Seated in the earl’s lavish drawing room in Grosvenor Square—two sets of shrewd, blatantly acquisitive eyes examining him as if he were a forged painting—St. Clare would have wagered a great deal that his grandfather not only approved of his coldness, but that he admired it, too.

Pity the old earl was incapable of exercising the same degree of restraint. It hadn’t taken but one mention of his long-deceased son for him to fly straight up into the boughs. “Why in blazes would you have heard of my son’s marriage? You cut his acquaintance, along with the rest of society. Did you expect him to send you a formal announcement of his betrothal? An invitation to his wedding?”

Mrs. Lavinia Beresford, the widow of the earl’s second cousin and mother of the man who, but for the existence of St. Clare, stood to inherit the earldom, was a painfully thin woman with birdlike features and a deceptively featherbrained air. Upon arriving at Grosvenor Square with her son fifteen minutes before, she’d perched herself on the edge of the drawing room sofa and set up an endless chirp of sharp-edged chatter.

“What have I said?” she asked with a titter. “Surely you didn’t think I meant to imply…? I merely wondered…” She turned her sharp eyes back on St. Clare, the quick movement of her neck causing the ostrich plumes in her hat to quiver. “As one does wonder, you know. Having never met your mother myself. And not knowing any of her family.”

St. Clare looked steadily back at her. He’d known this was coming. His grandfather had prepared him for it. They were to meet such accusations head on. Calmly, but decisively, and without undue protestation.

At least, that had been the plan.

“How would you know them?” Allendale bellowed. “My son was living in exile! He wasn’t courting girls at Almack’s!”

“Oh dear. I have put it badly, haven’t I?” She looked to her son for assistance. “Lionel?”

At nearly thirty years of age, Lionel Beresford bore little resemblance to the “young pup” that St. Clare had heard his grandfather raving about for so many years. He was, in fact, a fairly large gentleman. His height was only an inch or two below St. Clare’s own, and his width was presently straining at the confines of a brightly striped waistcoat and skintight pantaloons.

He had light brown curls brushed into careful disorder. A fleshy chin resting on an elaborately folded neckcloth. And he bore about himself an air of well-practiced indolence.

St. Clare had initially identified him as some manner of aspiring dandy. Within fifteen minutes of meeting him, however, it had become clear that Lionel Beresford was another sort of creature altogether.

“Madre means no offense,” he said lazily. “She’s simply curious. As are we all.”