“I have already told you, I will have no interference from women of any sort,” the Earl replied, “and everything I have said to you, Richard, is, of course, in confidence. If you betray me, I swear I will call you out!”

Richard laughed.

“Since you are a far better shot than I am, it would be sheer murder and you would have to flee the country. After all those years in the Peninsula I suspect you have had enough of foreign parts.”

“I certainly have!” the Earl said fervently. “Quite frankly, Richard, I am glad to be home. But there is a devil of a lot to do.”

He gave a sigh.

“The people I employ have grown old, the estate has been neglected and, because everyone was concentrating on the War, there have been practically no repairs done on the houses, barns, fences or anything else.”

“That should keep you busy,” Richard remarked, “but enough, you are depressing me! Come on, Vargus! Let’s go and call on Genevieve.”

“I am not certain that I feel very friendly towards French women at the moment,” the Earl commented.

His friend laughed.

“Does it matter what her nationality is, as long as she is attractive? And let me assure you that French women, like French wines, are, I find, far more delectable than the English variety.”

Carrying his hat and cane Richard started to walk down the stairs of his lodgings as he spoke and smiling, the Earl followed him.

Outside the house in Half Moon Street there was an exceedingly smart phaeton drawn by two superfine horses, Richard glanced at them with a touch of envy in his eyes before he climbed into the seat beside the Earl.

A groom wearing the Hellington livery released the horses’ heads and, as the phaeton moved off, ran to spring up into the small seat behind the Earl and his friend.

Driving with an expertise that had made him in the short time he had been back in England an acclaimed ‘Corinthian’, the Earl turned into Piccadilly.

A number of people walking along the pavement stopped to stare at the arresting picture he made with the smartness of his phaeton, his horses and, of course, himself.

With his tall hat at exactly the right angle on his dark hair, the Earl drew the eyes of every woman within a small radius and appeared supremely unaware that their hearts beat quicker at the mere sight of him.

If there was one thing he disliked, it was a reference to his looks and he had already threatened to thrash any man who spoke of him as a ‘beau’.

“It is only a fashionable term,” Richard had protested,

“I don’t care! It’s insulting for any man to be called beautiful, or for that matter a “dandy”, and it is certainly not the way I wish to be described.”

Richard had teased him, but had been too wise to use the term himself.