The Earl of Riverdale was as good as his word. A written invitation was delivered to Withington House two days after his visit. He was hosting a tea party for some of his neighbors three days hence and would be pleased if Miss Heyden would attend. She set the card down beside her breakfast plate and proceeded to eat her toast and marmalade and drink her coffee without really tasting them.

Would she go?

Maude had offered her opinion after he left a couple of days ago—of course. Maude always offered an opinion. She had been Aunt Megan’s maid and Wren’s since last year. But even before then she had never scrupled to speak her mind.

“A right handsome one, that,” she had said after he left.

“Too handsome?” Wren had asked.

“For his own good, do you mean?” In the act of picking up the tray from the table in front of Wren, Maude had pursed her lips and paused to think. “I was not given the impression that he thinks himself God’s gift to womankind. He was certainly not pleased to find himself alone with you, was he? I warned you it was improper when you concocted this whole mad scheme, but you never did heed anything I have to say, so I don’t know why I still bother. The other two were pleased enough to be here, though both of them looked a bit unnerved by the veil. They had probably heard you are worth a bundle and hoped they were onto a good thing.”

“Mr. Sweeney and Mr. Richman were a mistake,” Wren had admitted. “Is the Earl of Riverdale a mistake too, Maude? Though perhaps the answer is irrelevant. It is probable I will never hear from him again. He would not even admit to a possibly possible maybe, would he? And then he threw the challenge back at me with his idea about inviting me to some entertainment that would include others. If you have the courage to come, indeed.”

“And do you?” Maude had asked, straightening up, the tray in her hands. “You never did while your aunt and uncle were alive, and you never have since. If it wasn’t for the glassworks you would be a total hermit, and the glassworks don’t really count, do they? You aren’t going to find a husband there. And even there you always wear your veil.”

She had not waited for an answer to her question about courage. Which was just as well—Wren still did not know the answer two days later as she considered the invitation. A tea party. At Brambledean Court. With an indeterminate number of other guests from the neighborhood. Would she go? More to the point, could she? Maude was quite right—she had been a virtual hermit all her life. In more than twenty-nine years she had not attended a single social function. Her uncle and aunt had entertained occasionally, but she had always stayed in her room, and, bless their hearts, they had never tried to insist that she come down, though Uncle Reggie had tried several times to persuade her.

“You have allowed your birthmark to define your life, Wren,” he had said once, “when in reality it is something a person soon becomes accustomed to and scarcely notices. We are always more aware of our own physical shortcomings than other people are once they get to know us. You may no longer notice that my legs are too short for my body, but I am always conscious of it. Sometimes I fear that I waddle rather than walk.”

“Oh, you do not, Uncle Reggie,” Wren had protested, but he had achieved one of his aims, which was to make her laugh. But he had never seen her before the age of ten, when the birthmark had been a great deal worse than it was now. He did not know what she saw when she looked in her mirror.

It was her uncle who had named her Wren—because she had been all skinny arms and legs and big, sad eyes when he had first seen her and reminded him of a fledgling bird. Also Wren was close to Rowena, her real name. Aunt Megan had started calling her Wren too—a new name for a new life, she had said, giving her niece one of her big, all-encompassing hugs. And Wren herself had liked it. She could not remember the name Rowena ever being spoken with anything like affection or approval or even neutrality. Her uncle and aunt had had a way of saying the new name as though it—and she—was something special. And a year later they had changed her last name too—with her full approval—and she became Wren Heyden.

Her thoughts were all over the place this morning, she thought, bringing them back to the breakfast table. Would she go to tea at Brambledean Court? Could she? Those were the questions she needed to answer, though really they were one. As Countess of Riverdale, he had told her, she would not be able to remain a hermit. He would not allow it. And that was something that needed careful consideration, both the hermit part and the not-allowing part. It was a long time since she had been forced to do anything she did not want to do. She had almost forgotten that according to law, both civil and ecclesiastical, men had total command over their women, wives and children alike. She had not considered that when she decided to purchase a husband.

Purchase—it sounded horrible. But that was precisely what she was trying to do. She wanted to wed. She had longings and needs and yearnings that were a churning mix of the physical and emotional. Sometimes she could not sleep at night for the ache of something nameless that hummed through her body and her mind and seemed to settle most heavily about her heart. She had only one asset, however, with which to induce any man to marry her, and that was her money. Fortunately she had plenty of that. She was not much interested in using it to buy worldly goods. She had all she needed. She would use it, then, she had decided, to purchase what she did want, and she had set about making as wise a purchase as she could with no experience whatsoever in such matters. Now she had to ask herself a new question. In giving her person to a husband along with her money, would she be surrendering all her freedom too?

