“Not of my own volition.”

“I trust you have no intention of repeating your offer.”

“Do you want her? Is that it?” George turned from the glass. “Forgive me if I get confused. I thought it was an heiress you required. A lady with a substantial property. Henrietta Talbot, in fact.”

Alex didn’t reply. How could he when he didn’t know the answer himself?

“She is in the palm of your hand. If you don’t take her…” George huffed. “Well, it doesn’t seem fair, does it? That you should keep my markers when I’ve all but delivered Henrietta to you on a silver platter.”

Alex went to the washstand and filled the basin with water. “No, it isn’t fair. But life seldom is, is it?”

They dined in the hotel’s public dining room, all of them dressed in their evening finery. Squire Talbot presided over their party at the head of table. Alex was seated between Henrietta and Mrs. Bainbridge. Laura sat opposite him, between George and Teddy. There was no opportunity to speak to her. It would have been unseemly to talk across the table. Besides which, she was thoroughly engaged with her brother, discussing his progress at painting, by the sound of it.

She was also extraordinarily beautiful, garbed in a silk evening dress with a ribbon belt and a low, lace-trimmed neckline that revealed the curve of her porcelain shoulders and hinted at the swell of her bosom.

After a few brooding stares in her direction, Alex made a point of directing his attentions to Henrietta. She was equally lovely in a gown of printed pink, her golden ringlets pinned atop her head in a profusion of rosette-studded curls.

“I’d no notion it would be so crowded,” she said. “But it seems every London clerk and his wife has come to stay. And we must endure their company, both on the beach and here at the hotel.”

“You can blame the railway,” Alex said. “It’s democratized Margate.”

Henrietta raised a spoonful of soup to her lips. “To think this hotel was once patronized by royalty!”

Alex wondered what Henrietta would make of his own pedigree—or lack of one. He had no illustrious antecedents. No grand familial connections. Indeed, if he were to wager on his bloodlines, he’d bet everything he had on his mother having been a scullery maid, or a common prostitute. As for his father…

He’d long suspected that, like Justin Thornhill, he’d been sired by the notorious Sir Oswald Bannister, baronet. Sir Oswald had owned Greyfriar’s Abbey, a ramshackle estate in North Devon, situated high on a cliff overlooking the sea. Renowned for his drunkenness and lechery, he’d been one of the orphanage’s foremost patrons—which was no surprise when one considered that the place was populated with several of his bastards.