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Since that night he’d come upon her and Mr. St. Leger, she’d spent hours humiliated and incensed all over again. He deserved to be slapped, she told herself, and then admitted to herself he’d acted out of concern for her safety and reputation.

His words still rankled, though. Behaving like a Cyprian . . . going off with men like St. Leger . . .

She was horrified she’d slapped his face. She’d never behaved so toward Rees, but then, he’d never done anything to make her lose her control.

The next moment, shame filled her again. Neither had she ever done anything to warrant intervention like Mr. Marfleet’s. Her thoughts went in circles. She would not return to being a dutiful vicar’s daughter but neither did she want to behave unseemly. There seemed to be no middle ground. She wanted to be like Céline and Lady Dawson, women who commanded the attention and admiration of men but who also knew how to keep them in check.

She lacked no dance partners now. When she mentioned Mr. Marfleet to Mr. Allan one evening, he only said, “Oh, Lancelot is busy at work on his book. You know he’s an amateur botanist, don’t you?”

“Yes, he told me.”

“He is quite an academic sort. I was surprised to see him at any of these society events. He usually considers them too frivolous.” He grinned. “I had heard rumors that his mother and father are pressuring him to marry. I suppose he was looking over the latest crop of young ladies on the ‘marriage mart.’” He colored, as if realizing whom he was addressing. “Oh, I beg your pardon, I didn’t mean you, of course.”

She forced herself to laugh. “Of course you didn’t.”

“He must not have seen anyone to catch his interest and has gone back to his musty books and greenhouses.”

“I suppose so.” She said nothing more but mulled over the information she had received. So, he had been merely looking for a
wife. Had she caught his interest? The fact that she hadn’t seen him in over a week meant she had been found wanting. She colored, remembering again how he had found her the last time in the garden, on the verge of kissing Mr. St. Leger.

She cringed anew. She didn’t know why she had behaved so except that she’d been so upset at overhearing Rees and Céline. She couldn’t abide their pity and their amusement at her expense.

As far as Mr. Marfleet, good riddance! She didn’t need someone who was going to be her conscience tagging after her. If she chose to misbehave, that was her own affair.

In the meantime, Mr. St. Leger continued to be attentive and had suggested no more promenades in the garden, proving he was a serious suitor. Jessamine looked forward to their rides in the park and his witty sallies at dances.

She must put Mr. Marfleet out of her thoughts and continue cultivating the admiration of Mr. St. Leger and those gentlemen of his circle, without falling in love with any of them.

Lancelot sat up and lifted his spectacles, rubbing the bridge of his nose. His neck hurt from being hunched over his notes for so long.

But he was satisfied that he’d made a measurable amount of progress in the last week. He was ready to show a partial of his manuscript to the publisher Sir Banks had recommended. Delawney had completed dozens of watercolors, and the best ones now sat in a stack on his desk. He would collect everything in a portfolio and go to the Strand tomorrow to the publishing house.

He also needed to finalize his notes for the address he was going to give at the Royal Institute. He would take some of his sister’s paintings as well as a few plants.

He stood now and stretched, walking to the window to look at the fading day. He looked over the backyard, which ended in a wall and the mews beyond. The sky faded to a pale gray blue, the sun setting on the other side of the house.

Although he’d tackled his work with a will and single-mindedness he’d only had to exercise on himself a few times in his life, he’d not managed to exorcise Miss Barry from his thoughts.

He’d deliberately avoided any place where he might run into her. To his relief, racing season had started and Harold had left for Newmarket, so he would not be carrying tales if Lancelot absented himself from the season’s activities. His mother was visiting friends, so only he and Delawney remained in town with their father.

His father was busy in the House of Commons, what with the alarm over Napoleon’s threat, so he didn’t have time to interest himself in Lancelot’s affairs.

But he knew it was only a matter of time before they would begin to pressure him once more about proposing to a young lady.

Dear Lord, You
know I would like to marry as much as they
would like me to. But I want it to be
the woman You have chosen for me, and thus far,
I don’t feel You have presented her to me.
I thought . . . but no, I realize now, she was not
the one. Help me to put her from my thoughts.
In Your name, Lord Jesus, I ask this.

