Lady Christobel rarely divided her verbal communications into sentences.

One had to concentrate hard if one wished to follow everything she said.

Usually it was not necessary to do so but merely to listen to a word here and a phrase there. But she was an eager, pretty little thing and Stephen liked her.

He had to be careful about showing his liking too openly, however. She was the eldest daughter of the very wealthy and influential Marquess and Marchioness of Blythesdale, and she was eighteen years old and had just this year made her come-out. She was very marriageable indeed and very eager to achieve marital success during her first Season, preferably before any of her peers. She was likely to succeed too. If ever one wished to find her at any large entertainment, one had merely to find the densest throng of gentlemen, and she was sure to be in their midst.

But she had her sights set upon Stephen, as did her mama. He was well aware of it. Indeed, he was well aware that he was one of the most eligible bachelors in England and that the females of the race had decided this year more than in any previous one that the time had come for him to settle down and take a bride and set up his nursery and otherwise face his responsibilities as a peer of the realm. He was twenty-five years old and was, apparently, expected to have crossed some invisible threshold at his last birthday from irresponsible, wild-oat-sowing youth to steady, dutiful manhood.

Lady Christobel was not the only young lady who was courting him, and her mother was not the only mother who was determinedly attempting to reel him in.

Stephen liked most ladies of his acquaintance. He liked talking with them and dancing with them and escorting them to the theater and taking them for drives or walks in the park. He did not avoid them, as many of his peers did, for fear of stepping all unawares into a matrimonial trap. But he was not ready to marry.