Prologue
Brother and sister, pretty as a picture.
They walked through Hyde Park together, Miss Marianne Loxleigh on the arm of her brother. It was early October, before the Season had truly started, but near enough that other gentlemen and ladies were promenading. One should take advantage of the fine weather, after all.
Miss Loxleigh was taking advantage in full. Her lovely face was delightfully framed by a coquettish bonnet, and her new walking dress flattered her buxom figure, suggesting charms without displaying them too obviously. She was statuesque in build and fashionably dark; her brother stood barely an inch taller and was much lighter in colouring, with hazel eyes to her deep brown, and honey-coloured hair to her mahogany. Mr. Robin Loxleigh was as smart as his sister, in close-fitting pantaloons and a waistcoat of sober pattern but cheerful hue, and like her, blessed with striking good looks.
Two attractive, elegant, well-turned-out young people walking in Hyde Park: what could be more pleasant? As such, they received a number of glances, though no greetings. They were strangers to London, but if they felt isolated in the great metropolis there was no sign of it in their bearing. Robin walked with a confident gait; Marianne looked around with unaffected pleasure. She seemed content in her brother’s company, and quite unaware of the many admiring masculine looks that came her way.
Brother and sister, pretty as a picture.
Marianne smiled at Robin, and murmured, “There’s a man following us.”
“You or me?”
“Me, you fool. If I talk to him, you could try for his pocketbook.”
Robin prodded the rounded arm that lay through his in a playful manner. “Don’t tempt me.”
“We’ve got exactly three pounds and sevenpence left. And he’s annoying me.”
“Doing what?”
“Existing.”
“The bastard. Look, there’s no need to rush. We’ve got plenty of clothes, some of them paid for, and rent’s not due for six days. I’ll play tonight.”
Marianne heaved a pretty sigh. “You’d better win.”
They exchanged looks of glowing mutual affection for the benefit of watchers, and strolled on.
“What do you think?” Marianne asked after a few moments’ contemplation of the duck pond. “Group of women over there.”
Robin followed her gaze and saw three well-dressed young ladies, with an older companion walking behind. “They’ll do. Drop an earring?”
“Teach your grandmother to suck eggs.”
Brother and sister made their casual way along a loop of path that would bring them up to the young ladies, where Marianne gasped and clutched her earlobe.
“Oh! My earring! Robin, I think it fell!—Oh, how very kind you are, thank you—I was so afraid I had lost it, it was Robin’s birthday gift to me. My brother, Robin Loxleigh, and I am Marianne. —Delighted to meet you. No, we are quite new in London...”
Robin stood back, smiling, as Marianne struck up the acquaintance, bowing to their guardian companion and looking on the young ladies with a respectful admiration that was sufficiently modest as to be flattering yet give no offence.
They’d been preparing the ground for two days already and would be doing it again and again for the next weeks, in haberdashers’ and bookshops and tailors, at theatres and at Tattersall’s, assemblies and coffee-houses. By the time the Season began, plenty of people would recognise the well-mannered Loxleighs—friendly but not encroaching, up from the country, modest but so charming! They would have dinner invitations. They would find their way into parties. They would slide into the notice of the lower Upper Ten Thousand without anyone quite knowing how they’d got there.
And then the hunt would begin.
Chapter One
Sir John Hartlebury surveyed the ballroom with a jaundiced eye and wondered how soon he could leave.
“There,” Mrs. Edwina Blaine said through a fixed smile. “There he is with Alice now. By the negus. Look, Hart.”
He looked. Despite their vantage point at the top of the steps, which was severely incommoding the flow of people in and out, it took him several seconds to locate his sister’s stepdaughter. After all, she wasn’t very notable.
Miss Alice Fenwick had not been blessed with Nature’s charms. She was short, undistinguished in build, and plain in looks, with a mass of freckles and mousy brown hair, and there was nothing in her birth to make up for it. Her father, a provincial brewer, had lost his first wife in childbirth and persuaded Edwina Hartlebury, just twenty-three but firmly on the shelf, to replace her. The marriage had not borne fruit, but they had been surprisingly happy for five years, until the brewer’s untimely death.
Edwina had loved Alice from the start and regarded her as her own daughter. Unfortunately the world didn’t share that view. The Hartleburys could trace their lineage back to the fourteenth century but plain Alice Fenwick had no claim on that distinguished heritage.
The joint lack of birth and beauty was enough to disqualify her from the notice of high society, which confirmed Hart’s view that high society was witless. Alice was a delight, a studious and strikingly intelligent girl, shy in company but amusing in private, sharp-witted but never unkind. She was a loving companion to Edwina, and she was also, thanks to her father’s will, a substantial heiress, with twenty thousand pounds to come to her on her marriage under no restrictions at all.
Society might change its mind about her if that fact was widely known, but the family had agreed to keep quiet about Alice’s wealth for her first Season. Granted the portion was her best chance for a good match, it was also all too likely to bring her a bad one. That kind of money without strings was bound to attract fortune-hunters, and both Hart and Edwina were all too aware of the dangers of being swept off one’s feet by a handsome face.
The siblings had agreed that Alice needed a little town-bronze, which was to say a little knowledge of humanity’s infinite capacity to disappoint, before it became common talk that the plain girl came with a very attractive dowry. And here was their chance to learn if their strategy had been right, because Alice was being squired by a handsome man.
Hart folded his arms and watched.
The suitor was very handsome, if not in a classical way. He was of no more than medium stature, and boasted neither an athletic Corinthian build, nor a graceful and willowy form. Rather, he was solid and compact in a way that brought the word ‘yeoman’ to mind. He was in his early twenties, with honey-brown hair, an open, honest face, and a well-shaped mouth, full-lipped and promising pleasures. He looked like the kind of country youth they wrote ballads about, whether proclaiming his steadfastness as a faithful lover, or his enjoyment of a roll in the hay. Alice might count herself fortunate in such a suitor if his character and finances were as appealing as his exterior. Hart put a lot of mental emphasis on that ‘if’.
“Who is he?”
“A Loxleigh, of Nottinghamshire,” Edwina said. “Do you know the name?”
“It seems familiar, but I can’t place it.”
“That’s what everyone says. They aren’t anyone in particular, they’re quite clear about that. No presumption at all, pleasantly modest, and pretty-mannered. I find them both delightful.”