Their mothers had been sisters and had passed on their dark Greek good looks to their sons, who looked more like brothers than cousins. Almost like twins, in fact.

Constantine had not attended Vanessa and Elliott's ball, even though he had been in town.

"I was not invited," he said, looking across at Stephen with lazy, somewhat amused eyes. "And I would not have gone if I had been."

Stephen looked apologetic. He /had/ just been on something of a fishing expedition, as Con seemed to realize. Stephen knew that Elliott and Constantine scarcely talked to each other – even though they had grown up only a few miles apart and had been close friends as boys and young men.

And because Elliott did not talk to his cousin, neither did Vanessa.

Stephen had always wondered about it, but he had never asked. Perhaps it was time he did. Family feuds were almost always foolish things and went on long after everyone ought to have kissed and made up.

"What /is/ it – " he began.

But Cecil Avery had stopped his curricle beside them, and Lady Christobel Foley, his passenger, was risking life and limb by leaning slightly forward in her flimsy seat in order to smile brightly at them while she twirled a lacy confection of a parasol above her head.

"Mr. Huxtable, Lord Merton," she said, her eyes passing over Con before coming fully to rest upon Stephen, "is it not a /lovely/ day?"

They spent a few minutes agreeing that indeed it was and soliciting her hand for a set apiece at tomorrow evening's ball, since her mama had only just decided that they would go there rather than dine with the Dexters as originally planned, but she had already told simply /everyone/ that she was not going and consequently was positively /terrified/ she would have no dancing partners except dear Cecil, of course, who had been her neighbor in the country /forever/ and therefore had little choice, poor man, but to be gallant and dance with her so that she would not be an /utter/ wallflower.

Lady Christobel rarely divided her verbal communications into sentences.

One had to concentrate hard if one wished to follow everything she said.

Usually it was not necessary to do so but merely to listen to a word here and a phrase there. But she was an eager, pretty little thing and Stephen liked her.

He had to be careful about showing his liking too openly, however. She was the eldest daughter of the very wealthy and influential Marquess and Marchioness of Blythesdale, and she was eighteen years old and had just this year made her come-out. She was very marriageable indeed and very eager to achieve marital success during her first Season, preferably before any of her peers. She was likely to succeed too. If ever one wished to find her at any large entertainment, one had merely to find the densest throng of gentlemen, and she was sure to be in their midst.

But she had her sights set upon Stephen, as did her mama. He was well aware of it. Indeed, he was well aware that he was one of the most eligible bachelors in England and that the females of the race had decided this year more than in any previous one that the time had come for him to settle down and take a bride and set up his nursery and otherwise face his responsibilities as a peer of the realm. He was twenty-five years old and was, apparently, expected to have crossed some invisible threshold at his last birthday from irresponsible, wild-oat-sowing youth to steady, dutiful manhood.

Lady Christobel was not the only young lady who was courting him, and her mother was not the only mother who was determinedly attempting to reel him in.

Stephen liked most ladies of his acquaintance. He liked talking with them and dancing with them and escorting them to the theater and taking them for drives or walks in the park. He did not avoid them, as many of his peers did, for fear of stepping all unawares into a matrimonial trap. But he was not ready to marry.

Not nearly.

He believed in love – in romantic love as well as every other kind. He doubted he would ever marry unless he could feel a deep affection for his prospective bride and could be assured that she felt the like for him. But his title and wealth stood firmly in the way of such a seemingly modest dream. So – though it seemed conceited to think so – did his looks. He was aware that women found him both handsome and attractive. How could any woman see past all those barriers to know and understand /him/? To /love/ him?

But love /was/ possible, even perhaps for a wealthy earl. His sisters – all three of them – had found it, though all three marriages had admittedly made shaky beginnings.

Perhaps somewhere, somehow, sometime, there would be love for him too.

In the meanwhile, he was enjoying life – and avoiding the matrimonial traps that were becoming all too numerous and familiar to him.

