“I have offended you,” she said. “You need not trouble yourself, Lucius. Ladies know better than gentlemen what is what and are quite prepared to restore and keep the proprieties while men go freely about their own business.”

“Of raking?” he said.

He looked for two spots of color in her cheeks, but he realized suddenly that Portia never blushed—or needed to, he supposed.

“I think we might maintain a silence on that subject, Lucius,” she said. “What gentlemen do in their own time is their business and of no concern whatsoever to well-bred ladies.”

Good Lord! Devil take it! Would her calm not be ruffled if he went raking through life from their wedding day to the day of his death? The answer, he suspected, was that indeed it would not.

“You came here this morning to call upon Papa?” she asked him.

“I did,” he admitted. “I will come back some other time.”

“Of course you will,” she said, looking steadily at him.

Did she have any feelings for him? he wondered. Any warm feelings? Did she really want to marry him? Him, that was, as opposed to just Viscount Sinclair, the future Earl of Edgecombe?

“Portia,” he said as she resumed stitching, “do you have the feeling that we are being thrown together at every turn this spring, whether we wish it or not?”

Her needle paused, but she did not look up.

“Of course,” she said. “But why should we not wish for it?”

His heart sank.

“You wish for a connection with me, then?” he said.

A connection—what a clanger of a euphemism!

“Of course,” she said.

“Of course?” He raised his eyebrows as she looked up.

“Men are so foolish.” For a moment the look she bent on him seemed almost maternal. “They avoid reality at every turn. But it cannot be avoided indefinitely, Lucius.”

“You wish to marry me, then?”

There—the word was out, and he could not recall it or pretend that they were talking of something else.

“Of course,” she said.

His heart had no farther to sink. It attempted the impossible anyway.

“Why?” he asked her.

“Why?” It was her turn to raise her eyebrows. She rested the hand holding the needle on top of her work and seemed to forget it for the moment. “I have to marry someone, Lucius, and you are my most eligible choice. You have to marry someone, and I am your most eligible choice.”

“Is it a good enough reason?” He frowned at her.

“Lucius,” she said, “it is the only reason.”

“Do you love me?” he asked her.

She looked almost shocked.

“What a foolish question,” she said. “People like you and me do not marry for such a vulgar reason as love, Lucius. We marry for position and fortune and superior bloodlines.”

“It all sounds horribly unromantic,” he said.

“You are the last person I would expect to speak of romance,” she said.

“Why?” he asked again.

“Forgive me,” she said, “but your reputation is not entirely unknown to me, sheltered though I have always been from vulgarity. You will no doubt wish to continue that life, which I very much doubt you would call romantic. And therefore you will not expect or even wish for romance with your wife. You need not worry. I neither expect nor wish for it either.”

“Why?” he asked.

“Because romance is very foolish,” she said. “Because it is ungenteel. Because it is entirely imaginary. Because it is wishful thinking, usually on the woman’s part. Men are wiser and do not even believe in it. Neither do I.”

Until a few months ago, he thought, he would have agreed with her. Perhaps he still did. Romance had not really done him any good in the last few months, had it, beyond making him eternally irritated?

“What about passion?” he asked her. “Would you not expect that in your marriage?”

“I most certainly would not!” she said, openly shocked now. “The very idea, Lucius!”

He gazed gloomily at her as she returned her attention once more to her embroidery, her hand as steady as if they had been discussing the weather.

“Have I ever said or done anything to lead you to expect that I would offer for you?” he asked her.

He had, of course—very recently. He had just admitted to coming here this morning to call on her father.

“You have not needed to,” she said. “Lucius, I understand that you are reluctant and procrastinating. I understand that all men are the same way under similar circumstances. I understand too that eventually they all do what they must do, as will you. And the consequences will not be so very dreadful. There will be a home and a wife and a family where there were none before, and they are necessary components of a comfortable, genteel life. But in the main the man’s life does not change a great deal and does not need to. All the fear of leg shackles and parson’s mousetrap and those other foolish clichés men use are really quite without foundation.”

He wondered briefly if she was really cold to the very heart or if she was just unbelievably sheltered and innocent. Was there some man somewhere who could spark passion in her? He doubted it.

“You are determined to have me, then, are you, Portia?” he asked her. “There is nothing that would deter you?”

“I cannot imagine anything that would,” she said, “unless Mama and Papa withdrew their consent, of course. That is most unlikely, though.”

Heaven help him, he thought, he was a goner—as if he had not realized that before. He was here, for God’s sake, was he not?

Damn Frances. Damn her all to hell. She could have rescued him from this. He had asked her to marry him and told himself afterward that he would not have done so if he had stopped to think. But if she had taken a chance as he had and said yes, he would not have needed to think. He would have been too busy feeling—elation, passion, triumph.

Love.

But she had said no and so here he was, facing a life sentence as surely as his name was Lucius Marshall. Without having done anything more than pay a morning call on a man who was not even at home, he had gone too far with Portia, it seemed, to withdraw.

But before the conversation could resume, the door opened to admit her mother, who was looking very smug indeed though she expressed chagrin that Lord Balderston had chosen that very morning to go early to his club when he always remained home until well after breakfast.

They conversed, the three of them, on a few inane topics that included the obligatory remarks on the weather and one another’s health until Lucius felt enough time had passed that he could decently make his escape.

What the devil was he about to get himself into? he asked himself as he strode off in the direction of Jackson’s, where he hoped to don the gloves and pound the stuffing out of someone or, better yet, have someone pound the stuffing out of him. Though there was nothing future about his predicament.

She was beautiful and refined and accomplished and perfect. She was also a woman he had never quite been able to bring himself to like—and their conversation this morning had done nothing to change that.

And yet he was as surely leg-shackled to her as if the banns had already been called. He had gone to see Balderston this morning, and both Lady Balderston and Portia knew it. There could be only one reason for such a visit. And he had promised to call again. Portia fully expected it of him.

I will come back some other time.

Of course you will.

And then he felt fury again.

At least you had the good sense to hire a schoolteacher to accompany her, but the woman really ought to have stopped her from dancing.

To hire a schoolteacher!

The woman!

Frances!

He clamped his teeth together and lengthened his stride. He could never quite decide whether the longing to throttle her was stronger than the hurt and humiliation of her rejection. Or the pain of knowing he would never see her again.

Or the niggling suspicion that she had shown more good sense than he and had saved him from himself. He had had no idea when he set out from

Brock Street

that day that he was about to offer her marriage. He had not even known he was going to the school to see her, for God’s sake.

But calm good sense had never been his forte. He had always forged his way into the future with impulsive, reckless abandon.

He did it again not much more than twenty-four hours after his visit to

Berkeley Square

.

And again it was over Frances Allard.

“Mrs. Melford is in town, I have heard,” the Earl of Edgecombe said at breakfast. It was one of his better days healthwise, and he had got up to take the meal with his family.