Page 5 of The Lady Knows Best

Alistair was clearly not amused by the pun. Miles, however, was reluctantly intrigued. As someone who derived much of his pleasure from the company of women who were willing to defy society’s strictures, he generally approved of the magazine’s philosophy.

“Why does that particular copy look as if it was dropped in the bathtub and then run over by a mail coach?” he asked, with a nod toward its tattered and curled pages.

“It might well have been,” Alistair answered with a shrug. “The thing is handed about in secret, among girls whose parents would lock them up if they were caught.”

It never ceased to amaze Miles how few people understood that forbidding fruit only made people long for a taste. “Where did you come by it, then?”

“My sister Harriet was hiding it inside her arithmetic lesson book,” Alistair explained with an aggrieved sigh. “Her governess brought it to me—scandalized, of course—and I promised to give Harry a talking-to. But first . . .” He thumbed through the magazine. “I wanted you to hear this: ‘Dear Miss B.—’” he read, when he’d found the page he sought and folded the cover back. “‘Recently my father accepted on my behalf an offer from a gentleman who has, I will admit, a less than sterling reputation. But I persuaded myself that his proposal was a sign he meant to return to the path of virtue himself.’”

Miles snorted. “Are we pretending I’m the only recently betrothed chap to whom that could refer?”

Alistair sent him a sharp but knowing glare over the top of the magazine before continuing to read aloud. “‘Then, at the dinner party hosted by my parents to celebrate our engagement, he slipped away to the library, where I found him with another woman. . . .”

That did sound like him. “Well?” Miles prompted. “What’s the charge? What does she claim to have seen me doing?”

“It doesn’t say. There’s a row of little stars, as if something had to be redacted.”

Miles snatched the magazine from his friend’s hand and scanned the page. A sketch of a honeybee filled the uppermost corner, the insect’s flight path indicated by a dashed line looping around a banner of text: Trust Miss Busy B. for Good Advice . . . Even if It Stings!

Eventually, his gaze came to rest on the damning

********.

Oh, very clever, inviting readers to fill in the blanks with whatever salacious details their imaginations could concoct. He took a slurp of scalding coffee and grimaced.

“Mrs. Wellcroft and I were playing chess,” he said in his defense. He and the widow were old friends. “We’d both grown bored with the conversation over dinner, and neither of us fancied cards.”

One of Alistair’s dark brows lifted into a skeptical arch. “Playing chess. Is that some new lovers’ cant I haven’t heard?”

It was true that Miles wasn’t very good at chess. Certainly not as good as he was at . . . other things. “I didn’t tup her, if that’s what you’re implying. At least,” he added, a little sheepishly, “not on that occasion. I’ve turned over a new leaf since my engagement to Miss Grey.”

“One might expect to find a nine-day-old leaf still fresh and green, barely unfurled. Not crumpling into dust at the slightest touch. And yet . . .”

Miles hardly heard him. He’d picked up reading where Alistair had left off.

I overheard the pair of them laughing together over something—a wager, of which he is a party, pertaining to whether he would find a bride this Season! Humiliated to think I had merely been the means of winning a bet, I slipped away undetected and cried off from the rest of the party. Since then, I have pleaded various ailments to avoid everything to do with the wedding—especially him. After three visits from the physician, my mother is beginning to suspect. If I keep my promise to marry him, I’ll be miserable. If I don’t, my reputation will be in tatters. What should I do?

The letter was signed Aggrieved in Grosvenor Sq.

“Bloody hell,” Miles muttered.

The trouble had started when he’d arrived in Town at the start of April and mentioned to a few fellows, in the strictest confidence, that he thought it might be time for him, at the advanced age of eight and twenty, to give some thought to marriage.

The next evening, a chap whom Miles hardly knew had remarked over a hand of cards that Miles was unlikely to have his pick, as some of the best families had instructed their daughters to avoid that devil, Deveraux. Miles had only smiled. Someone else had asserted that if he weren’t careful, he might find it difficult to make any match at all. And somehow—Miles was never quite sure how, though he’d been getting himself into scrapes all his life—the evening had ended with him standing on his chair, vowing to wed a young lady of quality before the end of the Season.

Every gentleman present, except for Alistair, had bet against him, their wagers duly recorded in White’s infamous betting books.

Miles had been astonished by their lack of confidence; after all, he’d never lacked for female companionship before. But as it had turned out, a rakish reputation was no benefit when it came to finding a respectable bride. He’d succeeded in the end only because Edward Grey had squandered what little fortune he’d had on bad investments and had spotted a lucky chance to improve the family’s standing with a gentleman who did not require his bride bring a dowry. And because his daughter was a naïve, biddable sort of girl—or so Miles had thought.

Writing this letter—well, and breaking their engagement—were the first and only signs of spirit he had seen in Arabella Grey, the first and only things about her that had roused his interest, even a little.

Not that it mattered. Men like him didn’t marry for happiness or companionship. Certainly not for love. They married to carry on the family name and to forge alliances. They married because it was the expected, respectable thing to do.

Now, thanks to that wager, if he didn’t take a wife within the month, Miles stood to lose a great deal more than his self-respect.

“I don’t suppose you had a peek at the betting book before coming in here?” he ventured.

Alistair shook his head. “The crowd around it was too great.” Was it Miles’s imagination, or did his friend sound ever so slightly amused? Alistair nodded toward the magazine. “It would seem that all the young ladies of marriageable age in five counties aren’t the only ones who know what sort of rogue you are.”