Were most men tyrants by nature? More to the point, was he, the Earl of Riverdale? It would be very easy to be beguiled by his looks. Not that she was beguiled by them. Quite the contrary, in fact. She had not wanted an obviously handsome man, not when she looked the way she did. It would be too horribly intimidating. The earl was more than good looking, though, more than handsome. He was perfection. But that was on the outside. What about on the inside? Was he a petty tyrant who would take her money and tuck her away somewhere out of sight and out of mind? But no. He had said just the opposite, and that was the whole trouble. He would not allow her to be a hermit.

I am occasionally told that I am the proverbial tall, dark, handsome man of fairy tales. It can be a burden. What had he meant by that—a burden?

Wren tossed her napkin onto the table and got to her feet. There was work awaiting her in her uncle’s study, now hers. There were papers and reports from the glassworks, and since she was now the owner in more than just name, they demanded her immediate attention. She would decide later about the invitation. Perhaps she would simply send a polite refusal and retain her freedom and her money and her aches and longings and yearnings and disturbed nights and all the rest of her familiar life. There was some virtue in familiarity.

And perhaps, just perhaps, she would go.

… if you have the courage …

She looked almost vengefully down at the card beside her plate before snatching it up and taking it with her to the study.

It seemed a little embarrassing to Alexander as a single gentleman without either his mother or his sister in residence to act as his hostess that he was entertaining a group of his neighbors at an afternoon tea, of all things. However, if he was to give the guest of honor, so to speak, a chance to attend, he must consider both her single state and the distance she must travel, and an evening event would not be practical.

A number of his neighbors from the village and its immediate vicinity had already entertained him and had shown a flattering delight that he had come here and a cautious hope that he would make it his principal residence. The men had probed his interest in farming and horses and hunting and shooting and fishing. The ladies had been more interested in his views on parties and fetes and picnics and assemblies. The mothers had asked questions obviously designed to discover just how single he was, and their daughters had blushed and tittered and fluttered. He had found it all surprisingly heartwarming, considering the dreariness of Brambledean itself, and it really was time that he returned their hospitality with some of his own. A tea party was as good as anything, even if Miss Heyden did not come.

He had explained to those whom he had invited, a deliberate twinkle in his eye, that he wished them to see his drawing room in all its faded splendor so that in a few years’ time, after he had done some renovations, they would be able to marvel at the transformation. The house was indeed faded and shabby, though it was not in quite as bad a condition as he had feared when he first knew he had been encumbered with it. The staff had been small when he came here and was still not much larger, but the butler and housekeeper, Mr. and Mrs. Dearing, husband and wife, had kept every room clean despite the Holland covers that had shrouded the furniture in the main rooms. Every surface that could gleam did so, and every faded curtain and piece of upholstery was at least dust free. There were a few structural issues—some crumbling chimneys, some damaged areas of the roof, some water seepage in the cellars, among other things, and the equipment in the kitchens was antiquated. The stables and paddocks were looking sad. Ivy had been allowed to run riot over walls.

A whole pile of money needed to be poured into the place before it could become the stately home it was meant to be, and a great deal needed to be done to make the park a worthy setting for such a grand edifice, but both could wait—and must despite the fact that they would offer employment to a large number of people who were currently unemployed or underemployed. There were more important things to be done first. The farms were not prospering, either in cultivated land or in livestock or in buildings and equipment. Those who were employed to work them were suffering as a result. Their homes were hardly better than hovels and their wages had not been raised in ten years or more—when they had been paid at all, that was. Their children were poorly clothed and uneducated. Their wives tended to look haggard.

There were more than enough problems here to overwhelm him, but he had cast them all aside for one afternoon in order to host a tea party—which might, just possibly, lead to an ultimate solution to those very problems. That faint hope would come to nothing, of course, if Miss Heyden failed to come. But he was really not sure he wanted her to.

He had not warmed to her on the occasion of his visit to Withington House, and it was not because of her looks. He had found her whole manner cold and … strange. Her veil and the shadowed part of the room in which she had sat without once getting to her feet had had him thinking a little hilariously of witches and witches’ dens. And her marriage proposal had offended him. It had seemed all wrong, even outrageous. He had asked himself again on the long drive home in his curricle, of course, if he found it so because it was she who had offered, not he. Why would it be fine for him to make a proposal based almost entirely upon monetary considerations but was not for her? The admission that he was applying a double standard had done nothing to endear her more to him, however. She just did not seem feminine to him, whatever the devil that meant.

