Rousing her parents would be worse than useless. Her father would simply blink at her over his spectacles and comment mildly that if Mary wished to make a spectacle of herself, it would be best to let her get on with it as quickly as possible and with as little trouble to themselves as could be had. As for her mother…Letty's face twisted in a terrible grimace that would undoubtedly lead to all sorts of unattractive wrinkles later in life. There was certainly no help to be found from that quarter. Her mother would probably help Mary into his lordship's carriage.

Letty looked longingly at the poker. She couldn't, though. She really couldn't.

That left his lordship. London was crammed with men answering to that title at this time of year, but Letty had no doubt which lordship it was. Mary had never lacked for admirers, but only one man was besotted enough to agree to an elopement.

Letty conjured Lord Pinchingdale in her mind as she had seen him last week, dancing attendance on Mary at the Middlethorpes' ball. Discounting the doting expression that appeared whenever he encountered Mary, Lord Pinchingdale's had always struck her as an uncommonly intelligent face, the sort of face that wouldn't have looked amiss on a Renaissance cardinal or a seventeenth-century academician, quiet and thoughtful with just a hint of something cynical about the mouth. A long, thin nose; a lean, flexible mouth that was quick to quirk with amusement; and a pair of keen gray eyes that seemed to regard the world's foibles for what they were.

Which just went to show that physiognomy was never an exact science.