-since he was a boy. She was no aunt of his, for which fact he would give daily thanks if he were a praying man. “Clarrie? How do you do? May I have the pleasure-”

But apparently he might not have the pleasure of introducing Miss Katherine Huxtable to them-or her sister and brother either.

“Jasper,” the lady said in awful tones and with a swelling of the bosom that he remembered well, “I will see you in my own home tomorrow morning at precisely nine o’clock. Charlotte, step away from that man’s side this minute and come up here to sit beside me. I would have expected you to know better even if your half brother does not. I thought you had a respectable governess.”

“Aunt Prunella!” Charlotte exclaimed with a gasp and a look of open dismay.

“Oh, I say!” young Merton exclaimed at the same moment, indignation in his voice.

“Clarence,” his mother said, “get down this instant and assist Charlotte.”

“You had better stay where you are, Clarrie, old boy,” Jasper advised. “It would be a waste of effort to hop down here only to have to hop right back up again. And you stay where you are too, Char, with Miss Huxtable and the Earl of Merton. You are not footsore, are you?”

“N-no, Jasper,” she said, her eyes as wide as saucers.

“Then you do not need a ride,” he said. “She does not need a ride, ma’am. But thank you for stopping and offering. I shall do myself the honor of calling upon you in the morning, then. I may be four minutes late as the clock in the library, by which I invariably time myself, is four minutes slow. Or do I mean early? I have never quite worked it out. Which do I mean, Miss Huxtable?”

He glanced down at Katherine on his arm.

“Late,” she said. “You would be late. Or will be late as I suppose it has never occurred to you to have the clock set right.”

“It would be too confusing,” he said. “I would not know where I stood. Neither would my servants.”

“Jasper,” Lady Forester said in tones that clearly had Clarence quaking in his boots and not sure whether he should stay where he was and incur her undying wrath or whether he should hop down and risk Lord Montford’s, “I will not be spoken to thus in your usual insolent vein. Charlotte-”

“Clarrie,” Jasper said conversationally, “you are holding up traffic, old boy. I daresay there are curricles and phaetons and barouches backed up all the way to the gates and out into the street, not to mention other vehicles. You had better move on before this good coachman behind you decides to get down from his perch and knock your hat off. He is already purple in the face. So are his passengers. I shall see you both at precisely four minutes after nine tomorrow morning. Good day to you.”

And Clarence, after a nervous glance back at the vehicles behind him, gave his own coachman the signal to move on.

“Oh, Jasper,” Charlotte said when they were out of earshot, “you will not allow Aunt Prunella to take me away, will you? She would not stop sermonizing from dawn to bedtime. It would be like going to prison. I really do not think I could bear it.”

“There, there, Miss Wrayburn,” Merton was saying, patting her hand.

“I am so sorry,” the elder Miss Huxtable said, sounding deeply distressed, “if my invitation to Miss Wrayburn to come walking with Kate and me this afternoon has caused a problem. Is it because she is not yet out? But even children and young people need air and exercise at some time of the day, surely.”

“I daresay,” Merton said, “it is because I invited myself to come too. I suppose the very highest sticklers might argue that Miss Wrayburn ought not to be seen in company with me until after her come-out. I do beg your pardon, Miss Wrayburn, and yours too, Monty. I did not think.”

“I cannot imagine,” Jasper said, “that even the queen herself could take exception to a young girl strolling in a public park with her brother and guardian and three of his friends, two of whom are ladies older than herself. I will certainly not have any of you chastising yourselves for a nonexistent fault. I shall set Lady Forester right on the matter tomorrow morning. And no, Char, you will not be thrown into the lions’ den with Aunt Prunella and Clarence. Not under any circumstances.”

“But Clarence is one of my guardians,” she reminded him. “He always was pompous and horrible. I hated him when he was a boy and I am sure I still hate him. He has turned downright ugly too. He is fat.”

Which blunt words spelled doom for any courtship Clarence might hope to mount with his cousin.

“We will not bore Lord Merton and his sisters with our private business any longer, Char,” he said firmly. “And we had better stroll onward before we invite a wider audience.”

Which they proceeded to do-in a rather deafening silence punctuated by small bursts of bright, stilted conversation.

“This,” Miss Katherine Huxtable said when they arrived back at the gates, loosening her hold on his arm and including the others close behind them in her remarks, “has been a lovely afternoon, has it not? Thank you very much indeed, Miss Wrayburn and Lord Montford, for accompanying us.”

She and her brother and sister were going one way and he and Charlotte were going the other, so they all took their leave of one another with a flurry of cheerful farewells, just as if that damnably melodramatic interruption had not occurred.

And how many people had witnessed the scene? Not that he cared the snap of his fingers what the gossips might say about him. But there was Charlotte to think about. Good Lord, what the devil had her aunt been thinking of, exposing her thus to the public gaze and censure? She could not possibly have waited until tomorrow morning to read him a scold in the privacy of her own drawing room?

“Jasper,” Charlotte said, her small hand tucked beneath his arm, “what will Aunt Prunella say tomorrow? What will she do?”

“Let me worry about that,” he said, patting her hand. “Or not.”

“But you know what Papa said in his will,” she said, her voice thin and high-pitched with misery.

Her father had stated that she must be brought up and housed until her marriage by his sister, her aunt, if her mother should die and there were ever any question of neglect or impropriety in the way Baron Montford handled her upbringing.

“Your papa also appointed three guardians,” he said, “and fortunately Clarence is only one of them.”

“But if Great-Uncle Seth were to take his side,” she said, “then Aunt Prunella would take me away and there would be nothing you could do about it. Oh, I wish now I had stayed at Cedarhurst.”

“Great-Uncle Seth is too lazy to move out of his own shadow,” he told her. “He has never made any secret of the fact that he resented being named guardian by his own nephew-especially when that nephew had the effrontery to predecease him. I am sorry, Char. I ought not to talk about your papa in that careless way. But you need not worry about Great-Uncle Seth.”

“But I do,” she said. “He has only to say the word-” She did not complete the thought.

“It won’t happen,” he said, guiding her across the road and skirting about a pile of manure that the crossing sweep had not yet cleared. “I promise. I’ll go and call upon your great-uncle in person if I must, though he won’t