Never say never. I am better than that."

He crossed the room to her in a few quick strides, went down on his knees in front of her chair, and possessed himself of both her hands.

She gazed at him, startled, and the mask slipped.

"Stop it," he said. "Just stop it, Cassandra. That game is over. And game is all it ever was. That was not /you/. Or /me/. I am sorry for what I have done to you. Truly sorry."

She opened her mouth to speak and closed it again, the words unspoken.

She tried to look scornful and failed. He tightened his grip on her hands.

"Cassandra," he said, "if we are to go on, we must do it as friends. And I do not use that word as a euphemism for nothing at all. We must become friends. I need to continue helping you, and you need help. It is, perhaps, not quite an ideal basis for friendship, but it will have to do. I will support you for as long as you need support, and you will give me your confidence and trust and company in return. Not your body.

I cannot pay for your body. I /cannot/."

"Goodness me, Lord Merton," she said, "you /must/ be desperate if you are prepared to pay for friendship. Is being an angel such a lonely business, then? Does no one want to be your friend?"

"Cass," he said, "call me Stephen."

Why was he bothering? Why /was/ he?

Her smile was back – and then was not.

"Stephen," she said. It was almost a whisper.

"Let us be friends," he said. "Let me visit you openly here, with your former governess as your chaperone. Let me bring my sisters to visit you. Let me escort you about London as I did yesterday afternoon. Let us get to know each other."

"Are you so desperate, then," she said, "to have access to my secrets, Lord Merton? Are you itching to know all the titillating details of the way I killed Nigel?"

He let go of her hands and got to his feet again. He turned away from her and ran the fingers of one hand through his hair. He looked at the rumpled bed, where they had made love just a short while ago.

"/Did/ you kill him?" he asked.

Why had he not fully believed her the first time he asked? Why had he not recoiled in horror and put as much distance between himself and her as he could?

"Yes, I did," she said without hesitation. "You will not get me to deny it, Lord Merton – /Stephen/. You will not get me to invent a convenient stranger, a vagrant, who for no reason whatsoever but an inherent villainy climbed through the library window, shot my husband through the heart, and then took himself off again without even stealing anything of value. I did it because I hated him and wanted him dead and wanted to be free of him. Do you /really/ want to be my friend?"

Why did he /still/ not quite believe her? Because such a thing was unimaginable? But Lord Paget had died because a bullet had been shot into his heart. He tried to picture her with a pistol in her hand and closed his eyes briefly, appalled.

Was he mad? Was he besotted with her? Surely he was not. Of course he was not. He must simply be mad.

"Yes," he said with a sigh. "I do."

"The whole /ton/ would believe you were courting me," she said. "Your wings would soon be tinged black, Lord Merton. You would soon find yourself being shunned. Or becoming the laughingstock. Everyone would think you were my dupe. They would think you remarkably foolish. They would think you could not see beyond my beauty. I /am/ beautiful. I say that without vanity. I know how other people look at me – women with envy, men with admiration and desire. Women would turn from you in disappointment and disdain. Men would look at you with envy and scorn."

"I cannot live my life," he said, "according to what my peers expect of me. I must live it as I see fit. I suppose there was a reason why you noticed me in Hyde Park a few days ago, and why I noticed you. And it was not simply that you were looking for a protector and that I had an eye for beauty – especially as you were heavily veiled. You might have noticed a dozen others. So might I. But it was each other we saw. And there was a reason why we met again just the following day at Meg's ball. The reason was not just that we would tumble into bed together and then part bitterly a short while later. I believe in causes. And effects."

"We were fated to meet, then?" she said. "And to fall in love, perhaps, and marry and live happily ever after?"

"We make our own fate," he said. "But some things happen for a reason. I am convinced of it. We met for a reason, Cassandra. We can choose to explore that reason – or not. No effect is fated."

"Only the cause," she said.

"Yes," he said. "I think. I am no philosopher. Let us start again, Cassandra. Let us give ourselves a chance at least to be friends. Let me get to know you. Get to know me. Perhaps I am worth knowing."

"And perhaps not," she said.

"And perhaps not."

She sighed, and when he looked back at her he could see that she had dropped all pretenses. She looked simply vulnerable – and lovely beyond belief.

A murderer? Surely not. But what did a murderer look like?

"I ought to have known," she said, "as soon as I saw you that you would be trouble. Instead, it was your friend I dismissed as potentially dangerous. It was he I thought I would not be able to control. The one who looks like the devil. Mr. Huxtable."

"/Con/?" he said. "He is my cousin. He is not evil."

"I thought angels were safe," she said, "and so I chose you."

"I am not an angel, Cassandra," he said.

"Oh, believe me, you /are,/" she said. "That is the whole trouble."

He smiled at her suddenly, and for a moment there was a gleam in her eye, and he thought she was going to smile back at him. She did not do so.

"Let me call on you tomorrow afternoon," he said. "Or this afternoon, I suppose I mean. A formal call. On you and your former governess. Pardon me, remind me of her name."

"Alice Haytor," she said.

"Let me call on you and Miss Haytor," he said.

She was swinging her foot again.

"She /knows,/" she said.

"And doubtless believes I am the devil incarnate," he said. "Shall we see if I can charm her out of her strong disapproval of me?"

