The Husband List by Janet Evanovich, Dorien Kelly Page A

gentleman caller.”
    Caroline had reached the stone wall, which came about to her waist. “I was walking the Cliff Walk when it occurred to me I must be near your cottage, Flora. Since your neighbor’s wall is so obligingly low, I decided to take advantage and see if I could get a peek of your grounds.”
    “Come on over,” Flora said.
    “I’d be happy to,” Caroline replied.
    Jack, however, wasn’t ready for a repeat of the conversation on the way to the Casino. Flora and Caroline had the potential to be an unholy alliance, at least as it pertained to him.
    “Shouldn’t you be at a ball or something?” Jack asked Caroline.
    “I pled exhaustion and stayed at Villa Blanca,” she said before grasping her skirts in apparent preparation to hop the wall. “Mama and the girls won’t be back for hours yet.”
    “Help her, Jack,” Flora directed.
    “I can do it myself,” Caroline replied before he could even move.
    Flora let go of his arm and nudged him forward. “A gentleman would help in any case.”
    “Take the help or we’ll both be lectured,” Jack said to Caroline.
    “Fine.”
    Jack crossed the wall, which wasn’t more than three feet. He scooped Caroline up in his arms. She smelled pretty, like flowers and sunshine. Some unthinking part of him wanted to hold her. But the thinking part quickly deposited her on the other side of the wall. She landed well, considering his haste.
    “Thank you,” she said as he hopped back over.
    “I take it you’re out and about without your mother’s permission?” he asked.
    “The matter wasn’t discussed,” she replied before turning her attention away. “Flora, how was your tennis lesson?”
    “Very enjoyable, thank you,” Flora replied. “I seem to have some aptitude, not that I’m sure what I will do with it. One can play tennis only so much.” She extended her arm to Caroline. “Come walk toward the house with me and tell me what you have been doing since yesterday morning.”
    Caroline linked arms with her.
    “I have been doing almost everything a proper heiress should,” she said, giving Jack a single glance over her shoulder before the two women started walking.
    Jack followed after them, sure in the knowledge that this was to be like the ride to the Casino, when he’d been trapped in a feminine world he’d found as frustrating as he had intriguing.
    “Yesterday, after the Casino, I stopped at Villa Blanca to change outfits,” Caroline was saying to Flora. “Then I attended a tea at Miss Theresa Milburn’s, followed by another clothing change and a concert at Fairview. From there, it was Villa Blanca to change yet again, and then on to supper at the Allen home. Then—”
    “Villa Blanca to change?” Flora asked.
    Caroline laughed. “Yes. And finally to a small dance in honor of Miss Courtney Johnston’s eighteenth birthday.”
    “All that activity and a veritable mountain of clothing,” Flora said. “Do you ever get time to yourself?”
    “Only when I steal it,” Caroline replied. “And today was breakfast with Mama and Mrs. Longhorne and then off to Bailey’s Beach for some sea air. When I returned to Villa Blanca, Mama had a surprise for me … a new governess.”
    “A governess?” Flora asked. “Are you not too grown for a governess?”
    “Yes, at twenty-one, I am. But this new governess is my fault, in a way. If I had been compliant last year and married as my mother had planned, I would now be governess-free, if unhappily wed. Instead, I have Peek. She’ll be occupying my mornings. I am glad I learn quickly, because otherwise she’d take my full days.”
    “What are you learning?”
    “Peek is to teach me all I need to know about the English peers’ way of life. At this point, that seems to involve memorizing who may walk after whom in a procession, and how many strawberry leaves and pearls may be showing on a marquess’s coronet. The answer to the last is three and two, respectively.”
    Flora laughed. “You