Oh, dear. More than one question, all of them unpardonably rude. And she had plenty of time in which to realize the fact and feel increasingly uncomfortable. So uncomfortable that she did not immediately notice that he had turned his curricle, not onto the main thoroughfare leading out onto the streets of London but onto another path that led deeper into a less traveled, more wooded area of the park. By the time she did notice, it was too late to protest. This would certainly be remarked upon, she thought—first she had waltzed with a notorious rakehell, then she had driven with him, and now she was allowing him to drive off alone with her.

“Perhaps you have not looked at yourself in a glass lately, Miss Edgeworth,” he said at last.

“But Lady Mannering’s ballroom was filled with ladies lovelier than I,” she said. “And most of them considerably younger.”

“I cannot answer for your youth,” he said, “but I can for your beauty. If you did not realize that you were by far the loveliest lady at the ball, then indeed you have not looked at your reflection lately.”

“How absurd.” She had never had a great deal of patience with flattery. Or with ladies who fished for compliments. Was that what she had just done? If so, she had been served well. The loveliest lady at the ball, indeed! The path dipped into a hollow bordered on either side by giant oak trees, whose branches met in an arch over-head.

“It is your eyes that make you uniquely lovely, of course.” He slanted her a look. “I have never seen any others of quite their color or beauty.”

This was all highly improper. But she had only herself to blame.

“You knew who I was, I suppose,” she said. “Someone had pointed me out to you. You knew what happened to me last year. Was it curiosity, then?”

He angled a penetrating look at her. “To dance with a bride who had been abandoned at the altar?” he said. “I hope the park at Newbury is a large one. My guess is that Kilbourne must be constantly whipping himself all about its perimeter at his foolishness in having married someone else, doubtless on a momentary impulse, and so having lost the chance of having you.”

She despised herself for taking comfort from his words. For longer than a year she had felt so . . . unattractive. “Well, you are wrong, sir,” she said. “His marriage to the countess was and is a love match.” They were driving in a cool, verdant shade. Lauren lowered her parasol to her lap though she did not close it.

“And yours to him would not have been?” Again that swift, penetrating look.

Lauren raised her chin and stared straight ahead. How had she trapped herself into this? “That is an impertinent question, my lord.”

He chuckled softly. “My humblest apologies, ma’am,” he said. “But Kilbourne’s loss is my gain. I asked you to dance because even across Lady Mannering’s ballroom I was struck by your loveliness and felt compelled to discover who you were. I sent the roses because after waltzing with you I could do nothing else but return home and lie awake half the night thinking of you. I called upon you this afternoon and invited you to drive with me here because I knew that if I did not see you again you would haunt my waking thoughts and my sleeping dreams for the rest of the summer.”

Lauren’s eyes widened with shock, but by the time he had finished speaking she was glaring at him in speechless anger. How foolishly gullible did he think she was?

“My lord,” she said with all the cool dignity with which she had armed herself for most of her life, “no gentleman would so mock a lady. But then I have been warned that you are no gentleman, and with my own eyes I have beheld that it is true. Now my ears tell the same story. I would be obliged if you would return me to Grosvenor Square without further delay.”

He had the gall to look across at her and chuckle softly. “You did ask, you know,” he said, rearranging the ribbons so that they were in his right hand. With his left he possessed himself of one of her hands and raised it to his lips. “It would have been ungentlemanly of me to lie to a lady, would it not?”

“I suppose,” she said with icy dignity, “you expected me to be easy prey to this blatant gallantry, Lord Ravensberg, since I am an abandoned bride. You thought to have some sport with me. You have failed. I came to town to offer my companionship to the Duchess of Portfrey, who is awaiting a confinement. I did not come to parade myself in the marriage mart. I am not in search of a husband and never will be. And even if I were, I would not fall an easy prey to such as you.”

“To such as I.” They were headed back in the direction of the park gates, she realized suddenly. “Have they told you very dreadful things about me, then, Miss Edgeworth? But of course they have. And with your own eyes you have seen me brawling half naked in the park and kissing a milkmaid. I have confessed to breaking my brother’s nose and suffering the indignity of banishment from my boyhood home. I perceive that my chances of pursuing an acquaintance with you are remote indeed.”

“Absolutely nonexistent.” They drove clear of the shade of the trees and the sun beamed down on their heads as if in mockery.

“You have broken my heart.” He turned his face to her again and gazed soulfully into her eyes—except that even now she could see laughter lurking in the depths of his.

“I doubt you have one to break,” she retorted.

Neither of them spoke again after that. When the curricle came to a halt before the duke’s door several minutes later, Lord Ravensberg’s tiger came darting across the square, where he had been left earlier, and ran to the horses’ heads. Lauren had no choice but to retain her high seat until his lordship had descended and come around the vehicle to help her alight. But even this he did not allow her to do with dignity. He set his hands on either side of her waist and swung her down to the pavement. He did not, as she expected for one horrified moment, allow her body to slide down his, but even so she was a mere few inches away from him when her feet found the ground. She looked at him, her face tight with indignation again.

“Thank you for the outing, my lord,” she said with icy politeness. “Good-bye.”

His smile lit his whole face with merriment and devilry. “Thank you.” He released his hold on her waist and made her an elegant bow. “Au revoir, Miss Edgeworth.”

