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A marriage has been arranged and will shortly take place between the Honourable Major Lord Thornfalcon, of Half-Moon Street and Thornfalcon Manor in Somerset, and Lady Amelia Wyverne, sister of His Grace the Marquess of Wyverne, of Brook Street and Wyverne Hall, Buckinghamshire.

Marcus looked down at the note he had written out several times for insertion in all the usual newspapers.

He folded the final one and sealed it, stamping his crest into the red wax.

It would have been more conventional to have said that Amelia was the daughter of the late Lord Wyverne, but neither she nor her brother had wanted that. It was understandable.

He’d gone to see the Marquess, with Amelia, on that extraordinary and very long afternoon, to tell him formally of their engagement, since it seemed that everyone else in the world knew already.

They found Rafe, with his wife, in his library, and he’d had the sensation that they too had interrupted something intimate, but he was a great deal less perturbed by that than he would have been a few hours earlier.

He’d been tempered in the fire, he thought.

Mere considerations of embarrassment could trouble him no longer (though he discovered soon enough that he was entirely mistaken in this).

What an extraordinary family they were, the Marchioness not least .

And that was definitely her in the picture of Danae over the mantel.

Who were these people? And that was even before he’d met Amelia’s grandmother.

Delphine Wyverne, he’d thought at first, was considerably less terrifying than Lady Keswick.

She didn’t look intimidating at all, so tiny, old and fragile as she was, as though a stiff breeze would blow her away.

But God almighty, she was sharp. She looked him up and down quite shamelessly when he was presented to her, taking her sweet time about it, as if to emphasise how very much of him there was to see.

When she had looked her fill, she said, with a familiar twinkle in her eye, ignoring him completely and addressing Amelia, ‘Mon Dieu, ma petite, quelle figure d’homme!

Vous avez vraiment les yeux plus gros que la b… que le ventre!’

Marcus had something of a facility for languages – he could swear with great fluency in Spanish, Portuguese and even rough French – and he suspected that this was another innuendo.

Or not even that. A statement of fact. Something about eating?

Good God. He felt he was blushing furiously for the first time in years.

Amelia’s obvious deep embarrassment didn’t help at all.

‘Grand-mère! He might understand you!’ she hissed in furious French.

He could have got the sense of that easily enough even if he hadn’t spoken a word of the language.

‘Bah!’ said Madame La Marquise, unabashed.

‘I dare say he does – what of it? Good God, is he not a fully grown man by anyone’s standards?

If you are to marry into this family, young man,’ she said in perfect English, addressing him at last and dispensing with all the usual courtesies, ‘you must put any thought of embarrassment aside. Better you do it directly. It will save a great deal of trouble.’

‘I’m beginning to realise that, ma’am,’ he said with feeling. ‘I’m already a different person from the one who arrived here. Was it just a couple of hours ago? It seems much longer. So much has happened.’

The younger Marchioness gave an unladylike little snort of laughter. ‘It certainly has. And Lady Keswick made the most extraordinary suggestion earlier, which I am sure you will appreciate when you hear it, madame.’

Amelia covered her face with her hands at this and muttered despairingly behind them, ‘Is there no way to make it stop? Could I burn down the house, perhaps? Would that do it?’

‘Yes, leave off, both of you.’ Lord Wyverne appeared also to be amused, but plainly had a little more sense of decency than his wife or his grandmother.

‘You are putting Amelia to the blush, which is undeniably entertaining, but our guest is also mortified, and you will be well served if he makes a run for it and is never seen again. If I were him, I would seriously consider going abroad to escape from this houseful of lunatics. I have had a serious conversation with Lord Thornfalcon on a previous occasion in which I believe I convinced him that the terrible Wyverne reputation is largely undeserved, and now you are undoing all my good work between you.’

‘Lady Keswick was the chief culprit,’ said his wife unrepentantly and not entirely truthfully. ‘She began it, Rafe. I have never been so shocked in all my life, I assure you. I will view her in an entirely new light from now on.’

