The Unofficial Suitor by Charlotte Louise Dolan Page A

her rules, namely that they must hold their visit to thirty minutes, because Cassie was finding it harder and harder to convince herself that Mr. Hawke embodied no threat to her peace of mind.
    Richard watched the three ladies conversing by the window. Or rather, he could not keep his eyes off the one whose tongue was not flapping away at top speed. Although he had not previously considered it a necessary requirement for a wife, he now realized that he had no desire to wed a chatterbox. Lady Cassiopeia, fortunately, did not seem to suffer from that affliction.
    “Pay attention, Richard.” Perry clapped him on the shoulder. “Ingleby here has just promised he will put our names up for White’s and Brooks’s.”
    “But not Boodle’s,” young Mr. Ingleby said with a grin. “That club’s for the dandies, so if you want a membership there, you’ll have to apply to Stanier. Ecod, but I’d give a bundle to have seen his face when you was announced. I’ll wager his nose was bent out of shape when you turned up alive. Don’t quite know how he got it into his noggin that you had to be dead. Quite a few people have gone to the Colonies and returned alive.”
    “The United States,” Perry corrected.
    “Beg pardon?”
    “Not the Colonies anymore. We won our independence,” Perry said quite seriously. “Twice now.”
    “Oh, to be sure, to be sure. But you said ‘we.’ Don’t you mean ‘they’ old chap?”
    Perry must be the total lackwit, Richard decided, to speak in such a revolutionary way before his grandmother. Although she appeared to be deep in conversation with one of her cronies, Richard was willing to lay odds she was listening intently to every careless word her grandson was saying.
    Before Perry could say anything else that might prematurely reveal his plans to return to America, Richard took his elbow and gave it such a hard squeeze that Perry winced. “It is time we were on our way,” Richard said smoothly.
    Perry did retain a modicum of good sense, and without any objections, he took his farewell of his grandmother, who then held out her hand to Richard. Bowing over it, he said all that was polite, and moments later he was safely out on the street with his companion.
    “Were you deliberately trying to stir up a hornet’s nest in there?” Richard asked.
    “My wits must have gone begging,” Perry admitted. “I can’t believe I spoke that carelessly in front of my grandmother. Thank goodness I at least had enough common sense to drag you along to London with me. Well, no harm done.”
    Easy to say, thought Richard, but he doubted Lady Letitia had missed the implications of the word we even if Perry thought she had. Excusing himself on the grounds that he had pressing business to look after in the City, Richard waited until he was safely seated in a hack before opening the note Lady Letitia’s butler had slipped to him along with his hat.
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Chapter 6
    Lady Letitia wasted no time. As soon as the butler had left the room after serving them their dinner, she began her attack.
    “My grandson has mentioned you in many of the letters he has written me. You are not precisely the English gentleman of leisure you are now pretending to be.”
    Now is the time, Richard thought, to prove I am as adept at getting out of a tight spot as Perry thinks I am. “I am English, at least,” he replied mildly, “and not at all a savage. You will notice I am quite adept at eating with a knife and fork.” He held up his utensils in mute testimony.
    His hostess took another sip of her wine. “But you are not a gentleman born, nor are you a man of leisure. Wealthy, I will grant you, but none of it appears to have been inherited, which you must agree is the mark of a true gentleman.”
    “Delicious salmon,” Richard said. Perry’s grandmother was turning out to be every bit as formidable as he had said. It was too bad Perry had written such informative letters.
    “I do not think my grandson has any idea of