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she had no intention of attending the wedding. But Westcliff knew that it would hurt his sister’s feelings terribly, and so he forced his mother to stay, and furthermore, he made her put on a civil face about it.”
    “Really?” Daisy glanced at her with a curious half smile. “I wonder how he did that?”
    “By being the master of the house. Back in America the woman is the ruler of the home, but in England everything revolves around the man.”
    “Hmm. I don’t like that much.”
    “Yes, I know.” Lillian paused before adding darkly, “According to Annabelle, the English husband has to give his approval of the menus, the furniture arrangement, the color of the window hangings…
    everything.”
    Daisy looked surprised and appalled. “Does Mr. Hunt bother with such things?”
    “Well, no—he’s not a peer. He’s a professional man. And men of business don’t usually have time for such trivialities. But your average peer has much time in which to examine every little thing that goes on in the house.”
    Leaving off her rock kicking, Daisy regarded Lillian with a frown. “I’ve been wondering… why are we so determined to marry into the peerage, and live in a huge crumbly old house and eat slimy English food, and try to give instructions to a bunch of servants who have absolutely no respect for us?”

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    “Because it’s what Mother wants,” Lillian replied dryly. “And because no one in New York will have either of us.” It was an unfortunate fact that in the highly striated New York society, men with newly earned fortunes found it quite easy to marry well. But heiresses with common bloodlines were desired neither by the established blue bloods nor by the nouveau riche men who wanted to better themselves socially. Therefore, husband hunting in Europe, where upper-class men needed rich wives, was the only solution.
    Daisy’s frown twisted into an ironic grin. “What if no one will have us here either?”
    “Then we’ll become a pair of wicked old spinsters, romping back and forth across Europe.”
    Daisy laughed at the notion and flipped a long braid over her back. It was improper for young women of their age to walk about hatless, much less with their hair hanging down. However, both of the Bowman sisters had such a wealth of heavy dark locks that it was an ordeal to pin it all up in the intricate coiffures that were so fashionable. It required at least three racks of pins for each of them, and Lillian’s sensitive scalp literally ached after all the tugging and twisting required to make her hair presentable for a formal evening. More than once she had envied Annabelle Hunt, who had light, silky locks that always seemed to behave exactly as she wished them to. At the moment Lillian had tied her hair at the nape of the neck and allowed it to fall down her back in a style that never would have been allowed in company.
    “How are we going to persuade Westcliff to make his mother act as our sponsor?” Daisy asked. “It seems very unlikely that he would ever agree to do such a thing.”
    Drawing back her arm, Lillian flung the stick far into the woods, and brushed the flecks of bark from her palms. “I have no idea,” she admitted. “Annabelle has tried to get Mr. Hunt to ask him on our behalf, but he refuses on the grounds that it would be an abuse of their friendship.”
    “If only we could compel Westcliff in some way,” Daisy mused. “Trick him, or blackmail him, somehow.”
    “You can only blackmail a man if he’s done something shameful that he wants to hide. And I doubt that stodgy, boring old Westcliff has ever done anything that’s worthy of blackmail.”
    Daisy chuckled at the description. “He’s not stodgy, boring, or even that old!”
    “Mother says he’s at least thirty-five. I’d say that is fairly old, wouldn’t you?”
    “I’ll wager that most men in their twenties aren’t nearly as fit as