‘I too,’ Marcus said before he could stop himself. Spending time with this family was like being drunk and tossed in a blanket – it was enjoyable while it was happening, or parts of it were, but he had an uneasy feeling he was bound to regret it afterwards.

They had pressed him in hospitable fashion to stay to dinner and celebrate, but he was bound to refuse. ‘Lady Keswick knows of our engagement,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose she will run about the streets shouting it aloud as if she were selling ballad sheets.’

‘I wouldn’t bank on it,’ muttered his betrothed. ‘She’ll have us married before the end of the week if she gets her way.’

‘But it is not right that she or anyone else she may tell should know before my mother and my sister do. If they came to hear of it through some officious person’s tittle-tattle, they would be deeply hurt, and rightly so. I must tell them straight away.’

The Wyvernes were obliged to admit the justice of this, and so he took his leave; it was only right, he thought, that his family should be kept informed that matters had progressed to the point where they were now to be made official.

There would be a great outpouring of gossip and exclamation, and they must be prepared for it.

Amelia accompanied him out into the hall to say farewell, and he saw the confusion he was experiencing reflected in her face.

They could not speak frankly – the footmen stood waiting to open the door for him, faces carefully blank – so he was forced to content himself with taking her hand, not for the first time this day, and lifting it to his lips.

He was trying very hard, and failing, not to recall what that had set in motion, and how wonderful she had felt in his arms.

But he should have known already that he could not touch her without consequences.

Once more, he brushed her bare skin with his lips, and once more, what should have been an insignificant contact, a mere formality, set every part of his body tingling with awareness of her.

Her hand trembled in his grasp, and he did not know, dared not imagine, if she felt it too.

If they had been alone… But they were not alone.

It was fortunate that they were not. This inconvenient physical connection, if that was what it was, could not signify anything, and must be overcome.

‘All will be well,’ he said softly, scarcely knowing what he was saying. He wasn’t sure if it was true, but he hated to see her unhappy. She smiled at him uncertainly but made no response, and they parted. He strolled home deep in reverie and blind to his surroundings.

His mother and sister had indeed been delighted at the news; there was no need for pretence here, for they knew everything. Almost everything.

‘I’m excessively glad,’ Helena said in her blunt way.

‘I don’t care if it is real or not. It will put a stop to all this nonsense of women falling off horses and pretending to be my best friend in the world when they scarcely know me.

Lavinia – not to mention Priscilla – will have to start behaving like real persons rather than characters from a sensational novel. ’

‘I wonder if they will?’ sighed Lady Thornfalcon.

‘I am delighted too, naturally, my dears, but I confess that Lavinia’s behaviour still worries me.

Only conceive how furious she will be when she hears.

She will be shamed by this, or believe she is, and I fear from my knowledge of her character that she will not care for that at all. ’

‘Jeremy told me that he thought she’d painted herself into a corner and would not be able to get out of it without aid,’ Marcus remembered.

He was drinking a glass of brandy before dinner – this was not his usual habit and probably not a good idea, but after the day he’d had, he felt he could justify it as medicinal.

‘And he is the man to help her?’ asked his mother with quick interest. ‘I confess I had sometimes suspected as much when you were boys together.’

‘Well, I most certainly had not. And he’s my oldest friend.’

‘Men!’ said his female relatives in chorus, rolling their eyes.

‘But you can’t rely on him to save you,’ Helena continued thoughtfully.

‘It would be highly convenient for us, without question, if he swept in and carried her off over his saddlebow like young Lochinvar. It would be most uncomfortable for her, of course, and scandalous, but I cannot be expected to regard that. How delighted we would all be to be rid of her. But as Mama says, Lavinia has gone too far down the road of your great love story to merely say, “You’re right, it never would have worked, I wish you very happy.” And there are those stupid Friends of hers, too.

I hope Amelia will have a care – I hope you will have a care of her too, Marcus. ’