Leaving off her rock kicking, Daisy regarded Lillian with a frown. “I’ve been wondering…why are we so determined to marry into the peerage, and live in a huge crumbly old house and eat slimy English food, and try to give instructions to a bunch of servants who have absolutely no respect for us?”

“Because it’s what Mother wants,” Lillian replied dryly. “And because no one in New York will have either of us.” It was an unfortunate fact that in the highly striated New York society, men with newly earned fortunes found it quite easy to marry well. But heiresses with common bloodlines were desired neither by the established blue bloods nor by the nouveau riche men who wanted to better themselves socially. Therefore, husband hunting in Europe, where upper-class men needed rich wives, was the only solution.

Daisy’s frown twisted into an ironic grin. “What if no one will have us here either?”

“Then we’ll become a pair of wicked old spinsters, romping back and forth across Europe.”

Daisy laughed at the notion and flipped a long braid over her back. It was improper for young women of their age to walk about hatless, much less with their hair hanging down. However, both of the Bowman sisters had such a wealth of heavy dark locks that it was an ordeal to pin it all up in the intricate coiffures that were so fashionable. It required at least three racks of pins for each of them, and Lillian’s sensitive scalp literally ached after all the tugging and twisting required to make her hair presentable for a formal evening. More than once she had envied Annabelle Hunt, who had light, silky locks that always seemed to behave exactly as she wished them to. At the moment Lillian had tied her hair at the nape of the neck and allowed it to fall down her back in a style that never would have been allowed in company.

“How are we going to persuade Westcliff to make his mother act as our sponsor?” Daisy asked. “It seems very unlikely that he would ever agree to do such a thing.”

Drawing back her arm, Lillian flung the stick far into the woods, and brushed the flecks of bark from her palms. “I have no idea,” she admitted. “Annabelle has tried to get Mr. Hunt to ask him on our behalf, but he refuses on the grounds that it would be an abuse of their friendship.”

“If only we could compel Westcliff in some way,” Daisy mused. “Trick him, or blackmail him, somehow.”

“You can only blackmail a man if he’s done something shameful that he wants to hide. And I doubt that stodgy, boring old Westcliff has ever done anything that’s worthy of blackmail.”

Daisy chuckled at the description. “He’s not stodgy, boring, or even that old!”

“Mother says he’s at least thirty-five. I’d say that is fairly old, wouldn’t you?”

“I’ll wager that most men in their twenties aren’t nearly as fit as Westcliff.”

As always, when a conversation turned to the subject of Westcliff, Lillian felt thoroughly provoked, not unlike the way she had felt in childhood when her brothers had tossed her favorite doll over her head, back and forth between them, while she cried for them to give it back to her. Why any mention of the earl should affect her this way was a question for which there was no answer. She dismissed Daisy’s remark with an irritable shrug of her shoulders.

As they drew closer to the house, they heard a few happy yelps in the distance, followed by some youthful cheers that sounded like those of children playing. “What is that?” Lillian asked, glancing in the direction of the stables.

“I don’t know, but it sounds as if someone is having an awfully good time. Let’s go see.”

“We don’t have long,” Lillian warned. “If Mother discovers that we’re gone—”

“We’ll hurry. Oh, please, Lillian!”

As they hesitated, a few more hoots and shouts of laughter floated from the direction of the stable yard, offering such a contrast to the peaceful scenery around them that Lillian’s curiosity got the better of her. She grinned recklessly at Daisy. “I’ll race you there,” she said, and took off at a dead run.

Daisy hiked up her skirts and tore after her. Although Daisy’s legs were far shorter than Lillian’s, she was as light and agile as an elf, and she had nearly come even with Lillian by the time they had reached the stable yard. Puffing lightly from the effort of running up a long incline, Lillian rounded the outside of a neatly fenced paddock, and saw a group of five boys, varying in ages between twelve and sixteen, playing in the small field just beyond. Their attire identified them as stable boys. Their boots had been discarded beside the paddock, and they were running barefoot.

“Do you see?” Daisy asked eagerly.

Glancing over the group, Lillian saw one of them brandishing a long willow bat in the air, and she laughed in delight. “They’re playing rounders!”

Although the game, consisting of a bat, a ball, and four sanctuary bases arranged in a diamond pattern, was popular in both America and England, it had reached a level of obsessive interest in New York. Boys and girls of all classes played the game, and Lillian longingly remembered many a picnic followed by an afternoon of rounders. Warm nostalgia filled her as she watched a stable boy round the bases. It was clear that the field was often used for this purpose, as the sancutary posts had been hammered deeply into the ground, and the areas between them had been trampled to form grass-free lanes of dirt. Lillian recognized one of the players as the lad who had loaned her the rounders bat for the wall-flowers’ ill-fated game two months earlier.