As Carlyle well knew, a solitary female in that faraway land had few choices in life. Susannah might have ended up drifting from rich household to rich household as a governess, earning a pittance teaching the children of the East India Company families or Rajput princelings whose papas wished them to acquire a proper British education. But she would soon fade away into poverty and isolation.

His second promise to Mr. Fowler was turning out to be rather harder to keep: He was to find a suitably well-to-do Englishman of good character, although it had to be someone who would not ask too many questions about her somewhat unusual upbringing, and marry her off. Carlyle hated the idea.

Susannah would not discuss the subject with him in any case. He wondered why. An advantageous match was what every young woman dreamed of, or so he had heard. He was not the marrying kind himself. Nonetheless, she went out to balls and plays and dinners dutifully enough, escorted by Mrs. Posey. A distant half-aunt of hers, who lived in the country and seldom came to town, had charged her London friends to invite Susannah to anything attended by persons in trousers, to improve her odds.

Carlyle seldom went along. The easy familiarity of their relationship-they had known each other for more than a year in India-might have put off prospective suitors. Her father did not seem to have considered Carlyle himself as a suitable candidate for a husband, although he liked and trusted him, praising his intelligence and pluck and so forth, as so many did.

It did not matter. Whatever his sterling qualities, Carlyle was a second son who had gone to India to seek a fortune which had eluded him thus far. All the same, he might make one someday; she would have to marry one.

The odds were in her favor. In London, Susannah was an unknown, which made her all the more intriguing. She dressed beautifully-well, she was beautiful to begin with-and tailored her conversation to the company, which amused Carlyle, who had pegged her as a remarkably independent sort from their first meeting. But she seemed to have grasped that her late father’s wishes were as good as a command.

In the weeks since they had come to London she had been quite ladylike…almost prim. His fault, in a way. He had been a perfect gentleman, Carlyle thought ruefully. Not like him. Not like him at all. But he was determined to be satisfied with polite chitchat and discreet lusting after Susannah, and that was that.

A spark escaped the grate and Carlyle stamped it out with the toe of his boot, frowning.

If it were up to him, her lovely body would not be confined within the acres of material that constituted proper attire for a well-bred woman in the reign of Queen Victoria. In Jaipur, Susannah had floated about in gauzy, simple dresses. No swags, no furbelows, no bothersome drapery-it was simply too hot. No stiff petticoats-the climate wilted anything starched within seconds.

To preserve her complexion, she had favored wide-brimmed hats of light straw, delighting him on the first day he’d seen her with a flirtatious peek from under the brim of one.

Her eyes were large and blue, fringed with dark eyelashes. The fierce sun that beat down upon her hat made tiny dots of light dance on her cheekbones and the look she’d given him made his breath catch. He’d had to fight the impulse to raise a hand to her face and gently brush the light away.

She was impossibly pretty. He’d thought so even after she trounced him at chess later that same day, sitting inside a pavilion of pierced stone in the maharajah’s enclosed garden. Susannah had added insult to injury by pointing out that he had not been paying attention. Of course not. How could he, faced with so lovely an adversary?

And so she conquered. More than she knew.

After that day, they had played many more times, and he was far more watchful, but almost never won. In the ensuing months, they had become good friends, progressing to fond flirtation, but no more than that. Susannah was young and headstrong, a volatile combination. His respect for her father-and his own wish to steer clear of complicated romantic entanglements-meant that Carlyle kept a certain distance.

Until that night by the reflecting pool when he had almost kissed her.

She had looked enchanting in the moonlight, her blue eyes wide and expectant, her hands folded demurely in her lap. But he could not bring himself to touch his lips to hers-and in the end, it hadn’t mattered.

As her father grew increasingly weak, she spent all her time with him, until the inevitable. Clad in black, wrapped in silent grief, she never complained through the overland journey out of the Rajasthan hills to the coast and the long sea voyage home. Indeed, she had scarcely looked at him during those months until the stormy day they had arrived in London.

The fire before him now was not warm enough to make the memory less dismal. Carlyle crossed his arms over his chest and his legs at the ankles, thinking back on it.

