Faith’s heart was beating so quickly she feared her ribs would crack. She did not wish to speak of Christina with Hawkridge. She did not wish to speak to Hawkridge at all.

And yet she could not simply push past him and go. For touching him was out of the question. Just being in his presence was enough to weaken her knees and empty her head of all the reasons why she should not let him tempt her. Sliding her fingers over his leanly muscled forearms would be her undoing.

Even anchored in the open doorway with the wind in her hair and the cold sooty air bracing against her cheeks, his familiar scent and the warmth of his presence transported her from the dirty rookery to the brilliant starlit night they had shared so long ago. Back then, a chill in the air was simply a fine excuse to nestle deeper into his embrace.

Not so today, despite what her treacherous body might wish.

Her pulse skipped. Preparing herself emotionally for their hour-long weekly dance lessons was difficult enough without also having to worry about him dropping by the school unannounced at all hours of the day or night. Especially with that way he had of completely focusing on her to the point where it was easy to believe she was the only thing that mattered in his world.

It wasn’t true. It had never been true. Yet believing the lie was so, so tempting.

“Time’s up,” she said. “Good night, Hawkridge.”

Faith wasn’t fleeing. She had to get home to her daughter. If she tarried any later, her parents would have carried Christina to bed and Faith would have missed their nightly storytime ritual.

“Let me take you home.” The intensity of his gaze did not waver.

She shook her head. “I have plenty of hack fare.”

“I have a carriage waiting not ten feet away.” He lifted his palm toward the street.

“Even more reason to say no.” She did not know whether her cheeks had turned pale or pink at the thought of sitting next to him in a carriage. “We should not be alone together.”

“I know,” he admitted. His hazel eyes seemed so sincere. “I just want to do the right thing. Please allow me to be gallant. Just this once.”

“Gallant without strings?” she asked archly before she remembered that with him, there were never any strings. No ties between them at all. That was why he had been able to walk away. Her voice went flat. “Am I to receive a curt, emotionless missive on the morrow?”

Anguish flashed across his gaze. “Can we not try to be friends?”

“How?” she asked hoarsely, wanting it so badly she could taste it. If only they could have what they once shared. If only they could have more. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “But I would very much like the opportunity to try.”

She closed her eyes and forced herself to listen to the truth of where she was rather than the dream of where she wished to be. This was real life. The thunder of footsteps in the dormitories overhead. The nightbirds hawking their wares on the streets outside. The emptiness in her heart that she dared not refill with more empty promises.

As co-owner of a boarding school, her first obligation was to whatever most benefited the girls in the institution. Even if it meant occasionally allowing her former paramour through the doors. Even if it meant dancing with him.

However, she was not obliged to open herself up to being rejected anew.

He claimed to wish to be friends, but were his motives pure? Dare she trust him again, even a tiny bit? She licked her suddenly dry lips.

Perhaps their encounters would be easier to survive if she just accepted that she had missed him. Being near him was torture because she was forced to admit part of her wanted to be near him. But it didn’t mean she’d forgiven him or that she was inviting him back into her life.

Although Faith wished with her entire being that things had gone differently between them, no amount of apologizing would change the past.

“I’m scared,” she said suddenly, unable to stanch the words. She was too vulnerable. He was asking too much. “I want to believe you. But last time, trusting you was a foolish mistake.”

“I am not the same man I was before,” he said, his tone firm and his gaze intense. “Are you the same woman?”

She swallowed her guilt. “You may not wish to be friends with who I am now.”

“Can I not decide for myself?” He lifted her hands in his as if he were about to clutch them to his chest, then abruptly let go as if the mere act of touching her wounded him more than he could bear. He stepped aside, allowing her free passage to come or go as she pleased. “As you wish, Miss Digby. You may call a hack, or you can allow me to escort you. Friendship cannot be forced. Your choices are yours alone.”

She nodded. Very well. There could be only one decision. Had Hawkridge resorted to manipulation, she would’ve sent him to the devil. But politeness and respect had managed to melt the edges of a heart even as cold and scarred as hers.

He had made her choice by allowing her to choose for herself.

“It’s not the same house as before.” She latched the front door of the school behind her and joined him on the stoop but did not take his arm. “Little more than a fifteen-minute drive if the streets are clear.”

He stared at her as if she were speaking in tongues. Then his face lit with surprise and joy, and he nodded so quickly she feared he would unravel his cravat.

“Fifteen minutes is a trifle. I am honored to escort you.” His cheeks flushed with pink. “You may now have a new residence, but I fear my conveyance is the same as before. With perhaps a few new creaks to augment the dull edges.”

“I was going to take a hack,” she reminded him gently. “I will not be offended by a marquess’s coach, no matter its age.”

His driver opened the side door before they had even crossed the street, and Hawkridge helped her up into his antique carriage as if she were more precious than any jewel.

