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“And the next day,” Lina continued, “I caught the mail-coach to London at five in the morning. I was determined to find a place where people would ask, nay, beg me to sing.”

“Oh, sweetheart,” he said, holding her even tighter.

“Kiss me again, Tom?”

“I don’t know,” he said, nipping her ear with his teeth. “I have this odd feeling that I ought to go upstairs and start making a series of wild vows so that I can break them all tomorrow.”

“Later,” she said, turning her face up to his. “I do like the way you kiss.”

“Am I more adroit than Hugh Sutherland?” he said, his lips hovering above hers.

“Kiss me again, and I’ll tell you,” she said, just before he stole her breath away.

Twenty-three

Talk of Marriage

Lady Griselda Willoughby’s residence

Number Fourteen, Chandois Street

Cavendish Square

“The point is, darling, you must get married. It’s your duty to the name, etc., etc. Surely you can imagine the rest of the lecture without my having to take the trouble to spell it out.” Lady Griselda Willoughby waved her hand languidly in the air.

“You are a lazy creature, Gressie,” the Earl of Mayne told his sister, not without affection. “But you’ll have no success bringing me to that point, even if you exerted all your energies.”

“Well, I don’t see why not. I quite enjoyed being married to poor Willoughby.”

“I doubt you can even remember what he looked like.”

“Nonsense,” Griselda said, quite stung by the sardonic look in her brother’s eyes. “It’s only been ten years, you know, and I do declare that the very mention of his name makes me feel quite, quite triste.” She caught sight of herself in the mirror that hung over the mantelpiece and arranged her face into a charmingly tragic expression. She was an enchantingly lovely woman of thirty years, who prided herself on looking at least eight years younger, and perhaps all of ten, by candlelight.

“You must have indigestion,” her brother said rudely. “Willoughby was all right in his own way, but you were only married for a year or two before he popped off. And since you haven’t shown any signs of fixing yourself in another marriage, I don’t know why you’d wish the fate on me.”

“I am not the question,” Griselda said majestically. Then she rather ruined the effect by rummaging through her reticule and pulling out a screw of paper. “Although I might marry Cornelius. Do look at this, Garret! He has written me the most delicious poem.”

“Cornelius Bamber is a fop,” her brother said. “But if you can stomach the man’s manner, I’ve got no objection to your marrying him.”

“My love is like to ice,” Griselda said dreamily.

“And I to fire,” her brother put in.

“How did you know that?” Surprise actually brought Griselda to a sitting position, a rare event given as she thought her figure showed to its best advantage at a slight decline.

“On second thought, don’t marry Bamber. A man paltry enough to borrow poetry from Spenser doesn’t deserve your esteem.”

“Piffle!” she said. “I never thought to marry Bamber. Is Spenser alive, a friend of Byron’s, perhaps? It is the most delicious poem. I would like to meet him.”

“Dead. Very dead. It’s Edmund Spenser, and he was a contemporary of Shakespeare’s.”

Griselda pouted and threw the sheet of paper to the side. “To return to the point,” she said, eyeing her brother. “You need to marry. You’re getting doddering for the marriage market.”

“I haven’t seen any revulsion amongst my female acquaintances.”

“That’s because you don’t know any marriage-minded mamas,” she said.

He shrugged. “Why should I? A woman with a daughter to put on the market has no time for games.”