“From – Birmingham,” she answered, as it was the first big town that came to her mind.
“I suppose you have been on tour,” the Earl remarked. “Well, I am sure now that you are in London it would be a grave error to let you disappear back to the Provinces.”
Once again he was speaking in that dry tone, which made it difficult, Minella thought, to understand exactly what he meant.
Instead she turned as her mother had always taught her to do to speak to the gentleman next to her, to find that it was Lord Skelton, who was talking intimately and in a low voice to Nellie.
He obviously had no wish to speak to her.
The Earl must have realised what she was doing because he said,
“I think you will find at this party that everybody is neatly paired off with the person they want to be with. So, as