His hand went absently to the cheek where Miss Barry had slapped him. He could still feel the impact. He’d never provoked a lady to slap him. It shook him to the core that he could have caused such violence in her.

His thoughts turned to the present uncertainty of his own life. When would he be offered a new living as a vicar?

With an impatient shake of his head, he returned to his desk, determined to work until it was time to change for dinner. Instead his gaze drifted to the invitation that had arrived the day before yesterday. It sat propped against a stack of books on his desk, where he could stare at it every time he sat down.

Céline Phillips requests your company at 9 o’clock on the evening of the 29th of May, 1815, at a ball given in honor of Miss Megan Anne Phillips and Miss Jessamine Elizabeth Barry at 12 Berkeley Square.

With the former Countess of Wexham hosting a ball for her, Miss Barry would no longer need his mother’s help in gaining entrée into society. This ball would seal both her and Miss Phillips’s coming-out. They needn’t have a court presentation. He had no doubt the countess could even drop a hint in one of the patronesses of Almack’s ears and have them invited to an assembly.

Lancelot started at the sound of a knock against the doorjamb. He usually left his door ajar, but Delawney would never walk in unannounced.

“Come in,” he told his sister, turning in his chair.

She carried a couple of watercolors in her hands. “I brought you these, which I think are satisfactory.”

“Let me see,” he said eagerly, reaching out for one of the stiff sheets of paper. It was of an orchid specimen he had brought back. “Perfect,” he murmured, happy with how well his sister had captured the exotic greenish-yellow flower with black specks and crimson tips.
Paphiopedilum venustum
was written in a tiny gray script at the bottom with the year and her name to one side.

“It really is quite exquisite—the original, I mean,” she was quick to amend. “How timely that it blossomed now. The painting doesn’t do it justice.”

Lancelot glanced up at her with a quick smile. “It’s exquisite—the watercolor. It will do very well indeed. I think I shall take this one to the lecture.”

“Yes, both orchids will garner attention. They will please all the matrons going there to educate themselves,” she added dryly.

“I think it’s a nice thing, this current popularity of science with the general public.”

She rolled her eyes. “All they want is to be entertained—made to laugh at a whiff of nitrous oxide, watch a balloon ascend, see
a man’s leg be amputated in Guy’s surgical theater.” She shook her head in disgust.

“Nevertheless, if it helps educate the public, I am all for their attending the lectures of the Royal Society or the Royal Institute.”

She said nothing more, and Lancelot examined the other painting.

“Are you going?”

“Hmm?” His eyes were on a watercolor of a cluster of tiny pink and white flowers resembling lilacs but more pendulous.
Dendrobium aphyllum
, although the name was disputed.

“To the ball.”

He looked up, feeling his skin warm. His sister’s gaze was not on him but on the invitation displayed so prominently against the books. Why had he left it there?

“I haven’t decided.”

“It’s a golden opportunity.”

He grimaced. “For what? To be turned down once more by Miss Barry? She has made it plain on more than one occasion that she does not welcome my company.”
Especially when she is in
the arms of another man.
He touched his cheek.

Delawney leaned a hip against the edge of his desk and folded her arms. “I think if a man showed a certain amount of persistence in pursuing me, I would take a second look, even if I had at first dismissed him as nothing but a diffident vicar without a pulpit, a bookish second son who blushes too easily, an amateur scientist who can’t see more than two feet in front of him without his spectacles—”

“But who nevertheless wears them in public much to the consternation of any young lady forced to be seen in his presence.”

She laughed. “But of course you must present yourself as who you are without varnishing the truth. I, for one, would respect such a man.”

Lancelot’s lips twisted. “The irony is she wears spectacles too.”

Delawney’s eyes widened and she clapped her hands. “No! In public?”

“Well, no—or only occasionally since coming to London. She has actually taken to wearing a quizzing glass, to great effect, I might add.”

