“Heed me, Miss Charlotte, for you won’t be getting other offers, no matter that your uncle is a duke. I am a viscount, and you shall like being my viscountess very well.”

Charlotte Windham had no choice but to heed Viscount Neederby, for he was nearly dragging her along Lady Belchamp’s wilderness walk by the arm.

“My lord, while I am ever receptive to knowledgeable guidance, this is not the time or the place to make a declaration.” Never and nowhere suited Charlotte when it came to proposals from such as Neederby.

He marched onward nonetheless, walking and pontificating at the same time being one of his few accomplishments.

“I must beg to differ, my dear, for receptive to guidance you most assuredly are not. Married to me, your sadly headstrong propensities would be a thing of the past. It will be my duty and pleasure as your devoted spouse to instruct you in all matters.”

He sent her a look, one intended to convey tender indulgence or a disturbance of the bowels. Charlotte wasn’t sure which.

“Might we circle back toward the buffet, your lordship? All this hiking about has left me with an appetite.”

Neederby finally came to a halt, though he’d chosen a spot overlooking the Thames. What imbecile had decided that scenic views were a mandatory improvement on Nature as the Almighty had designed her?

“Were you being arch, Miss Charlotte? I believe you were. I have appetites too, dontcha know.”

Neederby fancied himself a Corinthian. Hostesses added him to guest lists because he had a title, and had yet to lose either his hair or his teeth in any quantity. In Charlotte’s estimation, his brains had gone missing entirely.

“I haven’t an arch bone in my body, your lordship. I am, however, hungry.” The occasion was a Venetian breakfast, and Charlotte had intended to do justice to the lavish buffet.

Her belly was roiling, though, at the sound of the water rushing by more than ten yards below the iron balustrade along Lady Belchamp’s walkway.

“One hears things,” Neederby said, wiggling his eyebrows. “About certain people.”

Charlotte heard the river roaring below and tried to edge back from the overlook. “I have no interest in gossip, sir, though a plate of Lady Belchamp’s buffet offerings has great appeal.”

His lordship refused to budge and clamped a gloved hand over Charlotte’s fingers. “What about my offerings? I’m tireless in the saddle, as they say, and you’re in want of a fellow to show you the bridal path, as it were.”

Equestrian analogies never led anywhere decent. Charlotte escaped Neederby’s grasp by twisting her arm, a move her cousins had shown her more than ten years ago.

“I’m famished, your lordship, though I’d enjoy a morning hack in proper company someday next spring, if you happen to be back in London. At present, we can return to the buffet, or I’ll leave you here to admire the view.”

Either way, the gossips would add to their store of ammunition. Charlotte had taken too long on this ramble with his lordship, or she’d returned to the party without his escort, both choices unacceptable for a lady.

As the only remaining unmarried Windham, Charlotte had earned the enmity of every wallflower, failed debutante, matchmaker, or fortune hunter in Mayfair. The little season brought the wilted and the wounded out in quantity, while Charlotte—who considered herself neither—longed to retire to the country on the next available coach.

Neederby moved more quickly than he reasoned, and thus Charlotte found herself between him and the railing.

“When anybody’s looking,” he said, “you’re all haughty airs and tidy bows, but I know what you fast girls really want. Married to me, you’d be more than content.”

Married to him, Charlotte would be a candidate for Bedlam. “I need breakfast, you buffoon, and I haven’t been a girl for years. Get away from me.”

Charlotte also needed room to drive her knee into his jewelbox, and she needed to breathe.

Neederby took a step closer, and Charlotte backed up until the railing was all that prevented her from falling into the torrent below. Her vision began to dim at the edges and the roaring in her ears merged with the noise of the river.

Not now. Please, not here, not now, not with the biggest nincompoop in all of nincompoopdom strutting and spouting marital ambitions at my side.

The thought had barely formed when Neederby was abruptly dragged three feet to the right.

“Sherbourne,” his lordship squawked. “Devilish bad taste to interrupt a man when he’s paying his addresses.”

Lucas Sherbourne was tall, blond, solidly built, and at that moment, a pathetically welcome sight.

“If that’s your idea of paying your addresses,” Sherbourne said, “then I’d like to introduce you to my version of target practice at dawn.”