The Viscount and the Virgin. Annie Burrows

would make sure each and every one of them knew they were loved exactly as they were, be they boys or girls. She would never try to stifle their personalities or make them feel they had to constantly strive for her approval.

      Though, she thought despondently as she trailed up the front steps behind her aunt, it was not likely that she ever would have children of her own.

      No man that Lord and Lady Callandar considered eligible would want to ally himself to a girl who could bring so little credit to his name. She only had to think of the disdain she had read in the viscount’s eyes, the mockery in those of his friends, to know she was never going to measure up.

      ‘In here, if you please,’ said her aunt, making her way across the hall to the sitting room. She waited in silence while a footman hastily lit some candles, banked up the fire, enquired if they wanted any refreshment and then withdrew.

      ‘Sit up straight,’ she then urged Imogen, who had slumped down on the sofa. ‘Just because you have suffered a little setback, there is no excuse for forgetting your posture!’

      Imogen sat up straight, mentally bracing herself for yet another lecture about how young ladies ought to behave.

      ‘Now, Imogen, I have not taken you into my home and drilled you into the ways of Society, only to have you fall at the first hurdle! I do not despair of seeing you make a creditable alliance before the end of the Season.’

      Imogen had a depressing vision of endless balls where she sat on the sidelines, watching the prettier, wealthier girls whirling round with their admiring partners. Or dancing with dutiful, bored men like Mr Dysart. Of picnics and breakfasts where she endured the spiteful comments of girls like Penelope and Charlotte, while the matrons whispered about her father’s terrible fate, and the bucks sniggered about her mother’s scandalous conduct. Of always having to rein herself in, lest she betray some sign that she took after either of her scandalous parents.

      And then she looked at the determined jut of her aunt’s jaw. Her poor, beleaguered aunt, who had so determinedly taken up the cudgels on her behalf.

      The last thing she wanted was to become a lifelong burden on her aunt and uncle. ‘If…if I have not received a proposal by the end of the Season, though, I could always go and teach in a school somewhere. For you surely cannot want me living with you indefinitely.’

      ‘That is for Lord Callandar to decide. Though I am sure it would make him most uncomfortable to think of a Herriard teaching in a school!’

      ‘But I am not a Herriard,’ Imogen pointed out. ‘I am a Hebden.’ It was why Hugh Bredon had not wished to adopt her, after all. Because she was the spawn of the notorious Kit Hebden.

      ‘Nobody will be in the least surprised that you could not make anything of me. Though I am sure everyone can see that you have done all you could to try and make me more…’ she waved her hands expansively, then frowned ‘…make me less…’

      Her aunt sighed. ‘That is just the trouble, is it not? You are what you are, niece, and I am beginning to think no power on earth will ever make a jot of difference.’

      ‘I am sorry, Aunt.’ She bowed her head as she tugged off her evening gloves, one finger at a time. The backs were sticky with dried champagne. ‘I do not want you to be ashamed of me. I do not ever wish to cause you any trouble.’

      ‘I know that, dear,’ her aunt replied on yet another sigh. ‘But trouble seems to find you, nonetheless.’

      Chapter Two

      Imogen was in the sitting room, with her tambour on her lap, trying extremely hard to look as though she did not think decorative embroidery was the most pointless exercise ever foisted upon womankind.

      Sitting indoors on a sunny day, embroidering silk flowers onto a scrap of linen, when real crocuses would be unfurling like jewelled fans in the park not two hundred yards from her door…just in case somebody chose to pay a visit! Not that anybody ever came to see her. Still, when her aunt was ‘at home’ a steady flow of callers made their way through this room. And her aunt insisted that they saw Imogen sitting quietly in her corner, applying herself to her embroidery, so that they could go away with a favourable impression of her.

      Not that Imogen could see what was so praiseworthy about stitching away at something that was never going to be of any practical value.

      ‘Lady Verity Carlow,’ her aunt had explained, as though delivering a clincher, ‘sits for hours at a time plying her needle.’

      Well, huffed Imogen, so had she, back in Staffordshire, when she had some useful sewing to do. She had made all her brothers’ shirts, hemmed miles of linen and darned thousands of socks. And she had not minded that at all. Particularly not when one of the boys came to read aloud to her while she did it.

      Her mind flew back to the days when she and her mother would sit with the mending basket, by the fire in the cluttered little parlour of the Brambles. And just as she was recalling how the boys would lounge like so many overgrown puppies around their feet, her uncle’s butler, Bedworth, stunned her by opening the door and intoning, ‘Captain Alaric Bredon.’

      While Imogen was still reeling from the coincidence of having the butler announcing a visitor with a name so like that of the boys she was thinking of, Bedworth opened the door a little wider, and she saw, just beyond his portly figure, in the scarlet jacket with the yellow reveres and cuffs of his regiment, his shako held under one arm, and a broad grin creasing his weather-beaten face, her oldest—and favourite—stepbrother.

      ‘Rick!’ she squealed, leaping to her feet, scattering her silks, tambour and pincushion in all directions.

      Captain Bredon met her halfway across the room, dropping his shako as he spread his arms wide to sweep her into his embrace.

      ‘Midge!’ he laughed, lifting her off her feet and twirling her round as she flung her arms round his neck.

      ‘Oh, Rick, c-can it really be you?’ She was so happy to see him. It was absurd to find tears streaming down her face.

      ‘When did you get back to En-England?’ she hiccupped. He had missed his father’s funeral. The letter informing him of Hugh Bredon’s death had not caught up with him for several weeks. She had hoped he might have been permitted time to come home, but his commanding officer had thought pushing Bonaparte’s troops back into France had been far more important. ‘You have Nick there,’ he had written back to her. ‘Trust him to do what is best for you. After all, he is the legal brains of the family.’

      And Nick had dealt with everything with extreme punctiliousness. But, oh, how she wished Rick had been there on that day when she had felt as though she had lost everything at a stroke!

      Now that he was here, she found herself burying her face in his shoulder, letting go of all the grief she had bottled up for so long.

      ‘Rick, Rick,’ she sobbed. ‘I have m-missed you so much.’

      ‘Imogen!’ shrieked her aunt, preventing Rick from making any reply. ‘Have you lost all sense of decorum?’

      ‘But this is Rick, ma’am, Rick, my brother—’

      ‘I had gathered that,’ her aunt snapped. ‘But that is no excuse for indulging in such unseemly behaviour! And as for you, young man, I will thank you to put my niece down!’

      Rick did so with alacrity. He had just tugged his jacket back into place and taken a breath as though to tender an apology for offending his hostess, when they all heard a carriage drawing up outside.

      Lady Callandar flew to the window, said a rather unladylike word, then rounded on Imogen and Rick.

      ‘Up to your room, this instant!’ she barked at Imogen. ‘And as for you—’ she swooped on Captain Bredon’s shako and thrust it into his hands ‘—out! Now! No arguments!’

      Imogen had caught a glimpse of the carriage when her aunt had twitched back the curtains, and she recognized Lord Keddinton’s