“You have no time for this,” Anna said, hazarding another guess as she snipped carefully to trim up the curling hair at his nape. She’d snip, snip then brush the trimmings from his bare shoulders. It went like that, snip, snip, brush until she leaned up and blew gently on his nape instead, then resumed snipping.

When she leaned in again, she caught the scent of his woodsy, spicy cologne. The fragrance and putting her mouth just a few inches from his exposed nape left her insides with an odd, fluttery disconcerted feeling. She lingered behind him, hoping her blush was subsiding as she finished her task. “There.” This time she brushed her fingers over his neck several more times. “I believe you are presentable, or your hair is.”

“The rest of me is yet underdressed.” He held out his hand for the scissors. “Now where is my damned shirt?”

She handed him his damned shirt and would have turned to go, except his cravat had also sprouted wings and flown off to an obscure location on the door of his wardrobe, followed by his cuff links, and stickpin, and so forth. When he started muttering that neck-cloths were altogether inane in the blistering heat, she gently pushed his fingers aside and put both hands on his shoulders.

“Steady on.” She looked him right in the eye. “It’s only a silly committee, and you need only leave a bank draft then be about your day. How elegant do you want to look?”

“I want to look as plain as I can without being a Quaker,” the earl said. “My father loves this sort of thing, back-slapping, trading stories, and haggling politics.”

Anna finished a simple, elegant knot and took the stickpin from the earl’s hand. “Once again, you find yourself doing that which you do not enjoy, because it is your duty. Quizzing glass?”

“No. I do put a pair of spectacles on a fob.”

“How many fobs, and do you carry a watch?” Anna found a pair of spectacles on the escritoire and waited while the earl sorted through his collection of fobs. He presented her with one simple gold chain.

“I do not carry a time piece to Carlton House,” he explained, “for it serves only to reinforce how many hours I am wasting on the Regent’s business.” Anna bent to thread the chain through the buttonhole of his waistcoat and tucked the glasses into his watch pocket, giving the earl’s tummy a little pat when the chain was hanging just so across his middle.

“Will I do?” the earl asked, smiling at her proprietary gesture.

“Not without a coat, you won’t, though in this heat, no one would censor you for simply carrying it until you arrived at your destination.”

“Coat.” The earl scowled, looking perplexed.

“On the clothespress,” Anna said, shaking her head in amusement.

“So it is.” The earl nodded, but his eyes were on Anna. “It appears you’ve put me to rights, Anna Seaton, my thanks.”

He bent and kissed her cheek, a gesture so startling in its spontaneity and simple affection, she could only stand speechless as the earl whisked his coat across his arm and strode from his room. The door slammed shut behind him as he yelled for Lord Valentine to meet him in the mews immediately or suffer a walk in the afternoon’s heat.

Dumbstruck, Anna sat on the stool the earl had used for his trimming. He had a backward sort of charm to him, Anna thought, her fingers drifting over her cheek. After four days of barking orders, hurling thunderbolts, and scribbling lists at her in Tolliver’s absence, he thanked her with a lovely little kiss.

She should have chided him—might have, if he’d held still long enough—but he’d caught her unawares, just as when he’d frowned at her hand and seen she had no wedding ring.

Her pleasure at the earl’s kiss evaporating, Anna looked at her left hand. Why hadn’t she thought of this detail, for pity’s sake? Dress the part, she reminded herself.

She hung up some discarded ensembles of court-worthy attire, straightened up both the escritoire and the earl’s bureau, which looked as if a strong wind had blown all into disarray. When she opened his wardrobe, she unashamedly leaned in and took a big whiff of the expensive, masculine scent of him while running her hand along the sleeve of a finely tailored dark green riding jacket.

He was a handsome man, but he was also a very astute man, one who would continue to spot details and put together facts, until he began to see through her to the lies and deceptions. Before then, of course, she would be gone.

When he finally returned to his townhouse that evening, the earl handed his hat, gloves, and cane to a footman then made his way through the dark house to the kitchens, wanting nothing so much as a tall, cold glass of sweetened lemonade. He could summon a servant to fetch it but was too restless and keyed up to wait.