“I took the mutt for a run too,” he said with a chuckle. “I thought its yapping might well drive you insane.”

“Why did you do it all?” she asked, sounding rather cross.

“Because I cannot stand being idle?” he said. “But no, you would not believe that, would you? You believe me to be nothing but idle. Perhaps I wished to impress you.”

“And you flattered Miss Honeydew without ceasing for almost an hour,” she said. “She was delighted even though she did not believe a word you said. She will doubtless live on the memory for days or weeks to come.”

“Is there anything wrong with that?” he asked her. “She is lonely, is she not?”

“There is nothing wrong with it,” she said, still sounding cross. “You are kind. You are very kind.”

Ah, she was cross because she had been proved at least partly wrong about him, was she?

“But frivolous and idle too,” he said, realizing suddenly that the elusive perfume he had tried to identify all the way to the cottage was not perfume at all but soap. It was very enticing nevertheless. So were the soft warmth of her thigh and her arm.

She did not reply and he chuckled.

“It is quite unsporting of you not to contradict me, Miss Osbourne,” he said. “Shall we use the return journey to discover if there is anything about each other that might make it possible for us to be friends?”

“Or impossible,” she said.

“I perceive,” he said, “that you are of the half-empty-glass school of thought, Miss Osbourne, while I am of the half-full school.”

“Then we are quite incompatible,” she said.

“Not necessarily so,” he said. “Some differences of opinion will provide us with topics upon which to hold a lively debate. There is nothing more dull than two people who are so totally in agreement with each other upon every subject under the sun that there really is nothing left worth saying.”

But why the devil it had popped into his head earlier and even last evening that he wanted her as a friend, he had no idea. Except that he knew he could not make her into a flirt, perhaps. She would not allow it-and neither would he. He would flirt with his social equals, with those who knew the rules of the game. He would not flirt with an indigent schoolteacher-she had been a charity pupil at the school where she now taught, for the love of God-whom he might inadvertently hurt.

But he could not simply ignore her. Good Lord, what was it he had thought two days ago when he first set eyes on her?

There she is.

The words still puzzled him and made him strangely uneasy.

It would be a novel challenge to try again to make a friend of a young woman-one who did not particularly like him and one who claimed that they were closer to being universes apart than worlds.

Well, challenges were meant to brighten the dull routine of life.

Not that routine was always dull. Sometimes he longed for it. It was what he had grown up with and expected of the rest of his life-a quiet routine, a fulfillment of duty that was self-imposed rather than enforced from above as it had been all through his boyhood. He had expected very little of his life really-only a sort of heaven of home and hearth and domestic contentment. Most of his current friends would cringe if they knew that of him. Even Raycroft, his closest friend, would be astonished.

“Tell me what you like so much about teaching,” he said.

He felt rather than saw her smile.

“It is something I am capable of doing well,” she said, “and something I can constantly work upon to improve. It is something useful and worthwhile.”

“Educating girls is worthwhile?” he asked only because he guessed the question would provoke her into saying more.

“Girls have minds just as boys do,” she said firmly, “and are just as hungry for knowledge and just as capable of learning and understanding. It is true that most of them grow up to lives in which they do not need to know very much at all, but then I suspect that holds true of most men too.”

“Like me?” he asked.

“I believe there is a saying,” she said tartly, “that if the shoe fits one ought to wear it.”

He chuckled softly.

“But most men would argue,” he said, “that educating girls gives them brain fever at worst and makes them unattractive at best. Or perhaps I have got the worst and the best mixed up.”

“I daresay,” she said, “those men are insecure in their masculinity and fear that women may outshine them. How mortifying it would be if they had to ask a woman for the square root of eighty-one.”

She was a delight. He had already seen several different facets of her character, but he could always rely upon the prim schoolteacher to keep making an appearance. The square root of eighty-one, indeed!

“Ouch!” he said, wincing noticeably. “But would there ever be such an occasion? I cannot for the life of me think of one. What is the square root of eighty-one anyway?”

“Nine,” they said in unison.

He laughed, and after a brief moment so did she.

He wondered if she realized what a dazzling combination laughter was with her looks. He wondered too how often she laughed. Perhaps it was more often than he had suspected the day before yesterday. Perhaps she brought light and joy to that school in Bath.

“But that is not your cue,” he said, deliberately sobering, “to fire all sorts of obscure and tricky questions at me. My masculinity is a fragile enough commodity without being put to that sort of test.”

“I doubt that,” she said fervently, and then laughed again when he looked at her sidelong and pulled an abject face.

He chuckled once more before turning into the lane from the village that would eventually bring them to the fork into Barclay Court. “And in case you are neglecting to ask for fear of the answer, Miss Osbourne, I detect no signs of brain fever in you, and you are certainly not unattractive. Quite the contrary, in fact.”

“I would rather,” she said after a brief silence, “that you not try to flatter and flirt with me. You must speak sensibly with me if we are to be friends.”

“We are to be friends, then?” he asked her. “Very well. Let me be honest. You are quite devoid of any discernible attraction. A small, slender stature combined with shining auburn curls and sea green eyes and regular features is all quite unappealing, as I am sure you must be aware.”

When he turned his head to snatch a look at her, she was smiling broadly and looking straight ahead.

“Friends need not be unaware of each other’s attractions,” he said. “Tell me how you occupy your time when you are not teaching.”

“You do not know much about the world of employment, do you, Lord Whitleaf?” she asked. “There is not much time that is not taken up with work. When I am not in the classroom I am supervising games in the meadow beyond the school or organizing dramatic presentations or watching over the girls during study sessions or marking papers or examinations or…Well, there is almost always something to do. But when there is some leisure time, usually late in the evening, I spend it with my friends, the other resident teachers. We usually gather in Claudia Martin’s sitting room. Or sometimes if it is daytime and there is the rare luxury of a spare hour I go out walking. Bath is a lovely city. There is much to see there.”

Ah, yes, they were from different universes. But he admired her sense of purpose.

“Now it is your turn,” she said. “You must tell me something of yourself.”

“Are you sure you really wish to know about my idle, empty life?” he asked her, his eyes twinkling.

“You were the one who thought there could be a friendship between us,” she reminded him. “There can be no friendship if only one party gets to ask the questions. Tell me about your childhood.”

“Hmm.” He gave the matter some thought. “It was filled with women-a familiar pattern with me, Miss Osbourne. My father died when I was three years old. I have no memory of him, alas. I do think it unsporting of him not to have waited at least another two or three years. I was left with my mother and five elder sisters. I daresay my parents had despaired of producing an heir and were jubilant when I finally put in an appearance. By that time my sisters too must have been aware that a family without an heir was a family headed for certain disaster. And indeed I came along only just in time to avert it. I was the apple of every female eye as I grew up. I could do no wrong in their sight. I was petted and cosseted and adored. No boy was ever more fortunate than I.”

She had turned her head and was looking steadily at him.

“There was no man in your life, then?” she asked.

“Oh, several,” he said. “There were official guardians and self-appointed guardians, all of whom ruled my estate and my fortune and me and arranged everything from my education to the reading and answering of my mail. It was all done for my benefit, of course. I was very fortunate.”

“I suppose,” she said, “they did no more than your father would have done if he had lived.”

“Except that then there would have been a relationship,” he said. “Perhaps there would have been some sharing. Some love.”

He was turning at the fork in the lane as he spoke. Perhaps he would not have spoken so unguardedly if he had not been thus occupied. Good Lord, he did not usually even think such abject thoughts. He felt quite embarrassed.

“You missed your father,” she said softly.

He glanced down at her. “You cannot miss what you never had, Miss Osbourne,” he said. “I do not even remember him.”