How dare the man even ask such a question! Harriet was so angry that she wasn’t sure whether she could make it out of the room without saying something she was sure she would regret. “That is none of your concern.”

“Oh, but it is,” he said gravely. “For all my hesitations about your lack of a dowry, there is no denying your good breeding. Your father is in Debrett’s, your mother was a Standish. I daresay no other family in this area is as well connected as the Wards.”

“Mr. Gower, where are you going with all of this?”

The pompous ass smiled down at her, completely unaffected that she was glaring back at him. “Simple, my dear. After much thought, I’ve decided to make you my wife.”

Chapter 8

The first time I fell in love, I was sixteen years of age. The second time I fell in love, I was also sixteen years of age. But then I grew older and wiser and I did not fall in love for a very, very long time. In fact, I almost made it to my seventeenth birthday before I experienced that wretched state again.

Mr. Devon St. John to Lord Kilturn, an antiquarian with an unfortunate penchant for dressing the dandy and dangling after much younger women

Devon St. John tossed his cards on the green baize table that stretched before him. “I lose,” he said in an affable voice.

Through the swirl of smoke that permeated the card room at White’s, his opponent, Mr. Lawrence Pound, sighed languidly. Renowned in polite circles not only for his close connection with the Bessingtons, but also for his polite manner and impeccable dress, Pound tossed his own cards onto the table and said in a rather plaintive voice, “It is insulting how well you take defeat.”

Devon quirked a brow. “What do you wish? Sighs and laments? Wild cries of unjust hands and a threat to put a period to my existence?”

Though the two men were both lean and well built, Devon St. John had the broad shoulders and well defined hands of his family. That along with the unmistakable combination of black hair and blue eyes, proclaimed his breeding as clearly as if the St. John coat of arms were embroidered on his pocket.

Pound took a thoughtful sip of port. “I rather like the last scenario, but then I’ve always been rather fond of gun play. Perhaps next time.”

“Perhaps. If I lose again, which I doubt.”

Pound sighed wearily. “I should have known better than to toss the cards with a St. John. Winning is devoid of pleasure when one knows it is but a temporary lapse in the alignment of the stars.”

Devon leaned back in his chair and grinned. “You were the one who insisted on playing. I merely wished to talk.”

“Yes,” Pound said in a meditative tone, “it is a common fault with my family, to rush toward their own demise in a most hodgepodge manner. Quite ill-bred of the lot of us.”