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“Does she know you’ve taken Verwood?”

“No. I mean it to be a surprise.”

“When you call on her, you should ride Achilles. He’s your best mount.”

*

Raven had written to Lady Ramsbury asking if he might call upon her daughter, and a cordial reply invited him to visit. By the road the distance was an easy five miles. Another mile through the estate’s woods and fields led to the house, built, Raven guessed, sometime before 1700. It was fiercely symmetrical with ornate diamond brickwork, a striking number of windows in old multiple-paned style, and paired columns framing a tall, narrow entrance. A cupola with a golden ball glinted in the sunlight atop the roof.

A stately butler greeted Raven. A liveried footman saw to his horse, and he was announced at the entrance to a long white-and-gold room with a high ceiling and a dark-blue carpet underfoot. Amabel and her mother sat over needlework at one end of the room, and Amabel’s golden harp stood in a sunny corner.

Amabel saw him and flung aside her sewing, coming to his side and drawing him to her mother. “Mama, doesn’t Sir Adrian look perfect for the country?”

Lady Ramsbury offered her hand, and Raven bowed over it. “Do not let my daughter embarrass you, Sir Adrian.” She returned her attention to her needle and the bright threads of a piece she was working.

“But, I’m right, Mama. He must know our country ways. Have you been spying on us, sir?” she asked.

“Merely growing accustomed.” Raven was not sure he had judged rightly after all. Both ladies were elaborately coiffed and gowned in pale green silk. The sameness of their dress rather than of feature marked the pair as mother and daughter. Raven remembered a stray comment of Jay’s that Lady Cassandra was not a fashion plate. Perhaps Raven had been misled by her and by his neighbors in Wormley as to the degree of dress expected in a noble household even in summer in the country.

“And where are you staying, Sir Adrian?” asked the countess. “Did we have notice of your coming our way?”

“Oh, you knew he was coming, Mama, for I told you.” Amabel gave Raven a mischievous look that made him rethink the letter he’d received.

“I’ve taken a place near Wormley, ma’am,” he said.

At that the countess looked up briefly. “Have you? A hunting box? Do you hunt?”

“I have in the past.”

“Ah, before your trade in London consumed you, I imagine.”

“Exactly, ma’am.”

“You may join Ramsbury’s hunt. If you wish.” Lady Ramsbury spoke to her needlework.

“Won’t I have something to say about that?” Amabel asked. “After all, he’s come to visit me, not Papa. And I’d like to show him the grounds, if I may.”

“Of course, dear. You seem to have arranged things to your satisfaction.”

Once again, the suspicion crossed Raven’s mind that Amabel herself had answered his letter.

Amabel gave her mother a kiss, and took Raven by the hand. “Let’s walk round the lake,” she said. She pulled Raven to the door, and when it closed behind them, she smiled up at him with a gleam of mischief in her eyes and a hint of dimples in her cheeks. “You have saved me. My cousins are due to arrive within the hour. They are two of the dullest girls you will ever meet, and my aunt is a champion complainer.”

“Won’t your mother feel abandoned if you leave her to entertain the tedious cousins?” he asked.

“Mama can depress anyone’s pretensions,” she said. “And you mustn’t mind her. She might want me to marry a title, as if I cared a scrap about that. But really, she knows that I must have a handsome, darling man who adores me. And, besides, we’ve already decided that you will have a title one day.”

“Lady Amabel wills it so,” he said. “By the way, did you send me that letter approving my visit?”

She flashed a triumphant smile at him. “Let me get a parasol.”

For a few minutes Raven admired the soaring staircase in the entry hall with its elaborately carved white balustrade, trying to reconcile his pleasure in seeing Amabel, with a mild unease at the cunning with which she had secured approval for his visit. His misgivings vanished when she returned in a fetching straw bonnet, tied under her chin with a peach-colored ribbon, and with a dainty parasol over one shoulder.

She led him to the rear of the house where a wide expanse of grass sloped down to a lake considerably larger than the lake at Verwood with what looked to be a small Grecian temple on the hill opposite.

“You know…” She peeped up at him from under the parasol, her golden lashes catching the light. “We could row across to the folly if you’d like?”

He grinned at that. “You mean, Sir Adrian would you care to row me across the lake?”