“N-no, Jasper,” she said, her eyes as wide as saucers.

“Then you do not need a ride,” he said. “She does not need a ride, ma’am. But thank you for stopping and offering. I shall do myself the honor of calling upon you in the morning, then. I may be four minutes late as the clock in the library, by which I invariably time myself, is four minutes slow. Or do I mean early? I have never quite worked it out. Which do I mean, Miss Huxtable?”

He glanced down at Katherine on his arm.

“Late,” she said. “You would be late. Or will be late as I suppose it has never occurred to you to have the clock set right.”

“It would be too confusing,” he said. “I would not know where I stood. Neither would my servants.”

“Jasper,” Lady Forester said in tones that clearly had Clarence quaking in his boots and not sure whether he should stay where he was and incur her undying wrath or whether he should hop down and risk Lord Montford’s, “I will not be spoken to thus in your usual insolent vein. Charlotte-”

“Clarrie,” Jasper said conversationally, “you are holding up traffic, old boy. I daresay there are curricles and phaetons and barouches backed up all the way to the gates and out into the street, not to mention other vehicles. You had better move on before this good coachman behind you decides to get down from his perch and knock your hat off. He is already purple in the face. So are his passengers. I shall see you both at precisely four minutes after nine tomorrow morning. Good day to you.”

And Clarence, after a nervous glance back at the vehicles behind him, gave his own coachman the signal to move on.

“Oh, Jasper,” Charlotte said when they were out of earshot, “you will not allow Aunt Prunella to take me away, will you? She would not stop sermonizing from dawn to bedtime. It would be like going to prison. I really do not think I could bear it.”

“There, there, Miss Wrayburn,” Merton was saying, patting her hand.

“I am so sorry,” the elder Miss Huxtable said, sounding deeply distressed, “if my invitation to Miss Wrayburn to come walking with Kate and me this afternoon has caused a problem. Is it because she is not yet out? But even children and young people need air and exercise at some time of the day, surely.”

“I daresay,” Merton said, “it is because I invited myself to come too. I suppose the very highest sticklers might argue that Miss Wrayburn ought not to be seen in company with me until after her come-out. I do beg your pardon, Miss Wrayburn, and yours too, Monty. I did not think.”

“I cannot imagine,” Jasper said, “that even the queen herself could take exception to a young girl strolling in a public park with her brother and guardian and three of his friends, two of whom are ladies older than herself. I will certainly not have any of you chastising yourselves for a nonexistent fault. I shall set Lady Forester right on the matter tomorrow morning. And no, Char, you will not be thrown into the lions’ den with Aunt Prunella and Clarence. Not under any circumstances.”

“But Clarence is one of my guardians,” she reminded him. “He always was pompous and horrible. I hated him when he was a boy and I am sure I still hate him. He has turned downright ugly too. He is fat.”

Which blunt words spelled doom for any courtship Clarence might hope to mount with his cousin.

“We will not bore Lord Merton and his sisters with our private business any longer, Char,” he said firmly. “And we had better stroll onward before we invite a wider audience.”

Which they proceeded to do-in a rather deafening silence punctuated by small bursts of bright, stilted conversation.

“This,” Miss Katherine Huxtable said when they arrived back at the gates, loosening her hold on his arm and including the others close behind them in her remarks, “has been a lovely afternoon, has it not? Thank you very much indeed, Miss Wrayburn and Lord Montford, for accompanying us.”

She and her brother and sister were going one way and he and Charlotte were going the other, so they all took their leave of one another with a flurry of cheerful farewells, just as if that damnably melodramatic interruption had not occurred.

And how many people had witnessed the scene? Not that he cared the snap of his fingers what the gossips might say about him. But there was Charlotte to think about. Good Lord, what the devil had her aunt been thinking of, exposing her thus to the public gaze and censure? She could not possibly have waited until tomorrow morning to read him a scold in the privacy of her own drawing room?

“Jasper,” Charlotte said, her small hand tucked beneath his arm, “what will Aunt Prunella say tomorrow? What will she do?”

“Let me worry about that,” he said, patting her hand. “Or not.”

“But you know what Papa said in his will,” she said, her voice thin and high-pitched with misery.

