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beyond annoying. He was the only person (aside from her sisters) who had managed to infuriate her so much that she’d had to literally hold her hands down to keep from smacking him.
    She had never been so angry as she had that night. . . .

Chapter Two

    How They Met
    (the way she remembers it)
    A London ballroom, celebrating the engagement of Mr. Charles Dunwoody to Miss Nerissa Berbrooke
    Sixteen months earlier
    “D o you think Mr. St. Clair is handsome?”
    Sarah didn’t bother to turn toward Honoria as she asked the question. She was too busy watching Mr. St. Clair, trying to decide what she thought of him. She’d always favored men with tawny hair, but she wasn’t so sure she liked the queue he wore in the back. Did it make him look like a pirate, or did it make him look as if he was trying to look like a pirate?
    There was an enormous difference.
    “Gareth St. Clair?” Honoria queried. “Do you mean Lady Danbury’s grandson?”
    That yanked Sarah’s eyes right back to Honoria’s. “He’s not!” she said with a gasp.
    “Oh, he is. I’m quite sure of it.”
    “Well, that takes him right off my list,” Sarah said with no hesitation whatsoever.
    “Do you know, I admire Lady Danbury,” Honoria said. “She says exactly what she means.”
    “Which is precisely why no woman in her right mind would want to marry a member of her family. Good heavens, Honoria, what if one had to live with her?”
    “You have been known to be somewhat forthright yourself,” Honoria pointed out.
    “Be that as it may,” Sarah said, which was as far as she would go toward agreement, “I am no match for Lady Danbury.” She glanced back at Mr. St. Clair. Pirate or aspiring pirate? She supposed it didn’t matter, not if he was related to Lady Danbury.
    Honoria patted her arm. “Give yourself time.”
    Sarah turned toward her cousin with a flat, sarcastic stare. “How much time? She’s eighty if she’s a day.”
    “We all need something to which to aspire,” Honoria demurred.
    Sarah could not forestall a roll of her eyes. “Has my life become so pathetic that my aspirations must be measured in decades rather than years?”
    “No, of course not, but . . .”
    “But what?” Sarah asked suspiciously when Honoria did not complete her thought.
    Honoria sighed. “Will we find husbands this year, do you think?”
    Sarah couldn’t bring herself to form a verbal answer. A doleful look was all she could manage.
    Honoria returned the expression in kind, and in unison, they sighed. Tired, worn-out, when-will-this-be-over sighs.
    “We are pathetic,” Sarah said.
    “We are,” Honoria agreed.
    They watched the ballroom for a few more moments, and then Sarah said, “I don’t mind it tonight, though.”
    “Being pathetic?”
    Sarah glanced over at her cousin with a cheeky smile. “Tonight I have you.”
    “Misery loves company?”
    “That’s the funny thing,” Sarah said, feeling her brow knit into a quizzical expression. “Tonight I’m not even miserable.”
    “Why, Sarah Pleinsworth,” Honoria said with barely suppressed humor, “that might be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
    Sarah chuckled, but still she asked, “Shall we be spinsters together, old and wobbly at the annual musicale?”
    Honoria shuddered. “I am fairly certain that is not the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me. I do love the musicale, but—”
    “You don’t!” Sarah just barely resisted the urge to clap her hands over her ears. No one could love that musicale.
    “I said I loved the musicale,” Honoria clarified, “not the music.”
    “How, pray tell, are they different? I thought I might perish —”
    “Oh, Sarah,” Honoria scolded. “Don’t exaggerate.”
    “I wish it were an exaggeration,” Sarah muttered.
    “I thought it was great fun practicing with you and Viola and Marigold. And next year will be even better. We shall have Iris with us to play the cello. Aunt Maria told me that Mr. Wedgecombe is mere