The Chocolate Debutante by M. C. Beaton Page B

unfashionable.”
     
    Harriet looked at his dark red hair. “Yet you wear it unpowdered.”
     
    “Ah, you see, I am hoping someone will love me truly despite my red hair.” He smiled into her large green eyes. “Do you think, Miss Tremayne, that a lady could love me for myself alone?”
     
    “Many ladies would find it easy to love you, my lord.”
     
    “Why? Pray tell me.”
     
    “Your title and your fortune.”
     
    “A sore wound, Miss Tremayne. You are supposed to say because of my striking looks.”
     
    She gave a little sigh. “It is a wicked and mercenary world we live in. Despite her beauty, little Susan would be hard put to find suitors if she lacked a dowry.”
     
    “She is so very beautiful, I think someone would want to marry her even if she had no fortune at all.”
     
    “If they can find her awake enough to propose.”
     
    “It would be a simple matter. A box of the very best chocolates and little Miss Susan would fall into anybody’s arms.”
     
    “Oh, dear. Perhaps you can tell me which gentlemen are to be at the Season that she should be protected against… apart from you yourself.”
     
    “Now, why should Miss Colville be protected from me?”
     
    “She is very young and… and… pure and you keep a mistress.”
     
    His face darkened. “The day becomes chilly,” he said. “Shall we go?”
     
    Harriet bit her lip, wondering what had possessed her to make such a disgraceful remark. If Susan were to be kept from all the men in London who kept mistresses or visited whores, then she would have very few to choose from.
     
    They drove in silence to Hyde Park toll, where they joined a queue of carriages. A smart little curricle lined with quilted white silk drew alongside. It was driven by a buxom brunette with dark, liquid eyes. She was dressed in the first stare of fashion.
     
    “Dangerfield,” she called. “Where have you been? I have not seen you this age.”
     
    He bowed and said, “I will call on you presently,” and then the carriages moved on.
     
    “You did not introduce me,” said Harriet in a small voice.
     
    “Naturally not,” he remarked in an icy voice.
     
    Harriet felt very low. She was sure the stylish lady was the earl’s mistress.
     
    Harriet found Bertha waiting for her in the drawing room. “What is this, you sly puss?” cried Bertha. “I have just heard from London’s greatest gossip that you were seen this day being driven by Dangerfield and that he seemed very happy in your company.”
     
    Sighing, and untying the strings of her bonnet, Harriet said wearily, “Lord Dangerfield is cultivating my company with a view to courting Susan.”
     
    “Oh, tish and fiddlesticks. He would have been so suitable for you. Is it not lowering when a man like Dangerfield waits this age to get married and then falls for some milk-and-water miss?”
     
    “Well, as you first pointed out to me, men of Dangerfield’s age are marriageable, women of my age are not.”
     
    “But you are so changed, so modish! Oh, it is all too bad.”
     
    “Does… does Dangerfield have a mistress? Did you not say so? When we were making that call on the Marchioness of Trowbridge, I believe she said something to that effect.”
     
    “He has a liaison with Mrs. Verity Palfrey. Do you know her?”
     
    Harriet looked startled. “Why should I know such a creature?”
     
    “She is very good ton. In fact, she was considered highly respectable at one time. Palfrey was considerably older than she. Very rich. He died of an apoplexy. Up till then, she had seemed such a quiet creature, but then she began to appear everywhere in rather shocking gowns—damped muslin, my dear—Roman sandals, and toenails stained with cochineal. Do you know Sir Thomas Jeynes?”
     
    “No.”
     
    “She had a passionate affair with him, and then two years ago she switched to Dangerfield. You
have
been out of the world for too long. ’Twas a monstrous scandal. Jeynes challenged Dangerfield to a