How wealthy was she, anyway? Very wealthy, according to her, but very was not a precise word, was it? He hated the fact that it mattered, that he might overlook all his misgivings about her personally if the money was sufficient. He hated what that fact suggested about him. He hoped she would not come. But a brief note arrived the day before the tea, accepting his invitation.

She was one of the last to arrive. There were eleven people already in the drawing room apart from Alexander himself, a few of them seated, most of them still on their feet, frankly looking around the room or out through the windows, all warmly cheerful and animated and happy to be there. One young lady had just executed a pirouette in the middle of the floor, her hands clasped to her bosom, and declared that the room would be perfect for an informal dance if only Lord Riverdale would consider using it as such. Her mother was just reproving her, but with a laughing look cast Alexander’s way, when Dearing announced the twelfth guest, and Miss Heyden stepped past him and stood just inside the doorway. Alexander strode toward her, his hand outstretched, a smile on his face.

He had still been half hoping she would not come.

She was remarkably tall for a woman—only a couple of inches shorter than his own six foot one—and willowy and slender. She was doing nothing to minimize her height, as tall women tended to do. She held herself very erect and kept her chin high. She was dressed with simple elegance in a lavender high-waisted dress and a small-brimmed silver-gray bonnet with matching facial veil. A few of the other ladies had retained their bonnets too, so hers did not look totally out of place. The veil did, however. Her face was visible through it, but not the birthmark. She looked haughty and cold and remote, and it seemed to Alexander that the temperature of the room dropped a few degrees. Even her hand when she set it in the one he held out toward her—slender and long fingered—was chilly.

“How do you do, Lord Riverdale?” she said in that low voice he remembered with its very precise diction.

“I am delighted you came, Miss Heyden,” he lied. “Do you know any of my neighbors?” He was fully aware that she did not—he had been careful not to invite either Sweeney or Richman. “Allow me to introduce you.”

Conversation in the room had all but hushed. That was partly understandable, of course. A new face was always of great interest to people who spent the bulk of their lives in the country with the same few friends and neighbors. Even more intriguing, though, was a face that ought to be at least partly familiar, since she lived no farther than eight miles or so away but was in fact not familiar at all. Of course, no one was seeing a new face even now. She did not raise the veil as Alexander took her about the room, introducing her to everyone as they went. He watched all his neighbors being polite to her but leaning back from her an almost imperceptible half inch or so, clearly disturbed by the anonymity of her appearance and the aloof arrogance of her manner despite the fact that she repeated their names and had a polite word for each of them.

There was something … other about her, Alexander thought. He could think of no more definite a word.

His neighbors resumed their hearty, good-humored conversation over the next hour and a half, during which time they were joined by the remaining three guests. Clearly they were all gratified to have been invited and were happy to see the inside of his home, to judge for themselves how shabby it was, to see him in his own proper milieu. They had come to please and be pleased, to be amiable, to make a friend of him. Brambledean Court and the Earl of Riverdale were, after all, at the heart of their neighborhood, and his arrival here had raised their hope of a more vivid, more elevating social life than they had enjoyed for years, or a whole lifetime in many cases. They sat or stood and moved about freely while partaking of the feast Mrs. Mathers, Alexander’s cook, had produced with great enthusiasm and ingenuity with her ancient equipment.

Miss Heyden sat in their midst the whole while. At first, she was with the vicar and his wife and a retired army colonel and his wife. Then others took their place, clearly curious about her and kind enough not to leave her isolated. She did not move from the chair to which he had directed her after introducing her to everyone. She was not unsociable. She spoke when spoken to and listened with a certain poise and grace. She sipped her tea beneath her veil but ate nothing.

It was hard, Alexander discovered, not to be aware of her at every moment. It would be unkind to say that she was the one discordant note in an otherwise warm and harmonious party. She was not. But everyone who approached her somehow became overhearty in her presence, and no one stayed beside her for longer than a few minutes. It would have been inaccurate to describe her manner as cold. It was not. She was neither taciturn nor supercilious nor anything else a guest ought not to be. She was just … other. And it was the veil. Surely it was the veil. It all felt a bit like being at a party one of the guests had mistaken for a masquerade, and no one liked to tell her she had been mistaken. Everyone seemed a little embarrassed. Everyone made a point of not noticing the shrouded face.

