Читать книгу The Viscount and the Virgin - Энни Берроуз, Annie Burrows - Страница 6

January, 1815. London

Imogen Hebden knew it was no use blaming the Veryan sisters when her first ball ended so disastrously.

Not that it was all that much of a ball. There was scarcely anyone in town so soon after Christmas. But that, as her aunt had pointed out, was all to the good. Imogen could experience the flavour of a select Ton gathering at Mrs Leeming’s soirée without exposing herself to anyone that really mattered.

Still, Imogen had been really pleased when a gentleman had actually asked her to dance. Even though it was with the rather wooden expression of a man bent on doing his duty by the night’s resident wallflower.

Mr Dysart had looked bored throughout the set, and the moment the music had ended, accorded her a very stiff bow, and hightailed it to the card room.

That had been when she noticed that one of the three sets of ruffles on her skirt had come adrift and was hanging down in an untidy loop at the back. She did not think Mr Dysart had been responsible. She would have felt it if he had trodden on her hem. Besides, he had maintained a good arm’s length from her at all times. No, it was far more likely that she had snagged it on the chair leg when she had leapt up in response to her first invitation to dance at her first, sort of, ball.

She had begun to make her way to the retiring room so she could pin it up, when the Honourable Miss Penelope Veryan, flanked on one side by her younger sister Charlotte, and on the other by her friend Lady Verity Carlow, had moved to block her path.

‘I do hope you enjoyed your dance with Mr Dysart,’ Penelope had cooed, with a smile that did not reach her eyes. ‘But I do feel I should warn you not to place too much hope in that quarter. He is a particular friend of mine, and only asked you to dance because he knows we are taking an interest in you.’

Mr Dysart’s behaviour now made perfect sense. Lots of people were keen to curry favour with the wealthy and influential Veryan family. It was a little disappointing to learn that Mr Dysart had not sought her out for her own sake. But at least now, she would not have to pretend to like him when she ran across him again. It was strange, but during the whole year she had been living with Lady Callandar, though she had been introduced to a great many people, she could not say she liked any of them all that much.

‘I suppose you expect me to thank you,’ mused Imogen aloud, though she was not at all sure she was grateful for Penelope’s interference. She thought it might have been preferable to have sat on the sidelines all night, rather than have a man dance with her only because he sought Penelope’s good opinion or, rather, that of her father, Lord Keddinton.

There had been a flash of anger in Penelope’s eyes, but with her customary poise, she quelled it almost at once.

‘How is your court dress coming along?’ hastily put in Lady Verity.

Imogen turned to her with relief. Although she had absolutely nothing in common with the supremely fashionable Lady Verity, who never seemed to think about anything but dresses and parties, at least there was not an ounce of malice in her.

‘I have had the final fitting,’ Imogen replied.

‘Do you not like it?’ Charlotte pounced on Imogen’s less than enthusiastic response. ‘I heard that Lady Callandar hired the very best modiste, and spent an extortionate amount on yards and yards of the most exquisite Brussels lace!’

Imogen could not help bristling at Charlotte’s implication that no matter how much money was spent on her, or how skilled the dressmaker, she would never manage to look anything but a sad romp. Especially since Charlotte was correct.

The flimsy muslin gowns that Imogen’s aunt dressed her in, with their straight skirts and delicate ruffles, permitted no activity more strenuous than strolling to the shops. And in Imogen’s case, not even that. Why, she seemed to be able to part a shoulder seam between leaving her bedroom and arriving in the breakfast parlour. And as for her hair…

Well, it went its own way no matter how often Pansy, the maid her aunt had provided her with, was called to rearrange it. Charlotte’s ringlets, she noted enviously, fell decoratively around her face, not into her eyes. If only her aunt would permit her to just keep her hair long and braid it as she had done before! But no. Fashionable young ladies had their hair cut short at the front. And so poor Pansy had to wield the curling tongs, tie in the bandeaus and jab in the pins.

Which reminded her: that torn flounce still needed pinning up.

