“It was Mrs. Harpenden you overheard, wasn’t it? Starting the rumor about Miss Wootton.
The glint of amusement vanished. “Mr. St. Just, I’ve already told you that I won’t—”
“I know it was her,” Adam said. “That’s why she received a visit from our quixotic thief.”
Miss Knightley said nothing, she merely looked at him, her expression closed and unforthcoming.
“I’m not interested in Mrs. Harpenden.” Adam shifted his weight in the saddle, leaning slightly towards her. “It’s Tom I want to know about.”
Miss Knightley blinked. “Tom?”
“Yes,” he said. “Who else was nearby? Who else could have overheard Mrs. Harpenden—”
“You want to find Tom?” Her voice was as astonished as her face.
Adam felt himself flush. “Yes.”
Miss Knightley didn’t laugh at him; instead, she frowned. “Why?”
Because it gives me something to do other than worry about Grace. Adam shrugged. “Don’t you want to know who he is?”
“No.”
“Well, I do,” Adam said. “And I’d be grateful if you could tell me who was nearby when you heard Mrs. Harpenden talking.”
Miss Knightley’s expression was as eloquent as a shrug. He didn’t need to see her lift her shoulders to know that she didn’t remember. “I have no idea, Mr. St. Just. I pay no attention to servants.”
“I don’t think Tom is a servant.”
Her eyebrows arched again. “You don’t?”
“No.” Adam looked at her in frustration. “Who was with you when you overheard Mrs. Harpenden?”
“I was by myself.”
“But surely there were people nearby—”
“Dozens,” Miss Knightley said. The amusement, the mockery, had crept back into her eyes, into her voice. “But I haven’t the faintest recollection who they were.”
“If you should remember—”
“I doubt I’ll recall anything more than I’ve already told you.” Her smile was contrite and insincere. “Good day, Mr. St. Just.” The black mare surged forward.
Adam held Goliath at a walk, conscious of a sense of frustration. “God damn it,” he said.
THE FRUSTRATION WAS still with him when he sat down with the Morning Post in the bow window at White’s later that day. Alongside it was a healthy dose of nervousness. Adam glanced at his fob watch. It was still too early to pay a visit to Mr. fforbes-Brown.
He swallowed a mouthful of claret and resisted the urge to loosen his neckcloth. His nervousness annoyed him. He might lack a title, but both his lineage and fortune were superior to Sir Humphrey’s. There was no reason for either Mr. fforbes-Brown or his daughter to reject his offer.
Adam opened the Morning Post. It was unnerving to think that within a few hours he’d be engaged. He felt a flicker of uneasiness. Was he being too hasty?
A moment’s reflection assured him that he wasn’t. Miss fforbes-Brown was the best of this year’s crop of débutantes. Others surpassed her in beauty and fortune, but she possessed the qualities of a fine mother: she was cheerful, sensible, and extremely fond of children.
His eyes skimmed the columns—and stopped halfway down the page, arrested by an announcement.
Mr. fforbes-Brown of Upper Helmsley, Yorkshire, announces the engagement of his eldest daughter, Sophia, to Sir Humphrey Holbrook of Holbrook Manor, Derbyshire.
“God damn it,” Adam said. He closed the newspaper violently and reached for his wine glass.
HIS MOOD, AS he entered the Thornycrofts’ ballroom that evening, was dour. Grace clasped her hands together and looked around in delight. “How beautiful! It’s like a Faerie bower.”
Adam looked at the flowers and the ferns and the gauzy draperies and wished he was at his club. The trill of pan flutes was an irritant.
Servants circulated among the assembled guests. Instead of livery and powdered wigs, they were dressed as ancient Greeks. Adam’s lip curled in disbelief as a footman wearing a toga and a laurel wreath came towards them. The man’s expression was wooden. He clearly felt as ridiculous as he looked.
“Pink champagne!” Grace said, enchanted. “May I?”
At Aunt Seraphina’s nod, she took a glass from the tray the footman offered.
Adam’s disgruntlement faded as he watched his sister. Her cheeks were flushed with pleasure and delight sparkled in her eyes. I haven’t seen her look this happy in weeks. Not since the Cranbrooks’ soirée, when they’d walked into the salon to the accompaniment of whispers and sidelong glances. Grace had been nervous, eager, delighted to be attending her first London party. The delight hadn’t lasted long; she’d left early and almost in tears.
“Can you see Hetty?” Grace asked, looking around. “She said she’d meet me here.”
To Adam’s relief, the pan flutes were superseded by an orchestra. Hetty Wootton arrived as the opening bars of the minuet were being played. The two girls departed, arm in arm, to the row of giltwood chairs that lined the wall and fell immediately into conversation. They were indisputably the most beautiful girls in the room. Grace’s pale loveliness, her golden hair and blue eyes, contrasted very nicely with Hetty Wootton’s more robust prettiness, her nut-brown curls and rosy cheeks.
Their beauty and the animation with which they conversed, the laughter lighting their faces, drew a number of glances, but neither girl showed awareness of the interest they were attracting.
His father would have disapproved of so animated a conversation—It’s vulgar to display emotion, and St. Justs are never vulgar!—but Adam gave a nod of approval. He went in search of something to drink that wasn’t pink. By the time he found it, a cluster of young men had begun to form around Hetty and Grace. To his satisfaction, not all of them were fortune hunters.
“The only thing more pleasing to the eye than one Beauty,” a familiar voice drawled in his ear, “is two Beauties.”
“Evening, Jeremy,” Adam said, without looking around. A face on the dance floor caught his eye: Miss fforbes-Brown. His disgruntlement returned.
“Very clever,” Jeremy said. “They set each other off to perfection.”
Adam grunted. He glanced at his friend. “Good Lord,” he said, as
