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fingers should be enough to claim his position in the world.
    Fortune would secure his welcome in this gathering. But Hester wondered how annoyed he would be to find that his late arrival had given Isabella the excuse she needed to avoid dancing with him.
    Reaching Mrs. Mayfield’s side, Mr. Letchworth sketched her a bow just as Sir Harrowby turned to hail a friend.
    Moving aside to let him pass, Hester returned to her place in time to hear Mr. Letchworth compliment her aunt on Isabella’s appearance this evening. He suggested that rubies would become her daughter very well. Mrs. Mayfield accepted these comments with all her usual pride but she could not hide her relish in informing him that Isabella’s dances had been claimed for the rest of the night. Seeing that neither he nor her aunt intended to include her in their conversation, Hester turned her attention to the dancers and missed witnessing his disappointment. A few moments later, she saw him retreating in the direction from which he had come.
    At that moment, Sir Harrowby bid his friend goodbye. Turning back, he noticed Hester and gave a start. “Ah, there you are, Miss Kean. I vow, you are so silent, ma’am, I had no idea you was here. What say you about that fellow who was just speaking to your aunt? Would you care to set your cap his way?” He giggled at his joke.
    Hester smothered her annoyance at hearing herself addressed as “miss” when politeness dictated that ladies both married and unmarried were to be called “Mrs.” Instead, she bestowed a tolerant smile on Sir Harrowby, whose intention was to include her in their speech as one of Isabella’s family, even if she was only a servant.
    “I think not, sir,” she said. “I am afraid Mr. Letchworth is too stern a gentleman for me.”
    Her aunt stepped between them, issuing a sharp snort of laughter. “Fie on you again, sir! Next, you will be turning my niece’s head with thoughts of my Lord St. Mars, as if his lordship and Mr. Letchworth was not both head over heels in love with my Isabella. I vow, the letters that gentleman writes are so hot with passion as to put her mama to the blush! Lucky for you, Miss Kean has no illusions about the nature of her own attractions, else your sport would be cruel indeed.”
    At her spiteful tone, Sir Harrowby gave a blink, before something she had said seemed to catch at his mind. “Do you mean to tell me, ma’am, that Mr. Letchworth has been courting Mrs. Isabella?”
    Hester’s aunt turned more playful. “Can you doubt it, Sir Harrowby? My Isabella has all the gentlemen wooing her.”
    “Zounds, madam! But that is infamous! What infernal impudence!”
    “I think I know what you are about, naughty sir! You would have all my daughter’s suitors passed on to someone else so that you could have a clear field for yourself.”
    She tapped him playfully on the arm. “Confess now, sir! That was what you was about. Lud, but you gentlemen are all alike where my daughter is concerned—playing off your tricks and making threats to cut each other out—but you cannot win her from me that way, and so I shall warn Isabella.” With a smirk, she spread a chicken-skin fan and fluttered it before her painted face.
    “I trust that you have given Mr. Letchworth a sense of the futility of his hopes,” Sir Harrowby said, raising his brows with a hint of offence.
    Since Mrs. Mayfield had done her best to do just that with respect to himself, he was not best pleased when she said, “Why, no, sir. It is not for me to be scaring off my daughter’s suitors, though I hardly need tell you that that particular gentleman is not on the list of my daughter’s favourites. Family as you are to my Lord St. Mars—”
    A movement near the door caught her eye. “Why, here he is at last! I wondered what was keeping his lordship, since he particularly asked my Isabella to save him a dance.”
    Hester turned reflexively, in time to see St. Mars give one quick glance about the room