had ever made.
At the time attending the annual village harvest dance hadn’t tempted Jennet, who preferred to stay home with her mother after the summer waned and the days grew shorter. She knew Margaret hated the cold, and without some distraction would grow melancholic. Together they spent the evenings sewing, playing cards or reading together. Often her mother would badger her on getting out to socialize, however, and on that occasion she had insisted.
“You have been shut in this house with me too long, my dear,” Margaret said. “I daresay Catherine Tindall and your other friends will be there. All of the young men in Renwick will wish to dance with you, I am sure.”
Jennet frowned at her. “Why are you so set on this, Mama? I have never been fond of going out in society.”
“But that is where you can be with people your own age,” her mother said, sounding slightly exasperated now. “You need not worry about me. I mean to change the ribbons on my good church bonnet, and I have the new Edgeworth novel to read. I do hope it is as scandalous as Lady Hardiwick claimed. Now, please, go, and enjoy yourself.”
Held at the spacious hall in the heart of Renwick, the harvest dance attracted most of the younger set. Jennet hovered outside for a moment to peer in through the windows and see if Catherine and her friends had arrived. That was when she overheard the conversation among a group of bachelors who had congregated just on the other side.
“I vow I saw her driving herself here,” one of the young men said. “She is wearing dark velvet, and comes alone. I hardly ever see her out in society. I must ask her to dance as soon as she makes an appearance.”
“Do you mean Jennet Reed?” another man asked, his upper lip curling. “As dour as a dowager, that one, and twice as prim.”
Jennet recognized her disparager. He had made a nuisance of himself at another assembly, simply because she had refused to dance with him.
“She refused to dance with you, I take it?” a tall, dark-haired gentleman inquired, as if he had heard her thoughts. When the other man scowled, he said, “A shame, then, that the lady has good taste.”
She moved to the other side of the window to get a better look at her defender’s face, and saw it was William Gerard. She had been introduced to him years ago, while he had been on holiday from school. At the time she had been a skinny girl of ten with dark red braids and very little to say, mostly out of embarrassment. In those days Margaret had dressed her like a doll, usually in fussy lace gowns that made her resemble a moth cocoon with legs.
I like your eyes much more than my own, Jennet remembered William saying to her. Shall we trade?
William had changed greatly since that brief meeting. The lanky, polite older boy she remembered had grown tall and broad-shouldered, and dressed in the latest fashions for men without looking foppish. He greatly resembled his father in coloring and features, but did not share the baron’s perpetually stern expression. His dark green eyes seemed to smile even when his mouth didn’t.
Jennet felt mesmerized.
Of course, every unattached young lady inside the hall was discreetly watching the dark, handsome heir to the Greystone barony; William’s father was enormously wealthy as well as a peer of the realm. His son would someday inherit all of it, including a grand house in London as well as Gerard Lodge, a magnificent Georgian mansion on an expansive estate, making him quite the eligible bachelor. From the polished perfection of his appearance he also possessed, as her friend Catherine would say, town bronze.
She would go home this moment, Jennet decided, turning away. The last thing she needed was to spend the night mooning over a man she had met exactly once. Yet before she could take a step the door to the hall opened, making her step back.
William Gerard came outside, closing the door and blocking her path. Jennet pivoted, intending to go the other way, when his voice stopped her.
“Miss Reed.” As she turned, he bowed to her. “I have not seen you at church all month. Are you become a heathen?”
Jennet bobbed. When she lifted her chin to meet his gaze she started to reply, and then a shaft of light from the setting sun fell over them, gilding William with the softest, purest