e must find out to which places he has been invited, my dear. Or, more usefully, which invitations he has accepted. The man is always drowning in requests for his company and he is very good about not spreading himself too thin,” Lady Balfour said authoritatively, as she and Louisa drove in the park.

Louisa fidgeted. It had been three days, but the subject of Lord Wrenworth would not go away. It did not help her resolution to put him behind her, once and for all. Nor did it help matters on the practical front—a proposal from him was a far-fetched notion that didn’t merit any in-depth discussion, let alone motivated efforts. It would be so much more productive if she could convince Lady Balfour to invite Mr. Pitt to one of her dinners.

“Wouldn’t Lord Wrenworth prefer to marry a lady with a loftier pedigree or a greater fortune?” Louisa tried one more time.

Lady Balfour snorted. “So he would. But that’s what a magnificent catch is all about: gaining the hand of a man who should make a more ruthless choice.”

Had her moonier sentiments concerning The Ideal Gentleman continued unabated, Louisa probably still would have protested, hoping someone would bring her back to her senses, but at the same time, she’d have been secretly thrilled that she had her sponsor’s backing to go boldly after the man of her dreams.

But she no longer wanted to be anywhere near him, a man who made her feel transparently greedy and social-climbing.

“Speak of the devil!” Lady Balfour whispered urgently.

Lord Wrenworth emerged from a bend in Rotten Row, the very image of a dashing gentleman charioteer in his nimble calèche. And in spite of Louisa’s wariness, her heart skipped a beat. There was no arguing with beauty of such magnitude.

“I thought bachelors didn’t come for these afternoon drives,” she muttered, annoyed with herself.

“So they don’t.” Lady Balfour spoke out of the corner of her mouth, busy nodding at Wrenworth. After all, he couldn’t approach a phaeton driven by ladies unless his presence had first been acknowledged.

To Louisa’s surprise, he didn’t merely nod and move on, but pulled up against their vehicle.

“Good afternoon, Lady Balfour. Good afternoon, Miss Cantwell. Enjoying a drive out before the rain comes again?”

Try as Louisa did, she could not detect any special inflection in the pronunciation of her name. But as soon as his gaze landed on her, she felt as if she were being peeled like an onion, layer by layer—an experience not the least erotic, but clinical, something done with gloves and forceps.

“But of course. And you, young man, what brought you here?” Lady Balfour inquired.

“A wild whim.” He smiled.

A man who could smile charmingly at toads, Louisa thought unhappily.

He drove abreast of them for no more than a minute. Perfectly appropriate, not a hint of impingement on their time. As soon as he left, Lady Balfour began to berate herself for not asking after his itinerary while she had him at her disposal. But even she did not suggest that the meeting was anything other than coincidental.

Louisa, however, felt a certain prickling at the base of her spine.

• • •

Lady Balfour would not have agonized over her missed opportunity had she known that Felix had already bestirred himself to seek them out. He had a good view of Miss Cantwell across a crowded drawing room at Mrs. Conrad’s house. Miss Cantwell pointedly—or so it felt—did not look at all in his direction.

He saw her again toward the end of the week, in the midst of a rowing sortie on the river. He wasn’t part of their merrymaking party, of course. Rather, he glided by on a yacht with a company of his own. She frolicked and laughed until she became aware of him. The mirth on her face slipped away, replaced by wariness.

So it was no fluke.

She truly saw something the matter with him.

He was oddly pleased—and stumped. What was one to do in such a situation? Certainly he could not walk up to her and say, Brava, old girl, for having the sense to be wary of me.

He put down the book on Asiatic travels he had been browsing. It was nearly four o’clock. He’d be expected at his club, his opinions eagerly anticipated on the day’s occurrences. As he exited the bookshop located a little way from Piccadilly Circus, however, he almost bumped into the subject of his preoccupation.

Miss Cantwell.

He ceased flicking book dust from his otherwise immaculate gloves.

She had just alighted from a Balfour victoria, clad in a green velvet walking gown. “I’ll be but a second picking up her ladyship’s order,” she said sweetly to the footman and the driver.

She turned around, and stilled in shock as she saw him, as if she had the misfortune of finding herself directly in the path of a sharp-fanged wolf.

