“Freddy does.”

Beneath the pretended brightness, her voice was strained, as tense as her shoulders and the odd, watchful glint in her eyes, so foreign to honest desire. There had been rumors of late, in the bazaars, that the new Englishman had taken Nur Bai into keeping — not in hired quarters in the town, with all the inconvenience of having to obtain permission to enter the city after dark, but in his own zenana. Alex had dismissed the rumors as just that, rumors. It just wasn’t done. Not when one had a wife. Discreet rooms in the town, yes. But not in one’s own home. A man would have to hold his wife in utter contempt in order to contemplate a move like that.

Alex looked at Lady Frederick’s pinched, white face and knew that he had been wrong.

“That’s what this is about, isn’t it? Not me, not the moonlight.” He felt vaguely ill himself, with disappointment or disgust or both. Disgust, he told himself. Disgust at Lord Frederick’s wanton cruelty. He had no right to disappointment. “Christ . I should have known.”

“You’ll blaspheme but you won’t indulge in a spot of adultery? I call that hypocritical.” Lady Frederick trailed a finger down his cheek, aiming for his lips.

Alex called it too much wine. Grasping her arm by the wrist, he held it suspended in the air between them. “Don’t do anything you’ll regret in the morning. He’s not worth it.”

Lady Frederick twisted her arm away, taking a step back. Her face was bitter in the darkness. “You mean I’m not worth it.”

“You’re worth ten of him,” he said roughly.

Her lips twisted in a lopsided mockery of a smile. “Very kind of you, Captain Reid. Your condescension overwhelms me.”

Condescension? If she thought that was all it was, she was more naïve than she looked. His body was screaming to reassure her that condescension was the last thing he had on his mind. It might even be called a kindness.

A sick sort of kindness, to use her pain as an excuse for his own desires. Do that, and he’d be even more of a cad than her ass of a husband.

“Go home — Penelope.” He very deliberately employed her given name. “Go home and sleep it off.”

Lady Frederick’s mouth opened in soundless laughter. “You think I’m foxed? Trust me, Captain, I can hold my liquor better than that.”

“Drunk on revenge,” he corrected bluntly. “You’ll feel differently in the morning.”

“Will I?” she said, and her gaze swept him up and down, taking in every last detail, as someone anticipating thirst might drain the last drops of water from a dipper.

There was an odd, forlorn note in her voice that made Alex wonder, with a dangerous burst of exhilaration, if he might have gotten it all topsy-turvy, if it might not be at least a little bit about him and a little bit less about revenge. He made a move towards her, not towards Lady Frederick, but towards Penelope, forthright and honest and calling to him.

But he left it too late.

She turned, abruptly, missing the hand that had begun to reach for her.

“If you don’t appreciate my company,” she said flippantly, looking pointedly back towards the Residency, “I’ll find someone who will.”

Her back was towards him, the slim column of her throat held as high as it would go. She was every inch Lady Frederick again, as hard and glittering as the marble columns supporting the Residency veranda.

Alex tasted regret, as pungent as sour wine. Regret and pity.

Even though he knew she wouldn’t thank him for it, he called after her, “Lady Frederick — Penelope.”

She stopped at the sound of his voice, wary, waiting.

He couldn’t bring himself to say what he really wanted to. “Don’t sell yourself too cheaply.”

He saw the flicker of her lashes as she glanced back at the shadow figures on the veranda. “That’s the bother of it, Captain Reid. I already have.”

Chapter Sixteen

It was midnight, bleak and frigid cold, by the time I struggled up the Tube steps at Bayswater Station.

There was no self-indulgent cab on the way home from the movies. It was nearly midnight and Cinderella’s coach had turned back into a pumpkin. Or a Tube train, as the case might be.

I huddled down into my coat and clamped my elbow over my bag as I navigated my way down Queensway. It wasn’t entirely deserted — there were still lights on in the pub at one end of the road and the odd group of roving tourists — but the daytime crowds had gone and the shops were shuttered. Crumpled take-out wrappers and abandoned tourist brochures littered the street, bumping along in the wind like an urban version of tumbleweed. The whole stretch had the derelict feel of a party space after the party had gone.

The James Bond theme music was still playing in my head, bringing with it that rush one gets after a really good action movie. I wasn’t ready to go home and go virtuously to bed. I wanted lights, people, conversation.

There wasn’t much I could do about the first two, but I could manage the third. As I turned off Queensway, I fished my mobile out of my bag. It was a bit late to be calling, but that was the nice thing — well, one of the nice things — about having a boyfriend. You didn’t have to worry about things like socially acceptable calling hours with them.

Scrolling down through my contacts list, I hit “Colin.” It had taken me a while to program him into my phone, as though by presuming him permanent enough to be enshrined in my contacts list along with my parents, Pammy, and my favorite pizza place, I might somehow jinx the whole thing.

The phone rang twice, then three times, before Colin finally picked up. “Selwick.”

I must have caught him in the middle of working on something, because his voice had a preoccupied sound to it and I could hear the clack, clack, clack of computer keys still going in the background. Or that might have just been the static on the line. Cell to cell does not always make for the best connection.

“Hi!” I shrilled, my breath coming in pants as I tried to walk, talk, and keep my head down against the wind all at the same time. “It’s me.”

“Me?” The clack, clack, clack had stopped at least.

“Eloise,” I specified. I stopped short of adding “your girlfriend.” Although I was pretty sure I was, we had never actually specified that bit. “How many women do you have calling you in the wee hours?”