One of his tenant farmers and his wife were the first to take their leave. It was the signal for everyone else, though most people seemed flatteringly reluctant to go.

“I took the liberty,” Alexander said when Miss Heyden too got to her feet, “of having your carriage sent back to Withington, Miss Heyden. I shall do myself the honor of escorting you home in mine.”

She looked steadily at him through the veil before sitting again without a word of reply and clasping her hands loosely in her lap.

Alexander shook hands with all his departing guests, a long, slow process as each wished to thank him profusely for the invitation and the tea. Some asked him to pass on their compliments to the cook. A few hoped, as they had on previous occasions, that he would be remaining in the country and that they would see much more of him. One or two asked about Mrs. Westcott, his mother, and about Lady Overfield, his sister. One tenant farmer thought the weather they had been having so far this spring boded well for the year’s crops, while another, overhearing him, argued that a dry, warm spring often presaged a wet, cold summer and a poor harvest. The young lady who had performed a pirouette earlier repeated her hint that his lordship’s drawing room would be quite divine for an informal dance. Her mother again told her to mind her manners. But finally they had all left and Alexander gave the order to have his carriage brought around.

Miss Heyden rose to her feet again when they were alone. “You dismissed my carriage without consulting me, Lord Riverdale,” she said. It was a clear reproof.

He wished he had not done so. He would have been quite happy to see her on her way with the hope that he would never see her again. He would have liked her better, perhaps, if she had stamped her foot and thrown a tantrum. But her annoyance was perfectly controlled. He set his hands behind him and gazed steadily back at her. Good God, she was tall. He was unaccustomed to looking almost straight across into a woman’s eyes—or what could be seen of her eyes through her veil.

“Miss Heyden,” he said, “the last time we met you asked me to marry you. Do you not feel we ought to get to know each other somewhat better before deciding if it is what we both want? Unless, perhaps, you have already decided and wish to withdraw your offer. If that is indeed so, I shall send a maid to accompany you and an extra footman to sit up with my coachman.”

“I have not changed my mind,” she said. “You are considering my proposal, then?”

“Considering it, yes,” he said reluctantly. “I would be a fool not to. But I am sure neither one of us wishes to marry in haste only to repent at leisure, as the old saying goes. Shall we?” He gestured toward the doors. “I believe I heard the carriage drawing up a moment ago.”

She came toward him and he opened one of the doors for her to pass through. As he followed her, he considered offering his arm but decided against it. It was a breach of gentlemanly manners unlike him, but there was something about her … It was as if she were surrounded by an invisible wall of ice. Though that was unfair. There was nothing definably icy in her demeanor. It was just … other. He had still not thought of the word for which his mind sought—if there was such a word.

He wondered suddenly if this tea had been her first social event ever. It seemed incredible when she was almost thirty. But … perhaps she really had been a total recluse until today. Perhaps all afternoon she had been terrified and holding herself together by pure force of will. He had challenged her to have the courage to come. Perhaps she had shown more courage than he could possibly imagine.

Perhaps she was that desperate to marry. Though desperate was an unkind word. Eager, then. Perhaps her wish to find someone to wed—to use her own phrase—took precedence over all else. The possibility made her seem more human and perhaps even a little more likable.

He offered a hand to help her into his carriage and was a bit surprised when she took it.

He had sent Maude home with her carriage. Perhaps as her presumptive betrothed he had not felt the necessity of observing the proprieties. Was he her presumptive betrothed? He had done and said nothing during that ghastly tea to suggest any such thing. There had been no hint to his neighbors, several of whom had been acquainted with her aunt and uncle and had commiserated with her on her loss and expressed pleasure at meeting her. None had really seemed delighted, though. But perhaps that was her fault. Undoubtedly it was, in fact.

It had been by far the worst afternoon of her life—since the age of ten anyway. She settled on the seat of Lord Riverdale’s carriage, made room for him beside her, and longed for her own conveyance. She had been waiting for what seemed like forever but was actually less than two hours for the ordeal to be over so that she might collapse into it and close her eyes and feel the comfort of Maude’s presence beside her. She could not do this. She simply could not. He was too male and too handsome and the world was too vast a place and too full of people.

She wanted to curl up into a ball, either on the seat or on the floor. She did not know how she was going to keep panic at bay for … How long did it take to travel eight miles? She could not think clearly.

