“But the ladies must be allowed to admire the heir without the interference of mere men,” Monty said. “You would not really wish to be there, would you, Stephen? When your sisters have gone to all the trouble of inviting a dozen other ladies to join them in their admiration and to bring gifts, which Cassandra will have to admire and they will all have to examine and, ah, coo over?” He shuddered theatrically.

Stephen grinned. “You have a point, Monty,” he said.

His countess had recently borne him a son. Their first. An heir. A future Earl of Merton. It really did not matter to Constantine. After his father there had been his brother Jonathan-Jon-as earl for a few years and now there was Stephen. Eventually there would be Stephen’s son. He and Cassandra might proceed to have a whole string of spares over the next number of years if they chose. It would make no difference to Constantine. He would never be the earl himself.

It did not matter. He had always known that he would not. He did not really care.

They stopped to exchange pleasantries with a couple of male acquaintances. The park was full of familiar faces, Constantine saw as he looked idly around. There were almost no new ones at all, and those few there were belonged mostly to very young ladies-the new crop of marriageable hopefuls come to the great marriage mart.

There were a few beauties among them too, by Jove. But Constantine was surprised and not a little alarmed to discover how clinical the inward analysis was. He felt no stirring of real interest in any of them. He might have done so without any fear of seeming presumptuous. His illegitimacy was a mere legal trifle. It prohibited him from inheriting his father’s title and entailed property, it was true, but it had no bearing on his status in the ton as the son of an earl. He had been brought up at Warren Hall. He had been left comfortably well off on his father’s death.