‘I look perfectly frightful in my court dress,’ admitted Imogen with a wry smile. ‘Now, if you will excuse me…’ And she began once more to press towards the exit.

The other girls fell into step beside her, Charlotte linking her arm, which obliged her to match their languid pace.

‘Just wait until you try walking backwards with that train!’ chortled Charlotte. Penelope uttered a tinkling little laugh, shaking her head at the impossibility of Imogen performing such a feat.

‘Oh, I am sure you will manage it, given time and plenty of practice,’ put in Lady Verity kindly.

Penelope made a noise which expressed her extreme doubt. They all knew Imogen could not survive half an hour in a ballroom without tearing her gown. How on earth was she going to cope with all the rigmarole of a court presentation? Sidling through doorways with panniers strapped to her hips, backing away from the royal presence with yards and yards of lace train just waiting to trip her up?

Imogen was still managing to hang onto her composure, when Penelope brought up the subject of her headdress.

‘Have you practised getting into a carriage yet?’ she asked, all feigned solicitude. ‘I presume you have bought your feathers. Or at least—’ she paused,

laying a hand on her arm, obliging Imogen to come to a complete standstill ‘—you do know how tall they usually are?’

And that had been the moment when disaster struck. Irritated by Penelope’s patronizing attitude, Imogen had swung round, replying, ‘Of course I do!’

Charlotte had let go of her arm, and naturally, Imogen had taken the opportunity to demonstrate exactly how tall those infernal plumes were.

‘They are this high!’ she said, waving her free arm in a wide arc above her head.

And her hand had connected with something solid. A man’s voice had uttered a word she was certain she was not supposed to have understood. She had whirled round, and been horrified to discover that the solid object which her hand had struck had been a glass of champagne, held in the hand of a man just emerging from the refreshment room. All the champagne had sprayed out of the glass, and was now dripping down the front of an intricately tied cravat, onto a beautifully embroidered, green silk waistcoat.

‘Oh! I am so sorry!’ she had wailed, delving into her reticule for a handkerchief. ‘I have ruined your waistcoat!’ It really was a shame. That waistcoat was very nearly a work of art. Even the stitching around the buttonholes had been contrived so that the buttons resembled jewelled fruit peeping out from lush foliage.

She pulled out a square of plain muslin—highly absorbent and just the ticket for blotting up the worst of the spill. So long as not too much soaked into the gorgeous silk, his valet would be bound to know of some remedy to rescue it. Why, Pansy could make the most obdurate stains disappear from even the most delicate of fabrics!

But her hand never reached its intended target. The gentleman in the green waistcoat grabbed her wrist and snarled, ‘Do not presume to touch my person.’

Stunned by the venomous tone of his voice, she looked up, to encounter a glare from a pair of eyes as green as the jewels adorning his waistcoat. And just—she swallowed—as hard.

It was only the hardness of those eyes, and perhaps the cleft in his chin, that prevented her from immediately applying the word beautiful to the angry gentleman. She took in the regular, finely chiselled features of his face, the fair hair cut in the rather severe style known as the Brutus, the perfect fit of his bottle-green tailcoat, and the immaculately manicured nails of the hand that held her wrist in a bruis-ingly firm grip. And all the breath left her lungs in one long, shuddering sigh. She had heard people say that something had taken their breath away, but this was the first time it had ever happened to her.

But then she had never been so close to such a breathtakingly gorgeous specimen of masculinity before.

She pulled herself together with an effort. It was no use standing there, sighing at all that masculine beauty. A man who took such pains over his appearance was the very worst sort of gentleman to have spilled a drink over! Determined to make some form of reparation for her clumsiness, Imogen feebly twitched the handkerchief she was still clutching in fingers that were beginning to go numb.

‘I only m-meant—’ she began, but he would not let her finish.

‘I know what you meant,’ he sneered.

Ever since he had arrived in town, matchmaking mamas had been irritating him by thrusting their daughters under his nose. But worse, far worse, were the antics of enterprising girls like this one. It was getting so that he could not even take a walk in the park without some female tripping over an imaginary obstacle and stumbling artistically into his arms.

