Damsel in Distress by Joan Smith

disappointed. She did want to be seen at Lady Sefton’s ball on Dolmain’s arm, however, so she must remain civil. She was curious to see that Helen would be with them. Newt would be happy to accompany her, and between them, they might discover something from her.
    As soon as Newton received her note inviting him to join the party, he called for his carriage and drove to Berkeley Square in a frenzy, steaming at every pore. To her amazement, he entered wearing a bearish scowl.
    “If this is a joke, Caro, it ain’t fanny,” he said. “Mean to say, you know I have feelings for Lady Helen, even if her papa is a mawworm.”
    “Do sit down. Would you care for a drink?”
    “Passionately.” He ignored the coffeepot and poured himself a glass of wine, which he gulped down like a man who had been stranded in the desert for a week.
    “Are you not pleased with the invitation?” Caro asked.
    “Thrilled to minced meat. To tell the truth, I am as nervous as a chicken with a fox peering in at the door.”
    “Nervous of a schoolgirl?”
    “True, I have been on the town awhile. Know which side of the street is up.” Still his nerves refused to be tamed by mere facts. “Fact is, I am a martyr to self-doubts when it comes to petticoat dealings,” he explained. “If she was a filly, I would not have a care in the world. I understand horses, but women! I am head over heels in love with the chit. She is head over heels over shoulders above me. I may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I know that much. All the bucks are dangling after her. I tell myself I am good as any of them — well, as eligible in point of fortune — but it does no good. Goes in one ear and out the other, like a dose of salts,” he said, with a very poor notion of anatomy.
    When she assured him that Helen had very little experience of gentlemen and could not be so very demanding, he found a new concern. “What cravat shall I wear? Do you think the Oriental, or is it too big? My face looks like a moon on a platter in those big cravats. I ain’t sure my man can do it either. Should I send her a corsage? I don’t want to be encroaching.”
    She calmed him down, talked him out of the Oriental cravat and the Brutus do, which would not at all suit his full face, suggested a modest corsage of baby roses for a young lady just making her debut, and generally assuaged his fears.
    “What will I say to her?” was his next concern. “I hope she likes horses. I could talk an hour about my stable.”
    “Oh, I would not do that, Newt. Ten minutes is quite enough. What you must talk about is that trip to the Pantheon, and the missing diamonds and Miss Blanchard. I am sure Lady Helen knows more than she has told her papa.”
    “That ought to keep the chat rattling along. I hope she ain’t blue. If she starts talking books, I am done for.”
    With a heavy day ahead of him preparing for the ball, he soon left. By four he had arranged all the details with his valet and was free to drive to Hyde Park. He called on Caro, but she was entertaining her neighbor, Lady Jersey, so he left before that dame tried to induce him to attend Almack’s.
    His trip to the park was a success. He saw Lady Helen. She was accompanied by Lady Milchamp, but when Helen met up with a group of youngsters to stroll about the park, the chaperon remained in the carriage. Newt pulled in behind her and followed Helen’s group, hoping to overhear the conversation, to learn what interested her. His blue eyes narrowed when she fell a little behind the group. He watched as a handsome young scoundrel popped out from behind a tree and spoke to her.
    Newton was all set to pounce forward and rescue her from the mushroom when he recognized the fellow. It was that Bernard she had been dancing with at the Pantheon. He and Helen were chatting away, six to the dozen — in French. It might as well have been Dutch as far as Newt was concerned.
    He observed every detail of Bernard’s toilette. There was