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L ady Pendleton surveyed the ballroom activity through her lorgnette and sighed. “I must say, the debutantes this year seem far less polished than last season, when my Jane faced such worthy competition before making her brilliant match.”

Lady Eugenia Townsend, who’d been gazing with rapt admiration at the young ladies in their diaphanous white muslin gowns, dancing a quadrille on the polished parquet floor, blinked.

While she was rarely in agreement with the formidable Lady Pendleton, she’d learned over the years that it was pointless to offer a counter opinion.

“Doesn’t Lady Nosegay look like she’s just escaped the guillotine?

” Lady Pendleton went on, nodding at an aged dowager in a gown of heavy burgundy brocade, adorned with outdated gold braiding.

“How could her daughter let the unfortunate befuddled soul out of the house wearing such an abomination? Don’t you agree, Eugenia? ”

“Naturally, Lady Pendleton.”

Lady Pendleton adjusted her purple toque, its ostrich feather trembling with each movement, and looked satisfied as she fanned herself with a painted ivory fan, though she said with a sniff, “It isn’t wise to agree with every opinion that is aired, Eugenia.

I sometimes think that is why you never married.

While a man naturally wants a wife who is in agreement with him on every subject, she must also prove that she has some faculty for forming an opinion that is her own. ”

Eugenia bit her tongue as she remained seated beside her companion a little distance from the dance floor, observing the gaiety around them. Lady Pendleton neither needed nor deserved an answer to this.

“But perhaps I do you an injustice.” Her old friend leaned forward to pat her hand.

Even before Barbara, Lady Pendleton, was out of the schoolroom, she was acutely aware of the power she wielded.

The Special Remainder allowing female succession associated with her family’s title meant that, being an only daughter in the direct line of succession, she would be Lady Pendleton and whomever she married would have to take her name.

Power and status had always been important to Lady Pendleton.

“Perhaps you never met a man you wished to marry.” Lady Pendleton sent Eugenia a sly smile as she leaned back in her chair.

“Or perhaps you couldn’t make up your mind.

We were spoiled for choice during our first season.

Such a long time ago, that was.” She sighed.

“Of course, Pendleton fell so swiftly in love with me I had barely three weeks to enjoy my debut before he’d whisked me off on our wedding tour.

But I do sometimes wonder if, had I stayed longer in London that season, I might not have helped guide you in a matrimonial direction, my dear Eugenia.

Alas, being such a loyal wife and mother, I was so caught up with Pendleton’s political career, and the children, that for the next two decades I quite neglected my old friends.

And now, here we are. My serious-minded Albert is being groomed to make an excellent viscount and my little Jane is now Lady Chance while you, my dear Eugenia…

well, I don’t mean to sound dampening, but life is passing you by. ”

Eugenia managed to look impassive, though she had to blink rapidly to keep the tears at bay. And her tongue in check.

“Well?” Lady Pendleton fixed her with a gimlet eye. “Do you not think so?”

“I am fortunate to have been well provisioned, Lady Pendleton, despite my sex precluding me from inheriting the viscountcy. It is rare for a woman—as in your case—to inherit both,” Eugenia managed through clenched teeth, her fingers nervously smoothing the green silk of her gown.

“But with my handsome fortune, why would I wish to encumber myself with a husband at my advanced age when I enjoy all the freedom I could wish for?”

Lady Pendleton leaned back as she nodded comfortably, the candlelight softening the lines of age around her eyes.

“Ah yes, there we were, both the only daughters of viscounts, yet you had to see the title go to your cousin. Poor Eugenia. No title, no husband, no children when, if you’d only been born a male, you’d have had it all.

But, yes, you have your freedom.” She smiled as if it were now no longer of any importance to Eugenia.

The truth was that Eugenia would have willingly given up all the freedom she could have wished for if only a certain gentleman had crooked his little finger.

It had ever been thus; in her first season out, and no different now, thirty years later when Lord Thornton had reappeared last year in the London ballrooms Eugenia frequented, this time as a widower.

Lord Thornton. She closed her eyes briefly as she remembered how handsome he’d been as a young man and how distinguished he now looked.

His late wife, Alice, had been Eugenia’s bosom friend.

But that was all so long ago now, and Eugenia was a fool for allowing those old feelings any license.

