Imogen stopped, frowning. She was aware that Mama wanted her fraternizing with the young lordling and his friends, no matter how vast the gap between them.

No matter that Imogen would rather rub shoulders with a pack of rabid hyenas. Hyenas would at least acknowledge her.

Sighing deeply, she turned back and obediently ambled through the garden where a game of croquet was being played out.

She stood to the side watching, trying not to feel obtrusive as a group of young ladies and gentlemen played a lively game, whacking their mallets and laughing merrily. Unfortunately the longer she stood there, watching, being ignored, the more awkward she felt.

After several minutes of that misery, she decided to move along. Clearly not back toward her mother and the old dames where she was not welcome. She felt like a dinghy, cast adrift, lost at sea.

It really was a dreadful day.

She looked around helplessly before settling on the quietly beckoning pond as a potential refuge. She strolled toward its calm waters, stopping when she noticed a group of young men congregating at the edge, initially obscured behind the large oak with bowing branches. They skipped stones, laughing and chatting congenially.

At the center of them stood Penning’s unmistakable form. He cut a dashing figure with his dark hair and sharply hewn profile. She recognized only one other person in the group. Amos Blankenship. Like the young duke-to-be, he was easy to identify, but for different reasons.

Amos Blankenship was blinding in his lime-green-and-gold jacket. Amos’s father possessed untold railway shares and his son reveled in his family’s wealth, oft tearing through the village in a flashy new phaeton. They might not possess title, but money like theirs paved the way for them and bought them position. The Blankenship family took pride in leading village society. Mrs. Blankenship was the epicenter of all social activity . . . and the town’s biggest gossip.

Imogen studied the group of young gentlemen undetected. The young Lord Penning was no longer boyish. All his softness was gone, replaced by hard edges—a fitting observation on this, the celebration of his eighteenth birthday. He was a man now. She looked down self-consciously at herself, fisting a handful of ruffles in disgust. Whilst she was an overdressed little girl.

He reminded her of one of the chiseled Greek gods at the British Museum she’d visited not very long ago. Except he was attired in clothes, of course. Just last summer she and her cousin Winifred had giggled and gawked at the naked statues longer than they ought to have done. Their mothers would not have approved, which only made them revel in their silliness. There was something to be said of being away from their mothers’ gimlet stares that brought out the ridiculous in them.