“The hour isn’t exactly wee yet,” pointed out Colin, with that amused note in his voice that I loved so well. I could picture him settling back in his incredibly uncomfortable desk chair, wedging his mobile more snugly against his ear. “It’s not yet midnight.”

“Close enough,” I chattered. “How’s the book going?”

“Slowly.” Colin was, or so he claimed, working on a spy novel. I wasn’t sure what the plot was, but it seemed to have something to do with international mobsters operating out of Dubai. Or was it Moscow? He was very cagey about the whole project. “Are you outside?”

“Yup!” I hitched up the strap of my bag, nearly dislodging the phone from my ear in the process. “I’m just on my way back from going to the movies with Serena! We saw the new James Bond.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line, followed by, “Oh.” And then, “Was Pammy with you?”

It was a logical question. Pammy had gone to school — to different schools — with both me and Serena, so she was the natural connecting link. “Nope. Just me and Serena.”

Silence.

“Hello?” I said, frowning at my cell. “Hello? Oh, good, you’re still there. I thought the line had gone.”

“I’m still here,” said Colin, but there was something flat about it. I couldn’t tell whether he was displeased or just preoccupied. Whatever it was, it wasn’t the warm and fuzzy reception I had been hoping for.

I hate cell phones sometimes. It’s impossible to pick up nuances of tone, especially with the wind driving your hair between your ear and the phone and the sound of your own breath rasping into the receiver.

I soldiered on, turning the corner onto Leinster Street. “Guess who we ran into in the movies?”

“Dr. Evil?”

Okay, it couldn’t be that bad if he was making Austin Powers jokes. He was probably just checking e-mail while talking to me. I do that sometimes. It’s awful of me and I know I shouldn’t, but I do it anyway. “No. Your friend Nick. He was there with some little blond chicky.”

“He usually is.”

“It sucks for Serena, though.” The wind was stronger as I turned down Leinster. I hunched my shoulders against it. “I was kind of hoping . . . I don’t know.”

“Hoping what?” I finally had Colin’s full attention, but not in a good way. There was something sharp about the way he said it that put me instantly on edge.

I shrugged before realizing that he couldn’t see it. “That she and Nick might hit it off.”

“She’s known Nick for years,” said Colin flatly. “And weren’t you just trying to set her up with Martin?”

Something about this conversation wasn’t going quite as I had intended it. “Yes, I know, but . . .” Why did I suddenly feel like I was the one on the defensive? “She seems to have a thing for Nick.”

Another horrible pause. Now that I was aware of them, listening for them, they sounded ten times worse. I could hear Colin exhale, his breath whistling down the line.

In the fake reasonable tone that people use when they’re trying not to say what they’re really thinking, he said, “Maybe you should just leave it be.”

Since when had I become the villainess here? “I just thought it would be nice if Serena had someone of her own.”

“It will happen when it happens.”

And in the meantime, I’d have his sister as a permanent third wheel on our dates, if not present in fact, then in spirit.

I rammed my shoulder against the front door of my building. The door always stuck, but tonight I slammed it with even more force than necessary. “Oh, come on. These things don’t just happen. Especially when people are too shy to make them happen for themselves.”

“Are you saying that Serena needs you to find a bloke for her?”

Put that way, it did sound a little ridiculous. Not to mention condescending and more than a bit of an insult to Serena.

“I’m not saying she can’t cope on her own.” Oh, crap, that hadn’t come out right, had it? I rushed on, “It’s just that dating isn’t easy. Everyone can use a little helping hand now and again.”

“That’s not a helping hand, that’s a bulldozer.”

I’m not the bulldozer; Pammy is the bulldozer. “Fine.” I said tightly, kicking the door shut behind me. “I was just trying to be helpful.”

“I’m not saying your intentions weren’t good.” Now that I was inside, the wind had stopped howling in my ears, but Colin’s voice had gone as crackly as a brown paper bag. My building is a Victorian structure, a large town house turned into a series of flats. There’s something about the old construction that stymies mobile reception. I like to think that it’s the ghosts of disapproving Victorian spinsters going about gumming up everyone’s lines.

A cute conceit, but not exactly useful when one is in the middle of a tense conversation with one’s boyfriend.

If I went down to my basement flat, I would lose him completely, so I stood there on the upper landing, letting my bag drop to the floor as I rested an elbow against the ancient radiator where everyone’s mail got dumped every day. I could feel the damp heat of it against my legs.

“Then what are you saying?” The scent of mold made my nostrils twitch. I scrubbed the back of my hand against my nose.

With only a single bulb hanging drunkenly from the ceiling, the foyer seemed even dingier than usual, with its ancient blue carpet and peeling blue wallpaper. We’d had our first kiss in this foyer, Colin and I, crackling radiator, mold and all.

Colin was clearly not in a kissing mood at the moment. “I’m just saying you should let it go.”

“You mean you don’t want me meddling in your sister’s life.” Fine. I got it. It was his family and it wasn’t any of my business. And maybe it wasn’t.

No, I corrected myself. Under normal circumstances it wouldn’t be any of my business. But it became my business when a good half of our already limited time together had to be shared with his only sibling. He couldn’t have it both ways.

“You just don’t know what you’re dealing with. Our family is” — Colin struggled for the appropriate adjective — “unusual.”

“I would never have gotten that.” Although, come to think of it, everyone thinks his family is unusual. True, the Selwicks did have that whole spy thing going, but everyone kept swearing right and left that that was all in the past.