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defending her?” Percival demanded, the expression in his blue eyes clearly aghast.
    Ives smiled and shook his head. “No. I am just saying that there might have been a good reason for her to have taken a shot at the departed Marlowe.”
    â€œWell, that may be,” Percival replied, slightly ruffled by Ives’s reaction to Lady Marlowe’s sins, “but surely you see why she is not a woman that you would care to know more intimately.”
    At that moment, almost as if she sensed that she was the topic of the conversation taking place in the small alcove, Lady Marlowe glanced in their direction. As her clear, golden stare moved curiously over him, Ives felt as if he had been struck by a thunderbolt. Every nerve in his body tingled as their gazes met and held.
    She was exquisite. Her features had been fashioned by a master hand, the tip-tilted nose, the high brow and delicately sculpted mouth blending perfectly with the determined little chin and stubborn jaw. No simpering damsel here, he decided, as he stared boldly back at her. Not with that jaw and chin. Yes, he could believe that she had shot at her husband. Might even have murdered him, if Percival was to be believed. And she was Jane’s daughter.
    His reasons for being in London, for being here tonight instantly vanished. He was after something else at the moment. Something that had waited a long time. Something that had eaten at him and fashioned him into the man he had become. Even after all these years, the hunger for revenge for Robert’s suicide was not dead in his breast. It did not matter that she was merely the daughter of the woman who had caused the death of his brother. What suddenly mattered was that Jane was beyond his reach . . . but her daughter was not.
    And if her past was anything to go by, she was not going to be the type of weak, innocent creature who might cause him guilt for what had just occurred to him. He was, he admitted unashamedly, going to thoroughly enjoy wreaking vengeance on the already infamous Lady Marlowe.
    His fierce gaze never dropping from hers, Ives touched Percival’s arm once more. “Introduce us,” he said again, the note in his voice making Percival glance sharply at him.
    â€œOh, no,” Percival said, “I am not going to be a part of seeing you make a fool of yourself. Find somebody else to help you make a cake of yourself.”
    Ives’s eyes dropped to him. And he smiled, a smile that made Percival distinctly uneasy. “I have no intention of making Lady Marlowe my bride. But I suddenly have a yearning to meet this remarkable young woman . . . dear Jane’s daughter.”
    Percival jerked and stared at him appalled. “You mean to punish her for what Jane did?” When Ives’s dark head dipped arrogantly in assent, Percival said, “That is the most ridiculously idiotic idea you have had in a very long time. I hold no fondness for her or her mother, but she is not responsible for what happened to Robert.”
    Ives sent him a bland look. “Indeed not,” he agreed, “but there is an interesting passage in the Bible, something about ‘the sins of the fathers being visited upon the children’—or in this case, the sins of the mother. Now are you going to introduce me to her, or must I find someone else to do it?”
    â€œOh, damn and blast! I knew I never should have allowed Aunt Margaret to bully me into coming here. Come along then, if you are determined to make a fool of yourself.” Percival shook a finger at Ives. “Just do not blame me for what happens.”
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    Sophy was enjoying herself, or enjoying herself as much as she did at any of these gatherings. She had not wanted to come tonight, but Marcus, unexpectedly in the throes of his first calf love, had begged her to accompany him so that his attendance at such a stuffy event would not be so obvious. She smiled. At nineteen, Marcus had grown up into an