He walked the parks of the capital-St. James, Green Park, then into Hyde Park. A poor choice; his boots had barely touched the lawn when he was hailed by Lady Swaledale, eager to introduce him to her daughter and her niece. A bevy of matrons with bright-eyed damsels in tow leaned from their carriages, hoping to catch his attention; others hovered, parading along the grassed verge.

Spotting his aunt Minnie, Lady Bellamy, in her carriage drawn up by the side of the Avenue, he excused himself to a particularly clinging fond mama on the grounds of paying his respects. The instant he reached the carriage, he grasped Minnie’s hand and with an extravagant gesture, kissed it. “I’m throwing myself on your mercy-save me,” he implored.

Minnie chortled. She patted his hand and leaned down to offer her lined cheek, which he dutifully bussed. “If you’d just make your choice, dear, they’d go off and hunt someone else.”

“Not, of course, that we want you to rush your choice.” Timms, Minnie’s companion, leaned forward to give Gerrard her hand. “But while you remain unattached, you must expect to be pursued.”

Gerrard assumed an expression of mock-dismay. “Et tu, Timms?”

Timms snorted. She’d grown more gaunt with the years, but there was nothing wrong with her mind.

Or with Minnie’s; she regarded him shrewdly, if affectionately. “Endowed as you are with an excellent estate, and the business interests the Cynsters have sponsored you into, let alone being my principal heir, there’s no getting away from it, m’boy-if you’d been as ugly as sin you might have given them pause, but as you are, celebrated gentleman painter that you’ve become, you’re in a fair way to being a matchmaking mama’s fondest dream.”

Gerrard looked his disgust. “I’m not at all sure marriage, at least in the near future, is in my best interests.”

That was his current stance, although not one he’d to date shared with anyone else.