'I cannot decline, for he has not yet proposed. I have not even met him-not face to face. I have only seen him from a distance at receptions during the Season. Not that he stayed very long when he did come. And he never talks to people. Or dances,' she added plaintively. 'Or smiles.'

'I read about his wife's death at the time.' Rowan frowned, trying to recall the stories she had perused. Acting as hostess to her father Lord Chilcourt, in the midst of the glamour of the Congress of Vienna, had been an engrossing whirl of activity far removed from the sedate and regulated pleasures a single lady of twenty-four might enjoy in London. The English news had seemed far away and alien.

Even so, Lady Danescroft's death had been a sensational and scandalous mystery, and as well as lingering on the horrid details of how she had been found by the butler at the foot of the servants' stair, with her neck broken, the reports had been full of veiled hints and coded phrases. Lady Danescroft had been 'lively', 'well-known amidst the younger set', and famed for her 'wide circle of friends of both sexes'.

The Earl of Danescroft had apparently shown no emotion at either the inquest or the funeral, had declined to speculate upon why his wife should have been on the servants' stair at all in the middle of the night, and had simply become chillier and more abrupt on the subject as time went on.

'Are they really saying he killed her?' Rowan demanded. 'The papers were full of innuendo, but nothing about an outright accusation, let alone a trial.'

'Not exactly.' Penny frowned. 'They say that it is very strange he does nothing to rebut the rumours. He did not go into mourning for her. And-' she blushed '-they say he dismissed his valet the very next day, and the valet was very good-looking.'