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didn’t wish to go.
    Like this one.
    “Enlighten me.” He crossed to a small side table, poured another snifter of brandy, and after a moment, took the decanter of sherry and poured his sister a measure of it. At first he thought she would refuse the goblet, but then she accepted it with trembling fingers.
    “Thank you.” She didn’t drink but just stared at her glass, her face slightly averted.
    “In return tell me why we are here.”
    “They don’t need to hear it.”
    “I assume you mean Carole and Betsy. . . . Why?”
    Lily glanced up, her pallor noticeable. “You must be discreet because I have not been. My scandal was bad enough. They will not fare well in society if our family endures another one. If you haven’t heard of it already, you will. They know some of it, of course, because everyone knows, but I am not sure if they understand how my notoriety will affect them.”
    What was so poignant, he discovered, was that she meant it. She was all of two and twenty. Did she not realize that at her age, all matters seemed catastrophic when in truth few were? Life went on. He might only be seven years older, but he’d learned that lesson.
    “I am perishing from curiosity to discover,” he said in lazy contemplation, “what a proper English lady like yourself might have done to supposedly humiliate her family.”
    There was only a minute’s hesitation. “I spent the night with Viscount Sebring.” Lily glanced up, her blue eyes dark but her gaze direct. Her chin lifted. “He refused to marry me.”
    Perhaps the most peculiar part of this conversation was that Jonathan experienced a murderous urge to make this heretofore unknown nobleman—though the man’s nobility was questionable, considering the content of the current conversation—accountable for apparently ruining his sister’s life. It wasn’t pathos on her part either, for he’d been subjected to that before by emotional females and he could tell from the way Lily held herself that his help would not be welcomed. It was more just a curious sense of duty over what he’d previously thought would not engage him.
    He was, he found, quite engaged. Involved. The look in her eyes alone would move any person with even a modicum of compassion, and he was her brother.
    Good God, he was her brother . For his whole life that had been an abstract concept, but at this moment, with her trembling body sitting on the edge of the chair in the room that used to belong to their father, the impact of his position was real. Lily had no one to protect her except him.
    “He refused to marry the daughter of an earl? That is hard to believe. Tell me what happened.” Jonathan sat down. His height was imposing and he knew it and he very much wanted his answer.
    “It was an accident.” Her voice was low.
    “What you mean is he planned it and you accidentally fell into the trap. Go on.”
    “You don’t know him.” That brought her head up and her gaze was defiant. “Besides, as I understand it, you might have something in common with him. At least in our case there was no child.”
    She still defended this man. That was interesting. Jonathan ignored the jibe about the circumstances of his daughter’s birth. He was aware of the rumor that he had not played the gentleman and had declined to marry Adela’s mother. “He ruined you, and then refused to follow an honorable course. Is there something else I need to know?” His inquiry was polite but to the point. He was surprised to a certain extent that James hadn’t told him, but his potentially lethal reaction might be just exactly why. It did anger him. “Introduce us so he and I can discuss this in person.”
    “There’s no need for that.”
    “It seems to me there is.”
    “How do you know it was his fault?”
    The question silenced him. She was right; he couldn’t be sure. He didn’t know her well enough to judge.
    She went on coolly, “We are not talking about me, but about our sisters’ upcoming