"Oh, and the second with me?" Lady Rachel asked. "Can you waltz, Mr. Gower?"

"Yes, actually," he assured her, "though nowhere is it taught as a requisite for holy orders, ma'am."

She giggled and twirled her parasol. "How I am looking forward to this evening," she said, her eyes sparkling again. "It is an age since the last ball. A week ago yesterday. Though there was dancing in the Whites' drawing room three evenings ago. There were no more than fifteen couples, however. I am beginning to find the Season tedious, Algie."

"I fear we are blocking the pavement, Rache," Algernon said, offering her his arm. "Which milliner did you wish to visit? And how could you possibly need more bonnets? I have not seen you in the same one twice all spring. That particular one is very fetching, by the way."

"Thank you," she said. "Imagine how lowering it would be, Algie, to go through a whole Season with the same bonnets as one started with. That is a splendid cane. Is it new?"

David smiled warmly at Miss Barnes and took her arm within his.

***

Lady Rachel Palmer had been enjoying her first Season. She was nineteen years old, quite horrifyingly old to be making her come-out, in her opinion. However, she was glad enough to be in London even at that late date, considering the contempt in which her father held all that pertained to city life. Her mama had finally persuaded him that he must sacrifice his personal interests for the sake of his daughter.

"How is Rachel to have any choice of husband, Edgeley," she had said before winter even set in, "if she is never to meet anyone but Algernon? I will be perfectly delighted if she does marry him eventually, you know. But I would hate to see her do so just because she has never been presented with any alternative."

The Earl of Edgeley had grumbled and sulked all through the winter and had kept his women feeling almost as if they lived on tiptoe and with bated breath. But finally in February he had announced that he had rented a grand house in Grosvenor Square and that they might as well use it for a few months as leave it stand empty.