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across her knuckles. Just then, Aiden strolled through the open doorway.
    Turning, Charles introduced the new arrival. “Lindsay, this is my friend, Aiden Evers. Aiden, this is Miss Beaumont.”
    “It is a pleasure to see you again, Miss Beaumont,” Aiden stated, bending over her hand.
    “Likewise,” she flushed an even brighter hue.
    “So, you know one another, well?” Charles asked, surprised.
    “Ms. Beaumont favored me with a dance in London this season. A pity we were unable to make further acquaintance.”
    “Yes, a pity,” drolled Charles, offering Lindsay his arm as they strolled toward the spacious green sitting room that Lindsay’s grandmother used to receive larger groups of visitors. Avoiding Charles, Lindsay slipped her hand into Aiden’s elbow and turned a smiling face to his query.
    “I believe we are late in arriving. I hope we have not delayed any activities?”
    “Nonsense,” replied Lindsay, her mind over taxed by the sexual aura of the two towering men at her flanks. She struggled to keep her voice light. “You know very well that country hours are not strictly abided to during house parties. Dinner is not until eight. You have a good half hour of visiting before you’ll need to head up to your rooms to freshen up.”
    “In that case,” sighed Charles, “perhaps we should have arrived a few minutes later.”
    “Try to contain your enthusiasm, dear Charles. You, see,” explained Aiden, turning to Lindsay, “Charles has come to make the further acquaintance of his future meal tic-I mean bride, Miss Charlotte Reynolds.”
    “Oh,” Lindsay replied, trying to make sense of her chaotic emotions. “I knew that the Reynolds were invited but I was unaware that they had accepted...”
    “Oh, they had decided not to come but changed their minds at the last moment, when they learned that the newly returned, Baronet, Sir Charles planned to attend.”
    “How flattering,” Lindsay quipped. “It seems you have yet again lent me, that is to say, my family, an aura of acceptability.” Her words were cold, leaving little question as to her feelings of resentment on the matter. Aiden paused at the entrance to the salon and searched Lindsay’s face, hoping to locate the cause of her new and unsettled mood.
    “Forgive me,” smiled Aiden, as if goaded into a dazzling grin. “It was not my intention to lure the lady out of her lair. I had, in truth, invited Charles here so that he might avoid the endless musicales and lectures that Miss Reynolds had snared him into. At which point she, master of evasion herself, quickly ‘remembered’ that she too was engaged, and at the same event, no less.”
    “As I know, Miss Beaumont, that there is no love lost between you and Miss Reynolds, I shall offer my apologies and hope that our stay, and hers, will cause you as little trouble as possible.”
    Nodding decisively, the normally blunt Lindsay determined to be a gracious hostess, no matter that her carefully constructed reserve seemed to be crumbling about her once more. Pasting her best debutante’s smile between peaked cheeks, she strolled into the salon, clutching a bit too tightly to Aiden’s arm.
    ~ ~ ~
    Lindsay quickly discovered, through a whispered conversation with her grandmother, that Charlotte, the gossip monger herself, would not be attending until tomorrow, but would then be sleeping over, in a room with the other unmarried young women. “Why ever did you not decide to tell me of this?” hissed Lindsay, with a sickly sweet smile upon her face.
    “Precisely because of the stress you are now experiencing,” retorted Eleanor, smiling sweetly and patting her granddaughter’s arm in the same attempt to portray a benign and pleasing conversation to possible observers. “I only just received word of their imminent arrival this afternoon and saw no reason to distress you with the news until absolutely necessary. There is no way for us to plan or prepare for what pitfalls their visit may