So when they drew apart, following the marquis’s discreet knock on the library door, Patrick looked keenly at Sophie’s flushed face, her trembling fingers, and her swollen lips. She looked like a woman who had been thoroughly kissed and had enjoyed every minute of it. He’d woo her, that’s all. In no time Sophie would be in love with him rather than with Braddon, resolving this uneasy feeling of guilt he felt about having taken her virginity.

Yet even after Sophie went upstairs to talk with her mother, and Patrick sat down with the marquis to draw up plans for the marriage settlement, he still felt curling pulses of guilt in his stomach. Finally he shrugged it off, naming a settlement figure that made the Marquis of Brandenburg’s eyes bulge.

“My God, man, are you some sort of a nabob?” he finally asked.

“Something like it,” Patrick answered laconically.

George had no particular desire for his only daughter to marry a man of money. Far more important was that Sophie find someone of birth, and someone she might love. But there’s no parent in the world who doesn’t feel a small thrill of satisfaction to find that his daughter has fallen into the way of marriage with an extremely wealthy man.

“I’ll have my lawyer draw these up,” George said as they shook hands. Then he glanced at Patrick’s eye and the bruise on his jaw. “I apologize again for striking you.”

Patrick said nothing but smiled with more than a hint of irony. “I deserved it,” he repeated. “Luckily one of my uncles is a bishop. I shall arrange for a special license this afternoon.”

“A special license?” The marquis was startled. He had thought the marriage might be held in haste, but this was paramount to an elopement.

“I have decided,” Patrick said, “that the best way to survive the scandal with a minimum of unpleasantness for Lady Sophie is to get married in the very near future and leave London on an extended wedding trip.”

“Oh, I see,” George said, not really seeing at all.

“It will be accepted among the ton as a love match,” Patrick said patiently.

“Oh, I see,” George said again.

Patrick hesitated for a moment. Should he tell his future father-in-law about the title that Parliament might grant him? Better not, until it was official.

He bowed his farewell. “Shall I return tomorrow, my lord?”

“Oh right, yes indeed,” George replied. “Join us for dinner, and we’ll have the contracts all sewn up. Then you can marry my girl whenever you please.”

“Thank you, my lord.” Patrick bowed again and departed.

George stared after him, somewhat stunned by the events of the morning. Damned if he wouldn’t have thought that it was a love match, if he didn’t know better. Something about the way Patrick’s eyes glowed when he said he wanted to marry Sophie immediately.