He took the seat beside her at a respectable distance. Neither hugging the window on the other side nor arranging himself alarmingly close. To an outside observer, they might even look as though they were exactly what he wanted: friends. His gaze shone with unconcealed hope.

Faith tamped down the butterflies in her stomach. Perhaps he had changed. Perhaps this time, his interest was sincere.

Hawkridge looked at her expectantly and she realized she had missed the driver inquiring as to her destination.

She directed him to her parents’ elegant new home in the heart of stylish Mayfair and tried to collect herself before risking another glance at Hawkridge.

He was too close.

He was not close enough.

She longed to reach for him. Did he miss her touch as much as she missed his? When he looked her in the eyes, did his gaze drop to her lips and remember how they felt against his, as she did every time she looked his way?

“If you like,” he said hesitantly, “I should be pleased to escort you home after dancing lessons.”

“I’m not sure that’s wise.” Her voice was throaty, so full of desire and skittishness and longing that Faith could scarcely recognize herself.

He lifted his hand and reached toward her so slowly, so tenderly, so hesitantly, that she had plenty of time to stop him long before his warm familiar fingers curved against the side of her face.

Yet she did not.

“I missed you.” His voice was gravelly, his gaze anguished. “I still miss you.”

Faith did not trust herself to respond. She doubted she needed to. Allowing him to cradle her face in the palm of his hand was as much a confession as torture.

Now he would know.

She yearned for him. Had never stopped yearning. Her body could not be trusted to accomplish self-preservation. Nor could her heart. It was cracking open even as she gazed up at him in wordless need.

He might’ve kissed her then, had the driver not abruptly reached their destination. She might even have let him.

Oh, who was she fooling? Of course she would have let him. Her face was still nestled in his hand. He could kiss her now, right in front of her parents’ home, and she would not pull away.

And then she realized what was missing: Surprise. Surprise was missing.

Hawkridge had not blinked when she’d given her direction to a neighborhood five times as elegant as the one her parents had been able to afford when they were younger. He was not surprised she now resided in one of the largest homes on the most expensive street.

He knew.

She jerked her face from his touch, the old hurt roiling inside her like bile.

Of course his offer to “do the right thing” was just as insincere now as it had been back then. A man like him would always want something from her. No matter how much she longed to believe otherwise.

He lowered his hand and frowned. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m home. Let me out,” she said rather than answer directly.

There was no sense in starting an argument.

That explained the sudden renewal to his attraction. Lord Hawkridge was after her pocketbook, not her heart. Rekindling a pointless “romance” with him was as foolish as ever.

She all but elbowed past him as she scrambled out of the carriage and onto the front walk of her parents’ home. If his sudden interest was due to her dowry, then she had no interest in him at all.

Besides, Christina was waiting inside, which made this street the last place to be airing old wounds. Her stomach constricted as she gazed up at the flickering candle in her daughter’s bedroom window. This was far too risky.

Faith didn’t know what would be worse—for Hawkridge to disbelieve her if she were foolish enough to confess the truth, or the brunt of his vengeance if he did.

He stood beside the carriage, clearly bewildered by the abrupt way she had closed herself off from him. “Faith?”

“Miss Digby,” she corrected, forcing herself to resume a professional mien that fit the headmistress of a boarding school.

“I should not have touched you.” He stepped forward, his gaze full of self-recrimination. “I only—”

“I can’t.” The words exploded out of her as if her hungry heart had clawed from her chest. “Good night, Lord Hawkridge. Thank you very much for your generous assistance. I will not impose upon you again.”

Faith turned and hurried into the house as if the devil himself were behind her, but she suspected the greatest danger lay within her own heart.

The moment she was safely inside, she closed the door against the night and her own desires and collapsed against it to catch her breath.

Alarmed, the butler offered to fetch her a brandy, or smelling salts.

Faith waved the idea away. The situation required a far more drastic solution than smelling salts. Or expensive brandy.

She had been so close to giving Hawkridge a foothold back into her life. Back into her heart. Back into her arms.

How could she be so foolish? Had life taught her nothing?

She pushed away from the door leading back to temptation and hurried instead to the library at the rear of the house.

It was empty.

However many books Christina had chosen tonight, Faith had not been there to read them.

A flash of anger coursed through her. Not at Hawkridge. She had given up long ago on staying angry with him. Rather, her ire was directed at herself for letting him distract her from the only thing that mattered.

She tossed her bonnet on a side table and raced up the stairs to the sleeping quarters. As soon as she reached the landing, she slowed her steps so as not to startle Christina awake.

The door to her daughter’s bedchamber was ajar, and Faith’s parents stood just out of sight in the corridor. They held twin fingers up to their lips in a gesture for silence.

Faith sighed. She had indeed missed the bedtime ritual. She nodded at her parents and tiptoed to the crack in the door to peer in at her peacefully sleeping daughter.

Christina was beautiful, awake or asleep. Her golden-brown curls framed her cherubic face like a halo. Soft breaths and the occasional crackle in the grate were the only sounds.

