LITMIR.BIZ

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and open books the top of it was quite obliterated. He looked up at her over the steel rim of his spectacles. He looked tired. ‘Well, child? Has he gone?’

      ‘Yes, Papa.’

      ‘And?’

      ‘I am not sure how I feel about him, Papa. I told him I would think about it.’

      ‘You are not still wearing the willow for that rakeshame cousin, are you?’

      ‘No, Papa, of course not.’

      ‘What have you got to think about then? Mr Allworthy comes of good stock and he is a scholar like myself and not a poseur, nor, for all he likes to live in the country, is he a mushroom. There is not a breath of scandal attached to him and he seems not to mind that you have no dowry to speak of.’

      ‘That is something I cannot understand, Papa. Why offer for me when I have nothing to bring to the marriage? He does not seem the kind of man to fall headlong in love; he is too controlled. So what is behind it?’

      ‘You are too modest, Jane. And what has falling in love done for you, except make you unhappy? Better make a good match and let the affection come later as you grow towards each other. That is what happened with me and your dear mama.’

      ‘I know, Papa,’ she said, smiling at him. ‘I will give Mr Allworthy an answer soon.’

      ‘See that you do, it is not fair to keep him dangling. Now, if you have no pressing engagement for the rest of this morning, I need some new pages copying.’ He held out a handful of sheets covered with his untidy scrawl, much of which had been crossed out and altered between the lines and up and down the margins. He had once had a secretary, but the poor man had been unable to make head or tail of the way Mr Hemingford worked and did not stay long. Only Jane could understand it because she had taken the trouble to do so.

      ‘Of course, Papa.’ She took the sheets to a table on the other side of the room and sat down to work, just as if she had not, only a few minutes before, received a proposal that could alter her whole life. Aunt Lane was busy making extravagant plans and her father had dismissed it as of little consequence. Both were wide of the mark. She needed to talk to Anne.

      Anne was Harry’s twin, but that made no difference; she was Jane’s oldest and dearest friend. Anne had been overjoyed when Harry and Jane announced their engagement and bitterly disappointed when Jane called it off. Several times she had tried to plead on Harry’s behalf. He had been foolish, she said, and it had cost him his reputation and his commission and caused an irreparable rift between him and their grandfather, the Earl of Bostock, whose heir he was, but it was unfair that it should also cost him Jane’s love, especially when he had only been thinking of their future together. Jane’s reaction was to quarrel with her friend so violently they had not spoken to each other for months.

      They had been rigidly polite when they met in company and that had been unbearable until one day, finding themselves in the same room and no one else present to carry on a conversation, they had felt obliged to speak to each other. And talking eased the tension. Having few other friends and certainly none that was close, Jane had missed Anne, and it was not long before they had buried the hatchet, but only on Anne’s promise never again to mention Harry and what had happened.

      When she told Mr Allworthy that she had an engagement that afternoon, nothing had been arranged, but she must have known, in the back of her mind, that she would go to see Anne. News as stupendous as this needed sharing.

      Although she could have borrowed her aunt’s carriage the Earl of Bostock’s London mansion was just off Cavendish Square, near enough for her to reach it on foot. The Earl was extremely old and rarely left Sutton Park, his country home in Lincolnshire, but Anne, who had made her home with him ever since both parents had been killed in a coaching accident when she and Harry were very young, had come up for the Season, as she did every year. The amusements on offer afforded her a little light relief from being at her grandfather’s beck and call, gave her the opportunity to renew her wardrobe and spend some time with Jane. His lordship did not deem it necessary to surround her with retainers and so, apart from the usual household servants, she lived with her maid-companion, a middle-aged sycophant called Amelia Parker.

      Jane had no qualms about coming across Harry while visiting her friend because he had left the country almost immediately after the scandal. If Anne knew where he was, she had never told Jane, perhaps because Jane had assured her she did not want to know and would not even speak of him.

      She was admitted by a footman and conducted to the drawing room where Anne was dispensing tea to a bevy of matrons who seemed to think that just because she had no mother, it was their duty to call on her and give her the benefit of their advice, notwithstanding she was twenty-four years old and perfectly able to conduct her own affairs. ‘Such a dutiful gel,’ they murmured among themselves. ‘She is devoted to that old man and stayed in the country to look after him when that scapegrace shamed him and ruined her own chances doing it. Now she is too old. We must go and bear her company.’ Anne knew perfectly well what they said and often laughed about it to Jane, but there was a little hollowness in the laughter.

      She came forward when Jane was announced and held out both her hands. ‘Jane, my dear, how lovely to see you.’ She reached forward to kiss her cheek and added in a whisper, ‘Give me a few minutes to get rid of these antidotes and I shall be free to talk.’ She drew Jane forward. ‘Do you know everyone? Lady Grant, Lady Cowper, Mrs Archibald and her daughter, Fanny?’

      ‘Indeed, yes.’ Jane bent her knee to each of them and asked them how they did, but though they were polite and asked after her father, they had no real interest in her doings and the conversation ground to a halt. Not long after that, they gathered up parasols, gloves and reticules and departed.

      ‘Now,’ Anne said, as soon as the door had closed on them. ‘I shall order more tea and we may sit down for a comfortable coze.’ She turned to ring the bell for the maid, then took Jane’s hand and drew her to sit beside her on the sofa. ‘You look a trifle agitated, my dear, has something happened to upset you?’

      ‘Not upset exactly. I have received an offer of marriage.’

      ‘Oh.’ There was a little silence after that, as if Anne was cogitating how to answer her. ‘Who is the lucky man?’

      ‘Mr Donald Allworthy.’

      ‘Goodness, not that sti—’ She stopped suddenly.

      Jane laughed. ‘That stiff-rump, is that what you were going to say?’

      ‘Well, he is a little pompous.’

      ‘Only if you count good manners and courtesy as pomposity. And I am sure he is very sincere when he says he has a high regard for me.’

      ‘Oh, Jane, you are never thinking of accepting him?’

      ‘I have said I will consider it.’

      ‘But, my dear, you can’t, you simply cannot.’

      ‘Why not? I should like very much to be married.’

      ‘But not to Donald Allworthy.’

      ‘No one else has offered.’

      ‘You know that is not true. You would have been married by now, if—’

      ‘Please, Anne, do not speak of the past. It is dead and buried, along with my dreams. I must be practical. Papa is becoming tired and increasingly frail and I know I must be a great burden to him. Besides, Aunt Lane has taken so much trouble.’

      ‘You surely would not agree to marry someone you do not love simply not to disappoint your aunt. That is the very worst reason I can think of for marrying anyone.’

      ‘Of course it is not that, or not only that. I do not want to be an old maid, Anne.’

      ‘You are four years younger than me, there is still time for you.’

      ‘Oh, I am sorry, I did not mean—’ Jane broke off in confusion.

      Anne laughed. ‘No,

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