He was still on the bridge, making himself agreeable to Henrietta. Laura would have to put her on her guard. Not that Henrietta couldn’t discover the man’s motives for herself. Despite her pettishness and well-developed sense of frivolity, Henrietta was quite canny when it came to detecting fortune hunters.

“Laura.” George stepped down onto the grass to join her, leaving Henrietta and Mr. Archer to talk alone on the bridge. “It’s been a long while.”

“Two years,” Laura said.

“Longer than that.” George rubbed his cheek, as if in recollection of how their last meeting had ended. “It was Christmas, don’t you remember? The year you came out of mourning for your father.”

“I remember everything.”

His gaze slid guiltily away from hers. “Looking back on it…I may have had too much of Squire Talbot’s punch.”

Laura sighed. “Let’s not pretend, George. Do me that courtesy, at least.”

His lips thinned. “You could have refused to come today.”

“I came for Henrietta, not you.”

“As her chaperone. What a lark.” He paced a few steps before coming to a halt in front of her. His golden hair curled along the edge of his collar and brow, a sharp contrast to the darkness of his hat and the bright fabric of his plaid suit. “I trust you won’t interfere.”

“Interfere with what?”

“You know very well what I’m talking about.”

Laura regarded George with a vague sense of contempt. She wondered how she could have ever thought him pleasing. How she could have ever believed him her friend. He was—she realized now—a fundamentally weak man. “Where did you meet him?”

“At a gaming club in Marseilles.” George smirked. “You look surprised.”

“I’m surprised that you answered me honestly.”

“Why shouldn’t I? You’re nothing if not a good little secret keeper. You might have tattled on me at any point these past years, but you—”

“Perhaps I’m merely biding my time.”

He scowled.

“What do you know of him, George?” she pressed. “Where is he from? Who are his people?”

“Does it matter?”

“Of course it matters. You’ve brought him here—introduced him to your friends, and to your father, I presume.”

“Not yet. Father hasn’t been home all day.”

“You’ve provided an introduction to Henrietta.”

“Why shouldn’t I have? It’s only an introduction. She’s quite at liberty to snub him.”

Only an introduction? As if it were some minor thing.

An introduction from a lifelong friend—a gentleman who had lived his entire life in the village, and whose father was the vicar for heaven’s sake—was very different from the sort of introductions made by casual acquaintances. It was a voucher. A personal bond. A promise that the man being introduced was worthy of intimate friendship. Of sacred trust.

George introducing Mr. Archer was tantamount to his stamping the man with a golden seal of approval.