On the other hand, what if he were to learn that Venetia—not the baroness, but Mrs. Easterbrook—had not only been in America, but had been in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at the exact same time as his Harvard lecture?

One could only juggle sticks of dynamite for so long before they exploded one by one.


I’m sorry, darling,” said Christian, as soon as he and the baroness were inside his rooms.

She glanced back at him, the paillettes on her veil catching light like so many tiny mirrors. But the sparkle had gone from her voice. “Why do you apologize to me?”

“I have upset you.”

He’d upset himself—Miss Vanderwoude’s impertinence had been a grave reminder that his mistake had compounded far beyond its original dimensions. But the baroness’s distress was, if possible, more acute than his own. Afterward, though she’d gamely kept up a constant stream of friendly banter with Mr. Cameron, he’d barely tasted anything, knowing he’d sunken far in her esteem.

She sat down on the chaise, the set of her shoulders both tense and weary. And something in the way her fingers clung to one another spoke more than just disappointment: She was afraid.

“Please say something.”

She tilted her head back, as if looking heavenward for help. “Miss Vanderwoude was willing to devote her own time and funds to muck about the private affairs of someone she’d never met and only heard of secondhand. It astounds me what you must have said to arouse such unseemly interest.”

Her dispirited words were nails pounded into his heart. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have.”

“Indeed you shouldn’t. Your comments caused someone to be spoken of as undiluted evil.”

He sat down next to her and took her hand in his. “I did not do it out of malice, if that is what concerns you. I relayed my anecdote less as an objective lesson for my audience than as a reminder to myself.”

“I don’t understand.”

He would have to explain, to expose himself as he never had. But he cared little for his mortification. The only thing that mattered was that she must not turn away from him.

“The woman I used as an example at Harvard—she was my elsewhere.”

She yanked her hand from his. He gripped her arm before she could leap away. “Please, listen.”

“My God,” she said, looking everywhere but at him. “My God.”

If he could only pull out his heart to show her. But he had only words, slow, laborious, useless words. “The lady in question is bewitchingly beautiful. And for a decade, I was fixated by her beauty. I wrote an entire article on the evolutionary significance of beauty as a rebuke to myself, that I, who understood the concepts so well, nevertheless could not escape the magnetic pull of one particular woman’s beauty.”

Her veil rippled with her agitated breathing. “And that was not enough, the article? You had to speak of it in public?”

“My obsession was mindless. I had to stay away from places she frequented. If I saw her, it wouldn’t have mattered whether she hastened her husband’s journey to the grave. I’d have willingly married her just to possess her.”

In her lap, her hands shook visibly. He, too, shook—but inside, where fear and regret threatened to drown the hopes that had been leaping and frolicking like pods of dolphins alongside the Rhodesia.

“I’ve long been ashamed of this fixation, but it clung to me like a leech. And this time, I wouldn’t be able to stay away from her—she is a fixture at the London Season. I was troubled that I might give in and approach her, propriety and pride notwithstanding.” The dream, damn the dream. “Believe me, I’d never intended such a catastrophic lapse of judgment.”

She yanked free her arm, rose, and walked away.


Venetia felt blown to pieces, all the dynamite sticks she’d been juggling having detonated at once.

She hadn’t been a random example, something casually plucked out of all his accumulated experiences to illustrate a passing point. Rather, she had been the bane of his existence.

She could not grasp it. The reach of her mind had been diminished by her shock. She could only gape at the idea, as if it were a tentacled sea monster come to sink the Rhodesia.

He said he’d been nineteen. She would have also been nineteen—very much still married, but with her erstwhile romantic illusions already dashed upon the hard rock of Tony’s indestructible self-love.

One of the Harrow players couldn’t stop staring at you. If someone had handed him a fork he’d have devoured you in one sitting.

He’d been that Harrow player. She’d been his despised obsession. And she was also his salvation—from herself.

Panic swept in like a cyclone.

Until now, it was possible to imagine her ruse being forgiven. Not anymore, not after he had exposed his Achilles’ heel to the last person he’d willingly give that knowledge.

For that, he would not forgive her. Ever.

He rose to his feet. “Please say something.”

But she couldn’t speak. All she understood was a rising desperation: Their affair must end now, before things could get any worse.


She turned her back to him. Her hands, braced apart, gripped the edge of the writing desk, as if she couldn’t quite support her own weight. He couldn’t breathe—to have caused pain to the woman who’d only ever brought him warmth and joy.

He turned off the lamp, approached her, and removed her veil.

She inhaled unsteadily. He set his hands on either side of hers and kissed her hair, holding the pristine, sweet scent of her deep in his lungs.

“I love you.” The words had arrived on their own, like butterflies emerging from cocoons when their time had come. He, too, felt transformed, from a boy who mistook compulsion for love to a man who at last understood his own heart.

She shuddered.

“You are the one I’ve been waiting for all my life.”

She spun around and covered his mouth with her hand.

He moved her hand aside. “From the beginning—do you not remember the lift? You overtook my entire—”

She kissed him, a rampage of lips and tongue. Relief flooded him—she would still have him. And such ardor, as if she could not bear the least distance between them. Her fever burned in him. He lifted her bottom onto the desk and pushed up her skirts. She tugged impatiently at her drawers. He would have gone down on his knees to worship her, but she refused to let their lips part.