"She also knows," she said, "that it is all my fault, that I seduced you."

"She can know no such thing," he said, "because it is not true, Cassandra. You signaled strong interest in me. I was not seduced. I chose to be interested in return. You /are/ beautiful. And desirable. I deserve Miss Haytor's disapproval. I made the wrong decisions concerning you and my attraction to you. Allow me to try to win her respect."

She sighed again.

"You will not just go away, will you?" she said.

They looked at each other.

"I will," he said. "If you tell me to go away and stay away, I will do it. If the /real/ Lady Paget tells me, that is. Do you want me to leave, Cassandra? Do you want me out of your life for now and always?"

She stared at him and then closed her eyes.

"I do," she said after a few moments, "but I cannot say it with my eyes open. Stephen, /why/ did I meet you?"

"I do not know," he said. "Shall we discover the answer together?"

"You will regret it," she said.

"Perhaps," he agreed.

"I already regret it," she said.

"Tomorrow afternoon?" he said.

"Oh, very well." She opened her eyes and gazed at him again. "Come if you must."

He raised his eyebrows.

"Come," she said. "And I shall tell Mary not to put a spider in your teacup."

He smiled.

"And now go," she said. "I need some sleep even if you do not."

He crossed the room to put on his cloak and take up his hat. He turned toward her. She was standing in front of the chair.

"Good night, Cassandra," he said.

"Good night, Stephen."

He walked home wondering what on earth he had got himself into now. His life seemed to have been turned upside down in the past two days.

Had they /really/ been fated to meet? For what possible reason – except that he help keep her and her friends from starvation?

But the reason was for them to discover. Some events, some moments, were dropped deliberately into one's life, he believed, by an unseen hand.

But that hand had no power to dictate one's response. It was up to the individual concerned to make something out of those events and moments.

Or not.

It rained all morning, but by early afternoon the rain had stopped, the clouds had moved on, the sun was shining, and the roads and pavements had dried off.

"It is a /perfect/ afternoon for a walk," Alice said stubbornly, having crossed to the sitting room window to prove with her own eyes that she was quite right. "We have been promising ourselves a walk in Green Park, Cassie. It will be less crowded than Hyde Park."

"When you arrived home for luncheon," Cassandra reminded her, "you declared that your feet would surely drop off if you had to walk one more step today."

Alice had spent the morning trying to discover agencies she had missed yesterday and revisiting those at which she had left her name, in the hope that something had turned up overnight.

She had said that about her feet before Cassandra had finally plucked up the courage to mention very casually that the Earl of Merton was to call this afternoon – a formal social visit to take tea with them, not official business.

"It is amazing what a little luncheon and a cup of tea and an hour's sit-down can do to restore one's energy," Alice said brightly. "I am ready to go again – and this afternoon I will not even get wet."

"I agreed that I would be here when he came, Alice," Cassandra said. "It would be ill-mannered to be from home after all, and you taught me never to be bad-mannered. Besides…"

"Besides /what/?" Alice was cross. She had turned from the window, a frown on her face.

Cassandra had no work on her lap – she could not seem to settle to anything these days. She had no excuse to look anywhere else but back at her old governess.

"I think our… /liaison/ is at an end, Allie," she said. "In fact, it is. He found it distasteful – mainly, I believe, because Belinda lives here. He said something about sullying innocence. Though it was not only that. I think he really must be an angel. I led an angel astray. He feels guilty. He wants to make amends. He wants to start again, and he wants us to be /friends/. Have you ever heard anything so absurd in your life? But he wants to keep on paying me too, and I do not know how I am going to make myself say no, though of course I ought. I cannot accept a handsome salary just for being someone's friend, can I?"

"Come for a walk," Alice said firmly, "before it is too late. Just get your bonnet, Cassie, and never mind about changing your dress."

Cassandra shook her head and looked down at her hands in her lap. She examined her fingernails. They needed cutting. She was wearing her sprigged muslin dress for the occasion. Pretty clothes were something she /did/ have left. Nigel had always insisted that she dress well.

"I do not want even to set eyes on him," Alice said, "let alone sit and take tea with him. I don't /like/ him, Cassie, and I do not need to meet him to know that. He hurt you."

"No, he did not." Cassandra looked up with troubled eyes. "If any hurting was done, it was the other way around. He has not hurt /me/. He is… lovely, Allie."

Lovely and terribly troubling.

All morning – and all last night after he had left – she had thought about his lovemaking and the aches and yearnings it had aroused in her. And that pain that was not pain. It was sexual desire she had been feeling.

She had admitted that eventually. She had never before felt sexual desire. She had not even known there was such a thing for women.

And all morning she had been thinking about their conversation afterward. /I suppose there was a reason why you noticed me in Hyde Park a few/ /days ago, and why I noticed you… And there was a reason why we met again just the following day at Meg's ball. I believe in causes. And effects/.

If there was a reason for everything, why had she met Nigel? /Some things happen for a reason. I am sure of it. We met for a reason, Cassandra. We can choose to explore that reason – or not. No effect is fated/.

He had found a way for fate and free will to exist side by side. How clever of him. /Let us start again, Cassandra. Let us give ourselves a chance at least to be friends. Let me get to know you. Get to know me. Perhaps I am worth knowing/.