The Lady Most Likely...

by Julia Quinn

  Julia

  QUINN

  Eloisa

  JAMES

  Connie

  BROCKWAY

  The Lady

  Most

  Likely…

  A Novel

  in Three Parts

  This book is dedicated to all the

  wonderfully funny, cheerful people who visit

  Connie’s, Eloisa’s and Julia’s Facebook Fan pages.

  We have so much fun with you—

  we hope you have fun reading this book!

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Epilogue

  “I had her make me a list.”

  More Dazzling Romance From

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter 1

  August 20, 1817

  The London town house of

  the Marquess of Finchley

  14 Cavendish Square

  After years of inducing giggles, squawks, and outright bellows of laughter, Hugh Theodore Dunne, Earl of Briarly, understood perfectly well that an older brother exists primarily for the amusement of his younger sisters. After all, his parents had endowed him with four such sisters. They had the heir; they needed a spare; all they had managed to produce were girls who turned poking fun at their brother into an art form.

  “A list!” his oldest sister Carolyn was saying, practically hooting between words, she was laughing so hard. “Georgie, did you hear what Hugh just said?”

  Perhaps he shouldn’t have issued his demand in front of his sister’s best friend, since Lady Georgina Sorrell was practically convulsed with laughter.

  “What’s so damned funny about it?” he demanded, starting to feel irritated. “It’s not as if you haven’t warned me a thousand times that I have to get married unless I want Slinky Simon to inherit my title. Here I am, bending over to put my head in the parson’s noose, and you’re falling all over yourself because it’s so hilarious.”

  “I do think you should get married,” Carolyn replied. “I’m sure I have said so a thousand times. But now that you’ve finally decided to do it, you want me to pick you a wife?” Laughter bubbled out of her again. “You want me to make you a list?”

  “I’m sorry,” Georgina said, gasping a little. “I certainly don’t mean to poke fun. I should allow the two of you to speak in private. I’ll leave.”

  Hugh couldn’t help grinning as giggles burst from behind her fingers. He’d always liked Georgie, even back when she was in pinafores, and she didn’t smile enough these days.

  “Be serious,” he commanded the two of them. “I don’t have the time for fiddling around in a ballroom and doing this sort of thing myself. You’re always running around those places; you know the cattle; just point out a woman with good bloodlines and good teeth.”

  “He’s in the market for a Hereford,” Georgina said to Carolyn.

  “Not a cow,” Carolyn said. “A horse. You know Hugh; the only thing he thinks about is horseflesh day and night.”

  “I’m sitting right here in front of you,” Hugh pointed out. “Scoff all you like, but I’m still waiting for a list.”

  “Hugh,” Carolyn said.

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “You’re serious?”

  It was a mystery to him why his sister would think he wasn’t serious. “I don’t have time for wife-hunting,” he pointed out. “I’m breaking in a new stallion, Caro. He’s a —”

  “Wait a minute,” Georgina broke in. “What happened to make you decide to marry?” All the laughter was gone from her voice as if it had never existed.

  “What happened is that he’s finally growing up,” Carolyn said blithely. “And at twenty-eight, it isn’t a moment too soon.”

  Georgina waved her hand impatiently. “Something brought him here, Caro.” She turned to Hugh. She had a delicate jaw, but damned if it didn’t take on a bulldoggish look. “What happened?”

  Hugh stared at her. He’d known Georgina since she was five years old. Their mothers were close friends, so they spent their summers together. Not that he’d seen her much in the past five years … in fact, he hadn’t had a proper conversation with her since her husband’s funeral. And that was, what, two years ago?

  “Hugh?” Carolyn asked, the mockery gone from her voice as well.

  “There’s no need to make a production of it,” he said, wondering exactly when Georgina’s eyes had grown so grave. She had spent her childhood falling about laughing, yet now she was so clearly a matron. A widow, even though she couldn’t be older than twenty-five since she was the same age as Carolyn.

  She was sitting bolt upright, her eyes focused on his.

  “Richelieu threw me,” he admitted.

  Carolyn gasped. “But you get thrown all the time.”

  The corner of his mouth twitched. “It goes with the territory. You can’t break in a horse, let alone the particular horses I fancy, without cracking a bone now and then.”

  “But obviously this was different,” Georgina stated. “What happened?”

  “I’ve been out,” he admitted reluctantly.

  “Out?” Carolyn echoed. “Out of what?”

  “Out of my mind. Flat out. In a coma, or so they call it.”

  “For days?” Georgina put in. Her voice was steady, calm. Of course, she had watched her husband die. And it took the man months … even a year.

  “A week,” he said, resigned. “I was out a week.”

  “Why didn’t I know?” Carolyn cried. Her big blue eyes were filling with tears, which was precisely why he hadn’t meant to tell her at all.

  “Peckering has explicit instructions what to do in case of an event like this. And he followed them.”

  There was a moment of silence in the room.

  “Peckering is your groomsman?” Georgina asked.

  “Valet,” he said. “I’d trust him with my life.”

  “Did he even call for a doctor? Was that in the plan?”

