Page 37 of What's an Earl Gotta Do?
Anne sighed. “Please just tell me, Mama.”
“You cannot imagine my astonishment that my little tomboy is now regarded as the most respectable woman in all of London. You gave no indication of it growing up.”
“Lady Wynters!” a voice called. Anne turned and saw her first partner, Alexander Fitzroy, approaching.
“Please, Mama,” Anne said. “It’s urgent. Two wild boars. Whose is it?”
The countess fanned herself. “Had you spent even a quarter of the time I asked you to spend studying DeBrett’s—”
“Lady Wynters,” said Mr. Fitzroy. He was mere feet away, but a trio of passing debutantes impeded him.
“Mama!” Anne hissed.
“—then you would know that it is the Barons Gladstone whose crest features two wild boars,” Lady Cheltenham concluded.
Baron Gladstone.
It… it all made sense.
He was the secretary of the R.M.A. All of its correspondence would therefore go through him. Lieutenant Avery had requested help from the R.M.A. via letter.
Opportunity.
His estate was insolvent.
Motive.
And it was his carriage that had taken Nick and Johnny away.
Evidence.
And she was going to have to dance with him. In less than an hour, she would have to paste on a smile and dance with the man who had… who had…
“Lady Wynters.”
Anne all but jumped out of her skin as Mr. Fitzroy claimed her hand and bowed over it. She tried to disguise the shriek she’d just given as laughter.
Mr. Fitzroy did not seem to notice her discomfiture. As he led her away, Anne’s thoughts were a thousand miles away from the bright, sparkling ballroom.
Michael was annoyed to see that his friend Andrew Tomlinson was accompanied by not one, but two of Anne’s suitors, the very gentlemen they had been discussing earlier: Scudamore and Gladstone.
Delightful.
Scudamore had been two years ahead of Michael at Eton, and Michael had never much liked him. He was fairly certain the feeling was mutual. At Eton, it was a tradition for the younger boys to wait on the older boys, but in Michael’s mind there was a difference between asking someone to make your morning tea and forcing someone to spend all morning polishing your boots, then whipping them because they still weren’t shiny enough.
As to Anne’s claim that Scudamore had changed for the better, he would believe that when he saw it.
Tomlinson didn’t seem to notice the glare Michael was exchanging with Scudamore. “It’s deuced good to see you, Morsley.”
“And you as well,” Michael replied.
“Was that Lady Wynters you were just speaking to?” Tomlinson asked. “She’s caused quite the stir lately hasn’t she?”
Michael eyed him warily. Not Tomlinson, too. Was every man in this ballroom dangling after Anne? “What do you mean?”
“Well, wasn’t there an article in the paper about her the other day?” Tomlinson asked. “I didn’t see it, but it’s all anyone can talk about.”
“I fear I missed it, as I just returned from Canada,” Michael said.
