It was every girl’s dream, surely, to be singled out across a crowded room, Cinderella one moment, the love of Prince Charming’s soul the next. There was no more romantic myth. And despite herself, Lauren was not immune to it. But she was no girl. There was all the difference in the world between myth and reality. Life had dealt her enough doses of reality that she felt no doubt of that. She did not believe in love at first sight. She did not even believe in romantic love.

“Since then,” he said, “my regard for you has deepened every day. Every hour.”

“Has it?” She almost wished for the foolish girlhood she had never known—for the gullible belief in fairy-tale romance. She almost wished she could believe. “Why?” It was a question she seemed to have asked a great deal lately.

“You are beautiful,” he said. “You are elegant and graceful and dignified. You are a perfect lady, in fact. I have fallen head over ears in love with you.”

Those were the words that released her from her mental torpor. Men simply did not fall head over ears in love. Young girls might, but if love happened at all for men, it did so far more slowly and pragmatically. Lord Ravensberg was not the type to fall violently in love with any woman. He loved himself far too much, she suspected. And Lauren Edgeworth was not the type of woman to inspire soaring flights of emotion in any man.

“My lord,” she asked him, looking him directly in the eye and wishing there were more light, “what is your game?”

“Game?” He leaned a little closer and she turned sharply away and took a few steps along the path. She stood with her back to him.

“Is it my fortune?” she asked him. “Do you need to marry money?”

“I have all the wealth I need,” he said after a short pause. “And I am heir to a great deal more.”

“Then why?” She gazed ahead along the path and absently noted the shifting patterns of bluish light and shade cast across it by the distant lamp. “Why did you attend Lady Mannering’s ball? I have been told that you had been to no other before it this Season. Why did you dance only with me? You went there with that specific intention, did you not? You intended to offer for me before you even saw me. Am I right?”

“I had seen you in the park before then,” he said. “Remember? You are hard to forget.”

London during the Season was the great marriage mart. Viscount Ravensberg must be in his late twenties, perhaps older. He was heir to an earldom. It was perfectly conceivable that he had decided it was time to take a bride. But why her? And why sight unseen? She did not believe for a moment that he had conceived a passion for her during that brief meeting of their eyes in the park while he was holding and kissing the milkmaid. She did not believe he had conceived a passion for her at all. She turned to look back at him. From this angle his face was more in the light. There seemed less laughter there than usual.

“Your pretense of passion is insulting, my lord,” she said. “Lies are surely unnecessary. Why not simply the truth?”

His features looked hard and chiseled without the customary expression of good humor. She could imagine him now, as she had never been able to before, as a military officer.

“Insulting,” he repeated softly. “I have insulted you. And indeed you are right. I have.”

She had the distinct impression that her heart plummeted all the way down from her chest to her feet. She was right, then. He felt nothing for her. Of course he did not. And she did not want him to, anyway. She did not want his love or any man’s. Especially not his. But she felt suddenly chilled. She was not beautiful. She was not desirable. She was simply Lauren Edgeworth, perfect lady and eligible bride for an earl’s heir—as she had been all her life, unless the man happened to find a more appealing bride before it was too late. She turned her head to confirm what her eyes had seen earlier without really noticing—a rustic seat. She walked toward it and seated herself, arranging her skirts carefully about her so that she would not have to look at him. He moved closer, but made no attempt to seat himself beside her.

“Honor has always been enormously important to me,” he said, his voice so devoid of laughter that she scarcely recognized it. “There was a time—while I was commissioned—when honor meant more to me than life itself, even the lives of those I loved. But—” There was a short silence before he continued. “In all my dealings with you I have acted completely without honor. I am deeply ashamed and I beg your pardon. Perhaps you will allow me to escort you back to Mrs. Merklinger?”

She gazed up at him. Without honor? Merely because he had pretended a love he did not feel? And why did that fact make her feel so very bleak? She had never believed him.