“Will you lift your veil?” he asked her as the carriage moved away from the front doors.

Did he not understand? What she needed was an extra veil to throw over the first—to throw over the whole of herself. She wanted desperately to be alone. But there was no point in directing her anger against him. She was the one who had set this nightmare in motion. Was she going to draw back now? She had made the decision and had planned her course with cool deliberation. She raised her hands and lifted the veil back over the brim of her bonnet. But she turned her head slightly toward the window on her left side as she did so.

“Thank you,” he said. And, after a few silent moments, “Have you always been a recluse, Miss Heyden?”

“No,” she said. “As the owner of a thriving business, I do not merely sit at home all year long, gathering in the profits while other people make the plans and the decisions and do the work. I learned the business from my uncle and spent long hours with him at the workshop with the artisans and in the offices with the administrative and creative staff. I am a businesswoman in more than just name.”

Her uncle and aunt had indulged many of her whims and respected her basic freedom, but they had been very insistent that she be properly educated— something she had certainly not been to the age of ten. They had hired Miss Briggs, an elderly governess who had appeared to be a cuddly old dear. In some ways she was, but she had also imposed a challenging academic curriculum upon her pupil and not only encouraged excellence but somehow insisted upon it. Miss Briggs had also taught manners and deportment and elocution and social skills, like making polite conversation with strangers. She had finally been let go the day after Wren’s eighteenth birthday with a comfortable pension and a small thatched cottage, to which Wren’s uncle had gone to the expense of bringing her beloved sister from halfway across the country to live with her.

Wren’s real education, though—or what she considered her real education—had come at the hands of her uncle himself. One day when she was twelve he had realized after taking her with him to the glassworks that a passion for his life’s work had been sparked in her. I could hardly get a word in edgewise all the way home, he had told Aunt Megan later. And I lost count of the number of questions she asked after the first thirty-nine. We have a young prodigy here, Meg.

“Did you live with your aunt and uncle all your life until their passing?” the Earl of Riverdale asked.

“Since I was ten,” she said. “My aunt took me to his home in London—that was before he sold it—and they were married a week later.”

“You have his name,” he said.

“They adopted me,” she told him. She had not been sure it was a legal adoption until after her uncle’s death, when she had found the certificate among his papers. Her father’s signature had been upon it—a stomach-churning shock at the time.

There was another short silence. Perhaps he was waiting for a further explanation. “You have a way,” he said at last, “of turning your eyes toward me as you speak but not your face. It must be hard on your eyes. Will you not turn your head too? I saw the left side of your face when I visited you, and if you will recall, I did not run from the room screaming or grimace horribly or have a fit of the vapors.”

She wanted to laugh at the unexpectedness of his words, but turned her face toward him instead. Would she ever be able to do it with ease? But would there be another occasion? She was still not at all sure she wished to continue with this—or that he did.

“It really is not horrible, you know,” he said, after letting his eyes roam over her face. “I can understand that it makes you self-conscious. I can understand that as a young lady you must lament what you consider a serious blemish to your looks. But it is not altogether unsightly. Anyone looking at you will of course notice it immediately. Some will even avoid any further acquaintance with you. Those are people who do not deserve your regard anyway. Most people, however, will surely look and then overlook. Though I noticed the first time and have noticed again now, I would be willing to wager that after seeing you a few more times I will not even see the blemish any longer. You will simply be you.”

Will, he had said, not would. He expected to see her again, then? She drew a slow breath. Her uncle used to say much the same thing as Lord Riverdale had just said. What birthmark? he used to say if ever it was referred to, and then he would pretend to start with surprise as he looked at her and noticed it. And sometimes he would ask her to look at him full face, and he would frown as he glanced from one side of her face to the other and say something like Ah yes, the purple marks are on the left side. I could not remember.

“And what about before you were ten?” the earl asked when she said nothing. “Did your parents die?”

“My life began when I was ten, Lord Riverdale,” she said. “I do not remember what came before.”

He looked steadily at her, a slight frown between his brows. He did not press the question further, however.

It was time to turn the tables on him, since it seemed she could not simply curl up in a ball on the floor and she would not give in to the panic that still clawed at her insides. “And what about your life before you inherited your title?” she asked. She knew some basic facts, but not details.