By the looks of her, she was yet another one of those girls from a shabby-genteel background, out to snare a wealthy husband who could set her up in style. Definitely not a pampered lady who had never done anything more strenuous than sew a seam. He could feel the strength in her wrist, as he held her determined little fingers away from their target.

It never ceased to amaze him that girls could think that running their hands over him would somehow make a favourable impression. Only two nights earlier, he had been disgusted by the apparently prim young miss who was seated next to him at dinner running her hand along his thigh under cover of the tablecloth. Just as this hoyden was attempting to run her hands over his torso, under cover of mopping up the drink she had thrown over him.

He glared down into her wide grey eyes, eyes which told him exactly what she was thinking. They were growing darker by the second. And her lips were still parted from that shuddering sigh.

To his shock, he experienced a reckless urge to yank her closer and give her the kiss those parted lips were begging him for.

Instead, he flung her from him. ‘I am sick to death of the lengths your kind will go to in order to attract my notice.’ And sickened to find that, in spite of his better judgement, his body was responding to this girl’s far-from-subtle approach.

‘My kind of…attract your…what?’ she sputtered.

‘Do not think to dupe me by a display of outraged innocence, miss. And do not presume to approach me again. If you were a person worthy of notice, you would have been able to find a more orthodox way of effecting an introduction and making me aware of your charms.’

Imogen stood, open-mouthed, while those hard green eyes raked her quivering form from top to toe with such insolence she felt as though he might just as well have stripped her naked.

‘Such as they are,’ he finished, with a sneer that left her in no doubt of his low opinion of her.

‘Well!’ she huffed.

One of his companions raised a lavender-scented handkerchief to his lips to conceal his smirk as the green-eyed exquisite turned and stalked away. The others sniggered openly.

Penelope and Charlotte flicked open their fans and raised them to their faces, but not before Imogen caught a glimpse of a pair of smiles that put her in mind of a cat that has a live bird under one paw.

‘Oh, dear,’ said Lady Verity, a frown creasing her normally placid brow as her friends turned their backs on Imogen and sauntered away, their noses in the air. ‘How unfortunate. He seemed to think…’

‘Yes, he made it quite plain what he thought. Odious man! Who does he think he is?’

‘I have no idea, but he seems to be someone of consequence…’

‘Someone who thinks a great deal of his own consequence, you mean,’ Imogen muttered darkly, taking in the arrogant set of the blond man’s shoulders as he strode towards the exit. ‘How dare he talk to me like that!’

Lady Verity was beginning to look perturbed. And Imogen realized she was clenching her fists and breathing heavily and, worst of all, scowling. All three things a lady should never do. Particularly not in a ballroom.

Oh, heavens, she thought, swinging to look towards the chaperon’s bench, where her aunt was sitting, monitoring her every move.

She took a deep breath, smiled grimly at Lady Verity and said, ‘I think I had better go and rejoin Lady Callandar.’

Lady Verity dipped a curtsy and went off after her friends, while Imogen braced herself to face her aunt’s exasperated brand of censure.

Not that her aunt’s face showed so much as a hint of disappointment that her niece had just demonstrated she was completely unfit to mix in polite Society. Nothing, but nothing would induce the woman to betray any kind of emotion in a public place. No, the unbearably gentle scolding would wait until they were in their carriage and on their way home, where nobody could overhear.

It began, as Imogen had known it would, the very moment the flunkey closed the carriage door on them.

‘Oh, Imogen—’ her aunt sighed ‘—I had such hopes for you when Mrs Leeming extended you an invitation to this small, select gathering—and what must you do but squander this opportunity by making an exhibition of yourself with one of, if not the most eligible bachelor in town! Everyone took notice of the way Viscount Mildenhall stormed out—’ she shook her head ruefully ‘—and by now I am sure nobody is in any doubt that it was because you threw your glass of champagne over him!’