“Ah, Lord Thornton!” Lady Pendleton waved her fan to waylay a passing gentleman, and Eugenia’s mouth was suddenly dry.

In fact, it was even difficult to breathe as the man poor Alice had married (with misgivings, it might be said, when Eugenia would have walked on knives for the rest of her life to have received the same offer) appeared before them.

“What are you ladies gossiping about?” he asked with the easy familiarity of thirty years’ acquaintance. “Matchmaking?”

Lady Pendleton tittered.

“Aha! And who have you paired up this evening?”

“A real gentleman would never ask such a question.” Lady Pendleton gave another affected little laugh and Lord Thornton, no doubt to humor her, scanned the room, his gaze sweeping past the gilt-framed mirrors that lined the walls, then chuckled.

“Aha! I spy the reclusive—some would say, mysterious—Sir Frederick emerging from the shadows with a very eye-catching golden-haired damsel in his wake.”

Eugenia fanned her heated cheeks and sought vainly for inspiration when he leveled his gaze at her and suggested that, indeed, the very handsome and eligible Sir Frederick might prove an entertaining candidate for a bit of matchmaking mischief.

But it was Lady Pendleton who said, coquettishly—for she, too, was clearly not immune to Lord Thornton’s chiseled features, strong jaw, and aristocratic nose—“Sir Frederick? Perhaps you are trying to deflect attention from yourself, Thornton. Might I be so bold as to wonder if you are here for the very same reasons as these young hopefuls?”

Eugenia nearly gasped out loud. Marriage ? Could Lord Thornton really be looking for a second wife?

She was relieved by his easy laugh and answer.

“Lord, no! However, I’ve been a widower too long and grown bored by my own society.

That’s why you see me here tonight—” He encompassed the room with a sweep of his arm before inclining his head at the ladies to add with his stock charm.

“—Enjoying the company of the most entertaining guests at Lady Nosegay’s ball. ”

The look he sent Eugenia caused her to bite her lip so hard that this time she did give a little gasp.

Lord Thornton fixed her with a level stare, the crystal-drop chandelier above casting a warm glow across his distinguished features. “Eugenia—?”

Yes, he called her Eugenia because Alice had insisted he Christian-name her during the agonizing dinner parties Eugenia had endured as their guest. Alice had enjoyed entertaining before the children.

“Yes, Thornton?”

His eyes, a deep, contemplative hazel flecked with gold, bored into her as she waited, breathless, for him to pose his question.

“Marriage is a serious business, would you not agree?”

“I… wouldn’t know.” Why had she said that? He wasn’t referring to her personal experience of it.

Lady Pendleton clicked her tongue. “Eugenia hasn’t an original opinion in her head.

She doesn’t know what she thinks, as I was observing earlier.

And she certainly has no idea of who would make an ideal marriage partner.

How could she since she is a spinster? Which is why I don’t engage her thoughts when it comes to the matchmaking of which you’ve just accused us, Lord Thornton; though I would lay claim to a few successes over the years. ” She looked smug.

“Couples of different dispositions can make very successful marriages, I think.” Eugenia stuck her chin out, quaking inwardly at Lady Pendleton’s disapproving frown as a quadrille ended and couples moved across the polished floor in a swish of silk and muslin.

What? For venturing an original opinion?

But Lord Thornton’s interested look was sufficiently bolstering for her to go on. “The difficulty is that if one party is of a shy and retiring nature, it is a challenge for the other to find the—”

“The what, Eugenia?” Lady Pendleton snapped. “Spit it out!”

“The pearl within,” Eugenia said faintly.

Perhaps her nervous humility pleased Lady Pendleton sufficiently, who said, “Why, that was very poetic, Eugenia,” albeit with another of her condescending smiles.

Thornton smiled too, though not at Eugenia.

His interest had returned to Sir Frederick and his young companion.

“Our newly returned baronet is a challenge,” he murmured.

“I have a niece who has quite lost her heart to him. Her mama—my sister—has implored me to keep her out of his sights, even though I’ve reassured her that Sir Frederick will be no threat if he remains true to his proclivity for tiny, vivacious blonde damsels.

My niece, Emma, you see, is chestnut-haired. ”

“Well, then, your sister has no need to worry.”