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Chapter Four

‘I want to marry your sister Chloe,’ Kit repeated. He would never have thought of it, but now Chloe had suggested it, it seemed an ideal solution to his problem.

James sat down with a thump in the nearest chair. ‘Forgive me. But why?’

‘Because I hold her in high esteem, naturally. As you know, Antonia Woolmer apart, I was intending to find a bride this Season. Chloe has all the qualities I am looking for in a wife —’

‘And you just happened to be struck all of a heap by this revelation five minutes after telling me of your despair at being entrapped by the Woolmers?’ James did not sound pleased. Kit could hardly blame him. An earl for a brother-in-law was one thing, but no man wanted to think his sister was being used.

‘Actually, it was Lady Chloe’s suggestion,’ Kit offered. ‘I haven’t persuaded her, rather the other way round.’ Not very gallant, but this was James, after all. He’d understand.

Or not, apparently. ‘You are telling me she needed to persuade you that she was an eligible bride?’

‘No! Not at all.’ He must stop digging himself into this hole before the sides caved in. ‘Lady Chloe overheard our conversation. She proposed…suggested that we tell Woolmer of our engagement using her sister’s recent troubles as an excuse for not announcing it earlier. Naturally, I was reluctant to take advantage of her in any way.’ That could have been better put. The hole was getting deeper, along with James’s frown. ‘Take advantage of her generosity, that is. I think we would suit.’

And, surprisingly, the more he thought about it, the more it seemed to him that they would suit. She was intelligent, well-bred, presentable. Well, she could be, if she stopped sticking pens in her hair… He’d been taken aback by the directness of her approach but he supposed she was tired of being the spinster sister. But he wouldn’t hold her to it, not if she got cold feet when she’d considered it at leisure.

‘I must talk with her.’ James shook his head. ‘I don’t understand this, she is rarely impulsive. Too much the scientist, I suppose. We had given up trying to persuade her to consider marriage.’

‘Did she hate the Season so much?’

James shrugged. ‘No-one took her seriously and then when she did find someone who was interested in geology they had a blazing row because he accused her of being irreligious and refusing to accept the approved date of the earth or something.’

‘Bishop Usher.’

‘No, he was a baronet.’

‘The bishop worked out the age of the earth from the Bible,’ Kit explained patiently. No wonder poor Chloe was anxious to leave home if her family knew less about geology than he did. ‘The baronet must have been a Neptunist—that theory explains everything in the earth in terms of Noah’s flood.’

‘Sounds as if you understand her better than he did, at any event.’ James perked up a little. ‘You both need to sleep on this, it is too important for a spur of the moment decision.’

‘Perhaps I should go back to the Clarendon,’ Kit suggested. The ceilings of his town house were being replastered after the water tank had burst the week before and James had invited him to stay upon hearing he was putting up in an hotel.

‘Does Woolmer know you’ve moved here? Best stay below the horizon until you and Chloe get this resolved, given that he’s out for your blood.’

True, but a night’s sleep away from this house might remove the sensation of careering downhill on an out-of-control sledge. A tap and the door opening prevented him agreeing. ‘A Mr Woolmer for Lord Twyford, my lord. He appears a trifle…agitated.’

‘Hell.’ James muttered. ‘Dunton, tell Mr Woolmer that his lordship is not in and we are not certain when he is returning.’

‘I regret, my lord, that Lady Chloe was crossing the hall when the gentleman arrived, told him Lord Twyford was here and took him into the drawing room. She requested the presence of you both.’

‘If she has told him she’s betrothed to you, then that’s final,’ James pronounced. ‘I don’t care whether you’re suited or not. I’m not having another sister’s marriage causing a scandal.’