“It was a dull but happy life—dull to talk about, happy enough to live,” he told her. “I had both parents until seven years ago, and I have one sister, of whom I am dearly fond. Not all people are so fortunate in their siblings. My father was devoted to his hounds and his horses and the hunt. He was hearty and well liked, and rather impecunious, I am afraid. It took me a good five years after his passing to set Riddings Park on a firm financial footing again. By that time my sister had been released from an unfortunate marriage by the untimely passing of her husband and was living with my mother and me again, and I was settling into the life I expected to continue with very few changes until my demise. There was only one slight bump of unease on my horizon, and that was the fact that I was heir to a twenty-year-old boy earl, who could not be expected to marry and produce an heir of his own for a number of years. But it seemed a slight worry. Harry was a healthy and basically decent lad. You took the trouble to learn some facts about me. You no doubt know exactly what happened to bring my worries to fruition.”

“The young earl’s father had married his mother bigamously,” she said, “with the result that the earl was illegitimate and no longer eligible for the title. It passed to you instead. What was—or is—your relationship to him?”

“Second cousin,” he said. “Harry and I share a great-grandfather, the venerable Stephen Westcott, Earl of Riverdale.”

“You did not want the title?” she asked.

“Why would I?” he asked in return. “It brought me duties and responsibilities and headaches in return for the dubious distinction of being called Earl of Riverdale and my lord instead of plain Alexander Westcott, which I always thought a rather distinguished name.”

Many men would have killed for such a title, she thought, even without a fortune to go with it. She was intrigued to discover that it meant little to him. The deference, even awe, with which his neighbors had treated him during tea was clearly not important to him. He would rather be back at his precious Riddings Park, where his life had been dull but happy enough, to use his own description.

Before she met him she had expected him to be a toplofty, conceited aristocrat—that was why he had been third on her list instead of first. She had expected it even more when she first set eyes upon him.

She realized suddenly how very alone they were in the close confines of his carriage, and she felt again all her unease at his gorgeous masculinity. For it was not just his perfect looks. There was something else about him that somehow caught at the breath in her throat and wrapped about her in an invisible but quite suffocating way. It was something she had never experienced before—but how could she have done?

“Did you ever consider marriage before you inherited the title?” she asked him.

He raised his eyebrows but did not answer immediately. “I did,” he said.

“And did you have anyone specific in mind?” She hoped the answer was no.

“No,” he said, and she did not believe he was lying.

“What were you looking for?” she asked him. “What sort of … qualities?” It was none of her business, of course, and his answer—if he did answer, that was—could only bring her pain or discomfort. He would hardly say he had been searching for a reclusive, awkward beanpole of a woman with a ruined face and an unladylike involvement in business—and almost thirty years old, could he?

“None in particular,” he said. “I merely hoped to meet someone with whom I might expect to be comfortable.”

It seemed a strange answer from a man who looked as he did and had had so much to offer before he inherited Brambledean. “You did not look for love?” she asked him. “Or beauty?”

“I hoped for affection in my marriage, certainly,” he said. “But beauty as an end in itself? There are many kinds of beauty, many of them not immediately apparent.”

“And could you be comfortable with me?” she asked him. “Could you ever feel affection for me?” She would not ask, of course, if he could ever find her beautiful.

He gazed at her for so long that she had to make a very concerted effort not to turn her face away. Would this dreadful afternoon never end? “I can only be honest with you, Miss Heyden,” he said at last. “I do not know.”

Well, she had asked for it. Had she expected him to lie? At least he had been gentleman enough to give a diplomatic answer. If this journey did not end soon, she would surely scream. But she could not leave it alone. “My money would come at too high a price?” she asked.

“There is great pain behind those words,” he said. “It is your pain that makes me hesitate, Miss Heyden.”

She felt a little as though he had punched her in the stomach with a closed fist, so unexpected was his answer. What did he know about pain? Specifically her pain? “It is too unattractive a quality?” she asked with as much hauteur as she could muster. She turned her head away.

“Oh no,” he said. “Quite the contrary.”

She frowned in incomprehension. But he did not explain and there was no chance for further questions. At last, at last, the distance between Brambledean and Withington had been covered and his carriage was drawing to a halt outside her own door.

“May I call again?” he asked her.

She would have been a fool to allow it. She opened her mouth to say no. Her emotions were so raw she felt as though she had real, physical wounds. The privacy of her room still felt a million miles away. But the whole of her future life might be hanging in the balance—in the simple difference between yes and no.

Ah, this scheme of hers had seemed so full of hope and possibility when she had concocted it. How could she even have imagined that it was possible?

“Yes,” she said as she saw the coachman outside her door, waiting to open it on a signal from his employer.