The lady moved forward as the Marquis’s cousin spoke and then bent down to kiss him lightly on the cheek.
“I am very angry with you, my dearest, most beloved Michael,” she said, “for not telling me where you were going. You know I would have come with you.”
“I wanted no one with me,” the Marquis replied.
He spoke disagreeably.
His cousin Oliver and the beauty, wearing a white bonnet decorated with flame-coloured ostrich feathers, stared at Erlina.
“And who is this?” Oliver enquired coldly.
“I should have introduced you,” the Marquis replied, “to Miss Erlina Sherwood, whose estate marches with this one and who, most unfortunately, has just had her home burnt to the ground.”
“That is indeed a disaster,” Oliver remarked.
“Erlina,” the Marquis went on, “allow me to introduce my cousin,
