“Preposterous,” Lynd scoffed. “The whole affair. If someone is so determined to marry the chit, he should ask her outright. But then, I suppose the entire lot of hopefuls is daft or desperate beyond reason to mix their lineage with the Tremaines’. She should be grateful her late father’s fortune has attracted suitors to her. She would have a devil of a time enticing a man without it.”

Jasper’s brow went up. He’d been enticed the moment she first opened her mouth.

“Truly,” Lynd went on, “she should just pick a poor fellow and be done with it. Any other woman would. Been allowed to run amok, that one. She took it upon herself to engage a thief-taker to intercede and his lordship is too preoccupied with the maze of his mind to rein her in. Melville’s participation in my interview was only with himself.”

“Do you have a point to this disparagement of my client?”

“Six weeks will seem a lifetime, I vow. No compensation can restitute the loss of your sanity. She is contrary in the extreme. Unnatural in a female. She had the gall to look down her nose at me-a feat, I must say, since I’m taller-and tell me I would do well to hire a decent tailor. No polish to her at all. I could barely tolerate her for the length of the interview. Made my teeth grind.”

“Good of you to decline the post, then,” Jasper drawled. “Clearly you would not have made a convincing suitor.”

“If you manage to be, I’d say you missed your true calling as a man of the stage.”

“So long as Montague fails to acquire the funds he needs to regain his marker from me, I can do whatever is required.” It was a delectable twist that the best way to foil Montague’s suit was to woo Eliza Martin himself.

“Revenge has a way of eating at you, my boy, like a cancer. Best to keep that in mind.”