The Earl of Merton was dancing with a very young and pretty lady, who was blushing and gazing up at him with worshipful, sparkling eyes. He was smiling at her and talking to her and giving her the whole of his attention.

He was going to sleep with /her/ tonight, Cassandra thought, and afterward she was going to do business with him. She believed she had done well. She knew she had attracted him physically. She had also very subtly engaged his pity. He thought her alone and lonely. It did not matter that it was at least partly true. /She would have it no other way/.

But she would draw him into her web, whether he really wished to be there or not. She needed him.

No, not /him/.

She needed his money.

Alice needed it. So did Mary and Belinda. And even dear Roger.

She had to remind herself of them. Only so could she bear the burden of self-loathing that suddenly descended like a real physical weight across her shoulders.

He was an amiable, courteous gentleman.

He was also a /man/. And men had needs. She would service those needs for the Earl of Merton. She would not be stealing his money. She would give good value in return.

She need not feel guilty.

"I have enjoyed the break from dancing too," she told Lady Carling.

/5/

"LADY Paget," the Duchess of Moreland said when the ball was over and crowds of people milled about, looking for spouses and offspring and shawls and fans, bidding friends and acquaintances good night, heading for the staircase and the hall below so that they would be there when it was the turn for their particular carriage to draw up in front of the steps. The duchess had just introduced herself. "Did you come in your carriage?"

"I did not," Cassandra said, "but Lord Merton has been kind enough to offer me a ride home in his."

"Ah, good." The duchess smiled. "Elliott and I would have been delighted to take you to your door, but you will be safe in Stephen's hands." /Stephen/. His name was Stephen. It somehow suited him.

The duchess linked an arm through hers.

"Let us go and find him," she said. "This end-of-evening crush is always the worst part of balls, but I am delighted there /is/ a crush tonight.

Meg was terrified that no one would come."

Cassandra saw the Earl of Merton striding toward them before they had taken more than a few steps.

"Nessie," he said, smiling at them both, "you have found Lady Paget, have you?"

"I do not believe she was lost, Stephen," she said. "But she is waiting for you to take her home."

It seemed to Cassandra that it took an age for them to leave the ballroom, descend the stairs, and make their way across the hall toward the front doors. But she soon realized why they were in no hurry. The duchess and Lord Merton were the Countess of Sheringford's sister and brother, and no doubt their carriages would be at the very back of the line.

Eventually there was no one left but the duke and duchess, Lord and Lady Montford, to whom the duchess introduced Cassandra, the Earl of Merton, Sir Graham and Lady Carling, and the Earl and Countess of Sheringford, who had just finished bidding their guests good night.

And Cassandra.

The irony of now being so very conspicuous when she had come uninvited to the ball did not escape her. Neither did the discomfort of being the only nonfamily guest still present. /Especially under the circumstances/.

Both Lady Carling and Baron Montford had offered to take her home in their carriages. She had assured both of them that Lord Merton had been kind enough to offer first.

"Well, Meg," Lord Montford said, "it is a good thing no one came to your ball. I dread to think how pushed and pulled and crushed we would all be feeling now if anyone /had/."

The countess laughed.

"It did go rather well," she said. And then, with a sudden look of anxiety, "It /did/, did it not?"

"It was the grandest squeeze of the Season so far, Margaret," Lady Carling assured her. "Every other hostess for what remains of the spring will be desperately trying to match it and failing miserably. I overheard Mrs. Bessmer tell Lady Spearing that she must discover who your cook is and lure her away with the offer of a higher salary."

The countess protested with a mock shriek.

"You have nothing to fear, Margaret," the duke said. "Mrs. Bessmer's main claim to fame is that she is a notorious pinch-penny. Her idea of more pay is doubtless to offer your cook one-fifth of what you are paying her."

"I could challenge Ferdie Bessmer to pistols at dawn if you wish, Maggie," the Earl of Sheringford offered.

The countess shook her head, smiling.

"Actually," she said, "it would be one-fifth of what /Grandpapa/ is paying her, and if I were Mrs. Bessmer, I would not wish to annoy him."

