The earl had died five years ago; Penny’s half brother Granville had succeeded to the title. A sole male with a doting mother and four sisters, Granville had always been spoiled, tumbling from one scrape into the next with nary a thought for anyone or anything beyond immediate gratification.

He’d last met Granville when he’d returned home in ’14; Granville had still been reckless and wild. Then had come Waterloo. Fired by the prevailing patriotic frenzy, Granville had shut his ears to his mother’s and sisters’ pleas and joined one of the regiments. He’d fallen somewhere on that bloody plain.

The title and estate had passed to a distant cousin, the Marquess of Amberly, an older gentleman who had assured Elaine and her daughters that they could continue to live as they always had at Wallingham Hall. Amberly had been close to the previous earl, Penny’s father, and had been Granville’s guardian prior to Granville attaining his majority.

And thus the freedom to get himself killed, leaving his mother and sisters, if far from destitute, then without immediate protectors.

That, Charles decided, opening his eyes and starting to pace again, was what bothered him most. Here was Penny already involved in God knew what, and there wasn’t any male in any position to watch over her. Except him.

How she’d feel about that he didn’t know.

At the back of his mind hovered a lowering suspicion over why she hadn’t been eager to marry, why no gentleman had managed to persuade her to the altar, but how she now thought of him, how she now viewed him, he didn’t know and couldn’t guess.

She’d be prickly almost certainly, but prickly-yet-willing-to-join-forces, or prickly-and-wanting-nothing-whatever-to-do-with-him? With ladies like her, it wasn’t easy, or safe, to guess.