  “Of course. There was nothing they could do. You know that. After a kick in the head, you either wake up, or you don’t.”

  “And if you do wake up, you might well be injured for life,” Georgina said. She was very white in the face, so white that her freckles stood out. She’d always had pale skin. It went with all that fiery red hair.

  “I’m not injured,” he said shortly. “I’m fully compos mentis, as you can see.” Not that he hadn’t feared just that, particularly when his vision didn’t come back at first. It was during the day, when he lay in the dark after waking, that he realized the time had come to produce an heir. That or stop training horses. A wife was infinitely preferable.

  “Oh, Hugh,” Carolyn said with a wail. “I can’t bear it!”

  He went over and picked her up as if she were still a little girl, then sat down with her in his lap. “I’m fine, Caro,” he said, patting her back. “You know that training horses can be risky. You’ve seen me fall off a hundred times.”

  “I don’t understand why you can’t just hire someo
ne to do the dangerous part,” she said, leaning against his shoulder. “Other people hire stable masters.” He had a sudden memory of holding his sister like this when she was much smaller, and she used to suck her thumb. That would be after their mother died, he guessed, when he was nine, and she was only five or six.

  “Working with horses is my life,” he said simply. “I do have a stable master. Hell, I have three of them because of the stables in Scotland and Kent. But when a horse like Richelieu comes along, I’m the only one to touch him.”

  “Why can’t you work with normal horses, then?” she cried. “Why must it be these terrible Arabians? So violent and uncontrolled?”

  “They aren’t violent by nature,” he said, picturing the gorgeous animals he spent his life with. “Richelieu is high-spirited, and it’s a game for him to try to best me. If I kill his spirit, I kill his ability to win.”

  “I don’t know a single other earl who spends his days in such a dangerous manner,” Carolyn said, starting to scold, which meant that she was feeling better.

  He stood up, put her on her feet, and grinned down at her. “There’s my shrewish little sister back.”

  “It serves you right if I’m a shrew. You drive me to distraction, Hugh. I hardly ever see you, and then you nearly die without even telling me, and—I worry about you!”

  “You’ve been pestering me to marry for years. Ever since I turned eighteen, and that was ten long years ago. Just think about how happy you’ll be. It shouldn’t take me long to manage the business.”

  “Did it hurt?” came a quiet voice.

  He turned and met Georgina’s eyes. She had remarkable eyes, sort of dark lavender. The kind of flower his housekeeper hung in the stillroom. And she looked at a man steadily, without playing the coquette. Of course, she wouldn’t play that with him. He was like a big brother to her. “No,” he said.

  And then: “Yes.” He didn’t want to lie to her. “My head hurt like the devil when I finally woke up. Something about the light, I think. But I was all right after a few days.”

  Carolyn ran to the door with a little sob. “Piers, it’s the most awful thing—Hugh was in a coma for a week, and he didn’t even let us know!” She flung herself into her husband’s arms.

  “Finchbird,” Hugh greeted his brother-in-law.

  The Marquess of Finchley didn’t bow since he had an armful of marchioness, but he nodded. “Hoof to the head?”

  “Unfortunately.”

  “He looks all right to me,” Finchley told Carolyn.

  “He almost died,” she said, catching her breath on a sob.

  Hugh’s brother-in-law shot him a look that said, clear as shooting, that he never should have told his sister.

  “I didn’t mean to,” Hugh said, sitting down again. “Georgina ferreted it out of me.”

  Georgina was still sitting bolt upright. “He came over to offer himself as a sacrifice at the marital altar,” she said dryly. “I thought it would take at least a brush with death to bring him to that point.”

  Finchley nodded. “It would have to be something disagreeable to get Hugh out of the stables.”

  Hugh rather resented that. In the last ten years, he had tripled the estate his father had left by importing and breeding Arabian thoroughbreds. If he wasn’t traipsing around ballrooms, it was only because … it was because there was no life for him outside the sweat and the thrill and the pure joy of the stable. “Well, here I am,” he said shortly. “I plan to marry, so if you want to jeer at me, Finchbird, get it over with now.”

  Finchley’s arms tightened around Carolyn’s waist, and he smiled an odd lopsided smile over her head. “Why would I do that?”

  Of course, theirs was a love match. Hugh wouldn’t have had it any other way; Carolyn had always been the most softhearted of his sisters. She needed to be taken care of, and the marquess was just the man for it.

  “He’s asking Carolyn to produce a list,” Georgina explained.

  “What sort of list?” Finchley asked.

  “A list of women to marry,” Hugh said, feeling as if his idea had been a stupid one. Now Finchbird would take the piss out of him as well.

  “I find that one wife is more than enough,” his brother-in-law said, grinning.

  “Thanks for the sublimely intelligent advice,” Hugh said. “Could you stop hanging on to your husband and jot down a name or two, Caro? I thought I’d go to Almack’s tonight and take care of this.”

  “Almack’s? In case you didn’t notice, Hugh, the season is over. It ended more than a week ago.” Georgina’s voice had a sweet thread of laughter again. He hated to see that sadness in her eyes. Damn her husband for dying anyway.

