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parents had been avoiding her since her father had returned from luncheon, she wasn’t surprised when her mother’s footsteps retreated in the direction of the stairs.
    She sniffed. Good . It was certainly easier to be indignant and angry than to sit back and consider what lay before her. How lovely to know that in her family’s eyes she could finally serve a purpose. In a sense, though, she was glad that it hadn’t been Beatrice sent headlong into this mess; her sister could barely tolerate anyone looking at her crosswise. She would certainly be no match for Cosgrove.
    The door shook again. “Rose?”
    James . With a grimace she stood, gesturing for her white kid gloves. Yesterday her brother’s carelessness had only annoyed and appalled her. Now his actions seemed almost criminal. And he would of course be theone who escaped any consequences. Taking a breath, she pulled open her door.
    Her brother blinked and took a step backward. “There you are. Thought maybe you were going to hide all night.”
    “I haven’t done anything for which I need to hide.” She looked him directly in the eyes, trying to decide when his youthful obliviousness had gone from amusing to exasperating. She was unsurprised when he quickly averted his gaze. “Do you feel any responsibility at all for the mess you’ve made for this family? For me?”
    Her younger sibling frowned. “Father mishandled the situation,” he muttered, falling in behind her as she descended the stairs. “He should have let me talk with Cosgrove. He’s my crony, and I could have played him for the blunt. I’m nearly unbeatable at faro. He’s told me so himself.”
    “James, you owe him more than the value of this house. Clearly you are not unbeatable at faro. I daresay I could play the game better than you do. At the least I would have stopped when I began losing.”
    “If you stop when you’re behind, you’ll never recover your losses.”
    “Idiot.”
    “You can’t talk like that to me, Rose,” he snapped. “I’m not fifteen any longer.”
    “No, you’re eighteen. And you’re behaving like a two-year-old.”
    “That is not so,” he stated. “And I don’t know why your hackles are up, anyway. Cosgrove thinks you’re worth ten thousand quid. You’re the Queen of Sheba.”
    “If you think so highly of him, you marry him.”
    “You don’t even know him. He’s coming to the soiree tonight, and he don’t ever do that. He wants to see you.”
    A quiver of uneasiness slithered up her spine. “He wants to see me,” she repeated. “If he’d wanted to…court me, he might have called here and offered to take me driving. Not purchase me for the price of a gambling debt.”
    “Father got him to agree to wait until the end of the month to announce anything, so now he can take you driving. I daresay you might even decide that you like him.”
    That seemed extremely unlikely. As she reached the foyer, her father sent her a stern look and then led the way out to the waiting coach. None of them saw the true problem. Cosgrove might have agreed to forgive James’s debt, but in marrying her the marquis would secure a permanent position in her softheaded brother’s life. In all their lives. Ten thousand pounds could very well be nothing but an aperitif.
    Whatever Cosgrove’s plans, though, he’d miscalculated; he could insinuate himself into their lives, but at the same time she would be in the middle of his. And however angry she might be with her family at the moment, she was still a Davies. The one who kept them all in order. And she was not about to sit by and let them be ruined. Not if she had any say at all in the matter.
    She took her seat in the coach, perfectly resigned to sit in silence all the way to Clacton House. At the moment she preferred being left to stew, and imagining with some satisfaction how her parents meantto inform Mayfair at large that their daughter would be marrying a notorious blackguard after a month of supposed