Page 1 of Rogue Lyon

Chapter One

London 1818

“I am sorry, Meredith, but we really do find ourselves in somewhat of a pickle.” Mrs. Dove-Lyon, dressed all in black, as usual, shook her head at Meredith Jones from across the polished desk. “I have tried my best, presented you to good men of standing, and it just hasn’t…”

“Worked,” Meredith finished for her as she knotted her hands in her lap.

“And can you explain these failures?”

“I just…” Meredith shrugged. “It’s not that I’m not grateful for your help. It’s just that I…”

“Your mother paid a pretty penny for you to be here in London with me.”

“I know and that weighs heavily on my shoulders. We are not a rich family. Not since my father passed.” Meredith paused to rid the shake from her voice. “But I…”

“Do go on.” Mrs. Dove-Lyon rolled her hand in the air. She wore a black glove with a pearl ring over the top. The candlelight caught the gem in a white flash.

“It’s just that…” Meredith swallowed. She didn’t want to be impolite, but she’d always been told that honesty was the best policy. “It’s just that the Earl of Langsdale, he…”

“Is very rich and quite the musician, I am told.”

“Yes, and that’s wonderful, but he… I’m very sorry, Mrs. Dove-Lyon, and I don’t wish to be disrespectful, but I had no idea if he was even looking at me when he spoke of his love of pie, all pies from rabbit to toad. His left eye went right and his right eye went left.”

Mrs. Dove-Lyon pursed her lips.

“I don’t mean to be unkind, but it was so disconcerting, I found myself tongue-tied and a little confused. And the thought of dining on toad pie, I…” She pulled a face. “Just don’t fancy it.”

“Mmm. I see.”

“And Mr. Baker. He…” Meredith went on.

“The banker, the very successful banker. I do believe his eyes are in perfect synchrony.”

“Oh, yes, they are, Mrs. Dove-Lyon, but he was so old. I mean, he could have been my grandfather and that wart on the end of his nose…” Meredith leaned forward and spoke earnestly. “It had three long hairs growing out of it. I would have had to pluck them at some point. When he was asleep, maybe, and that would have made him angry, but I just couldn’t have lived with them…or him.”

Mrs. Dove-Lyon steepled her fingers and sighed. “I suppose I take your point. Maybe not my best matches, but you see my dilemma, Meredith. Your mother funded you for a four-month stay, in which time you were to be betrothed. That four months is well over and there is still nothing on the horizon, absolutely nothing.”

“Perhaps there are other suitors I could meet?”

“You have been through several.” She tapped a thick ledger. “I am out of ideas…out of available men who would be willing to take you as a bride.”

Meredith looked down at her knotted fingers and her jaw tensed. She didn’t want a man who was willing to take her as a bride without even knowing her. What was the point in that? She was no beauty. Plain, that was what her mother had said, but she had a personality. A little shy, perhaps, and she wasn’t one for inane conversation just to pass the time, but she did have qualities to make up for the fact that she had no dowry.

She took a deep breath and looked up at Mrs. Dove-Lyon. “I hate that I have let you down, and my mother. I have let her down too.”

“You haven’t… Not really.” Mrs. Dove-Lyon shook her head and frowned. “And perhaps returning to Wales won’t be so bad and we will both have to live with the fact that on this rare occasion, I was not successful.”

“Return to Wales! No! For then I will never wed. We live in a small hamlet. There are no single men available. We have very few people pass through. I will be destined to be a spinster. Weaving, embroidery, and caring for the rose garden—that will be my life forever more.”

“And that is not what you want?”

Meredith knew that Mrs. Dove-Lyon had refrained from adding that she’d acted like spinsterhood was very much what she wanted. “No, it is not what I want. My father left enough money for my mother to live out her days in comfort, but not for me. God took him when he was still a young man.”

“And may I commend you for managing on your own, the two of you, for all of those years.”

“Please, let me stay. I can work, here at the Lyon’s Den.”

Mrs. Dove-Lyon raised her eyebrows and sat back in the chair. “That would be most irregular.”