Her smile deepened. “I think I should like to get better acquainted with this young lady who has taken your fancy.” She reached over for the invitation, and he had to restrain himself from stopping her. Would she decide to attend the ball with him? He didn’t know if he welcomed that or dreaded it.

“You may as well go,” he said.

He stared at the invitation in her hands, the only sound the edge of the paper rubbing against her fingers.

“Would you like me to accompany you and give you my opinion on”—she read from the invitation—“Miss Jessamine Elizabeth Barry, for I confess I paid scant attention to her at Mother’s dinner. She and her young friend seemed as forgettable as any two young ladies descending upon London in the spring to make their come-out.”

He attempted a careless laugh. “You, grace a ballroom? I’m afraid you’ll intimidate them both—”

“As well as the company at large?” she added with a wicked gleam in her eye.

He lifted a corner of his lips. “Won’t you?”

Her expression sobered. “I should do nothing to embarrass you or your young miss, that I can promise.”

He touched her hand, again resisting the urge to take back the invitation. “Of course you wouldn’t, and I apologize.” He sighed. “Very well, if you think you can stand it for an evening, I should appreciate the moral support.”

She handed him back the invitation, which he set in its place, resolving to put it away in a drawer as soon as she left the room.

“Speaking of ‘moral,’ has anything been decided for your future? No living opened up yet?”

His lips flattened at the topic that vied with that of Miss Barry for his attention. “Do you realize that more than half of clergymen
never receive a living? Even with Father’s influence, the chances are not the best that I shall be offered something soon.”

“A pity his own is tied up for the foreseeable future. When you went off to India and he found himself short of funds, he was forced to sell it when it came available.”

He gazed back down at the two watercolors laid on his desk. “I had thought of going back to teaching, perhaps as a fellow at Cambridge.”

She drew in a breath. “But then you couldn’t marry.”

“That is so. Mother and Father wouldn’t be pleased about that.”

“You are seven-and-twenty now. High time you did marry.”

He crooked his lip. “I could say the same for you at five-and-twenty.”

“Father’s inheritance does not depend on my offspring.”

He tapped his fingers lightly on the desk. “It makes one consider becoming a dissident preacher. As a Methodist I could open a chapel anywhere.”

“Do be serious.”

“I am. I met and worked with many fine Baptists, even Catholics, in India.”

“Or you could become a full-time botanist.”

“That would mean traveling the world over on my small allowance—which I wouldn’t mind. But I don’t think I could marry with that life.”

“That is true.” She sighed. “Pity Miss Barry doesn’t possess a fortune. Then you could marry her and set up as an amateur botanist right here in England.”

“I wouldn’t marry someone for my ease and comfort. Besides, as either a vicar or the second son of a baronet, I do not seem to be an attractive candidate to Miss Barry.”

“The more fool she then,” his sister asserted.

Jessamine stood with Megan and Céline in the receiving line, greeting the guests at their ball. She’d lost count of how many
titled ladies and gentlemen she’d curtsied to, even some foreign dignitaries including a prince or two from principalities in the far-off eastern reaches of the continent.

Jessamine could only stare in wonder at how many people greeted Céline as a long-lost sister—and not as someone who had possibly spied for Napoleon only a couple of years ago.

Jessamine and Megan were acquainted with many of the people from the events they had already attended, Megan more so now that she was living with Céline.

At that moment, the butler announced Mr. St. Leger.

The next moment he was bending over her hand. “Good evening, Miss Barry. You look good enough to eat,” he added for her ears alone. To her shock, she felt the pressure of his lips against the thin kid of her gloves. She blushed, pleasure stealing through her like warm syrup.

Since the evening in the garden, he had not attempted anything so intimate. Jessamine looked quickly at Céline, who was standing next to her in the receiving line, but she was in animated conversation with an old gentleman in uniform whose chest was covered with medals.

“I . . . I’m happy you were able to attend,” she said to Mr. St. Leger.

He cocked a dark eyebrow. “And miss your official launch? Not for the world.” Amusement played in his eyes. “I hope I may be privileged to dance a waltz with you this evening.”