“Sacre bleu!”

In the doorway stood a compact man with black eyes, a neat moustache, and a fastidious pinstriped coat. “What are these womens in my kitchen?” he exclaimed with a Gallic gesture of contempt.

“Oh!” Lily dropped the measuring cup into the bowl. “Oh,” she said more miserably. “I beg yer pardon, sir.” Her pretty eyes sought Teresa’s for a brief, anguished moment. Then she hurried past the Frenchman and out.

He stared after her.

Teresa went to him. “How to you do, monsieur. I am Miss Finch-Freeworth, a friend of several of the guests in this hotel.”

“Marcel Le Coq, a votre service, mademoiselle.” He bowed and glanced out the door again.

“What a well-appointed kitchen you have. I have heard raptures about your dinners.”

“Mais, bien sur,” he dismissed the compliment and sniffed the air. “But what is this? I did not give permission for the cakes to be baked today.

Agathe? Agathe!”

A kitchen maid snapped to attention. “Monsieur, it was the other lady.

She’d done it when I was serving breakfast to the guests upstairs and I thought as since they were so pretty I’d let them have their time in the oven.”

Monsieur Le Coq narrowed his eyes and stalked to the oven. With exaggerated disdain he wrenched open the door, grabbed up a cloth, and pulled forth the tray of cakes. He dropped it onto the counter. With the tip of his forefinger and thumb he plucked up one, brought it to his nose to sniff, and nibbled it.

His face relaxed. “C’est bon.” He took another bite. “C’est magnifique.” He cut Teresa a suspicious glance. She shrugged.

He ignored her after that and she went to find Lily. But the downcast girl had escaped to the park with Sorcha.

Finding Moira still in the parlor, Teresa settled into a cozy chat from which she emerged confident that of all the beaux with whom the beauty had danced the previous night she preferred the Philadelphian. Modest and reticent, she said nothing to reveal this, but Teresa discerned in her smile a special glow when she spoke of Mr. Baker-Frye. She applauded herself for a deed well done.

Teresa ferried her new friends from London drawing room to drawing room, using her every connection (including silly Aunt Hortensia) to put them in the way of gentlemen and mothers of eligible bachelors. Occasionally gratifying but more often dispiriting, these adventures were followed by visits to the bookshop and the confectioner’s for ices to cheer everybody up.

“Ye canna blame yerself, Teresa,” Una said. “’Tis the way o’ the world. No gentleman wants a leddy without a fine marriage portion lest she be a beauty.”

“I beg to disagree, my lady,” Tobias said. “Some gentlemen value a fine temperament and intelligence in a bride over other considerations.”

“Gentlemen like you, Toby,” Teresa said. “Won’t you invite some of your new friends from the War Office to join us on our next outing?”

“Perhaps we should ask Lady Una if she would like that,” he said.

“I should, thank ye.” She smiled.

Optimistic plans aside, Teresa’s distress over her failure to find suitable husbands for the earl’s sisters grew daily. Surprisingly, she found some relief from that distress in the regular company of the earl himself. He escorted them to take in the sculptures at the museum and on another day to the Tower of London. He hired a box at the theater, and a drive or ride with him and one or two of his sisters in the park during the quiet morning hours became habitual.

She was, however, not once alone in his company and he did not show any desire to see her alone. She longed to renew the embrace he had given her after Lady B’s ball and had every confidence that he wished quite the opposite. He could not have escaped that moment more swiftly, leaving her lips tingling and fantasies flying.

At the end of the wager’s second sennight, during which the Eads ladies met a total of three new gentlemen—a pair of octogenarians at the museum and Mr. Smythe, Tobias’s new friend from the War Office—she managed to find Diantha at home one afternoon both awake and alert.

“Please, Di, will you finally tell me about Lord Eads?”

“He has done crimes,” her friend said firmly.

“He wouldn’t be the only one in this room,” her husband muttered from behind his news journal. Wyn lowered the paper to cast his wife a slanted look. Diantha rolled her eyes at him.

“Crimes?” Teresa said. “As in acts that a criminal commits?”

Diantha nodded ominously.

Teresa felt shaky. This she had not expected. “When?”

“Years ago,” Wyn supplied.

“T, I simply cannot like this program,” Diantha repeated for the hundredth time in the fortnight. “Why can’t you fix your interest on a gentleman with a less dangerous past? There are plenty to be found about town.”