"I believe," Constantine said as they rode onward, "the lady would have been happy to tumble right out of that seat, Stephen, if she could have been quite sure you were close enough to catch her."

Stephen chuckled.

"I was about to ask you," he said, "what it is between you and Elliott – and Nessie. Your quarrel has been going on for as long as I have known you. What caused it?"

He had known Con for eight years. It was Elliott, as executor of the recently deceased Earl of Merton's will, who had come to inform Stephen that the title, along with everything that went with it, was now his.

Stephen had been living with his sisters in a small cottage in the village of Throckbridge in Shropshire at the time. Elliott, Viscount Lyngate then, though he was Duke of Moreland now, had been Stephen's official guardian for four years until he reached his majority. Elliott had spent time with them at Warren Hall, Stephen's principal seat in Hampshire. Con had been there too for a while – it was his home. He was the elder brother of the earl who had just died at the age of sixteen.

He was the eldest son of the earl who had preceded his brother, though he could not succeed to the title himself because he had been born two days before his parents married and was therefore legally illegitimate.

It had been clear from the start that Elliott and Con did not like each other. More than that, it had been clear that there was a real enmity there. /Something/ had happened between them.

"You would have to ask Moreland that," Constantine said in answer to his question. "I believe it had something to do with his being a pompous ass."

Elliott was /not/ pompous – or asinine. He did, however, poker up quite noticeably whenever he was forced to be in company with Constantine.

Stephen did not pursue the matter. Obviously Con was not going to tell him what had happened, and he had every right to guard his secrets.

Con was something of a puzzle, actually. Although he had always been amiable with both Stephen and his sisters, there was an edge of darkness to him, a certain brooding air despite his charm and ready smile. He had bought a home of his own somewhere in Gloucestershire after his brother's death, but none of them had ever been invited there – or anyone else of Stephen's acquaintance, for that matter. And no one knew how he could have afforded it. His father had doubtless made decent provision for him, but to such a degree that he could go off and buy himself a home and estate?

It was none of Stephen's business, of course.

But he did sometimes wonder /why/ Constantine had always been friendly.

Stephen and his sisters had been strangers when they suddenly invaded his home and claimed it as their own. Stephen had the title Earl of Merton, one that Con's brother had borne just a few months previously, and his father before that. It was a title that would have been Con's if he had been born three days later or if his parents had married three days sooner.

Ought he not to have been bitter? Even to the point of hatred? Should he not /still/ be bitter?

Stephen often wondered how much went on inside Con's mind that was never expressed in either words or actions.

"It must be as hot as Hades under there," Constantine said just after they had stopped to exchange pleasantries with a group of male acquaintances. He nodded in the direction of the footpath to their left.

There was a crowd of people walking there, but it was not difficult to see to whom Con referred.

There was a cluster of five ladies, all of them brightly and fashionably dressed in colors that complemented the summer. Just ahead of them were two other ladies, one of them decently clad in russet brown, a color more suited perhaps to autumn than summer, the other dressed in widow's weeds of the deepest mourning period. She was black from head to toe.

Even the black veil was so heavy that it was impossible to see her face, though she was no more than twenty feet away.

"Poor lady," Stephen said. "She must have recently lost a husband."

"At a pretty young age too, by the look of it," Constantine said. "I wonder if her face lives up to the promise of her figure."

Stephen was most attracted to very young ladies, whose figures tended to be lithe and slender. When he did finally turn his thoughts to matrimony, he had always assumed he would look among the newest crop of young hopefuls to arrive on the marriage mart and try to find among such crass commercialism a beauty whom he could like as well as admire and whom he could grow to love. A lady who would be willing to look beyond his title and wealth to know him and love him for who he was.

The lady in mourning was nothing like his ideal. She did not appear to be in the first blush of youth. Her figure was a little too mature for that. It was certainly an excellent figure, even though her widow's weeds had not been designed to show it to full advantage.