'All I can see is someone obstructing me because I've found the love of my life and she hasn't. That's why you're being so beastly to me, isn't it? You're insanely jealous.'

Dorothy spluttered. 'That's an outrageous thing to say!'

'It's the truth.'

'It's a poisonous lie and I demand that you take it back.'

'No,' said Abigail with a show of bravado. 'You've had romances and intrigues but that's all that they were — brief entanglements from which your admirers soon extracted themselves. My case is different. I have someone I wish to marry.''

'Be silent!'

Dorothy was so enraged by what her younger sister had said that she raised a hand to strike her. Thinking better of it, she let her arm drop to her side but she was still smarting. Abigail's accusation had more than a grain of truth in it. Dorothy had had many amours but they all petered out sooner or later. Although she had met men who excited and amused her, she had never found one whom she was moved to consider as a husband or — and this piqued her — who looked upon her as a potential wife.

The sisters were in the parlour of their house in Westminster. The family mansion was near Warwick and their father, Sir Nicholas Piper, represented the town in Parliament. Both of his daughters preferred the social life of the capital to a more subdued existence in the country. Dorothy was in her early twenties, a tall, stately young woman with the kind of features and figure that appealed strongly to men. She also cultivated the wit and sophistication needed to hold her own in any civilised gathering, and had many accomplishments, not least as a musician. She prided herself on her self- possession.

Abigail, on the other hand, still had the bloom of youth on her. Having spent all her life in the shadow of her elder and more talented sister, she yearned for independence from her and for the opportunity to be taken seriously as a woman. Her childhood prettiness had evanesced into a porcelain beauty that turned heads but, until now, she had lacked the skills and confidence to exploit it. The arrival of Daniel Rawson had been a revelation to her. For the first time ever, she had aroused interest in a man with whom she was besotted.