“Come now, my dear,” her husband said gently. “A man should always be given a second chance, shouldn’t he?”

They shared a private, expressive look that left Teresa feeling peculiarly achy.

“Eads is fortunate to have won your admiration, Teresa,” Wyn said. “I only hope he is worthy of it.”

“Would you like it if we invited him and his sisters to dinner, T?” Diantha said hesitantly.

Teresa bit her lip. “I thought neither of you liked him.”

“We should invite them,” Wyn said.

As Diantha and Wyn’s household was often filled with misfits and orphans anyway, the couple warmly welcomed to dinner Tobias, Abigail’s bookseller, and Mr. Baker-Frye along with the seven Eads ladies. Upon coming face to face, Mr. Yale and Lord Eads moved away from the group, engaged in several minutes of private conversation during which both their jaws seemed very tight. Then Wyn laughed, the earl cracked a slow grin, and after that the party began in earnest.

Diantha swiftly—sneakily—sat Teresa far away from Lord Eads at the table. Teresa tried not to watch him from a distance and failed. When she was in company with him it was astoundingly difficult not to stare at his lips and relive the effect they’d had upon hers, not to mention the effect they’d had on parts quite a bit deeper inside her. While she was staring, those deep parts would become remarkably hot and agitated, and her cheeks would grow warm. Then she would have to look away from him, which was a shame because she liked looking at him. She liked listening to him. She liked watching his cheek crease when he was amused and his eyes twinkle.

It was all terribly inconvenient and enormously frustrating.

After dinner the gentleman remained in the dining room at their port while in the drawing room Moira and Una played a duet on the pianoforte as Diantha poured tea. Teresa was pondering how the evening was decidedly not what her life would be like as the future Mrs. Waldon when the earl came to her side.

“’Tis the halfway mark,” he said quietly. “Are ye ready to call it quits? Admit ye bit aff more than ye could chew?”

She peeked at him from the corner of her eye and saw precisely what she wished to chew: his jaw. Then she would nibble his chin. Then she would move to his throat. The notion set off the familiar wild flutterings deep in her belly.

“No,” she replied. “I have a fortnight yet.” Mr. Baker-Frye had taken tea with Moira, each morning for three days in a row she had encountered him in the park, and he had accepted the invitation to dinner tonight with enthusiasm. It could not be long before an alliance happened there. One accomplished, one in the making, and only five to go. In a fortnight. “I will do it. Mark my words.”

“’Tis a struggle to mark them when I canna think o’ anything but the pretty lips that’ve spoken them.”

Her mouth fell open. He made no pretense of looking elsewhere.

“I canna get yer flavor outta ma head, Miss Teresa Finch-Freeworth.”

“Then kiss me again,” she whispered. “Right now. There’s an empty parlor just on the other side of that door.”

“Ye like to drive a man as mad as yerself, dinna ye?” His voice was smiling and ever so slightly husky.

“Not intentionally.” She held her breath. “What I would really like is to know more about you.” She craned her neck to look into his face.

He was no longer smiling. “Ye must make an end to this wager.”

“I shall. In a fortnight.”

He moved away. She put on a genial face and laughed and chatted with everybody. But that night when Diantha and Wyn had gone to bed and the house was again dark, she stole down to the parlor and wrote a little piece she titled “The Maid Milliner of Harpers Crest Cove and the Trouble With Desire: A Story of Seed Cakes.”

When she was finished she sanded it and tucked it into the drawer. The pile of pages seemed thinner than before. But she was weary and discouraged and not thinking perfectly straight. In the morning she would pull out all the stories and send a few to Freddie. He would laugh himself to pieces.

She went to bed telling herself that would be enough. It must be enough.

It was all the real happiness she would ever have.

Duncan read the London journals. He knew as well as anybody that scandal was afoot at one of the town’s rag sheets. The editor had hired a lady journalist and he was giving her a byline. Gossip was flying, but the column was already wildly popular.

It seemed to him that the London public would also enjoy satirical snippets of life in a provincial town written by a lady humorist. It so happened that he had several such stories in his possession now. So, after he spent the morning riding in the park with his sisters and the lady from Cheshire that made him forget his past, he paid a call on the offices of TheLondon Weekly.