She looked apologetically at Cassandra.

"Lady Paget," she said, "we are keeping you from your bed. Do forgive us. Stephen is going to take you home, I understand. Please allow me to send for a maid to accompany you."

"That will be quite unnecessary," Cassandra said. "I trust Lord Merton to be the perfect gentleman."

The countess smiled again.

"I am delighted that you came this evening," she said. "Will I see you at my mother-in-law's at-home tomorrow? I do hope so. I hear she has invited you."

"I will try," Cassandra said.

And perhaps she would. She had come here tonight to find a wealthy protector, not to force her way back into society. She had assumed that that was impossible, that she would always be an outcast. But perhaps she need not be after all. If the Earl of Sheringford could do it, then perhaps so could she.

It was a long, long time since she had had friends – except for Alice, of course. And Mary.

And then, at last, Lord Merton's carriage drew up to the steps outside and he led her out and handed her inside before climbing in to sit beside her. He turned after a footman had folded up the steps and shut the door, to wave a hand to his family.

"The perfect gentleman," he said quietly without turning his head back into the carriage as it pulled out of the square. "It is what I have always striven to be. Allow me to be a gentleman tonight, Lady Paget.

Allow me to see you safely home and then continue on my way to my own house."

Her stomach lurched with alarm. Had she wasted this whole ghastly evening? Had it all been for nothing? Was she going to have to start all over again tomorrow? She hated him suddenly, /this perfect gentleman/.

"Alas," she said, speaking low and injecting humor into her voice, "I am being rejected. Spurned. I am unwanted, unattractive, ugly. I shall go home and cry hot tears into my cold, unfeeling pillow."

She stretched out one hand as she spoke and set it on his leg, her fingers spread. It was warm through the silk of his breeches. She could feel the solidity of his thigh muscles.

He turned to her, and even in the darkness she could see that he was smiling.

"You know very well," he said, "that not a single one of those things has even a grain of truth in it."

"Except, alas," she said, "for the hot tears. And the unfeeling pillow."

She slid her hand farther to the inside of his thigh, and his smile faded. His eyes held hers.

"You are probably," he said, "the most beautiful woman I have ever seen."

"Beauty can be a cold, undesirable thing, Lord Merton," she said.

"And you are without any doubt," he said, "the most attractive."

"Attractive." She half smiled at him. "In what way, pray?"

"/Sexually/ attractive," he said, "if you will forgive me for such explicit speaking."

"When you are about to bed me, Lord Merton," she said, "you may be as explicit as you wish. /Are/ you about to bed me?"

"Yes." He slid his fingers beneath her hand, lifted it away from his thigh, and carried it to his lips. "But when we are in your bedchamber, the door closed behind us. Not in my carriage."

She was content, though her next move was to have been to lean forward and kiss him.

He set their clasped hands on the seat between them as the carriage rocked through the darkened streets of London, and kept his head turned toward her.

"Do you live quite alone?" he asked.

"I have a housekeeper," she said, "who is also my cook."

"And the lady with whom you walked in the park yesterday?" he asked.

"Alice Haytor?" she said. "Yes, she lives with me too as my companion."

"Your former governess?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Will she not be shocked when you arrive home with a – a /lover/?" he asked her.

"She has been warned," she told him, "not to come out of her room when I arrive home, Lord Merton, and she will not."

"You knew, then," he asked her, looking very directly into her eyes despite the darkness, "that you would be bringing a lover home with you?"

He was a tiresome man. He did not know how to play the game. Did he imagine that like a lightning bolt out of a blue sky she had been smitten with love as soon as her eyes alit upon him in his sister's ballroom? That everything had been spontaneous, unplanned? She had /told/ him it had all been very much planned.

"I am twenty-eight years old, Lord Merton," she said. "My husband has been dead for more than a year. Women have needs, appetites, just as surely as men do. I am not in search of another husband – not now, not ever. But it is time for a lover. I knew it when I came to London. And when I saw you in Hyde Park, looking like an angel – but a very human and very virile angel – I knew it with even greater certainty."