“I believe you owe me an explanation first,” she said though she was not sure she wanted to know.

For a long time it seemed to her that he would not answer. Footsteps approached along the path, accompanied by soft whispers and laughter. But whoever it was must have spotted them from a distance and turned to go back. The music of another waltz intruded from what seemed to be a long distance away.

“Suffice it to say,” Lord Ravensberg said at last after inhaling audibly, “that I have wagered against three other men that I will have wooed you and wed you by the end of this month.”

Lauren imposed control over herself by trying—and failing—to describe her feelings to herself with one word. Shock? Anger? Bewilderment? Hurt? Humiliation?

“A wager?” She was whispering.

“You were chosen,” he said, “because you have a reputation for unshakable dignity and gentility and respectability. For being the perfect lady, in fact. My . . . friends considered you to be the lady least likely to accept my proposal.”

“Because you are a rake? This was all a game, then?” Her tone, she realized, matched his own in flatness. “But a remarkably foolish one. What if you had won? You would have been stuck for life with a prim, respectable wife. A perfect lady. A perfectly dull lady. That is what I am, Lord Ravensberg.”

The sharpness of her pain was ridiculous. She had never respected this man or believed his preposterous flatteries. She respected him even less now. What did it matter that he had made a wager concerning her only because she was dull, dull, dull? For that was what dignity, gentility, and respectability added up to for him. And he was quite right. She was exactly what he thought her to be. She had always been proud of being a lady. She was still proud. So the pain was not valid. She was not really feeling it. Only anger—against herself more than against him. She had known from the start who and what he was. She had deliberately chosen not to listen to her family. She had wanted to assert her independence. And all the time she had been persuading herself that she was immune to his charm.

“No,” he said. “You do yourself an injustice. And it was not just a game. I really did— do—need a bride. Someone like you. But I should not have courted you with such . . . insensitivity. With such careless disregard for you as a person. I should not have allowed you, or any other lady, to become the object of a wager. You may be the perfect wife for me, but I would be just the worst possible husband for you.”

She should have risen to her feet then, the explanation given, and made her way back to the main path and the box where Mr. and Mrs. Merklinger waited. For very pride’s sake she should have left—and refused his escort. But she did not move.

“Why do you need a bride by the end of June?” she asked him. “That is less than two weeks away. And why a—a perfect lady?” She could not quite keep the bitterness from her voice.

“I had better tell you everything.” He sighed and took a step closer. But he did not sit down beside her. He set one foot on the wooden seat instead and draped an arm over his raised leg. His face, only inches from her own now, was as serious as she had ever seen it.

“I have been summoned to Alvesley for the summer,” he said. “My father’s principal seat, that is. My brother’s death almost two years ago made me his heir and forced me to sell my commission since he pointed out to me that I was no longer free to put my life at risk every day. My life was suddenly valuable to him, you see, even though he banished me forever the last time I saw him.”

“You did not wish to sell out?” she asked, noting the unusually bitter tone of his voice.

“As a younger son, I was brought up for a military career,” he said. “It was what I wanted anyway. And I enjoyed it, all things considered. It was something I did well.”

She waited.

“There is to be a house party in celebration of my grandmother’s seventy-fifth birthday this summer,” he told her. “My banishment has been revoked. The prodigal is to be allowed home after all. He is to learn his duties as the future earl, you see. And one of those duties is to take a bride and set up his nursery. It is my father’s intention, in fact, to make my betrothal the central event of a summer of festivities. It is to be a birthday gift to my grandmother.”

All was beginning to make sense. Her respectability, her reputation as a perfect lady, made her a good candidate. She had been chosen with cold calculation. As most brides of her class were, of course. Had he been open about his intentions from the start she would not have been offended. There was nothing intrinsically offensive about them.

“The Earl of Redfield has instructed you to choose a respectable bride?” she asked. “Was it he who suggested my name?”

“No.” He tapped his free hand against the leg on which he stood. “Actually he has another prospect in mind.”