And there was one final thing required in a matrimonial candidate. Perhaps the most vital. He must be willing to have children. She would have to be clear upon her desire to have children. If she was going to such lengths as to remarry, then she would have the one thing she desired most out of the union.

The butler ushered them into a drawing room.

“Her ladyship will be with you shortly,” he intoned as he bowed his way out of the room.

“Must be a very fine lady indeed,” Aunt Eleanor murmured, her eyes taking in the room’s elegant appointments. She stroked the muzzle of a large, porcelain bulldog situated near the large fireplace. “Very lifelike,” she murmured, watching the statue uneasily as she backed up and seated herself on a striped chintz sofa.

Meredith lowered herself into a wingback chair and nodded. “Yes. I wonder how Lord Brookshire knows Lady Derring. They must be well acquainted for her to agree to sponsor me.”

Her imaginative mind immediately leapt to all manner of conclusions and a stab of jealousy shot through her. Lady Derring was no doubt the kind of experienced, mature woman Nick preferred.

No doubt a fashionable blond beauty, popular, sophisticated, and worldly.

The sound of the door opening captured her attention. A bespectacled, dark-haired girl stood in the doorway, hands on her h*ps in an unladylike pose.

“Are you Lady Brookshire?”

Certainly not a fashionable blond beauty, Meredith noted. Could this be Lady Derring? She hardly looked out of the schoolroom. Perhaps a relation?

“Yes.”

“You are prettier than he let on.”

She flushed, instantly certain who he was, and mortified to know that he had discussed her looks, or more specifically her lack of looks, in the company of others.

The girl walked into the room with long, assured strides. “His dislike of you must blind him.”

“Lord Brookshire said he disliked my niece?” Aunt Eleanor demanded in affronted tones. “How rude.”

“Aunt,” Meredith warned.

“Well, it is,” Aunt Eleanor whispered in loud tones, as if the girl in front of them could not hear her every word. “I don’t care what you’ve done, it is unspeakably rude for him to slander you before others. I shall take this up with him upon our very next meeting.”

“I don’t think we will find ourselves in his company anytime soon,” Meredith reminded. His aversion to the ton had been declared from the start. She suspected he would not take advantage of his ascent into the echelons of Society by making the rounds this Season. It was for the best.

At least for her. She could not bear to see the cold contempt in his eyes at every soiree and ball she attended.

“Oh, he did not directly say he disliked Lady Brookshire, but it was easy to infer as much. I suspected there was no fondness.”

“Rest assured, it is mutual,” Meredith muttered, doing a poor job of feigning indifference.

“My name is Portia. And yes,” she added, as if they had inquired, “my mother was an avid reader of Shakespeare. Highly unnatural and unfeminine, according to Grandmother, that a woman should be an avid reader of anything. But then she had not liked my mother very much, called her an anomaly of womanhood… and all because she was a scholar.” Lady Portia paused for breath. “I suspect we shall grow to be quite the bosom friends since we’ll be going on the auction block together, at least if Grandmother has her way. And she always does.” Portia finished with a dramatic sigh.

“Grandmother?” Aunt Eleanor queried, appearing a little dizzy from the energetic girl’s prattling.

“Grandmother… who you are here to see… the Dowager Duchess of Derring.”

“A duchess?” Aunt Eleanor gasped before looking gleefully to Meredith. “What a coup to be presented by a duchess.”

“Yes, I wonder how Lord Brookshire finagled such a feat,” Meredith murmured. Apparently they could not have been paramours as she had first thought, unless Nick had a yen for grandmotherly types, and she did not think his tastes ran toward those that experienced and mature. So how did he manage to get a duchess to sponsor a nobody like her?

“Blackmail,” Portia answered blandly, clearly reading the direction of Meredith’s thoughts.

“What?” both Meredith and Aunt Eleanor enjoined, their voices a touch too loud.

Portia blinked and seemed to reconsider her choice of words. “Well, not exactly blackmail. I suppose it was more like an equitable trade.”

“What kind of trade?” Meredith pressed.

“Oh, Lord Brookshire was more than fair. He offered to return my family’s wealth, property…

essentially everything my brother has gambled away in exchange for my grandmother’s sponsorship of you.”

“Well,” Aunt Eleanor began uncertainly, “I suppose that is more than sporting of Lord Brookshire.”

“It’s perfectly dreadful.” Meredith’s eyes flared wide with outrage. “It is blackmail. He foisted me upon your poor grandmother. She has no choice but to sponsor me. How she must dread the chore.”

“She’s not thrilled about it, but it is really such a small task when you consider we are receiving our livelihood in return. And there is nothing poor about Grandmother. She is a perfect harridan.

Don’t pity her. The woman intends to sell me, her only granddaughter, on the auction block against my wishes. She’s a slave monger!”

“What is this auction block you keep referring to?” Aunt Eleanor asked, perplexed.

“Some call it the marriage mart, but it is slavery, pure and simple.” The girl settled her fists onto her narrow h*ps in a militant pose. “The only thing debutantes don’t do is have their teeth inspected by prospective grooms.”