  “Does that mean I can’t meet women simply because it’s not the season? Caro, you seemed to be at Almack’s almost every night the year you came out.”

  “Almack’s is only open once a week, during the season. And how would you know how often I was there?” Carolyn asked tartly. “Aunt Emma kept hoping that you would escort me one night, and you never bothered, not even once.”

  “Brothers never—”

  “Don’t even try that,” Carolyn interrupted. “I myself saw your closest friend, the Earl of Charters, at three or four balls this season with his sister.”

  “Poor Alec,” Hugh said, amused. “Shall I ask him to make me up a list instead? He must have seen every woman on the market if he’s been spending his time in ballrooms.”

  “If anyone is to make you a list, I’ll be the one,” Carolyn stated. “I will behave in a sisterly fashion by attempting to find you a spouse even if you completely neglected to help me in the same endeavor!”

  “You came out the year I brought Monteleone over from Arabia,” Hugh said. “Richelieu, the horse I’m working with now, comes from his line.”

  “I made a bundle on Monteleone when he won the Ascot,” Finchley said with satisfaction. He pulled his wife over to a sofa and sat down with her.

  “So you see? Finchbird managed to find you without my help, and if I’d been gadding about in a ballroom, Monteleone wouldn’t have won,” Hugh pointed out.

  “And if Monteleone hadn’t won, no one would want his issue, and you wouldn’t nearly have died at the hoof of Richelieu,” Georgina put in.

  “Georgie,” he said, reverting to her childhood nickname, “for God’s sake, throw me a bone, here!”

  Carolyn sniffed and straightened up. “So whom should he marry, Georgina?”

  They both stared at him for a moment. Hugh waited.

  “Gwendolyn Passmore?” Georgina said, with just a touch of doubt in her voice.

  “That’s just what I was thinking,” Carolyn said, but then she shook her head.

  “Why not?” Hugh demanded. Then he realized he had no idea who this Gwendolyn Passmore was. “I don’t want to marry anyone walleyed,” he said hastily. “Or with spots.”

  “Gwendolyn doesn’t have spots. She’s easily the most beautiful debutante of the year. Gorgeous pale red hair, the kind with a perfect curl,” his sister clarified.

  “I love red hair,” Hugh said. “Didn’t you just say that the season is over? So why didn’t this paragon marry someone?”

  “She turned down three offers that everyone knows of, and I’m sure there were others. The word is that she’s waiting for the Duke of Bretton to declare himself.”

  “Betting is running strongly against the duke’s future liberty,” Finchley put in. “He danced with her twice at the McClendon ball.”

  “No stables to speak of,” Hugh said with a shrug.

  “It’s not stables that will win a woman,” Carolyn said, frowning at him. “Bretton has great address.”

  “And he’s very handsome,” Georgina put in.

  “I’m not?” For some reason, it nettled him to hear that from Georgina. Granted, he didn’t swan about in ballrooms, but the woman he’d—ahem—befriended never showed any lack of appreciation. In fact, he had the distinct impression that his broad shoulders and muscled body were
highly regarded.

  “She’s above your touch,” his sister said. “Too beautiful, too desirable.”

  “I don’t agree,” Georgina said, knitting her brow. “Gwendolyn would be lucky to get Hugh. After all, he has your hair, Carolyn.”

  Carolyn grinned. “My finest feature!”

  Hugh peered at his sister’s hair. It was the same brandy brown as his own, not that he’d ever given the subject much thought.

  “But I don’t know that she would want him,” Georgina continued.

  “Why not?” he demanded.

  “She’s a bit shy,” Georgina said.

  “You have the social graces of an elephant,” his sister said briskly. “Besides, Gwendolyn really is a smash hit.”

  “She’s the Carolyn of her year,” Finchley put in. He was holding his wife tightly against his side.

  Hugh eyed him. Whatever happened, he didn’t want to end up as lovesick as his brother-in-law. All the same … “If you won the top debutante, I can certainly do the same,” he said pointedly.

  “There’s a perfect comparison,” his sister said. “Piers knows how to dance. He courted me, Hugh. He wooed me. He sent me violets every morning for three weeks in a row. You couldn’t do all those things. You don’t even—no. Just put Gwendolyn out of your mind.”

  “What about Miss Katherine Peyton?” Georgina asked. “She’s so adorable, and she does come from the country. She understands stables.”

  Carolyn tapped her chin thoughtfully. “I heard her ask Lord Nebel how many sheep he was running on his estate. He didn’t even know he was running sheep.”

  “I have sheep, but from the look of it, all they do is eat. No running,” Hugh said. “I think I’d rather have Gwendolyn. Look how well it’s worked out for Finchbird.”

  “What has?”

  “Going for the best woman on the market,” he said promptly. “I know you don’t like the comparison, but it doesn’t strike me as so different from buying a horse. There’s always one foal that everyone thinks will breed a winner. Gwendolyn’s it this year, so she’s the one I want.”

  Carolyn rolled her eyes. “You can’t just buy Gwendolyn, Hugh.”