He was offering his arm. His eyebrows were raised. Miss Goddard would be so very disappointed. But what was to be done? Nothing could be done at present. They would have to try again. Angeline took his arm and sighed inwardly. Why did his arm always seem steadier, more reliable than any other man’s? It was just an arm, after all.

They could have caught up with the group with the greatest ease. But Lord Heyward made no attempt to do so. Instead, he took a different direction entirely, taking Angeline with him.

“I wonder if there is a path up that hill beyond the trees,” he said. “I believe there must be, for there is a folly at the top of it—some sort of ruined tower. Do you see it?”

She followed the direction of his pointing arm. And she forgot instantly about her failed plan and about the group of young people making their merry way in the direction of the lake.

“Oh, I do,” she said. “Shall we find the way up to it? There must be a splendid view from up there.”

“If the climb will not be too much for you,” he said.

“I am not a wilting violet,” she told him.

“I did not believe so,” he said. “I have never yet seen a wilting violet tear across a meadow and straight up a tree.”

She glanced sidelong at him. Had Lord Heyward just made a joke? And about behavior he so despised?

“Of course,” he added, “I have never actually seen you do it either.”

He had made a joke.

“That is really too bad,” she said, “for I have no intention of performing an encore just for your benefit, you know.”

And there it was—that dimple in his cheek. And there went her stomach, doing a tumble toss, and she beamed her delight and laughed out loud. Oh, but she was over this. Long over it. Except that they were just two young people strolling in a private park during a house party and enjoying a summer afternoon. Why should they not joke and laugh together? It did not mean anything.

They found the path with no trouble at all once they had wound their way past the band of trees at the foot of the hill. They toiled up it without wasting breath talking. It was steep and rather overgrown with coarse grass. At one time it must have been used frequently—perhaps when Cousin Rosalie’s boys had been younger, before they all went off to school, or perhaps before Lord Palmer went on his diplomatic mission to Vienna. By the time they reached the top Angeline was quite out of breath, and she was sure her face must be horribly flushed and damp with perspiration. But Lord Heyward was panting too.

“Perhaps,” he said, “I ought to have asked myself if the climb would be too much for me.”

She smiled at him. Another joke.

“At least it will be all downhill on the way back,” she said. And because she was so warm, she untied the ribbons of her bonnet and let them flutter free. Her chin and neck immediately felt cooler.

But goodness. Oh, goodness. They were surrounded by nothing but view. Angeline turned completely about and saw house or park or village or farmland or countryside wherever she gazed.

“Oh, look,” she said unnecessarily, for of course he was already looking. What else could one do up here but stand and marvel?

“I will wager,” he said, “that the view is even more magnificent from up there.”

He was pointing at the tower.

“But no one would wager against you,” she said. “Besides, a lady never wagers. And I am a perfect lady now that I have made my come-out, remember?”

His eyes came to hers, and she could see that he did remember. The first time he had almost smiled at her was during the first set of her come-out ball when she had told him that from then on, now that she was out, she would be a perfect lady and there would be no more incidents like being alone in an inn taproom or galloping and whooping along Rotten Row during a rain or dashing across an occupied bull’s meadow.

“I’ll race you to the top,” she said, grasping her skirt at the sides and dashing across the short distance to the tower.

It looked far larger and more imposing from up here. Angeline pushed open the studded wooden door and stepped inside—and instantly forgot the race to the battlements. The walls and the floor were a brightly colored, intricate mosaic of colored stones. Slit arrow windows let in sunlight and would at any time of day—they faced in all directions. There was a wooden bench all about the perimeter, made soft with red leather cushions, though the color was marred somewhat by a layer of dust. A wooden ladder staircase in the middle of the room led upward to a trapdoor.

“What a glorious retreat!” she exclaimed. “If I lived at Hallings, I would come up here every day. I would bring my books and my easel, and I would sit here and read and paint and dream.”

She had been alone a great deal at Acton over the years and had made a friend of the hills and woods where she had played with Tresham and Ferdinand as a child. She would have made a retreat out of Dove Cottage by the far lake in the park, since it was beautifully situated, but it was where her father had housed his mistress—one of them, anyway—and she could never erase the wound of that memory from her mind.

Lord Heyward was climbing the ladder and pushing at the trapdoor until it disappeared into space and fell back somewhere up there with a thud. Angeline climbed up after him and took his offered hand to step out onto the battlements. He closed the trapdoor behind them.

“And what was the prize to be if you raced me to the top?” he asked her.

She turned to smile at him.

“You did not accept the wager,” she said, “just as I did not when you said the view would be even more magnificent from up here. I daresay we can see for miles in every direction. Oh, this was worth every moment of the climb, was it not?”

The tower was properly battlemented, of course, though there was some crumbling to one side at the front. It had been constructed that way, for this was a folly and was therefore supposed to look like a ruin, like something that had been here for a thousand years. Angeline rested her hands on the higher projections of the battlements and raised her face to the sky.