Instead, she unfastened his trousers and, without further preliminaries, took him inside her. He was unspeakably aroused—the feel of her, the rain-clean taste of her, the urgency of her. She panted and trembled with her need, ravishing him, urging him to ravish her in return.

No more words were needed. She was the only thing that mattered. They were the only thing that mattered. The avalanche of pleasure to come would meld them into one seamless union.

There were no secrets left.

Nothing separated them now.


Christian awakened to an eerie stillness, as if the Rhodesia’s heart had stopped beating. It took him a disoriented second to realize that the engines had stopped humming.

The liner had dropped anchor in Queenstown.

Instinctively he reached for her, but she was not in his bed, to which they’d repaired for more lovemaking, forging ever greater pleasure and closeness for the better part of the night. He called to her, thinking perhaps she was in the parlor or the water closet. Silence answered him.

Alarm prickled his spine—she’d never left without a word. He grabbed his pocket watch from the nightstand. Five minutes to nine—quite late for him. Maybe she had not wished to disturb his slumber. He pulled on some clothes, dashed off a note explaining his possible late arrival for their walk, and rang for the suite steward to take it to her.

The suite steward returned as he was applying shaving soap to his face. “Sir, the baroness’s room steward told me that she has disembarked.”

Christian turned around. “For a tour?”

Ocean liners replenished their supplies at Queenstown. It was not uncommon for passengers to use the time for an excursion into the Irish countryside.

“No, sir. She asked for her luggage to be sent ashore.”

She was leaving. And last night, which he’d believed to herald a new era for them, had been but a long, wordless good-bye for her. She did not believe in his love. She did not trust that he’d left his former obsession behind. And she could not imagine any likely future for them.

All the possibilities that had come to life with her presence began to shatter, and his heart with them.

“She might still be in the disembarkation queue, sir,” said the steward. “Shall I go down for a look?”

The disembarkation queue. Of course, the Rhodesia had not docked. She was somewhere in the harbor. Passengers and their luggage must wait to be ferried in tenders.

Christian washed the soap from his face, threw on a day coat, grabbed his hat, and rushed down to the main deck. The sky was gray. The Atlantic was gray. Even Ireland, otherwise green and beautiful, was an unremitting spread of dreariness.

He pushed through the crowd, frantically searching for her familiar silhouette. The entire population of the ship seemed to have congregated near the tenders. Old ladies tottered about in pairs. Children were held aloft to see over the rails. Young Americans chattered about Buckingham Palace and Shakespeare’s cottage, while waving at a tender rowing toward the Rhodesia.

At last he spotted her standing at the rail. Relief swallowed him whole. As if sensing his urgency, the crowd parted, and those near her scooted away to make room for him. But she did not acknowledge his presence as he came to stand beside her. Her face remained bent to the waves that lapped at the riveted steel plates of the ship’s hull.

“Why? Why are you leaving?”

“I’ve reached my destination.”

“Is it because you think I still love Mrs. Elsewhere?”

“It is not that.”

“Look at me when you say that.”

Her face turned toward him. Her hand tightened on the railing, as if she were surprised by his appearance. He’d been perspiring earlier. But standing on the open deck without his overcoat—the cold was sudden and intense.

“It is not that,” she repeated. “You’ve always said that I could leave anytime. I am leaving now. I don’t need another reason.”

He shivered. From the cold or her words he did not know. “Does it mean nothing that I love you?”

“You don’t love me. You are in love with a creature of your own imagination.”

“That is not true. I don’t need to know your face to know you.”

“I am a fraud, remember? There is no Baroness von Seidlitz-Hardenberg.”

“You think I have forgotten that? I don’t need you to be a baroness. Who you are is more than good enough for me.”

Her laughter sounded bitter. “Let’s not argue a moot point.”

He placed his hand on her arm. “I won’t, if you stay.”

She shook her head. “My luggage is already on the dock.”

“It can easily be brought back on board.”

She shook her head more vigorously. “Let it be. Some things are lovely precisely because they are brief.”

“And other things are lovely because they are rare and beautiful—and should be given a chance to stand the test of time.”

She was silent. His heart thumped wildly. Then she reached up and kissed him on the cheek through her veil. “Good-bye.”

It was the end of the world, nothing but wreckage where entire cities of hope once stood, their spires shining in the sun. Disbelief and despair gripped him turn by turn. Chaos reigned. He was cold, so very cold, the wind like knives upon his skin.

Then, just as suddenly, the confidence he’d taken for granted in his youth reasserted itself. Or perhaps it was only a gambler’s acceptance of all possible outcomes, as he laid his cards on the table.

“Marry me,” he said.


She swayed. She’d swindled a declaration of love, and now a proposal of marriage. He would despise her so much it would make Sodom and Gomorrah’s fate seem like a fairy tale.

Irony—for it was exactly what she had wanted in the first place.

“I can’t,” she said weakly. “No marriage between us would be considered valid.”

“Let’s meet again and discuss what we need to do to make it valid.”

She’d been shocked, when he first found her, to see him unshaven, without his collar, his necktie, his waistcoat, or his overcoat. And his agitation had, if anything, exceeded his dishevelment. But now he radiated mastery and purpose. He’d made up his mind, and nothing was going to dissuade him from his choice.