escaped.”
“Agreed,” Nat said. “The perfect opportunity for you, Miles.”
Miles raised a sardonic eyebrow. “Construe?”
“To renew your attentions to Miss Lister,” Nat said, with a mocking smile. “Now that you are so utterly sunk in debt, you will be needing a rich heiress more than ever.”
“That,” Miles said, “is exactly what I thought, too.”
Dexter almost choked on his brandy. “I’m sorry,” he said, when he had recovered his breath, “but which part of Miss Lister’s scathing rejection of your suit did you not understand, Miles?”
Miles shrugged. “It is unfortunate that I was obliged to abandon my previous pursuit of Miss Lister-”
“Unfortunate?” Dexter’s brows almost disappeared into his fair hair. “You dropped her for a richer heiress!”
“And even more inopportune that my courtship of Miss Bell did not come to fruition-”
“She threw you over for an earl.”
“And likewise extremely annoying that Sir Montague chose to tell Miss Lister of my ill-advised wager on her virtue,” Miles continued smoothly, “but I am certain that I can persuade her to accept me all the same.”
“If I were a betting man,” Nat said, lips twitching, “which I am not, as I have seen the predicament it has got you into, Miles, I would make a wager that you have not a hope in hell of pulling this off. Miss Lister is no fool and she knows now that she cannot trust you an inch.”
Miles shrugged again. He drained his glass and picked up the wedding dress. It felt cool and silky soft against his fingers. The perfume of honey and roses seemed to cling to it, reminding him of Alice and the softness of her hair against his fingers and the scent of her skin. It raised an echo of primitive arousal in him. He wanted Alice Lister. It was a simple matter of physical attraction. And he wanted her money. That was a simple matter of economics.
“We shall see,” he said. “I have an ace or two up my sleeve.”
CHAPTER THREE
“THERE IS A GENTLEMAN to see you, ma’am.” Marigold, the youthful housemaid, dropped Alice a respectful curtsy. “Shall I show him in, ma’am?”
“Who is it, Marigold?” Alice asked. Having once been a servant herself, she absolutely hated employing other people to wait on her and would frequently do their work herself. If she was near the front door when a caller arrived, she would answer it. If she saw dust on the mantelpiece, she would clean it. Her mother was forever chiding her that she did not behave as a lady should.
“I don’t know, ma’am.” Marigold looked suddenly apprehensive, caught out failing in the execution of her duty. “He did not say.”
“Always ask a caller to give their name,” Alice said, smiling reassuringly at the girl at the same time so that Marigold would know she was not angry with her. “You may show him in anyway, but please remember for next time.”
“I do wish you would permit me to change that girl’s name,” Mrs. Lister said as the maid sped away. “Marigold is a wildly unsuitable appellation for a housemaid. It is far too pretty and will give the girl ideas above her station. Mary would be more acceptable.”
“Mama!” Alice said sharply. “We have had this discussion before. Marigold’s name is Marigold and that is how it stays. It is not our place to change someone’s given name and call them something entirely different.”
“Why not?” Mrs. Lister countered. “Lady Membury called you Rose when you were in service.”
“Precisely,” Alice said. “I hated it. My name is Alice.”
“Rose is a delightful name,” Mrs. Lister said.
Her mama was missing the point as usual, Alice thought. It seemed strange to her that the unexpected inheritance of a large fortune had changed her character not at all-at least, she thought it had not-but that it had changed her mother almost out of recognition. Margaret Lister had once been a tenant farmer’s widow who struggled to make ends meet and feed her family. Alice’s legacy from her employer Lady Membury had changed all that. Alice’s younger brother, Lowell, now ran the tenant farm whilst Mrs. Lister lived in this smart villa in Fortune’s Folly. There had been elocution lessons that had almost succeeded in smoothing out Mrs. Lister’s broad Yorkshire vowels; there had been visits to the dressmaker and the purchase of gowns with copious frills and furbelows, so different from the plain, serviceable work clothes Mrs. Lister had worn before. Most of all there had been the endless nagging of Alice to ensure that she made a marriage to a titled gentleman. Mrs. Lister had been cock-a- hoop that so many aristocratic fortune hunters had courted her daughter and furious when Alice had rejected each and every one of them. And then she had been desolated that the stream of aristocratic callers had ceased. Very few people came to call now, demonstrating to Alice more effectively than any cruel words that she had only been welcomed in Fortune’s Folly society because of her money, and now that it was clear she was not going to bestow it on some greedy, penurious nobleman she was not welcome at all.
“I expect that this will be another marriage proposal,” Mrs. Lister said now. “Oh, Alice, you must take this one, no matter who it is! Please! Sir Montague will take half your fortune under the Dames’ Tax in six months’ time if you do not wed! Besides, unless you marry a lord no one in Fortune’s Folly will ever speak to us again! As it is, no one calls on us-”
“Mrs. Anstruther calls,” Alice pointed out. “She used to be a duchess. And Lady Elizabeth is living here with us. She is an earl’s daughter and half sister to a baronet.” She sighed at her mother’s obstinate expression. “We cannot force people to accept us, Mama,” she said. “You should know by now that money cannot buy everything.”
“But why not?” Mrs. Lister wailed. She patted the enormous diamond necklace that she was wearing like an armored chest plate. “I have all
Alice shook her head gently. Mrs. Lister seemed incapable of accepting that she could buy as many diamonds as she liked, she could order a dozen sets of china, she could paint the ceiling of the dining room with gold leaf- which she had done-she could even have her bedroom decorated with Chinese wallpaper featuring painted dragons, and still no one would see her as anything other than a
“Mama,” Alice said gently, “you are worth more than ten of the Duchess of Cole, and I do not mean in monetary terms-” She broke off, for Mrs. Lister was not listening. She was wearing the same puzzled and hurt expression that Alice had seen on her face before. She had lost the society of her own friends when she had gone up in the world, but now she had nothing to replace it. All the invitations from high society that she had anticipated had never materialized. Alice’s heart ached for her because, for all her snobbery, Mrs. Lister was lonely and unhappy.
Mrs. Lister grabbed Alice’s teacup. “Now, let me see…”
“Oh, Mama,” Alice said. Her mother had read tea leaves all her life, a skill she learned from
“A parasol!” she declared triumphantly. “A new lover.”
“It looks like a mushroom to me,” Alice said, peering at the splodge of tea leaves in the bottom of her cup. “An upside-down mushroom, signifying frustration-at yet another man courting me for my money.” She had fended off nineteen marriage proposals in the past six months, all from the fortune hunters who had flocked to Fortune’s Folly after Sir Montague Fortune had revived the ancient Dames’ Tax, requiring that all the village spinsters should marry within a twelvemonth or forfeit half their fortune to him.
“The Marquis of Drummond, ma’am,” Marigold said, from the doorway.
Alice heard her mother give a little hiss of satisfaction at the news that the visitor was no less than a marquis. No one of a rank higher than an earl had previously come to pay court.
“It is Lord Vickery,” Mrs. Lister whispered loudly in Alice’s ear, “come to renew his addresses to you. I had