She wished her aunt would give her space to explain that far from throwing anyone’s drink over the rude, arrogant fop, the whole thing had been an accident…although now she came to think of it, she wondered if it really had been an accident that she had been standing there, waving her arms about, at precisely the moment a supremely eligible viscount had been emerging from the refreshment room with a drink in his hand. Given the cruelty of the smiles as they had strolled away, she wouldn’t be a bit surprised to learn that Penelope Veryan had set the whole thing up. With Charlotte’s help.

But she knew it would be pointless to say a word against the Veryan girls. Her aunt was bound to simply point out that if she were not such an ill-disciplined, hurly-burly creature, who could be so easily goaded into waving her arms about like a windmill, the viscount’s waistcoat would have got away scot-free. And her uncle, she huffed, folding her arms in exasperation, was even more blind where the sisters were concerned. He was always telling Imogen to observe their manners, and use the example of those ‘perfect’ young ladies as her pattern. It was because they always listened to him with their heads tilted to one side, their eyes wide with admiration, whatever nonsense he spouted. And because they moved gracefully, dressed beautifully and had such polished manners. Oh, yes, they were exceptionally careful to conceal, from powerful men like Lord Callandar, their love of playing spiteful tricks on those less fortunate than themselves!

Well, if that was what it meant to be a young lady, she was glad her new guardians thought she was not one! She would never sink to the kind of unkind, sneaky behaviour those cats indulged in!

‘And when I think of the lengths,’ her aunt went on, ‘Mrs Leeming went to, to get him there at all! She will be furious with me! He has only recently come into his title, and is up in town for the express purpose of finding himself a bride with all due speed to ease the last days of his poor dear father, the Earl of Corfe. And Mrs Leeming has two daughters she particularly wished to bring to his notice.’

No wonder he was a bit conceited, thought Imogen, if he was the son of an earl on his deathbed. Especially if he was used to females flinging themselves at him because they all knew he was in town in search of a wife. But to bracket her in their company, just because she had waved her arm about…why, she had not even known he was standing behind her! What, did he think she had eyes in the back of her head?

He might be breathtakingly handsome to look at, but if he could not tell a genuine accident from a deliberate ploy to attract his notice, he obviously had the brains of a peacock, as well as the strutting gait of one!

‘What were you thinking?’ her aunt continued. ‘No—’ She closed her eyes, and held her hands up in a gesture of exasperation that had become all too familiar to Imogen over the past year. ‘On second thoughts, it is pointless asking you that! Not after the constant stream of excuses you have come up with ever since Lord Callandar brought you into our home on the death of your stepfather.’ She opened her eyes, eyes that were now filled with such sadness it brought a lump to Imogen’s throat.

‘It is such a pity my husband did not remove you from—’ she took a quick breath, and mouthed the words ‘That House,’ before continuing in a normal tone ‘—much sooner. You should have come to us the moment your mother died. Or even a year or so later, when it was the proper time to bring you out. Then I might have been able to do something with you. You were young enough then, perhaps, to have had some of your faults ironed out.’

She heaved a sigh. ‘Of course, although one can sympathize with your poor dear mother, for she never really recovered from—’ she pursed her lips and squeezed her eyes shut again ‘—that Dreadful Tragedy, nevertheless—’ her eyes snapped open ‘—she should not have permitted you to run wild with those Bredon boys.’

‘My brothers,’ Imogen could not help blurting. She knew that girls were not supposed to argue with their elders and betters. But sometimes she felt so strongly that she simply could not hold her tongue. Her uncle had informed her, less than one week after taking her in, that it was her most deplorable fault.

‘Properly reared young ladies,’ he had said, the corners of his mouth pulling down in chagrin, ‘should never set their own ideas above that of any gentleman. In fact, they should not even have them!’

‘Not have ideas?’ Imogen had been astounded enough to reply. ‘How can that be possible?’ She and her brothers had been used to having the liveliest of conversations around the dining table when they were all home. Even her stepfather had enjoyed what he termed a stimulating debate from time to time.

‘Stepbrothers,’ her aunt was firmly correcting her. ‘They are not blood relations.’

Imogen flinched. When Hugh Bredon—the scholarly man she had grown up to regard as her father—had died, his second son, Nicomedes, had done his utmost to disabuse her of the notion she had any legal claims on him.

