“There wasn’t time,” Gabby replied. And if there had been, she would not have sent one. The only portrait her father had ever commissioned made her look horribly round in the face.

She tucked the locket away again.

But even as she, Phoebe, and Kasi munched on dry toast, which was the only treat offered now that they had been at sea for weeks and weeks, Gabby couldn’t help daydreaming about her betrothed and his gentle eyes. Somehow, by the grace of God, she had been given a fiancé who was everything she had dreamed of: a man who looked perfectly capable of carrying on a quiet conversation. He seemed as unlike her cold, ranting father as possible.

Gabby’s heart glowed. Peter would obviously be a devoted and loving father. Already she could picture four or five small babes, all with her husband’s eyes.

Every day the ship drew farther and farther from India and thus farther and farther from her father’s frenzied reproaches: Gabrielle, why can’t you put a bridle on your tongue! Once again, Gabrielle, you have embarrassed me with your graceless behavior! And the worst of all: Oh, God above, why have you cursed me with this disgraceful chit, this prattling excuse for a daughter!

Her happiness grew with each ocean league that passed.

Her sense of confidence grew as well. Peter would love her, as her father never did. She felt as if Peter’s sweet eyes were already looking into her soul and seeing the Gabby inside: the Gabby who was worth loving, the Gabby who was not merely impetuous and clumsy. The real Gabby.

YES, A GLIMPSE OF Gabrielle Jerningham, along with insight into her dreams, would have shaken Quill to the backbone.

But since Quill was not overly given to the imagination, nor had he ever demonstrated the gift of precognition, he convinced himself that Miss Gabrielle Jerningham would make his younger brother a very good wife indeed. And when he encountered Peter at his club later that evening, he told him so.

Peter was in a tetchy mood, and well on the way to being drunk as a lord. “I don’t follow your reasoning.”

“Money,” his brother replied shortly.

“Money? What money?”

“Her money.” Quill had a flash of guilt, talking about Gabrielle as if she were a commodity, although in a sense she was. “With Jerningham’s money, you can afford those clothes you love so much.”

“I wear the very best clothes now,” Peter said loftily, with the smug understanding that he stood at the very pinnacle of London fashion.

“You wear clothes that I pay for,” Quill replied.

Peter chewed on his lip. It went against the grain—and against his fundamentally kindly nature—to point out that his elder brother’s money would all be his someday, unless a miracle cured Quill’s migraines.

Yet it would be pleasant to have his own money, no doubt about that.