“I have no particular liking for your uncle, who is one of my esteemed Chief’s cronies; on the only occasion when I solicited your beautiful cousin Cecilia to dance with me at Almack’s her forbidding brother forestalled me in a fashion as swift as it was crude. Someone ought to tell him that I am only interested in heiresses; and yet my withers are strangely wrung! Almost my heart goes out to the family. Do they tread blindly toward their doom, Sophy, or did they willingly receive a firebrand into their midst?”
She gave a chuckle. “They tread blindly, but I am not a firebrand!”
“No, I used the wrong word. You are like poor Whinyates’s rockets; no one knows what you will do next!”
Chapter 6
“Is the knocker never still?” demanded Charles of his mother, after the departure of the fourth morning caller in one day.
“Never!” she replied proudly. “Since that day when you took dear Sophy riding in the Park, I have received seven gentlemen — no, eight, counting Augustus Fawnhope; Princess Esterhazy, the Countess Lieven, Lady Jersey, and Lady Castlereagh have all left cards; and — ”
“Was Talgarth amongst those who called, ma’am?”
She wrinkled her brow. “Talgarth? Oh, yes! A most amiable man, with side whiskers! To be sure he was!”
“Take care!” he warned her. “That connection will not do!’“
She was startled. “Charles, what can you mean? He seems to be on terms of great friendship with Sophy, and she told me Sir Horace had been acquainted with him for years!