the Season with a definite purpose in Me, she drew a deep breath. "Very well. I'll do it!"

"Good!" Max stood. "I'll send Wilson to call on you this afternoon."

His aunt, already engrossed in the matter of finding husbands for the Twinning chits, looked up.

"Have you seen the other three girls?"

Max shook his head. Imagining the likely scene should they be on hand this afternoon when he called

for Miss Twinning, he closed his eyes in horror. He could just hear the on-dits. ''And I hope to God

I don't see them in Grillon's foyer either!"

Augusta Benborough laughed.

When he called at Grillon's promptly at two, Max was relieved to find Miss Twinning alone in the foyer, seated on a chaise opposite the door, her bonnet beside her. He was not to know that Caroline had had

to exert every last particle of persuasion to achieve this end. And she had been quite unable to prevent

her three sisters from keeping watch from the windows of their bedchambers.

As she had expected, she had had to describe His Grace of Twyford in detail for her sisters. Looking up at the figure striding across the foyer towards her, she did not think she had done too badly. What had been hardest to convey was the indefinable air that hung about him-compelling, exciting, it immediately brought to mind a whole range of emotions well-bred young ladies were not supposed to comprehend,

let alone feel. As he took her hand for an instant in his own, and smiled down at her in an oddly lazy

way, she decided she had altogether underestimated the attractiveness of that sleepy smile. It was really quite devastating.

Within a minute, Caroline found herself on the box seat of a fashionable curricle drawn by a pair of beautiful but restive bays. She resisted the temptation to glance up at the first-floor windows where she knew the other three would be stationed. Max mounted to the driving seat and the diminutive tiger, who had been holding the horses' heads, swung up behind. Then they were off, tacking through the traffic towards Hyde Park.