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“You need to think of something other than games as well,” she said with asperity. “I’m the last to read you a lecture, Garret, but I haven’t any children, and if you are uncivil enough to die and leave papa’s estate and the title to those rubbishing offspring of Cousin Hugo, I shall never forgive you.”

“I don’t mean to,” Mayne said. The profusion of rosebuds sprinkled around his sister’s drawing room was starting to make his teeth clench. “I’ll marry in my own good time.”

“And how old will you be by then?” she said, giving him a clear, direct look that he tolerated only from her. For all their teasing, neither of them had ever been as close to another person as they were to each other. “I’d like you to have a babe while you’re still able to throw the lad up on a horse yourself.”

“I’m not that old!” Mayne said.

“You’re thirty-four. You’re been caterwauling around town for years now. You’re dangerously close to turning into a joke.”

His customary sardonic gleam was replaced by a flare of real anger. “Careful. You’re getting dangerously close to insulting.”

She took out a fan and waved it before her face. “I mean to be. You need a shake-up, Garret. At this rate, there won’t be a matron in London whom you haven’t slept with.”

He had turned toward the fireplace and was scowling down into the unlit logs. Griselda bit her lip and wondered whether to keep talking at him. But he straightened and turned around.

“I suppose I could consider matrimony,” he drawled.

“Good,” she said with some relief.

“But not at the moment. I’ve something in train, and I’ve a mind to finish it.”

Griselda knew well enough when there was no moving him. “Countess Godwin?” she said, with a raised eyebrow.

“Precisely.”

“I heard all about it, naturally. I’d keep an eye out for Godwin, though. The man’s not fully tamed, you know.”

“He was civil enough when he found us in the music room together,” Mayne said indifferently. “The problem is that the lady has disappeared. No one has seen her in days.”

“Perhaps she’s retired to the country, worn out by chopping off all her hair,” Griselda suggested, giving her own blond tresses a loving pat. She shivered with fear when her ringlets had to be trimmed.

“Her household claims that she is taking the waters. But I went to Bath and there’s no sign of her. Nor in her country house either.”

“Goodness, you are all het up over this one,” Griselda said, rather entertained. “Traveling all the way to Bath. Well, I can tell you precisely where she is!”

He swung around. “Where?”

“Hiding until her hair grows back. I didn’t see the effect myself, but I am told that she made a Statement. And you know, Garret, one does rather regret a Statement the next morning. I certainly did, after I wore that Prussian gown with the blue ostrich feathers to the Queen’s Birthday.”

“Hiding where?” Mayne demanded. “I don’t want her to hide. I thought her hair was delightful.”

“You’ll find her,” Griselda replied, giving him a narrow-eyed glance over the pocket mirror she had taken out of her reticule. “Just get the whole business out of your way before the end of the season, will you not? I’d like to see you tie the knot this summer, and you’ll need at least two weeks to choose a bride and ask for her hand.”

Mayne suppressed a shudder. “I can’t imagine I’ll find a woman whom I’d wish to see every morning for breakfast.”

Griselda was painting her mouth with a small brush. “Don’t bother,” she suggested. “After I learned that Willoughby was fond of eating calves’ head pie for his first meal, we never ate together again. And our marriage was perfectly amiable, I promise you.”

“I’ll let myself out,” Mayne said, bending down and dropping a kiss on his sister’s cheek. “Prettying yourself up for Bamber, soi-disant Edmund Spenser, are you?”

“Naturally,” she said, patting her cherry-red lips delicately with a handkerchief. “I am most looking forward to exposing his little scheme. You are such a useful brother, dearest. And you have such unusual talents! There’s not another man in London who could identify that Spenser poem, I warrant you.”

But the Earl of Mayne paid her compliment little heed. He had no interest in his own ability to remember poetry (he’d always found a love poem or two to be the greatest help in fixing a reluctant matron’s affections, although he scrupulously granted the poems their proper authorship). He just wished he were cleverer at finding errant countesses.

It was positively infuriating. He couldn’t get her out of his mind: that slender, fawnlike grace, the tender curve of her slim shoulder, the way her eyes seemed to take up half her face, the way her eyebrows arched high at the corners of her eyes, the way her hair—damn, but he hoped she wasn’t growing her hair. A woman that beautiful had no reason to doll up her hair with fussy little ringlets, the way his sister did. Helene’s hair had felt as sleek and slippery as water, gliding through his fingers. He wanted more.

Outside his sister’s townhouse, the earl paused and adjusted the shoulder capes on his greatcoat before springing into the seat of his high-perch phaeton. If Helene were indeed hiding until her hair grew back, he thought with a grin, there was no reason not to afford her some amusement while in retirement. His smile grew as he considered the possibility. He never believed that story of Helene taking the waters, for all her household and friends had insisted on it. She wasn’t the type of woman to sit around docilely sipping cups of water that smelled of rotten eggs. No, his sister was likely right. She regretted her hair, and she’d gone to ground like a partridge during a hunt.

With a flip of the reins, the earl started off decisively down Chandois Street. He could guess who might tell him where Helene was.