He asked if he might then present them to a select number of his neighbors and assured them that they would not be sorry to make the acquaintance of such agreeable and distinguished persons - though none as agreeable and distinguished as themselves, of course. Lady Dew would be ecstatic at their kind condescension. So would his daughters and daughter-in-law. He would live in pleasurable anticipation of the advent of eight o'clock.

Elliott might have said a firm no. He did not usually suffer fools gladly. But he had intended merely not to attend the assembly but to remain closeted in his room when the baronet arrived and to send his excuses via George. What were secretaries for, after all?

Sometimes they were for prodding their employers' conscience - damn their eyes.

For of course George was quite right. Elliott Wallace, Viscount Lyngate, was - dash it all! - a gentleman. He had given tacit acceptance to the invitation by not uttering a firm refusal. It would be ungentlemanly now to barricade himself inside the dubious privacy of his inn room. And if he did not attend the revelries, he would be disturbed by them all night long anyway and be in just as bad a mood at the end of it all. Worse - he would feel guilty.

Damn /everyone's /eyes!

And the boy might indeed be at the assembly, if George was in the right of it. His sisters almost certainly would be. It might be as well to look them over this evening now that the opportunity had presented itself, to get some impression of them all before calling upon them tomorrow.

But God bless us, would he be expected to /dance/?

To romp with the village matrons and maidens?

On Valentine's Day?

Surely not. He could scarcely imagine a less agreeable fate.

He set the heel of his hand to his brow and tried to convince himself that he had a headache or some other irrefutable excuse for taking to his bed. It could not be done, though. He never had headaches.