Half a second passed before she recovered her composure. She smiled at him, a smile that radiated no warmth. “My lord Wrenworth, how do you do?”

“Very well, thank you. And you, Miss Cantwell?”

He took off his glove and offered his hand. She shook it uncertainly.

Then it happened. Her face colored. “Very well, too. I’m running some errands for Lady Balfour. Please do not let me keep you.”

It dawned on him as she disappeared into the dim interior of the bookshop that she wasn’t wholly unaffected by him, as he had assumed. Quite to the contrary. Somewhere deep inside her, the infatuation that he’d thought short-lived still simmered. And at this close range, she had been flustered by his presence.

It was an entirely new experience for him, to be physically appealing to a woman who otherwise did not care for him.

Until this moment, Miss Cantwell had been an intellectual, almost impersonal riddle. Now for the first time he became sexually aware of her.

And a rather ferocious awareness at that.

• • •

My dear Louisa,” cried Lady Balfour, “you will not believe what good fortune has just befallen us.”

Louisa, who had a curling iron in her hair, wielded by Lady Balfour’s maid, did not dare move. “Yes, ma’am?”

“Tenwhestle was at his club this afternoon. And guess who should come to him full of regret and apologies? Mr. Pitt. He must leave London immediately.”

“Oh, no. Is everything all right?”

Louisa had been looking forward to sitting next to Mr. Pitt for hours on end. Lady Balfour still thought him too homely, but Lady Tenwhestle was sympathetic to Louisa’s cause and had gone ahead and invited him to dinner, so that Louisa could deepen their acquaintance and, she hoped, hasten the arrival of his proposal.

“Nothing serious—something to do with the family estate,” said Lady Balfour. “That put Tenwhestle in a quandary—with Mr. Pitt’s absence, we’d be thirteen at the table. So Tenwhestle turned to the gentleman next to him and asked whether he happened to be free this evening.”

Such delight Lady Balfour’s reflection in the mirror radiated—an unhappy suspicion began to coalesce in Louisa’s head. “Which gentleman?”

Lady Balfour ignored her question. “The gentleman answered in the affirmative. And he was so amiable as to tell Tenwhestle that there was no need for the lady wife, at this late hour, to rearrange seating to suit his superior rank. He would, literally, take Mr. Pitt’s place at the table.”

“I see.”

“Do you, my dear?” Lady Balfour all but twirled. “You are going to sit down to dinner with Lord Wrenworth. I can’t tell you how many mamas have tried to arrange the same for their daughters—to think this should just fall into your lap. You must be the luckiest lady in all of London.”

More unnerving words Louisa had seldom heard.

Lady Balfour went to fetch her fan, leaving Louisa to stare at her reflection in dismay. Her entire toilette had been oriented toward making herself look as fetching as possible, with an ingenious bust improver that cantilevered her small br**sts to the point of spilling over the cusp of her décolletage.

And it was too late to change into a different dress. Or a less excessive bust improver.

The moment Lord Wrenworth’s gaze met hers across Lady Tenwhestle’s drawing room, before the ladies and the gentlemen had even been paired for their procession to the dining table, Louisa already felt the heat of her utter mortification.

He knew.

He knew that she’d dressed and coiffed herself for Mr. Pitt—the blinding white silk of the dinner gown, the flirty curls in her hair, and the blasted décolletage that made her chest look like the twin cheeks of a baby’s upturned bottom. He knew that she’d meant to appear girlish and pure, while leading Mr. Pitt toward resolutely impure thoughts. And he even knew how exasperated she was for all that detailed effort to have gone to waste.

All this—and a hundred more vexed thoughts—washed through her before he’d even said, “Good evening, Miss Cantwell.”

What was it about this man that made her lose her mind?

And then lose her mind a little more when she had to walk beside him, her hand on his arm. Because he smelled delicious—like that first lungful of fresh air after a good summer shower. Because though her fingers barely touched his sleeve, she could still feel the shape and strength of his forearm. Because when he leaned toward her and murmured, “You look lovely tonight, Miss Cantwell,” she sprouted goose bumps everywhere.

“Do you come to London often, Miss Cantwell?” he asked halfway through the first course.

She watched as he broke a piece of the bread passed around by the servant, his fingers strong and elegant. “No, sir. I visit quite infrequently.”

