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manage the
estates that were now his responsibility.
    And, what was more, he would make a better job of it than
either of his self-indulgent brothers could have done.
    ‘So… You are saying that you sympathise with my plight because
you know what it feels like to be pushed into marrying when you don’t really
want to?’
    ‘Something like that,’ he said with a hard smile, continuing,
‘I certainly admire the fact that you have not allowed your head to be turned by
all the flattering attention you attract. From what I observed last night, one
would expect you to be hanging out for a duke, or at the very least a marquess.’
That was probably what Berry had assumed when she made it obvious she was not
interested in any of the men who’d tried to get her to dance. ‘You have half the
male population of London at your feet, and yet you have set your heart on a man
with no rank and few prospects.’
    She was not cold and proud at all, or she couldn’t have rushed
headlong into such an inappropriate relationship.
    He turned towards her to make his next point, to find her
looking up at him, wide-eyed, and his breath caught in his throat.
Cornflower-blue. The exact shade to round off the perfection of her
features.
    Damnation.
    He’d half hoped that he would be able to detect some flaw upon
seeing her in broad daylight. She had, after all, been on the far side of the
ballroom the night before. And everyone knew candlelight was particularly
flattering. And then in the park it had been so dark he might well have imagined
her beauty was far beyond that which really existed. But here they were, their
faces mere inches away, and her utter perfection had just literally taken his
breath away.
    ‘Your Harry…Lieutenant Kendell…must be so dazzled by you,’ he
eventually managed to grate, ‘that he has completely lost his head.’
    And perhaps that really was the
truth. Perhaps he was no fortune-hunter at all. With those big blue eyes, that
glorious mane of golden curls and that utterly kissable little mouth, she was
capable of ensnaring just about any man she set her sights on. If she had given
the lowly lieutenant the least bit of encouragement, she might easily have
enslaved him.
    But she wasn’t going to enslave him. He whipped his gaze away from her mouth to glare at a hapless
matron whose own barouche happened to be passing theirs. He was not going to
allow this attraction, no matter how strong, to deflect him from his primary
objective. Which was to marry a paragon of some kind.
    He was not only going to learn how to manage his estates to the
admiration of his peers, he was going to marry a woman who would excite envy and
admiration. Not a girl whose very nature meant she was bound to teeter
permanently on the brink of one scandal or another.
    ‘Um… Actually…’ She faltered on the verge of confessing the
truth. He had just said he admired the way she was not hanging out for a man
with a grand title. It was so rarely she heard any praise for anything she did
that she was loath to admit she didn’t deserve even that.
    Not that she did think people
should attempt to marry for social advancement.
    ‘I believe that people should only marry for love,’ she
declared.
    ‘I might have guessed,’ he said, so scathingly her temper
flared up all over again.
    Her own family had been quite needlessly torn apart when her
aunt Aurora had eloped with a man the Earl of Caxton had decided was beneath
her, socially. Her grandfather would still not permit anyone to mention her
name. Which had, according to Josie, wounded her mother deeply. Yet the man with
whom she had eloped had been the son of a gentleman. There had been no need to
banish them both and forbid any communication between the sisters, surely?
    There had always been a sort of gaping hole in the family where
Aunt Aurora and her husband ought to have been round which they all had to
tiptoe. And she had long since come to the conclusion that her grandfather had
behaved