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I wish I could have listened.”
    They laughed together again. Perhaps she
had
overreacted, Susanna thought. Perhaps she would not have judged him quite so severely if he had been introduced to her as Viscount Jones or Viscount Smith or anything but Viscount
Whitleaf
.
    â€œAnyway,” she said, “I have always said that I will hold out for a duke or nobody. I believe a mere viscount must count as nobody.”
    They both chuckled at the absurdity of her words. A
mere
viscount, indeed!
    â€œCome along to my sitting room with me,” Frances said, “and we will order up some tea and have a comfortable coze until the visitors have gone away. It was rather a long walk on such a warm day, was it not? I am thirsty again. But it felt
so
good to stretch my legs. I have done enough sitting in a carriage during the last few months to last me for the next year at the very least.”
    Susanna followed her to the small sitting room of the private apartments she shared with the earl and sank into a comfortable brocaded easy chair while Frances pulled on the bell rope to summon a servant.
    But Frances had not finished with the topic of the viscount.
    â€œOf course,” she said, “you are quite right to be wary of Viscount Whitleaf, who is well known for having an eye for beauty but who may not have realized at first that you are far too intelligent to respond gladly to empty flirtation and dalliance. You are certainly wise not to be dazzled by him. But, Susanna, there has to be someone out there who is just perfect for you. I firmly believe it. And I
so
want to see you contentedly settled in life. Mr. Birney, our vicar, was new here just before we left for Europe and so I do not know him well. But he is pleasing to look at and has refined manners and is unattached—at least he was six months ago. And he cannot be a day over thirty, if he is that. Then there is Mr. Finn, a gentleman farmer, Lucius’s tenant. He is earnest and thrifty and worthy and quite personable in appearance. But I believe you met him last time you were here.”
    â€œI did,” Susanna said, her eyes twinkling. “I believe he is sweet on the eldest Miss Calvert.”
    â€œYou may be right,” Frances admitted. “But I am not yet convinced she is sweet on him. Well, let us dismiss him just in case she is—or just in case he is not heart-free. There is also Mr. Dannen. He owns his own property and is in possession of a modest fortune, I believe. Certainly he appears to be comfortably well off. You have not met him. He was away the last time you were here—in Scotland, I believe. He is short in stature—but then so are you. Otherwise he is well enough favored. Of course, he is—”
    â€œFrances!” Susanna interrupted her, laughing. “You do not have to matchmake for me.”
    â€œOh, but I do.” Frances sat on a love seat facing her friend’s chair after giving her order to the housekeeper, and gazed earnestly at her. “You and Claudia and Anne are still my dearest female friends, Susanna, and I fervently wish for you all to be as well settled and contented as I am. Surely there must be enough unattached gentlemen in this neighborhood for all of you.”
    Susanna laughed again, even more merrily, and after a moment Frances joined in.
    â€œWell, for
one
of you anyway,” she said. “I cannot seriously imagine Claudia ever marrying, can you? And Anne is so attached to David that I daresay she would be unwilling to risk subjecting him to a stepfather who might mistreat him.”
    David Jewell was an illegitimate child, Anne never having been married.
    â€œSo I am the one?” Susanna said.
    â€œAnd so you are the one,” Frances said, reaching for both her hands and squeezing them tightly. “You are so
very
pretty, Susanna, and so sweet-natured. It seems unfair that fate landed you in a girls’ school at the age of twelve and has kept you there