‘My father never adopted you,’ he said coldly. ‘In the eyes of the law, you are not my sister. And therefore it would be quite inappropriate for you to make your home with me now.’

Nick, who was training for the law, had already given her the devastating news that the Brambles—the house where she had grown up, the place she had thought of as her home—would have to be sold to pay off the debts Hugh had racked up in the latter years of his life.

‘What is left over is to be divided equally between myself, Alaric and Germanicus.’

She had felt as though Nick had struck her. ‘What about me?’ she had asked in a scratchy voice. How could he have left everything equally between the three sons who had left her to nurse their father through his last, protracted illness? Not that she blamed any one of them. Nick was too busy with his law books. Alaric was away with his regiment, fighting in the Peninsula. And Germanicus was a naval lieutenant serving with his squadron in the Caribbean.

No, it was Hugh’s attitude she found hard to swallow.

She had listened with mounting hope as Nick proceeded to witter on about widow’s jointures and marriage settlements, slowly grasping the fact that her mother, at least, had not intended her to be left completely penniless. She had, in fact, bequeathed her only surviving child quite a tidy sum.

Though Nick had not been able to quite meet her eye as he explained that it was to have been hers when she reached her twenty-fifth birthday.

‘Unfortunately, my father somehow got access to it and made some rather unwise investments.’

From the look on Nick’s face, Imogen had gathered he had squandered the lot.

‘What must I do then, Nick?’ she had asked with a sinking feeling. ‘Seek employment?’ She would probably be able to get work in a school. One thing about growing up in the household of a man who devoted his life to studying antiquities was that there had never been any shortage of books. She could teach any number of subjects, she was quite sure, to boys as well as girls.

‘No, not as bad as that,’ Nick had assured her. ‘Your mother’s family have agreed to take you in and, once your period of mourning is over, to give you a Season. If you can make a match your uncle approves of, he will make up what you would have received from your mother upon your majority into a respectable dowry.’

And so, though the prospect of having to endure even a single Season had her shivering with dread, she had been packed off to live with Lord Callandar, her mother’s brother, and Lady Callandar, his wife.

At least it had not been like going to live with total strangers. Though she had never met them, Lord Callandar had written to his sister Amanda punctiliously on her birthday and Imogen’s, every year.

It had never crossed anyone’s mind to approach her real father’s family, not considering their obdurate attitude towards her mother. They had laid the blame for what her aunt termed the Dreadful Tragedy firmly at her door. Imogen had never had any contact with them at all.

‘Are you attending me, Imogen?’ her aunt snapped, rapping her wrist with her fan so smartly that it jerked her out of her reverie. ‘And sit up straight. Hands in your lap, not folded in that insolent manner!’

Imogen flinched to hear her aunt sounding so annoyed, and dutifully corrected her posture. She was truly sorry that she had turned out to be such a disappointment to her aunt and uncle, who had each shown her a great deal of kindness, in their own way. Her uncle had spent an extortionate amount of money trying to make up for what he saw as the deficiencies in her education. He had paid for deportment lessons and dancing lessons, and encouraged her aunt to buy her more clothes than she had believed it was possible for one girl to wear in a lifetime. And that had just been to cover her mourning. They had shopped all over again when she went into half mourning, and again when it was time for her to begin moving about in society a little.

And yet she had never felt at all happy in the Herriard household. It might have had something to do with the fact that she still had vague, shadowy memories of the short time she had lived there before, in the aftermath of the Dreadful Tragedy. Her grandfather seemed always to have been angry, her mother always weeping. And nobody would tell her where her big brother Stephen had gone. Her grandpapa had roared at her that she was a naughty girl for even mentioning him, and said that if she so much as spoke his name again, he would have her beaten. A feeling of utter isolation had frozen her to the spot on a part of the landing that she could still not pass without a shiver. For Stephen had always been the one to scoop her up when the grown-ups were fighting and take her away somewhere she could not hear the raised voices.

