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allow her to do with dignity. He set his hands on either side of her waist and swung her down to the pavement. He did not, as she expected for one horrified moment, allow her body to slide down his, but even so she was a mere few inches away from him when her feet found the ground. She looked at him, her face tight with indignation again.
    “Thank you for the outing, my lord,” she said with icy politeness. “Good-bye.”
    His smile lit his whole face with merriment and devilry. “Thank
you
.” He released his hold on her waist and made her an elegant bow. “Au revoir, Miss Edgeworth.”
    The front door was already open, Powers having noted her return home. Lauren walked up the steps and into the hall with unhurried dignity. She did not look back as the door closed behind her.

4

    S utton?” Lord Farrington said. “Yes, I know him well enough, Ravensberg. We were up at Oxford at the same time. Cut up a few larks together. That was before he inherited the title and became head of the family and pillar of the community and intolerably stuffy.”
    “You are going to invite him to join a party of friends in your box at the theater next week,” Kit told him. “With his betrothed, of course.”
    “Am I?” Lord Farrington replied. They were on horseback, cantering along Rotten Row rather earlier in the morning than usual. It was still almost deserted. “Am I permitted to ask why?”
    “Because Lady Wilma Fawcitt is Miss Edgeworth’s cousin,” Kit reminded him. “Or stepcousin, to be precise. You are also going to invite her.”
    “Miss Edgeworth? Ah.” His friend’s voice was full of sudden comprehension. “And I suppose I am going to invite you too, Ravensberg. Or have you already invited yourself? And why, pray, should I help you win your wager when I stand to lose a hundred guineas?”
    “Because you will be unable to resist your curiosity to watch the progress of my courtship,” Kit said with a laugh. “And my chances are looking woefully slim, you will be delighted to know. I heaped gallantries upon her the day after the Mannering ball, when I drove her in the park, and instead of blushing and simpering, she did that icicle thing I was warned about and accused me of mocking her. I felt distinctly as if I were perched on top of the North Pole with no way down and no way home.”
    “You failed to charm her?” Lord Farrington threw back his head and laughed. “Are you losing your touch, Ravensberg?”
    “In the week and a half since then,” Kit continued, “I have looked in at a whole dreary array of balls and soirees and even a concert or two and have caught nary a glimpse of her. It is time to take a more active hand in my own fate. We have to entice her to the theater.”
    “We?”
Lord Farrington turned his horse at the Queen’s Gate end of the Row and headed back up it.
    “And I think you should invite another couple or two as well,” Kit said. “We must not appear too obvious, after all. Eminently respectable couples, I need scarcely add.”
    “Of course. And I am to forget to mention in the invitations that the infamous Lord Ravensberg is to be one of the party, I suppose?” his friend asked.
    “No, no,” Kit protested. “I would not win by foul means. She will be determined not to come when she knows I am to be there. Sutton and his betrothed, when they know it, will exert all their considerable influence to dissuade her from accepting. So will Anburey and his lady. And Attingsborough. Probably Portfrey and the duchess too, though I am not at all sure that I don’t have an ally in that particular lady—she has a twinkling eye. Anyway, I count upon the discouraging chorus about Miss Edgeworth being loud enough to persuade her to come just to spite them all.”
    “Tut, tut. You may as well pay your debts now and resign yourself to your father’s choice of a bride.” Lord Farrington shook his head before prodding his horse to a gallop and leaving his unwary friend in his dust for