“They are a start.” Though it had taken Eve all morning to come up with even a half-dozen names.

“Scratch Trit-Trot off your list. Joseph says he gambles excessively.”

Eve took up the paper and did as Louisa suggested, but it was no great loss. Trit-Trot would bow and blather her witless in a week.

Cleaveridge would not keep his hands to himself.

Enderbend was a sot whose drunken wagering would bankrupt them in a year.

Eve nibbled her pencil. “Can you think of anybody else? Mind you, this is strictly in the way of contingency planning.”

“We should ask Jenny. She notices things. This discussion will require sustenance.”

That Louisa wasn’t laughing at Eve’s project was both reassuring and unnerving. While Lou rang for trays—plural—another footman was sent off to retrieve Jenny from the gardens.

“We’re trying to find Eve a white knight husband, but it’s rather difficult going,” Louisa explained to their sister. “We need a fellow who will leave her in peace but be attentive and civil. He must be goodlooking enough to be credible and have all his teeth.”

Jenny took a seat in the rocker and frowned at the list. “He must be able to keep Eve in the style to which she has become accustomed.”

Before the tea trays had arrived, Eve’s sisters had concocted a list not of eligible husbands, but of the characteristics such a man must possess.

He must like to travel—preferably to foreign parts for extended periods.

He must be mild mannered, but a man of his word.

He must be affectionate enough, but not too affectionate.

It wouldn’t hurt if he already had an heir.

Nor if he were devoid of relatives who would be curious about the nature of the marriage.

Such an effort her sisters put forth to secure Eve a list of appropriate possibilities, and yet nowhere on their list were the things that might have made a white marriage bearable:

He must be kind.

He must be that rare man who could befriend an adult woman.

He must be loyal—faithful was a ridiculous notion under the circumstances.

And it really, truly would not hurt matters if he loved horses, either.

“Eve has left us.” Jenny made this observation when Louisa had laid siege to the sandwiches and cakes an hour later.

“I’m thinking,” Eve said, which was not a lie. She was thinking of never seeing Franny’s foal grow up, never bestowing a name on the little fellow, or petting Willy’s velvety nose ever again. Never again kissing the only man to make her insides rise up and sing the glories of being a healthy young female…

“Jenny has come up with a capital notion. You must marry this portrait painter everybody is raving about. I forget his name, though he and Joseph are cordial.”

Eve forced herself to attend the topic, more because her sisters left unsupervised would have her betrothed to the fellow without her even being introduced to him.

“Elijah Harrison. He has a title,” Jenny said, “but he doesn’t use it. He’s mannerly and quiet, also very talented and an associate member of the Royal Academy, one of the youngest so far.”

Louisa got up to brace her back against the mantel and cross her arms. “He’s also mostly to be found dozing among the ferns at the fashionable entertainments.”

Jenny set the list aside, her chin coming up. “He must work during daylight hours and has not the luxury of sleeping until noon every day; moreover, he’s a marvelous dancer.”

Oh-ho. Louisa’s lips quirked up, as did Eve’s. “Jenny is smitten,” Lou pronounced. “S-m-i-t-t-e-n. We must strike his name from your list, Evie. Alas for you and My Lord Artist.”

Eve resisted the urge to join in the teasing. Jenny showed her hand so rarely that Louisa was probably right in her surmise.

Louisa was right a maddening proportion of the time.

But drunks and painters?

Eve looked at the list again. “Perhaps we should ring for a fresh pot.”

Jenny looked relieved, Louisa determined, and though the list of requirements grew longer, the list of names did not.

* * *

“Are you suffering a bilious stomach, Deene, or have you taken to glowering the matchmakers into submission?”

Kesmore’s question caused Deene a start, for the man had given no warning of his presence.

“And when did you take to lurking among the ferns, Kesmore?”

“Perhaps I’m lurking among the shy, retiring bachelors. It isn’t like you to be demonstrably out of sorts, Deene, particularly not in company with the fair flowers of Polite Society.”

No, it was not, which sorry state of affairs Deene laid directly at Lady Eve Windham’s dainty feet. “Cleaveridge is all but drooling on his partner’s bosom.”

“What a lovely bosom it is, too. Moreland’s women are a pretty bunch.”

