“I’m not fussing. It’s only that it feels like an age since you were last here. I must know everything you’ve been up to.” Miss Talbot took Miss Hayes by the arm. “Let’s go inside and have some tea before our walk, shall we?” She cast a look at George as the pair of them headed back to the house. “Miss Hayes will not admit to any infirmity, but we must take care to look after her, mustn’t we?”

Miss Hayes’s face was an impenetrable mask.

As for George, he said not a word.

Alex walked along with him after the ladies. “‘A local woman of no account,’” he murmured.

George’s face reddened. “It’s the truth.”

“Is it?”

“She’s nothing,” he said in a low voice. “No one.”

Alex didn’t believe it for a moment. “Things aren’t as simple here as you would have had me believe.”

“They are. Or they would be if Miss Hayes didn’t always contrive to make herself the center of attention.”

“Is that what she’s done?”

“Isn’t it obvious? But you need have no apprehension. I shall separate them at the first opportunity. And then you may go about making yourself agreeable to Miss Talbot—or whatever it is you intend to do with her.”

“I believe you know what I intend to do with her.”

George looked away from him. “Yes,” he said tightly. “I know.”

Chapter 3

Laura stole another glance at Mr. Archer as she walked beside him down the path that led to the Edgington Park wilderness garden. He looked different than he had before. Not only was he dry—with his suit freshly pressed and his dark hair combed into meticulous order—but he appeared to have shaved, as well.

And the scent of him…

Her stomach performed a queer little somersault.

He smelled of polished leather and lightly starched linen. Of bergamot and spices and clean male skin.

At Talbot’s Pond, she’d thought him handsome. Now, she thought him something rather more than that. He was dashing, was what he was. The kind of loose-limbed, devil-may-care hero who graced the pages of penny novels, fighting off evildoers and rescuing damsels in distress.

George Wright looked rather insipid in comparison.

He walked ahead of them with Henrietta on his arm, paying her every solicitude, just as he had in the Edgington Park drawing room during tea.

Laura wondered what Henrietta would think if she knew how improperly her golden-haired lad had behaved on his last visit home? It had certainly come as a shock to Laura. Until then, she’d thought George was her friend. She’d even cherished hopes that he felt something more toward her. That he might, in fact, be on the verge of proposing marriage.

More fool her.