A sense of peace enveloped Faith. Seeing her daughter, knowing she was safe and happy, filled Faith with a richness far more valuable than money. She was more fortunate than she had ever dreamed.

For now.

Darkness gripped her heart as she considered all the ways allowing Hawkridge back into her life could have catastrophic consequences. She would allow nothing to bring her daughter pain.

Her parents motioned her away from the open doorway toward the rear of the corridor where they would not wake Christina.

“Have you tired of that school for indigents yet?” her father asked jovially.

Perhaps it was a jest. Perhaps it was not.

“I recall quite clearly what it was like to have very little,” Faith replied without rancor. “I shall never tire of giving children a reason to hope.”

Her mother’s eyebrows lifted. “Then why do you look like you’ve just come from battle?”

Faith winced. “Because I have. Lord Hawkridge escorted me home.”

This time, it was her father whose eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Why?”

“His proposition was far different than any one of us could have imagined.” Faith’s self-deprecating smile was wan. “He wants to be friends. He wants us to forget the past and start anew, as if such a thing were possible.”

“But that’s wonderful!” her mother said in delight. “I’ve always said you were meant for better things. This is your chance to turn your life around even more dramatically than your father and I did.”

Faith cast her mother a flat look. “No.”

“Is a potential courtship with a marquess not worth the risk? Even if it’s that marquess?” her mother insisted stubbornly. “Especially if it’s that marquess?”

“No,” Faith repeated softly, gazing through the parted doorway at her sleeping daughter. “It is not.”

As far as anyone knew, Christina was a perfectly ordinary ten-year-old. Branding her a bastard would invalidate her status in society, but worst of all, it would make her think herself less valid.

Faith didn’t wish to give anyone a reason to slight her daughter. To mock her. To reject her. To make her feel worthless and meaningless and unwanted. More importantly, Christina must never doubt she was important and loved.

If Hawkridge became involved, everyone would know Christina had been born out of wedlock. Being the by-blow of the marquess would give her no advantage. Dahlia’s husband Simon knew that better than anyone. Hawkridge’s father had abandoned Simon and his mother in order to wed a suitable bride. For a peer of the realm, class differences were a chasm too wide to cross.

Faith had learned that the hard way. Although she had been born on the right side of the blanket, she still hadn’t been good enough to make a desirable match. Or a match at all. Faith pressed her lips together. The last thing she would do was make life even harder for her daughter.

“Any money that goes to Hawkridge’s failing estate will not be able to go to Christina,” Faith reminded her mother. “If you don’t want two dozen innocent little girls to benefit from my dowry, do you really want that money to disappear into the bottomless pit of Lord Hawkridge’s debts?”

Mother’s eyes widened and she vigorously shook her head. “Absolutely correct, daughter. I don’t know what I was thinking. Never get into his carriage again.”

“For any reason,” her father added darkly.

Faith gave a tight nod. She deserved that rebuke.

No peer would lower himself to wedding Faith unless he were in desperate circumstances. Hawkridge wasn’t interested in her. He needed her dowry. Well, too bad. Faith was not in the marquess charity business. In fact, she had no business with Hawkridge at all.

Across the corridor, Christina sighed in her sleep and rolled on her side to curl deeper against her pillow.

It would destroy her to know the truth, Faith realized bleakly. Would Christina still love her “Aunt Faith” if it turned out she was the mother who had lied to her for her entire life?

Sick fear turned in Faith’s guts. It would be hard for a ten-year-old to understand that the secret Faith kept was meant not to protect herself, but her child. This necessary fiction was the only way Faith could ensure Christina even had a chance.

From time to time Faith couldn’t help but wonder what would have happened if she had confessed the truth back then, back before it became a tempest too wild to call back.

But those sorts of thoughts inevitably invited the return of reality. Hawkridge hadn’t wanted her. She hadn’t been good enough for him or his title or his family.

Even if he believed her, even if he’d gone against everyone’s wishes and made an honest woman of her, she still wouldn’t have been wanted, still wouldn’t have been good enough, still would have been living in a far greater hell than the happy life she had now.

Christina would not be reading from a plethora of child-focused books, or have access to an in-home library. She would not have the best tutors money could buy, or perhaps any tutors at all. She would not be clothed in dresses that fit, with fine warm fabric, and shoes that didn’t pinch.

Instead of possessing bright eyes and rosy cheeks, she might be pale and gaunt. And bored. And lonely. And miserable.

Whether Faith had made the right decision for herself or for Hawkridge was no longer the question. She had made a decision. It had resulted advantageous for Christina. A mother could wish for nothing more.

So why was a traitorous part of her so tempted to tumble right back into the arms of the one man she could never have?

She closed her eyes against the familiar pain. No matter how much she might wish there was a way, she could not rekindle any sort of relationship with a shameless fortune-hunter like Lord Hawkridge. Even if she were still stupidly, hopelessly, in love with the man.

Especially because she was still stupidly, hopelessly in love.