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prospective marital felicity. Lord Roxbury, who did not similarly flatter himself, regarded her rather warily. Jynx raised limpid eyes to his face.
    “Come, Jessamyn!” Eulalia saw an opportunity in which to further spread her poison. “The gentlemen will not require your presence.”
    “Ah!” said the viscount, who made a formidable opponent. “But the gentlemen do.” Jynx regarded rather wistfully the tanned fingers that clasped her wrist. This rare melancholy was not prompted by such physical intimacy—Lord Roxbury had, during the years of their association, clasped this and various other portions of Miss Lennox with fair regularity— but by a regret that she had ever received the wearisome note that rested with all the potential threat of explosive gunpowder in her sleeve.
    Eulalia goggled. The viscount, she decided, was a very great bit of an oddity. “But marriage portions!” she protested. “And settlements! You don’t want Jessamyn to hear about such things.”
    “Why not?” Lord Roxbury raised the gold-handled quizzing glass that hung on a black ribbon around his handsome neck, and utilized it to good effect. “Since it is Jessamyn who is being thusly disposed of, I think she might find the proceeding of interest.” He dropped the glass—having reduced Eulalia to glaring speechlessness—and studied his fiancée. “Would you, poppet?”
    “Rather!” Jynx would have welcomed any opportunity to delay a perusal of her letter. That illegible handwriting could have been scrawled only by one pen; and involvement with Cristin Ashley, in Jynx’s experience, invariably led her to strenuous exertions indeed.
    In high dudgeon, Eulalia swept from the room. Wonderfully strange, the affectionate manner in which the high-and-mighty Lord Roxbury regarded a mere dab of a girl. Strange, but to Eulalia’s advantage. Unaware that her phlegmatic niece was by her own, albeit unwilling, efforts about to land herself in a peck of trouble, Eulalia had conceived of a brilliant scheme.
     

Chapter Three
     
    Eulalia Wimple was not the only person to bewail the betrothal of Lord Roxbury to Miss Lennox; a positive dirge was underway within the walls of a certain red brick house in Portland Place.
    Adorée Blissington was in her drawing room, a rectangular chamber with an elegant coved ceiling, doorways of Italian Renaissance design, and walls hung with rich damask. The furnishings were of cane, boasted clever latticework, and were painted with classical subjects and floral designs.
    Lady Bliss lounged upon a two-back settee, with medallions painted in the Kauffman style. She was en déshabillé in a froth of ruffles and lace. Her hair was in artful disarray; her gray eyes were red-rimmed; and her elegant nose was buried in a lace-edged handkerchief.
    “Come, do not take on so!” said her gentleman companion, who was sprawled in a decidedly uncomfortable chair. “It’s not as if you didn’t expect to be given your congé.”
    “But one should weep on such occasions!” Lady Bliss briskly blew her nose. “One should love with utter abandon, and utter indifference to what people think and say. And it is very lowering to be cast aside like—like an old shoe!”
    “More fool you,” retorted the unappreciative gentleman. “Had you heeded my advice, you wouldn’t be in this fix. The next thing you know we’ll have an execution in the house, and Jews at the door filling up their carts, and the place overrun with bailiffs.”
    “Oh, don’t say so!” wailed Lady Bliss, regarding her brother with dismay. “You know very well that my creditors have begun to hound me in earnest—and I’m sure I’m not entirely to blame, even if I am a trifle careless about paying my bills. Nor should you scold me for it, Innis! You are very expensive, and I haven’t noticed that you’ve made the least attempt to economize!”
    Innis Ashley put forth no argument; in justice, he could not. Innis was, according to his detractors, the