“I’ll say this.” Allendale addressed his grandson with a measure of pride. “If they’ve come up to town expecting to rattle you, they know better now. By gad, sir, but you can keep your countenance. Such phlegmatic coldness I’ve never had the privilege to behold. I would have done well to follow your example. I might have done, too, if that woman hadn’t had the effrontery to mention my son to me. And then that whelp of hers, calling himself a Beresford! I was hard pressed not to throttle the pair of them.”

“They’ve taken a house for the season,” St. Clare said. “In Half Moon Street, I believe.”

“They may engage as many houses as they please,” Allendale replied acidly, “but if they think to presume upon my acquaintance—”

“Unless you intend to give them the cut direct, you must acknowledge them some time or other.”

Allendale glowered at this bit of reasonableness. “Off with you. Go call on some of the young ladies you’ve met or take a gel for a drive. After what I’ve seen today, if you don’t soon make some advances toward matrimony, I shall be forced to take a wife and sire the next heir myself.”

Vickers stifled a choke of laughter. “He wouldn’t, would he?” he asked as they made their exit.

St. Clare shook his head. He didn’t elaborate. Unbeknownst to Vickers—or to society at large—a carriage accident during the early years of Lord Allendale’s marriage had robbed him of his ability to sire more children. He’d fathered only the one: James Beresford.

If the line was to survive, it must continue through James’s son. Through St. Clare himself. Indeed, it was the sole source of St. Clare’s value to his grandfather, and one that Allendale took pains that St. Clare should never forget.

As if he ever could.

Chapter Ten

Dr. Felix Hart was by no means the most fashionable physician in London, but after he spent an hour examining her, Maggie was convinced he must be the most thorough one. He was a young man with a kind face and a slow, thoughtful manner. He didn’t merely listen to her heart and her lungs, he asked a great deal of questions, and unlike the village doctor who had treated Maggie during her illness at Beasley Park, he seemed to be more interested in her answers than in the sound of his own voice.

Looking at him now, sitting across from her in the Trumbles’ library, his hair sticking up at odd angles and his spectacles twinkling in the sunlight that shone in through the tall windows, she felt a guarded sense of hope.