“I don’t know how it happened,” she said. “I’ve never had a regular period in my life. My doctor even told me that I’d have to go on some sort of medication just to get myself regular if I ever wanted a family. And now…Look where we are, Brendan.”

Look what you did to me was the underlying message, as was And you, Brendan Power, a junior partner in Daddy’s own solicitor’s fi rm! Tsk, tsk. What a shame it might be to be given the sack.

But she didn’t need to say any of that. All she needed to say, head lowered penitently, was, “Brendan, I simply don’t know what I’m going to tell Daddy. What shall I do?”

A man in any other position would have said, “Just get rid of it, Rebecca,” and gone on with his work. A different sort of man in Brendan’s own position might have said the same thing. But Brendan was eighteen months away from St. John Andrew Townley-Young’s decision as to which of the solicitors would handle his affairs and his fortune when the current senior partner retired from the fi rm, and the perquisites that went with that decision were of the sort that Brendan could not turn from lightly: an introduction to society, the promise of other clients from Townley-Young’s class, and stellar advancement in his career.

The opportunities promised by TownleyYoung’s patronage had prompted Brendan to involve himself with the man’s twenty-eightyear-old daughter in the first place. He’d been with the firm just short of a year. He was eager to make his place in the world. Thus, when through the senior partner, St. John Andrew Townley-Young had extended an invitation to Brendan to escort Miss Townley-Young to the horse and pony sales of the Cowper Day Fair, it had seemed too much a stroke of good fortune for Brendan to demur.