Chapter Twenty-Two
TERESA WAS STARTLED, but not too surprised, when she emerged from the breakfast parlor to find Lord Stowe sitting with her mother in the drawing room.
She was used to her mother having men visiting her at all times of the day. And, despite the fact that her mother had only buried her father three months ago, she knew that to ask her mother to live without a man would be like asking a fish to live without water. It simply could not be done.
She had thought, nevertheless, that Lord Stowe would behave with more propriety. But then he had also come to call at an odd hour the day before. Perhaps, Teresa thought wryly, it was the effect that her mother had on the men around her—one of those knowing half smiles when propriety was the last thing on the minds of her beaux