“And where is home, if I may ask?” He spoke without glancing in her direction, busying himself with his butter knife.

“I live in the Cotswold, not far from Cirencester.”

“The Earl of Wyden’s seat is somewhere in the vicinity, is it not?”

“Yes, the estate is about ten miles away.”

When he didn’t say anything else, she felt obliged to add, “But we do not know the earl’s family very well.”

The impoverished relations of a mere baronet’s wife did not call upon Lord Wyden at will.

Others had asked similar questions when she’d related her place of origin, and she’d cheerfully admitted to a lack of intimacy with whichever family they’d inquired about. But it was difficult to do anything cheerfully before Lord Wrenworth: He had seen how dazzled she was by him.

Her besottedness had meant nothing to him, she was sure. But she was not one to share her sentiments. She didn’t mind letting it be known that she liked the neighbor’s new puppy or that she thought three weeks of continuous rain verged on bothersome. But anything strong enough to be labeled an emotion—fear for Matilda’s future, fear of a failed London Season, fear of another inexplicable bout of romantic idiocy—those she could bear only by keeping them locked away, far from prying eyes.

But there was no concealing anything from his ridiculously beautiful prying eyes.

She felt cornered.

“A shame,” he replied softly. “I know the earl’s sons very well. We’d have met much sooner had you been acquainted with them.”

She was staring down into her plate, but at his tone, which made her feel strange things, she could not help turning her face, looking into his eyes for the first time since she saw him across the drawing room, before the start of dinner.

Instantly a fierce heat swept over her. Had she thought that there was nothing erotic in the attention he directed her way? That must have been a different lifetime altogether. For this gaze of his made her think of... skin. Flesh. And, God help her, unnatural acts.

When she had assessed herself for her chances on the marriage mart, it had been immediately apparent that her décolletage needed help. A great deal of help. But did bust improvers, in this regard, constitute flagrant cheating? She’d agonized over that seemingly minor decision.

Then she had overheard Lady Balfour gossiping to Mrs. Cantwell about her black-sheep brother-in-law’s new mistress. A flat-chested little thing, and not even that pretty—but I hear she is willing to take part in the most unnatural acts in the bedroom.

Growing up, Louisa had occasionally been allowed to visit her paternal great-aunts, two sisters who lived in a charming little cottage in Bournemouth, on a bluff overlooking the sea. And by the time Louisa was thirteen, she’d come to the realization that those “maiden” aunts had once practiced the oldest profession in the world—as a team, no less. The elderly women would spy on the gentlemen’s bathing section—where the bathing suit was one’s own skin and nothing else—with a field glass, and cackle gleefully between themselves. Their reminiscences, when they believed Louisa otherwise occupied, had taught her a great many things that Mrs. Cantwell would have considered grossly indelicate.

The existence of unnatural acts in the bedroom, for example. And the fact that a woman could outlast such acts with her good humor perfectly intact.

So should Louisa’s future husband find out that she had far less chest than he’d been led to believe, she could redeem herself by being lax in her standards in the bedroom—and not be particularly worse off, if her great-aunts’ examples were anything to go by.

She had immediately set out to study every bust improver in the house, speculating on just how much more they could be padded without making her look ludicrous. Unnatural acts she’d never thought of again—until now.

There was nothing openly lascivious in Lord Wrenworth’s contemplation—Lady Balfour, glancing approvingly their way, clearly saw only an appropriate interest. But Louisa read in those same eyes a disastrous knowledge.

He had perceived that she was not as indifferent to him as she’d like to be—if only they hadn’t run into each other outside the bookshop! But now, instead of regarding her as utterly beneath his notice, he enjoyed making her betray herself.

“Would you like me to introduce them to you?” he asked.

She could see both of his hands, exactly where they ought to be. Yet somehow it felt as if he had touched her, before all the other dinner guests.

“Introduce... whom to me?”

“The Marsden brothers, Lord Wyden’s sons,” he said, his manner kind and helpful. “Excellent gentlemen, one and all.”

Then he smiled slightly, because she was so flustered that she forgot what they’d been talking about only seconds ago.

It was, she realized, going to be the longest dinner of her life.

• • •

It was, Felix realized, going to be the most riveting dinner of his life.