There was nobody to stand between her and this large, angry man, and it had terrified her. Even the nursery had been no refuge for the frightened little girl. Without Stephen, it had just become a bleak and empty prison cell. She had the impression of being left for days on end behind locked doors, although she was sure even her grandfather could not have been that cruel. He must have ensured she had at least a nursery maid bring her something to eat!

But no matter how hard she tried to resist them, those unhappy memories came swirling round her every time she crossed the threshold of the grand house in Mount Street.

It was not helped by the fact that once her mother had married Hugh Bredon, her life had undergone such a drastic change. Instead of incarceration and isolation, she had spent her first years at the Brambles learning to fish and shoot and ride, so that she could keep up with her magnificent new big brothers. She did not think she had run wild, precisely, over the ensuing nineteen years, though towards the end of her time there, she definitely had far more freedom than her aunt and uncle deemed appropriate for a young lady. She had thought nothing of saddling up her mare or harnessing the gig to go on errands or visit friends, entirely unaccompanied. And then, after her mother had died, she had taken over the running of Hugh’s household.

Her Uncle Herriard, she knew, would never have trusted a sixteen-year-old girl to run his household for him. Her stepfather might never have shown her much affection, but he had reposed a great deal of confidence in her abilities. Hugh had only checked the household accounts for the first few months she was in charge, and though he never praised her, he never complained about the way she ran things, either. All he wanted was to be left in peace to get on with his studies, and she had taken great pride in ensuring that he could do so.

But she had to face facts. When it came right down to it, Hugh Bredon had never quite thought of her as his own daughter. It was as though he was unable to forget that she was the result of his wife’s first disastrous marriage to Baron Framlingham.

Imogen’s shoulders slumped. ‘I am sorry to be such a disappointment to you, Aunt,’ she said dejectedly. ‘It is not that I am not trying to behave as you would wish…’

‘I know,’ her aunt agreed. ‘That is what is so particularly exasperating. It is so hard to discipline you for faults you just cannot help having! They are so deeply ingrained, that…’ She sighed. ‘If only you were as pretty as your mother,’ she said, for what seemed to Imogen like the thousandth time.

The very first time Lady Callandar had seen her, she had blanched and said, ‘Oh, dear! How very unfortunate!’

With her wildly curling hair and intelligent grey eyes, Imogen was, apparently, the very image of her father, Kit Hebden.

‘Knowing eyes,’ her uncle had said disparagingly. ‘That was the thing about Framlingham. Always looking at you as though he knew something you didn’t.’

‘Anyone who knew him will take one look at her,’ Lady Callandar had wailed, ‘and say she is bound to turn out exactly like him!’

‘Then you will just have to make sure,’ her uncle had said sternly, ‘that she never gives anyone cause to think it!’

‘Imogen, dear,’ her aunt had said sympathetically, once her uncle had stormed from the room, ‘you must not let your uncle’s manner upset you. You are—’ she had floundered for a moment, before her face lit up with inspiration ‘—-just like a lovely rose that has rambled in all the wrong directions. Your uncle may seem to be severe with you, but it is only because he wants to see you blossom.’

And from that day forward, her aunt had set about pruning her into shape.

‘If you could only learn to carry yourself with the poise of Penelope or Charlotte!’ her aunt had advised her, time after time. ‘People might gradually stop talking about the thorny issue of your mother’s Dreadful Disgrace!’

Although the shocking scandal in which her mother and father had been involved had happened over twenty years earlier, Imogen’s emergence into Society had reminded people of it.

Her mother had taken a lover. Not that there was anything unusual in that, in her circles. But feelings between William Wardale, Earl of Leybourne, and Baron Framlingham had apparently run high. They had got into a fist fight. And only weeks later, the earl had brutally stabbed Imogen’s father to death. As if that were not bad enough, it turned out that both men had been involved in some form of espionage. The Earl of Leybourne had been found guilty not only of murder, but treason. He had been stripped of land and titles, and hanged.

No wonder people stared at her and whispered behind their fans, whenever she walked into a room!