Her father had stated that she must be brought up and housed until her marriage by his sister, her aunt, if her mother should die and there were ever any question of neglect or impropriety in the way Baron Montford handled her upbringing.

“Your papa also appointed three guardians,” he said, “and fortunately Clarence is only one of them.”

“But if Great-Uncle Seth were to take his side,” she said, “then Aunt Prunella would take me away and there would be nothing you could do about it. Oh, I wish now I had stayed at Cedarhurst.”

“Great-Uncle Seth is too lazy to move out of his own shadow,” he told her. “He has never made any secret of the fact that he resented being named guardian by his own nephew-especially when that nephew had the effrontery to predecease him. I am sorry, Char. I ought not to talk about your papa in that careless way. But you need not worry about Great-Uncle Seth.”

“But I do,” she said. “He has only to say the word-” She did not complete the thought.

“It won’t happen,” he said, guiding her across the road and skirting about a pile of manure that the crossing sweep had not yet cleared. “I promise. I’ll go and call upon your great-uncle in person if I must, though he won’t like it above half.”

“Will you?” she said. “Do you think-”

“Let’s talk about something more cheerful,” he suggested, patting her hand. “Do you like the Huxtables?”

“Oh, exceedingly.” She brightened immediately, and then she turned a laughing face his way. “You like Miss Katherine Huxtable.”

He looked at her sharply.

“I like them both,” he said. “They are Merton’s sisters, and they are genteel and charming, not to mention beautiful.”

“But I think you like Miss Katherine Huxtable,” she said with an impish smile from beneath the brim of her bonnet. “You scarcely took your eyes off her while we were walking back through the park.”

“We were conversing,” he said. “It is polite to look at the person with whom you are having a conversation. Did Miss Daniels never teach you that?”

But she only laughed.

“And I think,” she said, “she likes you, Jasper.”

“Never tell me,” he said, recoiling in feigned horror, “that she was looking at me too while we talked. How very brazen of her.”

“It was the way she was looking,” she told him. “But I daresay all ladies like you. Are you going to marry one of these days?”

“One of these very future days, perhaps,” he said. “Maybe. Probably. Possibly. But not in the foreseeable future.”

“Not even,” she asked him, “if you were to fall in love?”

“I would marry immediately if not sooner were that to happen,” he said. “I would be so startled I would not know what else to do. As startled as I would be if I were to hear that hell had frozen over.”

“I wish,” she said with a sigh, “you were not such a dreadful cynic, Jasper.”

“And what do you think of Merton?” he asked, smiling down at her.

“He is exceedingly handsome and amiable,” she said. “He looks like a god. I daresay everyone is in love with him.”

“Including you, Char?” he asked.

“Oh, no,” she assured him. “I would not be so foolish. It would be like pining for the sun. I shall look for someone altogether more… possible with whom to fall in love. But not yet. I want to be at least twenty before I marry.”

“Elderly, in fact.” He grinned fondly at her. He had not realized how practical she was, how unsure of herself, how underestimating of her own charms. There was no reason in the world why the daughter of a wealthy baronet, sister of a baron, could not aspire to the hand of an earl.

But definitely not yet.

“Perhaps,” he said, “love will take you by surprise one of these days.”

“I hope so,” she said, smiling brightly at him. “When I am old enough to be quite sure that love is what it is. And I hope it happens to you too, Jasper. Falling in love, I mean.”

“Thank you,” he said, patting her hand again. “But let me see, is it a blessing or a curse you are bestowing?”

She laughed.

“I have an idea,” she said suddenly, gazing up eagerly into his face. “A wonderful idea. Miss Daniels says we should try to add a few more names to the guest list for my house party. I think we ought to invite Miss Katherine Huxtable, Jasper. Oh, and Miss Huxtable too. After all, you will need some congenial company as well as I will.”

“And since I am an elder and those two ladies are elders too,” he said, “we can congenially entertain one another? About a crackling fire to keep our aged bones warm in July, perhaps?”

“Miss Katherine Huxtable was twenty when her brother succeeded to the title,” she said. “She mentioned it when we were walking to the Serpentine. And that was three years ago. She is not so very old, Jasper, though it is surprising that she is not already married. Especially when she is so beautiful. Perhaps she has been waiting for someone special. I admire her for that.”