And possibly the most arousing.

He ought to be less pleased. As a rule, he was quite opaque, his true sentiments and opinions hidden behind a wall of amiability. But she must have read him accurately from the very beginning: Another young lady would be doing her utmost to impress him; she, on the other hand, only wanted him to go away, because she knew that he hadn’t the least matrimonial intentions toward her.

But how could she expect him to go away when she was in such delectable ferment? Were she to rip apart her bodice, she could not be more conspicuous. Her sweet br**sts rose and fell agitatedly, she had a death grip on her knife and fork, and from time to time she exhaled audibly, unsteadily, as if she’d been holding her breath for far too long.

It dawned on him that she was rather pretty after all, her skin fine and luminous, her chin a delightful shape and angle. And her eyes...

She was trying her best not to look at him. But he forced her hand here, pausing in the middle of his sentences, making it plain that he expected due attention, giving her no choice but to meet his eyes.

Every time their gaze held, he could sense the shock in her, as if he had reached under her skirts. Then a shadow of resentment deep in her irises, that he had this effect on her, that he could manipulate her reaction with nothing more than a desire to do so.

And he would experience a frisson unlike anything he’d ever known, a jolt of pleasure and of power.

Everything he did in life—with the exception of his astronomical interests, perhaps—was in the pursuit of power. Personal power, the ability to hold others in his thrall while he himself remained serenely unaffected.

And they had come willingly, surrendering their approval without a second thought, allowing him to retain the position of superiority in just about every friendship or affair.

He’d never known anyone who actively resisted. Or rather, who was torn about him.

Miss Cantwell was single-handedly introducing him to power of a different flavor altogether, as she struggled between her visceral need to escape him and her equally visceral attraction toward him.

So much so that after the ladies withdrew, he, who usually enjoyed his after-dinner port and cigar with the gentlemen, chomped at the bit to be finished. When the gentlemen rejoined the ladies in the drawing room, he did not go to her—that would be far too obvious. But he did let her know that he was watching her.

And with relish.

• • •

It was another overcast, starless night.

Felix stood before his window, gazing out. He had returned home in an exuberant mood, feeling more alive than he had in a long time. But now that headlong rush of euphoria was beginning to wear off; the street below seemed deserted as the sky above. His bedroom, as he turned around and walk across to the bath, practically echoed.

He wanted something, something he could not quite grasp or name.

He turned on the light in the bath and came face-to-face with a framed piece of the late marchioness’s needlework. Such pieces were scattered throughout both his town house and his country house—what devoted son would seek to remove such beautiful mementos left behind by his beloved mother?

He recalled many of the pieces from his daily allotment of time beside her, watching her embroider. In the beginning, they had served as reminders that he should be ever vigilant, lest he again taste the bitterness of love thrown back into his face. But it had been years now since he last paid attention to any of them; they had melted into the background and were no more likely to catch his eye than the pattern on the wallpaper.

But now he examined the tiny, meticulous stitches before him, a wine-red dahlia in bloom. One of his mother’s later efforts. He remembered walking by her, a cigarette in hand, feeling sophisticated and grown-up because he could irritate her with a habit she despised.

Feeling well beyond the heartache and yearnings of his childhood.

Only to learn at her deathbed not a year later how deluded he had been. How little removed from the heartache and yearnings he thought he’d left far behind.

Was this the universe sending him a signal, telling him that he ought to be as wary of Miss Cantwell as she was of him? That perhaps there was something suspect about the delights he derived from her company?

He turned and walked out of the bath.

He knew what love was. What Miss Cantwell inspired in him was no more love than a random clump of clay was Venus de Milo. Love gave; he wanted only to take. Love ennobled—or at least it should; he was fairly certain his desire for Miss Cantwell was about to make him a far worse man than he had ever been.

She would cause him no discomfort or anxiety. He would not give her up to avoid some imaginary future disaster. It remained to be seen only how he would go about gratifying himself, where she was concerned.

Of course he would not marry her. He was a man who respected tradition. and what was a good, solid, traditional marriage without a certain amount of hypocrisy? He would be The Ideal Gentleman in his marriage, but with Miss Cantwell...

He hoped she already thought very, very ill of him, or she would have quite a shock coming.