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“Loyalty.” He turned the word over in his mouth.

“A quality you have in spades, my lord, or you wouldn’t have kept secret my appalling lack of manners in the matter of the … obelisk.” When he didn’t say anything, she added, “Or about what I told you this evening about my father.”

“Well,” he couldn’t resist pointing out, though he smiled to show he was in jest, “you only just told me that. My loyalty on that matter has yet to be tested.”

But that was essentially what she was doing, wasn’t it, with her question about the qualities of friendship? She was testing him. He wanted to pass.

“I think the quality you are after, Miss Brown, isn’t loyalty so much as it is trustworthiness. I am a person whose friends can trust him.”

“Does that mean you are not loyal to your friends?”

“No, of course not, but loyalty to me seems a larger concept. I am loyal to institutions. Not blindly so, mind you. Institutions can and should change.”

“Is that why we ladies are here?”

“I don’t follow.”

“The institution of Earls Trip. Lord Harcourt told me it was your idea that the wives and his mother and the hangers-on—the hangers-on being Miss Morgan and me—should join you. I believe you suggested that the tradition needed to accommodate the reality of the fact that you aren’t bachelors anymore.”

“Well, I am. But yes, I suppose your assessment is correct. Earls Trip is a kind of institution, though I hadn’t been thinking of it that way. A true institution, I believe, is a force for good, or a potential force for good, in the life of all.”

“Parliament, for example.”

“Yes. Or the Church. Both of which give us structure, and meaning.”

“Can family be an institution?”

“I suppose, but in my case more traditional institutions have stepped in where family fell short.”

“Marriage is an institution.”

“Indeed.”

“And one that you respect.”

“I suppose I do, though I’m not sure how you can know that.”

“You said as much, in a speech in July of 1820.”

“I did?” He was astonished, and not a little flattered, she could cite something he’d said so specifically.

“Yes, it was during the Queen Caroline affair. You said something along the lines of your respect for the bonds of holy matrimony being such that you did not offer your support for the queen’s defense lightly.”

He chuckled. “I may have been speaking out of political expediency.”

“Really?”

“No,” he said quietly. “Not really.”

“I thought not.”

He cast himself back to the summer in question and tried to imagine Miss Brown reading his words. “My support for the queen had little to do with my feelings on the institution of marriage, though. It was more a question of fairness.”

“Why was the king able to cavort around taking lovers quite publicly, but when the queen took one with the utmost discretion, even after that letter of separation, it was a matter to be taken up by the House of Lords?”

“Yes.” She should have been the one giving the speech. “Though I must point out that neither monarch seemed to have much respect for the institution of marriage.”

She laughed. “Indeed.”