“He seemed fond of you,” Caroline said slowly.

Charlotte closed her eyes, swaying a little as she remembered the pleasure of dancing with him, of having him next to her as he drove her through the park. Once she thought he was going to kiss her, but they were interrupted before she knew what it was to feel his lips upon hers. “Alasdair McGregor. He was everything I wanted in a man.”

She opened her eyes to find Caroline’s knowing gaze on her. With a lift of her chin she rose and went to the window, staring blindly out at the garden as she played with the curtain tie. “And he still is.”

Two

Alasdair McGregor was being hunted.

It had been a familiar sensation the last few days since he’d arrived in London. Mornings brought with them chits who mysteriously twisted their ankles on the steps leading to his front door (whereupon the chits immediately pointed out the necessity of a lengthy recuperative period inside his house). Afternoons occasioned women he was riding past suddenly falling into the miscellaneous bodies of water found in London parks, resulting in them screaming and thrashing about and calling upon him for assistance. And evenings drew to a close as warm, scented bodies of unentangled widows insinuated themselves into his bed without regard to minor points of etiquette such as invitation or inclination.

Dare had seen thirty-two summers in his lifetime, was tall and broad enough in the shoulders as to cause the uninvited widows to lick their lips in anticipation of the pleasure to be found in his bed, and held the title of seventh earl of Carlisle, all of which made him fair game in the eyes of women of the ton, particularly those in the market for a husband.

“Batsfoam?”

“Yes, my lord?”

“I have a peculiar prickling sensation on the back of my neck.”

“Again, my lord?”

“Yes, again. Any sign of her?”

The butler trailing behind his master paused long enough to briefly scan the street. He sighed as he turned a lugubrious face to Carlisle. “South-southwest, my lord. In a pink phaeton of such a virulent color that merely looking at it has given me a sharp pain on the left side of my head.”

Dare muttered an expletive and lengthened his stride. “It must be Mrs. Benton. She’s been trying to catch my eye for the last three days. How close is she? Do you think we can make Dunbridge and Storm before she catches up to us?”

Batsfoam, hired originally as a butler and now by a regrettable lack in the earl’s fiduciary standing, secretary, valet, and draftsman, squinted against the afternoon sun and gauged the distance to the solicitor’s office. “Doubtful.”

“Blast!”

The butler’s shoulders drooped even more than was normal in his habitual slouch. Dark of eye and hair, with skin the shade and texture of an unripened lemon, Batsfoam moved through life at the center of a seemingly perpetual cloud of gloom. “We’re doomed. It’s no use, my lord, you must sacrifice me and leave me behind. My leg will only hold you up.”