A Warriner To Seduce Her. Virginia Heath

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      ‘The Sawyer sisters?’ Two spinsters in their sixties, both highly connected but with a penchant for hard spirits and reputations as characters. Hardly the sort of women who would be up for the task. ‘The slurring Sawyer sisters?’

      ‘The very same.’ Lord Fennimore looked rightly pleased with himself at Jake’s obvious disbelief. ‘I know. I can’t quite believe our luck either, but with no wife or other suitable female relatives, Rowley could hardly use his mistresses to launch the girl and my sources tell me he is determined to have her married by spring. He’s probably already got the groom in mind, hence the sudden haste to launch the girl. It makes a strange sort of sense to align the girl to the slurring sisters. Cressida and Daphne Sawyer are invited to everything.’

      ‘Because they are guaranteed to make spectacles of themselves and the ton likes a laugh. I can’t think of two worse chaperons for a girl as green as grass.’

      Fennimore shrugged. ‘Perhaps that’s deliberate, too. If Rowley has set his sights on a particular future nephew-in-law, if all else fails his lackadaisical choice of chaperons might aid the process when the girl is inevitably compromised. I wouldn’t put it past a slippery and conniving snake like Rowley to have factored that into his equations. Being with the Sawyers will certainly get the girl noticed and that’s usually half the battle on the marriage mart. It also aids us. I doubt you’ll find it overly difficult to make a move on the chit. Even more fortuitous, the timing is perfect. The chit is being presented tomorrow. At Almack’s.’

      ‘I’m banned from Almack’s.’ Something which had happened quite early in his career and of which Jake was inordinately proud. Only the worst sort of scoundrel was denied admission to Almack’s and the ban had done wonders for his bad reputation.

      ‘Not any more, you’re not. The patronesses have had a sudden change of heart. Here are your vouchers.’ He slid them across the table. ‘To be on the safe side I got you a month’s worth.’

      * * *

      The sea of people at Almack’s swirled by in a pastel haze, thanks to Uncle Crispin’s ridiculous insistence she leave her spectacles in the carriage. The unfamiliar place, the surging crowds and her short-sightedness made every step precarious. Already she had tripped up the short step into the high-ceilinged ballroom and nearly flattened a footman in the process.

      ‘Keep your head straight and glide, Felicity!’ Great-Aunt Daphne advised in her usual theatrical tone. ‘A lady should walk like a wispy cloud, floating across the sky.’ Or at least Fliss assumed it was her usual tone seeing that she had only met her aged relatives five days ago and, in truth, they weren’t technically any relation to her at all. But they were nice old dears who meant well, even if they were a trifle eccentric, and they had been very sweet while attempting to train her in the art of being a lady.

      Not that Fliss had any desire to be a lady of the ton. She was perfectly content with the manners she had already. Perhaps she could be a bit abrupt and had an acid tongue when the situation called for it, but those minor faults were actually quite perfect in her role as the schoolmistress of Sister Ursuline’s School for Wayward Girls. Some of those young ladies required a firm hand and many more needed her guidance because they were prone to make poor choices—especially regarding men. Once this silly visit was over, those girls would need the Miss Blunt they relied upon. Not some improved version who was required to walk like a ‘wispy cloud’, whatever that meant.

      Although why it was considered essential for a lady to walk as if she had a book balanced on her cranium was beyond her. For the better part of two days, Daphne and Cressida had made her walk backwards and forward in Uncle Crispin’s ostentatious Egyptian-themed drawing room, with a Mrs Radcliffe novel perched precariously on her head, while they instructed her on the subtle nuances of etiquette she had never had use of before. Who knew that curtsies were graduated, for instance, saving only the deepest and most grovelling for dukes and the monarchy? There had not been much cause for curtsying in Cumbria, thank goodness. Nor for the baffling array of cutlery deemed necessary for every meal when a knife, fork and spoon had always served her perfectly well before, thank you very much. Before she had been a wispy cloud, of course.

      ‘And smile!’ Aunt Cressida nudged her with such force she lurched a little sideways. ‘Think of yourself as a swan, my dear. Graceful. Elegant. Effortless.’

      There was no point enquiring as to where the cloud had gone, because Aunt Daphne and Aunt Cressida rarely remembered what they had said five minutes before. However, she was sorely tempted to point out there was nothing effortless in gliding like a swan in a strange place sans spectacles, but Fliss smiled tightly and tried her best, holding her head so still it made her jaw ache. She was here for her mother. Uncle Crispin had apparently made her a solemn promise upon her deathbed to give his half-sister’s daughter a Season and, while she was fundamentally too old to be launched into society, the guilt had made her agree to the offer—the guilt, Sister Ursuline’s insistence Fliss needed to go and have an adventure, and the desire to do something for the mother she struggled to remember fully yet had missed keenly throughout her life. For her tragic real mother, and her incorrigible surrogate mother, she would attempt to be a cloud or a swan or whatever other nonsense her new great-great-aunts came out with in the next few weeks and she would do it with all the enthusiasm she couldn’t be bothered to feel.

      The new corset she had been trussed up in like a ham about to be boiled didn’t help. While it did serve to keep her from slouching, because bending at the waist was now quite impossible, it also constricted every organ from her lungs to her bladder. It had also pushed her bosoms up in a most inappropriate manner so they threatened to spill out of the neckline of her new, form-fitting white-silk gown. Of course, she had protested the unsuitable dress and the corset, but her aunts insisted such fashions were all ladies wore in the ton and de rigueur at Almack’s. And from the amount of foggy cleavages she could just about see all around her, presented like soft loaves on a baker’s tray, her new great-great-aunts appeared to be right. The knowledge did not make Fliss feel any better about exposing her own bakery goods to the eyes of the world.

      And Fliss had definitely been thrust into the window of the bakery, despite repeatedly insisting to both the aged women and her stand-offish Uncle Crispin that she had no desire to find a husband while in town. Never had and probably never would. After years of being on her own, and after watching her mother’s disappointing marriage to her unreliable father, she could see no reason why she would want to relinquish her freedom to just anyone. If, by some miracle, she ever did find a man who wasn’t controlling or unreliable, then perhaps she would reconsider. But if she did, it would be of her own choosing somewhere very far in the future. And finally, and this was completely unnegotiable, he had to absolutely adore her. She wouldn’t settle for anything less. She had agreed to a Season, not to any matchmaking, therefore introducing her to all and sundry was pointless. Solid, dependable and trustworthy men would hardly waste their time in this crush. They would be far too sensible and nothing like the fops, dandies and pompous aristocratic versions here, so why her new aunts insisted on parading in a constant loop around the room was beyond her. Not only was she unlikely to remember the fifty different names of gentlemen thrown at her so far, without her spectacles, every one of the fifty faces resembled blurred pink blobs. Aside from the varying colours of hair or clothing, none of the many men she had met had any discerning features which she could recognise them by, should she need to.

      Mind you, parading around the ballroom was better than standing near the refreshment table. Her aunts had a worrying penchant for the lemonade—which they mixed liberally with the brandy they hid in hip flasks in their reticules, while they regaled her with outrageous stories from their pasts—and had pressed so many glasses into Fliss’s hand her head was beginning to spin. Thanks to the rigid corset, that wasn’t the only side-effect.

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