The front door was already open, Powers having noted her return home. Lauren walked up the steps and into the hall with unhurried dignity. She did not look back as the door closed behind her.

Chapter 4

Sutton?” Lord Farrington said. “Yes, I know him well enough, Ravensberg. We were up at Oxford at the same time. Cut up a few larks together. That was before he inherited the title and became head of the family and pillar of the community and intolerably stuffy.”

“You are going to invite him to join a party of friends in your box at the theater next week,” Kit told him. “With his betrothed, of course.”

“Am I?” Lord Farrington replied. They were on horseback, cantering along Rotten Row rather earlier in the morning than usual. It was still almost deserted. “Am I permitted to ask why?”

“Because Lady Wilma Fawcitt is Miss Edgeworth’s cousin,” Kit reminded him. “Or stepcousin, to be precise. You are also going to invite her.”

“Miss Edgeworth? Ah.” His friend’s voice was full of sudden comprehension. “And I suppose I am going to invite you too, Ravensberg. Or have you already invited yourself? And why, pray, should I help you win your wager when I stand to lose a hundred guineas?”

“Because you will be unable to resist your curiosity to watch the progress of my courtship,” Kit said with a laugh. “And my chances are looking woefully slim, you will be delighted to know. I heaped gallantries upon her the day after the Mannering ball, when I drove her in the park, and instead of blushing and simpering, she did that icicle thing I was warned about and accused me of mocking her. I felt distinctly as if I were perched on top of the North Pole with no way down and no way home.”

“You failed to charm her?” Lord Farrington threw back his head and laughed. “Are you losing your touch, Ravensberg?”

“In the week and a half since then,” Kit continued, “I have looked in at a whole dreary array of balls and soirees and even a concert or two and have caught nary a glimpse of her. It is time to take a more active hand in my own fate. We have to entice her to the theater.”

“We?” Lord Farrington turned his horse at the Queen’s Gate end of the Row and headed back up it.

“And I think you should invite another couple or two as well,” Kit said. “We must not appear too obvious, after all. Eminently respectable couples, I need scarcely add.”

“Of course. And I am to forget to mention in the invitations that the infamous Lord Ravensberg is to be one of the party, I suppose?” his friend asked.

“No, no,” Kit protested. “I would not win by foul means. She will be determined not to come when she knows I am to be there. Sutton and his betrothed, when they know it, will exert all their considerable influence to dissuade her from accepting. So will Anburey and his lady. And Attingsborough. Probably Portfrey and the duchess too, though I am not at all sure that I don’t have an ally in that particular lady—she has a twinkling eye. Anyway, I count upon the discouraging chorus about Miss Edgeworth being loud enough to persuade her to come just to spite them all.”

“Tut, tut. You may as well pay your debts now and resign yourself to your father’s choice of a bride.” Lord Farrington shook his head before prodding his horse to a gallop and leaving his unwary friend in his dust for a moment.

But winning his wager had become an appealing as well as a necessary challenge, Kit realized before going in pursuit. She was prim and proper and apparently without even a glimmering of a sense of humor. At the same time she was hauntingly beautiful, and she was not immune to a challenge. Certainly she did not allow her relatives to rule her. And she had shown some intelligence as well as spirit in spurning his deliberately blatant flatteries in the park. What would such a lady be like in bed? he wondered suddenly. It was an intriguing thought.

He needed to see her again. For the sake of his wager. For his chance to go to Alvesley on his own terms. And for the personal challenge of somehow penetrating that cool, ladylike faзade—if there was anything beyond the faзade to penetrate to, that was. There might well not be.


The roses had wilted after a few days. But one bud was still pressed between several heavy volumes a footman had carried up to Lauren’s sitting room from the library below. It was too perfect to be allowed to die and be forgotten, she had told herself.

She had refused all further invitations to ton events after the Mannering ball and the drive in the park. She had gone shopping and walking for exercise. She had read several books from both the duke’s collection and Hookham’s subscription library. She had worked diligently at her embroidery and at her tatting. She had written almost daily letters to Gwendoline and Aunt Clara, Gwen’s mother. She had even written one to Lily and had the duke enclose it with his daily missive—Lily was his daughter. If there was a certain boredom in her days, a certain restlessness—well, that was a lady’s lot in life.

But on this particular evening she was riding in the Earl of Sutton’s town carriage with the earl and Wilma. They were on their way to the theater at the invitation of Lord Farrington to watch a performance of Shakespeare’s King Lear. Viscount Ravensberg was to be a member of the party.

“You must sit between Sutton and me when we arrive, Lauren,” Wilma instructed, not for the first time, as the carriage drew up behind a couple of others close to the theater doors.

Wilma had been vociferous in her determination not to accept her invitation, and she had had a firm ally in her betrothed. But a couple of weeks ago Lauren had discovered a hitherto unsuspected side to herself—a stubborn disinclination to have her activities ordered for her by others, however well meaning. All her life she had behaved the way she believed a lady ought to behave. And look where it had got her. She had informed Wilma that she was accepting her own invitation even though she had never met Lord Farrington. She was still not sure what she would have done if Wilma had not considered it her duty to accompany her with Lord Sutton.