“I am. That is why I came to see the charmer for myself.”
Lord Ormskirk sighed. “You have the mot juste, my dear Ravenscar, as always. Enchanting, is she not? There is—you will have noticed—a freshness, excessively grateful to a jaded palate.”
“She will do very well for the role you design for her,” said Mr Ravenscar, with a curl of his lip.
“Precisely. But these young men have such romantic notions! And marriage, you will allow, is a bait, Ravenscar. One cannot deny that it is a bait!”
“Especially when it carries with it a title and a fortune,” agreed Ravenscar dryly.
“I felt sure we should understand one another tolerably well,” said his lordship. “I am persuaded that the affair can be adjusted to our mutual satisfaction. Had the pretty creature’s affections been engaged it would have been another matter. There would, I suppose, have been nothing left for me to do than to retire from the lists—ah—discomfited! One has one’s pride: it is inconvenient, but one has one’s pride. But this, I fancy, is by no means the case.”
“Good God, there’s no love there!” Ravenscar said scornfully. “There is a deal of ambition, I will grant.”
“And who shall blame her?” said his lordship affably. “I feel for her in this dilemma. What a pity it is that I am not young, and single, and a fool! I was once both young and single, but never, to the best of my recollection, a fool.”
“Adrian is all three,” said Mr Ravenscar, not mincing matters. “I, on the other hand, am single, but neither young nor a fool. For which reason, Ormskirk, I do not propose either to discuss the matter with my cousin, or to attempt to remove him from the lady’s vicinity. The rantings of a youth in the throes of his first love-affair are wholly without the power of interesting me, and although I do not pique myself upon my imagination, it is sufficiently acute to enable me to picture the result of any well-meant interference on my part.
The coup de grace must be delivered by Miss Grantham herself.”