A driving rain had drenched them all as they disembarked, and the carriage Carlyle had arranged for by post was nowhere to be found. The docks had been utter chaos, crowded with ships and shouting men unloading passengers and goods. Crowded into a leaking hackney cab, they’d jolted off to Albion Square. The fellow on the box had grumbled loudly because Susannah would not let him whip his horse.

Chilled through, holding up the bedraggled skirts of her traveling costume, she had gone upstairs immediately, assisted by her Indian maid. Lakshmi, who knew English but rarely used it, spoke soothingly to her in dialect.

He had wished he understood. The two women seemed so homesick and so ill-at-ease in London. As for himself, Carlyle was content enough. He could soldier on anywhere, it seemed. But he would be happier if Susannah was as happy as she’d been in India.

Alone in his house, he was keenly aware of her presence right next door. Hmm. She was probably swanning around in white linen petticoats and that nearly transparent camisole. He imagined her putting one foot on a needle-pointed stool-did she have one?-and unrolling a stocking.

Carlyle shifted in his chair.

He mused upon how lovely she had looked in that gray striped dress-a subdued color that marked the transition from one stage of mourning to the next. Her father was adamant that she was not to go about in black for long. Mr. Fowler had told Carlyle to find her a fashionable dressmaker as soon as possible, cost be damned. He paid no attention to the younger man’s statement that he knew of none.

The long and the short of it, the half-aunt helped Carlyle find a dressmaker and everything else a young unmarried woman might require, including Mrs. Posey for the sake of decency, and a hairdresser who visited weekly, a few servants and a carriage to convey her about town, stabled in the mews behind the row of houses on her street. All quite necessary for husband-hunting, the half-aunt assured him. Compared to it, bagging tigers was easy sport.

So far no one had proposed. As her guardian, he would have had to listen to any such declarations, expecting some to come from men who were far older than he was. But he could not simply claim her for his own, although there was no one to forbid it.

He had made promises to a dying man-one did not renege on such vows. And Carlyle had no chance of inheritance. His married older brother, the earl, was in robust health and disapproved of life-shortening vices such as drink, while indulging freely in life-enhancing ones. Carlyle was an uncle several times over to nephews born on both sides of the blanket.

His role as Susannah’s protector was eminently respectable in all its particulars, despite what had happened tonight. By mutual agreement, Carlyle even had a key to her house, but he did not come and go as he pleased.

Ah, if only he could. Carlyle thought that he still would not go so far as to steal a kiss but…he would not refuse one.

She would never do such a thing. A good reputation was hard-won and easily lost, as he knew only too well. But a man might dream all the same.

He drummed his fingers on the armrests of his chair. If Susannah was sitting on his lap, looking very pretty and not very proper…wriggling just a bit…The thought made his groin tense and he sat up, feeling rather too warm. Carlyle looked at the clock upon the mantelpiece.

He dismissed his sensual fantasy as he stood and stretched. Perhaps a breath of fresh air would clear his head. He could not and must not take advantage of his role as her guardian. She trusted him. As far as the corset was concerned, he was blameless. Of course, if she found the gems hidden in it, she might think otherwise.

It was time to get rid of the evidence, so to speak. And it was not as if Susannah would wear such a fancy corset often. Stealing it would be easy enough. Carlyle headed off to his solitary bed.

Chapter Two

Several days later…

The sun shone in upon the breakfast table, making everything on it look irresistible. Susannah lifted the lid of a speckled brown teapot and sniffed the rising steam. It had steeped long enough. She poured a cup.

There was toast in a rack, country butter, coddled eggs in porcelain cups, and her favorite treat, Devonshire cream with cherry jam. The little glass dish of jam caught the light and sparkled like… like rubies, Susannah thought. Which were safely hidden upstairs in the toe of her left shoe. At the moment, she would rather have the jam. Susannah believed in breakfast, and she was in a very good mood.

The sun was out. But that was only one reason. She was formulating a plan to find out how the rubies and sapphires had come to be in her corset.