She had lost three such friends—all in the same cause—over the course of four years. Sometimes it was hard not to be selfishly depressed by it all. “When she knew I was coming to Bath to spend a few days with my mother and my father, who is taking the waters,” the marquess said, “she asked me to call here and pay my respects to you. And she gave me this letter, perhaps to convince you that I am no impostor.” His eyes smiled again as he came across the room and placed the letter in her hand. And as if at least his eyes could not have been mud-colored or something equally nondescript, she could see that they were a clear blue, almost like a summer sky. Susanna had asked him to come and pay his respects? Why? “Whitleaf is the cousin of a cousin of mine,” the marquess explained. “Or an almost cousin of mine, anyway. It is complicated, as family relationships often are. Lauren Butler, Viscountess Ravensberg, is a cousin by virtue of the fact that her mother married my aunt’s brother-in-law. We have been close since childhood. And Whitleaf is Lauren’s first cousin. And so in a sense both he and his lady have a strong familial claim on me.” If he was a marquess, Claudia thought with sudden suspicion, and his father was still alive, what did that make his father? But he was here at Susanna’s behest and it behooved her to be a little better than just icily polite. “Thank you,” she said, “for coming in person to deliver the letter. I am much obliged to you, sir. May I offer you a cup of tea?” She willed him to say no. “I will not put you to that trouble, ma’am,” he said, smiling again. “I understand you are to leave for London in two days’ time?” Ah. Susanna must have told him that. Mr. Hatchard, her man of business in London, had found employment for two of her senior girls, both charity pupils, but he had been unusually evasive about the id entity of the prospective employers, even when she had asked quite specifically in her last letter to him.