He didn’t have enough to offer a woman, and especially a woman like this. She was laughing again, a husky laugh that didn’t belong to a virgin. The very sound sent warning prickles up his spine.

He turned away.

Chapter 7

Late that night

“I ’ve quite made up my mind to marry him,” Annabel said. She was curled up against one of the posters of Tess’s bed, wearing a chemise so worn it had been consigned to bed clothing. She tugged the chemise over her bare toes: none of the sisters had owned bed slippers for years.

For once, Josie didn’t respond with sarcasm. “I suppose you mean the duke?” she asked. She was curled against the opposite bedpost, a blanket pulled around her shoulders. She had clearly had a good cry after supper, but everyone was tactfully ignoring her swollen eyes.“I think you could do better,” Imogen put in. She had burrowed straight into Tess’s bed and was curled like a sleek little cat against the pillows. “Our guardian obviously drinks more than he ought, and he’s lost his figure. To be blunt, Holbrook is a sot.”

“That’s extremely harsh,” Tess objected. “But while I hate to disappoint you, Annabel, it is my definite opinion that Rafe does not mean to marry.”

“I was referring not to our esteemed guardian, but to the Earl of Mayne,” Annabel said. “After watching Holbrook single-handedly empty a decanter of brandy, I decided I want a husband who is not yet pickled.”

“Tess, don’t you think that Mayne deserves someone nicer than Annabel?” Josie inquired innocently.

“Extremely unkind of you,” Annabel said. But she was grinning. “Believe me, Josie, if Mayne turns out to be as rich as our guardian, I will be kind to him all day. Why wouldn’t I? The only thing that makes me crotchety is poverty. Well, poverty and Scotland.”

“I miss Scotland and—” But Josie broke off and swallowed.

“You can’t honestly say that you miss Scotland,” Annabel said. “Not that soggy old house and the way it smelled like peat every time it rained. Have you ever seen a counterpane as lovely as this one?” She smoothed the fabric with her hand. “My sheets are as fine as silk itself. I’ve never seen the like in my life. And look—” She gestured upward.

All four sisters obediently stared up at the midnight blue canopy that graced Tess’s four-poster.

“No water blotches!” Annabel pointed out. “The roof doesn’t leak.”

“We don’t know that,” Josie objected. “There’s another floor above us, you know.”

“As there was in the bedchamber I had at home,” Annabel argued. “Not to mention the attic above that. But there wasn’t a room in Papa’s house that didn’t have watermarks on the ceiling, even so. Sometimes I thought the nursery had a regular sieve for a roof. And why Papa never—”

“Don’t say anything mean about Papa!” Josie said. Her lips set in a firm line. “Don’t you dare!”

Annabel reached over and tweaked her little sister’s toe. “All right, you little termagant, I won’t.”

“He’s not here to defend himself,” Josie said, her voice arching high in a way that obviously embarrassed her. “I wish he were here. He would have laughed himself blue in the face over Lady Clarice.”

Imogen smiled faintly. “Hush about my future mother-in-law.” But somehow the ancient jest that she would marry Maitland someday fell flat now that they’d actually seen the man in England, and met his mother, and heard of his engagement from lips other than his.

Tess bit her lower lip and scooted over a few inches so that she was sitting just beside Imogen. They had always known Imogen’s love for Maitland would come to nothing, but it was so hard to tell her so.

She met Annabel’s eyes and saw the same awareness in her eyes. Imogen would never be able to marry young Lord Maitland, with his driven, ambitious mother and his oh-so-dowried fiancée. Not that he showed any particular desire to marry Imogen, if he were free. Other than giving her a few scrawled notes and one kiss, he had never—

Imogen interrupted her thoughts. “He behaved badly at dinner because he is distraught,” she said fiercely. “He doesn’t wish to marry Miss Pythian-Adams, no matter how cultivated she is. I think he is beginning to love me.”

“One would have to suppose that he’s hiding his emotion, if that’s the case,” Josie said, in her usual blunt fashion. “What on earth did Maitland do at supper?”

“He was overcome with emotion and left the table,” Imogen said. Her eyes were teary now. “Obviously his mother has chosen his bride. It’s just like Romeo and Juliet when Lady Capulet was determined Juliet should marry Paris. And Pyramus and Thisby too. Wasn’t Pyramus’s father determined to marry him to someone he abhorred?”

“That must have been before Thisby was eaten by a lion,” Annabel said. “I’m so glad that I’m not the type to be overtaken by passion. I have the greatest wish not to be munched by a wild animal. The whole business of love seems not at all in my style.”

“I wish I were like you,” Imogen said. She stared up at the canopy, her eyes a little teary.

“It’s much more comfortable this way,” Annabel said, patting Imogen’s foot as if to encourage her in the pursuit of logic. “I have no expectation of love and every expectation of making a worthy marriage. I assure you that life is truly relaxing when there is no expectation of heartbreak.”

“I suppose I shall just have to—to resign myself to a loveless life,” Imogen said in a rather choked voice.

They were all silent for a moment. Imogen had been so long possessed by the idea of marrying Draven Maitland that it was hard to imagine her no longer in love. No longer scribbling Imogen Maitland on every piece of discarded foolscap she could find. No longer studying etiquette books so that she would know the proper precedence of all the Maitland relatives.

“I’m sorry that we nurtured the hope,” Tess said, stroking Imogen’s hair. “We shouldn’t have let you dream for so long.”

“I do feel as if I’ve been living in a dream,” Imogen said, her voice a little choked. “Why did he kiss me, that time? Why did he—does he—look at me, in such a fashion? He must know that he cannot excuse himself from his engagement.”

Tess cleared her throat, trying to find a way to answer, but Imogen leaped in before she could formulate a thought.

“And don’t tell me that he merely wanted to dally with me in an improper fashion, because he didn’t! He didn’t! He never once tried unseemly behavior. And yet—and yet, all last winter, and the winter before, when he was in England, he must have known full well that his mother would never allow him to marry a penniless Scot. He could not help but be aware of her—her enthrallment with his future bride!”

“’Twas wrong of him,” Annabel ventured.

“Perhaps he couldn’t help flirting with you,” Josie put in. “Romeo was beside himself with passion, even though his family would never have agreed to the match.”

But Imogen pushed herself higher up against the pillows. “If Draven loved me as much as Romeo loved Juliet, he would declare himself,” she said flatly. “He may be miserable affianced to Miss Pythian-Adams, but he isn’t truly fighting his mother on the issue. He—he let Lady Clarice rattle on and on about Miss Pythian-Adams through the meal. Any fool could tell that she was warning me off. In truth, I think he may have reacted with anger not to his mother’s assault on me but because he was irritated with her for other reasons.”