Meredith felt her mouth curve into a smile. Possibly the first in many weeks. “Perhaps you should look at it differently,” she suggested.

Portia cocked her head. “How?”

“That it is the men who are on the auction block. We do have the prerogative to say no.”

Portia laughed mirthlessly. “Perhaps you do, but not I. Grandmother will be doing all the accepting and declining on my behalf. And I don’t really think you have much of a prerogative when it comes right down to it either. Lord Brookshire intends for you to accept the first proposal to come along and be done with it.”

“He said that?” Meredith clutched her reticule tightly, her indignation stirring.

“More or less.”

“The decision will be mine,” Meredith firmly insisted, her fingers digging into the soft poplin of her reticule.

“But you will choose someone?” Aunt Eleanor voiced nervously. “That was part of the agreement, dearest.”

“Yes, yes. I will marry this Season. Because I must.” She waved a hand in the air. “But I will go about this hunt in my own way.”

Portia grinned. “Ah, I do like that. The hunt. And we are the hunters, not the hunted. Hmmm, that does change one’s perspective of the situation.” She tilted her head thoughtfully.

Just then Lady Derring descended upon them. “Portia, I see you have already acquainted yourself with our guests,” she announced in clipped accents, her disapproval evident. Clad head to foot in black bombazine, she reminded Meredith of the angel of death. Leaning heavily on her cane, she thumped her way to stand before Meredith.

“You are Lady Brookshire?”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

The dowager glanced at Aunt Eleanor beside her. “And you are?”

“This is Miss Eleanor Buchanan, my aunt,” Meredith introduced.

The dowager gave a brief nod in acknowledgment at Aunt Eleanor’s quickly executed curtsy before returning her attention to Meredith. “Stand up so I may have a look at what goods I am charged with dispensing this Season.”

Meredith stifled an impertinent retort, not especially liking being labeled goods. Portia looked meaningfully at her, an I-told-you-so expression on her face. A perfect harridan indeed. Meredith rose to her feet and endured the dowager’s hard-eyed scrutiny.

“The widow’s weeds will have to go—”

“It has only been five months,” Meredith said, bold enough to interrupt. “I should not want to raise eyebrows.”

“Long enough not to stir any gossip on that account. Besides, the task here is to see you wed. No man will approach you in a frock like that.” She waved her hand contemptuously at Meredith’s dress.

Secretly, Meredith had always craved pretty gowns of vibrant colors, all in the height of fashion.

If the dowager said that convention could be set aside, then why should she object?

“You’ve recently suffered a miscarriage?” the dowager inquired, interrupting her thoughts.

Heat flooded her face. She had not expected to be questioned on that point. Not so bluntly at any rate. Had Nick told the dowager? Certainly such gossip would not have reached London. She was on no one’s on dit list.

“Yes.”

“Well, you appear quite recovered. Some women languish about after such an episode. I see you have the burden of a few pounds to shed, but I’ll see to that matter and instruct Cook on what manner of food to prepare for you. Never fear, you’ll be back in top form soon enough.”

She was torn between laughter and mortification that the dowager would credit her extra pounds to a pregnancy that had never existed and not the true source: too many honeyed scones.

“Thank you, Your Grace,” she muttered.

“And the red hair has to go,” the lady added, nodding grimly.

Meredith touched the hair peeking out beneath her bonnet. It was not truly red, but auburn with reddish highlights. “Go?” she asked nervously, envisioning herself bald. How could she rid herself of her hair? Surely she did not mean…

“Red hair denotes a foul temper and low breeding.”

“Queen Elizabeth had red hair,” Portia chirped, “and Boadicea and—”

“Portia, be so good as to keep quiet.” The dowager sighed in vexation, not sparing a glance at her granddaughter as she continued to address Meredith in starchy tones. “Not to mention red hair is very unfashionable. It is difficult to find the right gowns to complement red hair.”

“What do you suggest?” Meredith asked, trepidation lacing her voice.

“We dye it, of course.”

“Dye it?” Aunt Eleanor looked as though she would faint. “Isn’t that… common?”

“No more common than to possess red hair,” the dowager replied with cutting ruthlessness, her expression hard and unrelenting. “If the goal is to see you wed, this is what must be done.” The dowager raised her brows in challenge. “Just how serious are you about matrimony?”

Meredith had never particularly liked her hair. As a child it had in fact been the color of carrots and the bane of her existence. She had been quite relieved when it had darkened to auburn over the years. A part of her felt uneasy over tampering with what God gave her. What if the end result was worse than what she already possessed?

Still, the dowager’s question hung in the air. A test. After a moment she nodded. “Very well. I trust you have someone experienced to do it?”

“Have no fear, Henriette won’t botch it. She is excellent with hair. No one will even know it is dyed.”

Meredith drew a deep breath. “Fine. Anything else, Your Grace?”

After another survey, the dowager concluded, “With the right hair and wardrobe, I think you may not be as unattractive as Lord Brookshire claimed.”

The words shouldn’t have hurt, but they did. Hot tears smarted at the back of her eyes, and it took every ounce of willpower not to cry. She would not give the old harridan the satisfaction of making her cry on their first meeting.