‘You see, there may lie your problem, Netheravon,’ observed Lord Gorleston. ‘You secretly hope that you will, and me, I just happily accept that I won’t. I never understood my sisters, or my mama, and learned early that it is a waste of time worrying about it. Accept them for what they are, beautiful … endearing, but … er, not meaning my mama, you understand …’

‘Quite so.’ Lord Netheravon chuckled. ‘That is remarkably frightening, thinking of our mamas as simpering misses.’

‘Not sure mine ever mastered simpering. Giving set-downs is more in her line, but my father seems dashed fond of her, in his quiet way.’ Lord Gorleston was in awe of his mother, but deeply attached to her.

‘Do you have sisters, Henfield?’ Lord Netheravon took his shot and looked up at the viscount.

‘No, only child.’ Lord Henfield felt a twinge, as if he had told a lie. That was the problem; Henry had been so much his sister when she was small that he felt he could understand the two men who did have sisters. It was, he thought, slightly heartening that even the full and legal possession of sisters did not provide a deeper insight into the female mind. ‘I did have a very nice spaniel bitch, though, as a boy, and she seemed quite logical, for a dog.’

‘Cocker?’ The topic, as Lord Henfield had hoped, moved smoothly into gun dogs and shooting, and he relaxed. When he eventually left the club, with Lord Gorleston at his side, that gentleman apologised.

‘Nearly came a cropper, and all my own silly fault. I really ought not to try and be witty. Profound apologies, my dear fellow.’ From these concise utterances Lord Henfield understood the whole.

‘You are a good friend, Gorleston, and I know you would not try to put me to the blush for sport.’

‘So, has my mama’s advice given you hope?’

‘It was not so much advice as a plan of campaign, really. You know, if Wellington had had Lady Vernham in the Peninsular, I am dashed sure the war would have been over a year earlier.’

‘Oh, much more than a year, Henfield. Wellington would only have needed to send my mama out in front of the Frenchies to tell them that their behaviour was not what she expected of French manners, and that they put her out of all patience and should go home.’ Lord Gorleston grinned widely.

The two gentlemen were still chuckling at the top of St James’s.

CHAPTER TEN

Henrietta’s mind was in a whirl of confused thoughts when Lord Henfield departed, and she paid little attention to Lady Elstead’s approval of the nature and scale of the present, until that lady commented that his ‘sin’ must have been great.