His wiry brows snapped together. “The servants have been gossiping, have they? Which of them spoke to you? I won’t tolerate back-fence prattle. Not in my house.”

Julia knew that well enough. Her father had dismissed many a maid and footman on the flimsiest suspicion of telling tales. Prolonged illness had made him prone to paranoia. “The servants weren’t gossiping, Papa.”

“No? What else did they say to you? Lies, I’ll wager.”

“Pray don’t distress yourself. They only said the doctor had come, and that you’d sent George off to the telegraph office.”

Mollified, he relaxed back in his chair. “I had no choice, did I? I’ve the state of things with Gresham to consider. You’ll need someone to keep you out of the clutches of fortune hunters until he comes to the point. I’m not well enough to do it myself. Would that I’d had a son!”

A sense of foreboding crept over her. The same ominous feeling she’d had when Lord Gresham had mentioned she might, someday soon, play hostess to one of his dinner parties. “What has Lord Gresham to do with it? I know he’s visited you, but—”

“Just as any gentleman should, given his interest in you.” Her father’s hand emerged, white and frail, from the cocoon of his blankets to retrieve his glass of tonic. “He’s a fine man, Gresham.”

“He’s an old man,” Julia retorted before she could curb her tongue.

Annoyance flashed in her father’s eyes. “Too right. A young girl requires a seasoned husband to take her in hand.”

Husband.

Her breath stopped. “Are you saying . . . Has the earl asked to marry me?”

“Not as yet, but he intends to.” Her father drank the remainder of his tonic, swallowing it down in great noisy gulps. “Until such time, I’ve given him permission to pay court to you. He’ll be here this evening to escort you to the ball.”

She shook her head. “No, Papa.”

“No, you say?” A flush of anger darkened his face. “You forget yourself, my girl.”

“Not without reason.” She folded her hands in her lap, trying hard to ignore the panicked skittering of her pulse. “I don’t like him. Not in that way. We don’t suit at all.”

“What do you know of it?”

“I know myself,” she said. “And I know enough about him to make me uneasy.”

She knew Lord Gresham was arrogant and overbearing and that his wife had perished in childbed.

There had been talk of the late countess’s plight. Rumors that Gresham had kept the woman in a perpetual state of pregnancy, desperate for her to produce his heir, even if she might die in the attempt.

And she had.

It was why Gresham was in London looking for a new wife. A young wife.

“Rubbish,” her father said. “These matters are a man’s business. It’s for me to decide who suits you. I say Gresham will do nicely. He has a house in Grosvenor Square. An easy distance from here.”