She was not pretty, she was not rich, she lacked poise and she had a scandal attached to her name. Mrs Leeming had been one of the very few Society matrons prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt. But Imogen had just ruined her chance to demonstrate she was nothing like either of her parents, by getting embroiled in that scene with Viscount Mildenhall.

The promises of invitations her aunt had managed to cajole, bribe or bully from her other intimates would probably dwindle away altogether now.

‘Perhaps,’ she ventured timidly, ‘we should abandon the attempt to find me a husband.’

She had already begun to suspect that she would be completely miserable married to the kind of man her uncle would approve of. The more she learned about fashionable Society, the more she understood her mother’s willingness to accept her banishment to the wilds of Staffordshire under the aegis of the somewhat reclusive Hugh Bredon. He may have had his faults, but he had never treated Amanda like a piece of topiary that needed constant clipping to maintain an artificially decorative shape.

Her aunt shot her a darkling look, but made no reply, for the carriage was slowing down.

If she ever did have any children, Imogen decided, mutinously, ignoring the footman’s outstretched hand and jumping down from the carriage, she would make sure each and every one of them knew they were loved exactly as they were, be they boys or girls. She would never try to stifle their personalities or make them feel they had to constantly strive for her approval.

Though, she thought despondently as she trailed up the front steps behind her aunt, it was not likely that she ever would have children of her own.

No man that Lord and Lady Callandar considered eligible would want to ally himself to a girl who could bring so little credit to his name. She only had to think of the disdain she had read in the viscount’s eyes, the mockery in those of his friends, to know she was never going to measure up.

‘In here, if you please,’ said her aunt, making her way across the hall to the sitting room. She waited in silence while a footman hastily lit some candles, banked up the fire, enquired if they wanted any refreshment and then withdrew.

‘Sit up straight,’ she then urged Imogen, who had slumped down on the sofa. ‘Just because you have suffered a little setback, there is no excuse for forgetting your posture!’

Imogen sat up straight, mentally bracing herself for yet another lecture about how young ladies ought to behave.

‘Now, Imogen, I have not taken you into my home and drilled you into the ways of Society, only to have you fall at the first hurdle! I do not despair of seeing you make a creditable alliance before the end of the Season.’

Imogen had a depressing vision of endless balls where she sat on the sidelines, watching the prettier, wealthier girls whirling round with their admiring partners. Or dancing with dutiful, bored men like Mr Dysart. Of picnics and breakfasts where she endured the spiteful comments of girls like Penelope and Charlotte, while the matrons whispered about her father’s terrible fate, and the bucks sniggered about her mother’s scandalous conduct. Of always having to rein herself in, lest she betray some sign that she took after either of her scandalous parents.

And then she looked at the determined jut of her aunt’s jaw. Her poor, beleaguered aunt, who had so determinedly taken up the cudgels on her behalf.

The last thing she wanted was to become a lifelong burden on her aunt and uncle. ‘If…if I have not received a proposal by the end of the Season, though, I could always go and teach in a school somewhere. For you surely cannot want me living with you indefinitely.’

‘That is for Lord Callandar to decide. Though I am sure it would make him most uncomfortable to think of a Herriard teaching in a school!’

‘But I am not a Herriard,’ Imogen pointed out. ‘I am a Hebden.’ It was why Hugh Bredon had not wished to adopt her, after all. Because she was the spawn of the notorious Kit Hebden.

‘Nobody will be in the least surprised that you could not make anything of me. Though I am sure everyone can see that you have done all you could to try and make me more…’ she waved her hands expansively, then frowned ‘…make me less…’

Her aunt sighed. ‘That is just the trouble, is it not? You are what you are, niece, and I am beginning to think no power on earth will ever make a jot of difference.’

‘I am sorry, Aunt.’ She bowed her head as she tugged off her evening gloves, one finger at a time. The backs were sticky with dried champagne. ‘I do not want you to be ashamed of me. I do not ever wish to cause you any trouble.’

‘I know that, dear,’ her aunt replied on yet another sigh. ‘But trouble seems to find you, nonetheless.’