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Rosehips had once been his favorite of the family estates when he was a child, but he hadn’t been back since he joined the Navy. Even then, the marshy ground was beautiful, if not well-suited to farming. They had been steadily losing tenants to better prospects inland for years.

“I noticed you greeting Lady Catherine,” the Marquess cut in. “She’s back on the marriage mart this year now that she’s out of mourning. And there will be quite a portion to her name, I hear. The new Earl wants her married as quickly as possible.”

“How nice for her,” Alistair said.

He wasn’t interested in his father’s constant hounding for him to be married and settle down.

It was all the Marquess ever wrote to his son about and, had they seen each other at all in the last nine years, what Alistair was sure his father would speak to him about.

That or his disregard for Alistair’s employment with the East India Company.

“You might try being civil. Mrs. Somerville thinks you two would suit.”

Alistair eyed his father. “You were behind tonight’s seating arrangement, I take it? Of course, you were. I don’t know why I’d ever think otherwise. I’m not back in town to be married off at your command.” He gestured at his brother. “Seat him next to her.”

“Darius can handle his own affairs. You, I’m less certain of.”

“I have acquitted myself well, Father. In service to Queen and country. Or does that not rate in your accounting?”

The Marquess raised an eyebrow at his son, making his face an older mirror of Alistair’s. And Darius’s too, for that matter. “Have you?” he inquired. “It’s hard to imagine acquitting yourself well if you can’t even be sober for dinner.”

Darius put his hand on Alistair’s arm before he could reply. “That’s enough,” he said. “From both of you. Somerville is calling us over. Dinner’s to begin.”

Alistair took his seat and tried to stifle his irritation. The first stop on the goodwill campaign was not going as planned.

His father stared at him from across the table and made a motion with his head toward Lady Catherine who was placed next to him.

No.

If he had to ignore the lady all evening to make his point to his father, he would. He was not going to marry and live in London in some ill-fated attempt to mold himself to his father’s liking.

Alistair couldn’t stomach the notion of life in town, surrounded by these same people, thinking their same thoughts for the rest of his life. He’d go mad, and he knew it.

He’d left England to get away from the aristocracy and the heavy burden of his father’s expectations.

He wasn’t about to start acquiescing to them now.

That was for Darius, not him. Or, he realized suddenly, the Darius he’d known before.

It had been nearly a decade since he’d seen his brother.

He knew little about who Darius was now.

Alistair glanced down the table to his brother and then to where Miss Goodwin sat, Lady Catherine’s strange companion in the abominable dress. She was wedged between two old geezers, both distant Somerville cousins.

He felt that strange pang of irritation again as he watched the woman who couldn’t manage a single word for him laugh and smile with her two aging dinner companions.

He scowled and shifted his weight in his chair. The deuced woman bothered him. Improbably. He liked women, in the short amount of time he spent with any of them.

Tall or petite, lusciously curved or elegantly thin, a full bosom or dainty little breasts, he was glad to partake of every feminine size and shape that was willing, as long as he could leave afterward.

He had no particular preference for hair color, or skin tone for that matter, except perhaps an aversion to Miss Goodwin’s shade of green.

But he was never bothered. He didn’t spend enough time with any particular woman to be bothered. So why was he staring at Miss Goodwin?

Does she remind me of someone ?

Who?

He focused on her again, his jaw set, and his lips pressed together in a hard line as he tried to remember.

In his mind’s eye, he loosened her blonde hair from its severe bun and let it tumble down in an unruly set of loose curls. And he removed the front panel of that unbecoming dress so that her plump breasts crested the top of the neckline. And he…

“By Jove,” he whispered and almost dropped his dessert spoon.

It’s her.

It couldn’t be, and yet it was. The awkward woman in the ugly dress was the same intoxicating lady he’d met out on the balcony the night before he’d set sail with the East India Company. His cock twitched in recognition.

She was the one he’d found mid-argument with a feline. Honeyed, exuberant curls. Lush curves, ripe like the mangoes he’d feasted on in India. Blue eyes, bright and clear as the Mediterranean Sea.

Her.

He’d dreamed of her on occasion, his hard cock in his hand, his mouth watering at the remembrance of how close he’d come to laying his lips on hers.

“Watch the glass, my lord!”

Bollocks.

He’d almost knocked over his wine glass. He shook his head. What was wrong with him?

The whisky probably .

And the wine he’d chased it with.

Ignore her.

Miss Goodwin’s skin was green. Her cheeks were hollow. And her bosom was unceremoniously smashed into that dress.

It didn’t matter who she’d been three years ago. Or who he’d been, for that matter. He was no longer the wide-eyed young buck she’d met on that long ago night either. The one about to set sail for fate and fortune, excited for a new career and a new life.

The last three years had disillusioned him with the world and its mercenary need for more. More wealth, more power, more control. He grimaced.

“Is something amiss, my lord?” Lady Catherine asked.

“No.”

It was the first word he’d said to her all evening. He was being a cad, and he knew it. But he didn’t care. He was openly staring at Miss Goodwin now, willing her to look down the long table at him. But she resolutely cast her eyes away.

Ignore her, he commanded himself again.

But he couldn’t.

The moment dinner concluded, he stood and made a beeline for Miss Goodwin.