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considerable, since the woman kept every cent she ever came by. Unless she found a way to take it with—”
    “She is not my Miss Kane.”
    Gwen anxiously added another lump of sugar to her tea. “But you will call on her as she requested?” And another lump. “Won’t you?”
    “Then you think I should consider accepting Miss Kane’s check? Fending off the fortune-hunters might prove difficult if what you say is true, but if the chit is at all presentable, it should not be too hard a piece of work to get her fired off.”
    Gwen took a sip of her tea, then set it aside with a grimace. Stony started to pour her a fresh cup as she answered, “No, dear, I do not think you should become Miss Kane’s paid escort. I think you should marry her.”
    The tea landed in his lap.

Chapter Three
    “Thunderation!” the viscount yelled, jumping up and grabbing for an extra napkin. “That is not funny, Gwen.”
    “I am not joking. That letter and the Kane heiress just might be opportunity knocking.”
    “Opportunity has knocked many times, and I have never yet opened that particular door. I see no reason to do so now, no matter how much gold waits on the other side.”
    “Well, I see a great many reasons not to let Miss Kane slip through your fingers. You are nearly thirty and not getting any younger, for one thing.”
    “That is two things. I am barely nine and twenty, and only you seem to have discovered the knack of subtracting years from your age instead of adding them.”
    “We are not discussing my age, thank you. Not at the breakfast table. But you…you have to marry eventually anyway.”
    “I do?”
    “Of course, as you well know, dearest. You have not been working so hard to restore Wellstone Park just so the Crown might claim it when you die with no male heirs. Why, you do not even have a distant cousin with any kind of claim. Not a prolific lot, the Wellstone ancestors, were they? At any rate, the only way to beget those heirs—legitimate ones, I will have you know—is by marrying a proper young woman. Of course, there was that lord who claimed his dead brother’s son as his heir when everyone knew the boy was his, but that is another story.”
    For once Stony did not mind Gwen’s digressions. She could have repeated every tale of every bastard born, with his blessings. Damn if she did not get straight back on course, though.
    “And since you need to marry sooner or later,” she persisted, “why not sooner, as Lord Charles decided to do?”
    “Charlie had other reasons for his betrothal, spiting his father being first among them. I have no such compunctions to wed for the sake of convenience.”
    “No such compunctions? What do you call a broken-down estate and all of those who depend on it for their livelihoods? Or that shipyard you speak of building, to make jobs? Or that home for unwed mothers I know you support, even while you preach economy to me? Why, we have not opened the guest rooms here in ages. I am still mortified to think of my cousin and his wife putting up at a hotel when we have—”
    “I shall not marry a woman for her money. Not ever.”
    “Fine, then you will marry for love, although I never supposed you to have a romantic bent like one of those poets. But, Aubrey, dearest, you have been squiring females of all types and temperaments for the past three years at least. Beautiful, intelligent, and talented girls among them…to say nothing of their dowries, which any sane man has to consider. Not even you could be such a nodcock as to ignore a bride’s portion. Could you? No, do not answer that.”
    He did not, pretending to inspect his trousers for tea stains. Gwen went on: “Not a one of those females has caught your fancy. If you do not choose a bride soon you are liable to settle into a lonely old bachelorhood. Or else you’ll wait till you are quite old, then marry a girl barely out of the schoolroom, as your father did the second time, making a May game of his