“It’s a little gusty up here,” Lord Heyward said, raising a hand to hold on to his hat. “You had better—”

The attempted warning came too late. Even as Angeline lifted both hands to grasp the ribbons of her bonnet and tie them securely beneath her chin again, they whipped free, and her bonnet lifted from her head and sailed off into the sky and down over the slope in the direction of the lake below. All that saved it from a watery grave was the presence of a tree at the foot of the hill that was taller than its fellows. The ribbons caught and tangled in its upper branches and the hat lodged there to end up looking like a particularly exotic bloom.

“Ohhh!” One of Angeline’s hands slapped against her mouth while the other reached out foolishly into empty space and Lord Heyward’s hand clamped about her upper arm like a vise to prevent her from following the path her bonnet had taken.

They watched it all the way down without saying a word. And then Angeline burst into uncontrollable laughter and, after a moment, Lord Heyward joined her, bellowing with mirth at something that really was not funny at all.

“My poor hat,” she wailed between spasms.

Another healthy gust of wind tugged at her hairpins and won the battle with one of them. She turned and slid down the wall until she was sitting against its shelter, her knees drawn up before her. And Lord Heyward slid down beside her, his legs stretched out, and removed his hat.

They were still laughing.

“Did you s-s-see it?” she asked when she could catch her breath. “I thought it might fly all the way to America.”

“I thought it might cause heart seizures among all the birds inside the park,” he said. “It looked like a demented parrot. It still does.”

Which was a horrible insult to her bonnet.

Angeline laughed again. So did he.

“Oh, look at me,” she said as she grasped one fallen lock of hair and attempted to twist it up into the rest of her coiffure, which was probably hopelessly flattened anyway. “Just look at me.”

He turned his head and did so, and somehow their laughter faded. And they were sitting almost shoulder to shoulder, their faces turned toward each other.

Angeline bit her lip.

That was Lord Heyward with whom she had been laughing so merrily?

“You look windblown and wind-flushed and very wholesome,” he said.

“I shall have to think about that,” she said, “to understand whether I have been insulted or not.”

“Not,” he said softly.

There were beads of perspiration clinging to his brow where his hat had been.

“You are kind,” she said. “But goodness, I am not much to look at to begin with.”

The lock of hair, pushed firmly and quite securely beneath another, promptly fell down over her ear again as soon as she let go of it.

“Why do you say that?” he asked.

“Well,” she said, looking down at her lap, “just consider my mother.”

“I knew her,” he said. “Not personally, but I saw her more than once. She was extremely beautiful. You look nothing like her.”

“You noticed?” She laughed softly.

“Do you wish you did?” he asked.

It was funny. She had never really asked herself that question before. She had lamented the fact that she was not as beautiful as her mother had been, but—did she really wish she looked like her? It would change everything, would it not?

“When I first saw you,” he said, “when you turned from the window at the Rose and Crown, I thought you were the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. I thought so again when I saw you at Dudley House.”

She laughed.

“I am so tall,” she said. “A beanpole.”

“Perhaps you were at the age of thirteen or so,” he said, “but certainly not now.”

“And I am so dark.”

“Vividly dark,” he said.

“I cannot even arch my eyebrows properly,” she said.

“What?” He looked baffled.

“When I try it,” she said, “I look like a startled hare.”

“Show me,” he said.

And she turned her face obediently toward his again and showed him.

His eyes filled with laughter once more.

“By Jove,” he said, “you are quite right. A startled hare. Who was the first to warn you about it?”

“My mother,” she said.

The laughter faded.

“She was disappointed in me,” she said. “She loved Ferdie. She took him to London with her a number of times, but never me. I daresay she hoped my looks would improve before she had to show me to anyone beyond the neighborhood of Acton. And she had lovers, you know. Of course you know. Everyone knew. But it is quite unexceptionable for a married lady, is it not, once she has presented her husband with an heir and a spare, and a daughter in her case. And why should she not take lovers when Papa had mistresses and even kept one in a cottage on the corner of the estate, saying she was an indigent relative. But she was not. I always knew she was not even before I knew what a mistress was. She never looked poor, and she never came to the house for a meal, which she would have done at least once in a while if she had been a poor relative, would she not? And of course Tresham has mistresses, even married ones. He has fought two duels I have heard of and perhaps more that I have not. I daresay Ferdie has mistresses too, even though he is only twenty-one. I have sworn and sworn that I will not marry a rake, even if it means marrying a dull man instead. Better to be dull than to be so unhappy that one is forced to take lovers. She was unhappy, you know, my mother. If she had lived, perhaps she would have thought me improved, and she could have brought me out and helped me find a husband, and we could have become friends and she would have been happy and proud.”

She grasped her knees and turned her face from his and shut her eyes tightly.

“I am babbling,” she said.

Oh, where had all that come from? How absolutely mortifying.

“And then Tresham left home abruptly when he was sixteen and never came back,” she added for good measure, “and Ferdinand went off to school and sometimes did not even come home during the holidays but went to stay with school friends instead, and Papa died a year after Tresham left, and Mama stayed most of the time in London after that, even more than before, it seemed, and all I had left was my governesses. They did not like me, and I do not blame them. I made myself unlikable.”