This casual observation from a man who appeared to have no interest whatsoever in bosoms pretty or otherwise—save for that of his countess—made Deene want to stomp across the dance floor and pluck Eve from Cleaveridge’s arms.

“She’s up to something.”

“The ladies usually are. We adore them for it, and in polite company refer to it as a mysterious feminine quality.”

Deene turned to study Kesmore amid the shadows under the ballroom’s minstrel’s gallery. “With the exception of your recently acquired countess, I’ve yet to see you adoring a human female since you mustered out, Kesmore. One hears rumors about you and your livestock, however.”

“My livestock are lining the Kesmore coffers sufficiently to launch my daughters in style when the time comes. You insult the beasts at your peril.”

Though Kesmore’s voice was mild, Deene had the sense the man was genuinely protective of his pigs. This ought to be a point of departure for much raillery between former officers who’d served together under Wellington, but it was instead an odd comfort.

A man could apparently do worse than be protective of the woman who’d rejected his very first marital proposal… though Deene doubted Kesmore was actually jealous of the boar hogs courting his breeding sows.

“Cleaveridge does have an unfortunate tendency to stare at the wrong parts of a lady’s person, doesn’t he?” Kesmore kept his voice down, though as Deene watched Eve’s progress through the concluding bars of the dance, he wanted to shout at Cleaveridge to turn loose of Lady Eve.

At her final curtsy, Cleaveridge bowed to precisely that angle most convenient for ogling and even sniffing at Eve’s breasts.

“Deene.” Kesmore’s hand on Deene’s arm prevented him from starting across the ballroom. “Enderbend is making a charge from the punch bowl.”

“All of his charges start and end at the punch bowl.”

“Perhaps Lady Eve is on a charity mission to dance with all the hopefuls who will never graduate to the status of eligibles.”

She was on a mission to part Deene from his few remaining wits, making a strategic retreat the only sane course. “I’m off to play a hand of cards. Care to join me?”

Kesmore gave him an unreadable look. He had Deene’s height, though Kesmore’s coloring was dark, his build heavier, and somewhere in the middle of Spain his features had lost the knack of smiling.

“Take this.” Kesmore shoved an empty glass against Deene’s middle and limped away. Deene could only watch in consternation as the crowd parted before Kesmore with the hasty manners shown a man condemned to limp for the rest of his life.

Consternation turned to outright surprise when Kesmore offered his arm to Lady Eve and left Enderbend looking like a besotted fool at the edge of the dance floor.

Lest Deene be caught wearing the same expression in public, he did withdraw to the card room.

* * *

Eve could not have been more surprised when her most recently acquired brother-in-law, Joseph, the Earl of Kesmore, informed her she’d agreed to take some air with him at the conclusion of the quadrille.

She should have refused, particularly with Mr. Enderbend looking so eager for his dance—and flushed, and red, and savoring quite noxiously of spirits. Eve caught a whiff of Enderbend’s breath and accepted Kesmore’s unexpected offer.

In addition to being Louisa’s spouse, Kesmore was a neighbor. In the settled countryside of Kent, this meant that even prior to his marriage he could be accounted a family friend. He rode to hounds with His Grace at the local meets. He attended the assemblies and balls. He made calls and returned them, particularly at the holidays.

Eve would not have said he was her friend, however.

“I am capable of dancing, you know.”

“I beg your lordship’s pardon?”

He glanced down at her, his expression amused without anything approaching a smile lightening his saturnine features. “If you’re making some sort of penance for yourself out of dancing with the dregs, Lady Eve, you must include me on your card. Waltzing with a cripple has to rank with partnering the sots and lechers among the company.”

He was gruff. Widowers, even widowers who did not limp, might be gruff, but this was… needling.

“If I refuse a gentleman a dance without cause, then I must sit out the rest of the evening, my lord. What purpose is there in attending such a gathering, if not to dance?”

Another glance, somewhat measuring. “What purpose, indeed?”

Eve realized her rudeness too late. “I apologize, my lord, but do I surmise you choose not to dance rather than that you cannot dance?”

His expression softened, making him look for a moment almost wistful. “With the right woman, I dance well enough, as your sister can attest. Shall we avail ourselves of the terrace?”