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simply relinquishing their valuables, I will never understand. But it is your good fortune that they did and were shot. This is a perfect opportunity for you, my love, and will enable you to hold your head high in society again.”
    “Again? She never had to hang her head,” Sir Clarence said sharply, frowning at his wife. “That dashed Wrayburn! He thought to cut our Henrietta in the middle of a crowded ballroom. Well, she showed him!”
    Sophia had not been present at that particular ball. She had never been present at
any
ball for that matter. But she had been in London, and she had pieced together what she believed to be the real story about Henrietta and the Marquess of Wrayburn. When Henrietta and her mama had approached him at the Stiles ball, he had turned his back and pretended not to see them coming, making a loud remark to his group to the effect that it was sometimes near impossible to avoid determined mamas and their pathetic daughters.
    After Henrietta had spent half an hour in the ladies’ withdrawing room with her mama, where the latter had had to be plied with smelling salts and brandy, she had emerged in order to slink off home—several people had heard that remark, and doubtless by then
everyone
knew of it—and had the misfortune to come face to face with the marquess himself. To her credit, she had stuck her nose in the air and asked her mother if she knew the source of that nasty odor. Unfortunately for her, because it might well have been a splendid set-down, the marquess and his cronies had seen fit to find her remark uproariously funny, and doubtless the whole ballroom found it hilarious within a quarter of an hour.
    Sophia had felt
almost
sorry for her cousin that night. Indeed, if Henrietta had told the full truth of the incident—which Sophia learned from listening to the servants—she might have felt all the way sorry for her, at least for a while.
    “I shall call at Covington House without further delay,” Sir Clarence said, getting to his feet after consulting his pocket watch, “before anyone else gets there first. I daresay that bore of a vicar will be there before luncheon with one of his speeches and that fool of a Waddell woman will be there with her welcoming committee.”
    And you will be there,
the mouse commented silently,
to offer your daughter in marriage.
    “I shall invite him for dinner,” Sir Clarence announced. “Have a talk with the cook, Martha. Make sure she puts on something special this evening.”
    “But what does one serve a
blind
man?” his wife asked, looking dismayed.
    “Papa.” Henrietta’s voice was trembling. “You cannot expect me to marry a blind man with no face. You cannot expect me to marry
Vincent Hunt
. Not after the way he always played the most atrocious tricks on you.”
    “Boyish high spirits,” her father said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Listen to me, Henrietta. You have just been presented with this wonderful opportunity as if on a platter. It is as if we were brought home early from London for just this purpose. We will have him here this evening, and we will look him over. He won’t be able to see us doing it, after all, will he?”
    He looked pleased with his little joke, though he did not laugh. Sir Clarence March rarely did. He was too puffed up with his own consequence, Sophia thought with unrepentant malice.
    “If he passes muster,” Sir Clarence continued, “then you will have him, Henrietta. This year was your third Season in London, my girl. Your
third
. And somehow, though not through any fault of your own, it is true, you lost your chance for a baron the first year, an earl the second, and a marquess this year. A Season does not come cheap. And you do not grow younger. And pretty soon, if it has not happened already, you are going to be known as the young lady who cannot keep a suitor when she has one. Well, my girl, we will show them.”
    He beamed at his wife and daughter—and ignored the mouse—and