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would have been for you always to be wondering what sort of a fix we had got into without you here to put things right! And life here would have been very dull indeed,” she added with a teasing look.
    The old lady smiled back at her, and Lady St. Merryn said testily, “Just you wait, Aunt Ophelia, until Daintry is finally married, and see if she don’t change like Susan did, and like I did myself, for that matter. I am persuaded I was quite a lively girl before my come-out, but marriage is a sobering business, as you might not realize yourself, never having been asked.”
    Daintry looked swiftly back at her great-aunt, thinking the old lady would take offense; but, seeing that she was struggling to keep from smiling, Daintry relaxed.
    Lady Ophelia said, “It was certainly not from lack of being asked, Letty, but if you are trying to tell me that I ought to have married, I simply cannot agree with you.”
    Lady St. Merryn tossed her head like the pettish beauty she clearly once had been. “I am sure I should not be so impertinent as to tell you what you ought to have done, ma’am, but to be telling married ladies how things ought to be when you have no experience of the married state is rather the outside of enough.”
    “One needn’t always experience something to understand that it would be bad for one,” Lady Ophelia said, “and having discovered quite early on in life that I had practically no respect whatsoever for men, it would have been unconscionable of me to pretend to submit both my mind and body to the direction of one of the creatures, do you not agree?”
    “It would be most unbecoming in me to agree to any such thing,” Lady St. Merryn said, leaning back against her cushion. She looked at Daintry. “You will find, my dear, that once you are Viscountess Penthorpe your ways will have to change, for no gentleman will tolerate for long having his opinions challenged by a female, and you are far too likely to do that very thing. Your father has told you, and I tell you now, that to go on as you have become accustomed will soon lead to your undoing.”
    Daintry grimaced, thinking again as she had so frequently thought since the day her father had commanded her to cease her foolishness and agree to marry a man she had never met, that the road ahead was fraught with peril. Certain that she was bound to say something she would regret if she remained in the room much longer, she said that she ought to send word to the stables to have horses saddled for herself and the little girls just as soon as the weather cleared. Neither Lady Ophelia nor Lady St. Merryn made any objection, and when Daintry closed the door of the morning room behind her, she breathed a sigh of relief.
    Deciding she might as well walk down to the stables herself rather than send a footman, she went to her bedchamber to collect her red-wool hooded cloak. Flinging it around her shoulders and drawing on a pair of York tan gloves, she returned to the gallery and was approaching the right wing of the graceful, divided stairway that swooped down into the massive front hall, when her father came out of his library and the hall porter swung open the heavy front door to reveal a visitor, a tall, broad-shouldered gentleman in an elegant, many-caped gray driving cloak.
    His gleaming Hessian boots seemed to belie the dampness outside as he stepped across the threshold onto the black-and-white marble floor and doffed his beaver hat, revealing a ruggedly handsome face and a head of thick auburn hair.
    “Upon my word,” St. Merryn exclaimed, hurrying to greet him, “it’s Penthorpe, is it not? By heaven, lad, I’d recognize you anywhere with that head of hair, though damme, it’s darkened a good bit since last I saw you. “You can’t have been more than ten at the time, so that is not to be wondered at. Come in, come in. You are Penthorpe, are you not? Confess it, man. You’ve come at last to claim my daughter, and not before time, I can tell