His hand stilled. “Does she have affections to be toyed with?” he asked in return. “I think not, Miss Law.

She is after a titled husband, the richer and more socially prominent the better. I daresay a duke’s son who is independently wealthy seems like a brilliant catch to her.”

“You do not believe, then,” she said, “that she looks for love or at least hopes for love? That she has some tender feelings? You must be a cynic.”

“Not at all,” he said. “Merely a realist. People of my class do not choose marriage partners for love.

What would happen to the fabric of polite society if we started doing that? We marry for wealth and position.”

“You are toying with her, then,” she said. “My uncle is a mere baronet. His daughter must be far beneath the serious notice of a duke’s son.”

“There you are wrong again,” he told her. “Titles do not tell the whole story. Sir George Effingham’s lineage is impeccable, and he is a wealthy man of property. My grandmother believes that the alliance will be perfectly eligible.”

Will be?

“You are going to marry Julianne, then?” she asked. She had not fully believed it until this moment despite all Aunt Effingham and Julianne had said.

“Why not?” He shrugged. “She is young and pretty and charming. And well born and rich.”

She did not know why her heart and her mind raced with such distress. She had been given her own chance to have him and had refused him. But of course she knew. She could not hear the thought of his being with Julianne. She is young and pretty and charming . And also empty-headed and vain and selfish. Did he deserve better, then? Everything he had told her about himself said no. And yet. ..

“Of course,” he said, “Miss Effingham and her mama will be disappointed if they hope to see her a duchess one day. I am second in line now, but my elder brother married recently. In the nature of things it is altogether probable that his wife will be breeding soon. If she produces a boy, I will be pushed back into third spot.”

She knew the look that would be on his face, and sure enough, when she glanced at him she saw the familiar mockery there.

“Perhaps,” he said, “Lady Aidan will do her duty consummately well and produce twelve sons in as many years. That will leave me almost without hope. What is the opposite of hope? Despair? Each of Aidan’s sons will plunge me deeper into despair.”

She realized suddenly that his intent was not so much to mock either her or himself as to amuse her. And she was amused. What an absurd picture he painted. She laughed.

“How dreadfully sad for you,” she said.

“And if you think my plight desperate,” he said, “imagine that of Alleyne, my younger brother. Aidan busy begetting sons, me twenty-eight years old and in danger of taking a bride at any moment and doing some begetting of my own.”

She laughed again, looking into his face as she did so.

“That is better,” he said, a gleam of something that might have been amusement in his eyes. “You need to smile and laugh more often.” He lifted one hand to set his forefinger lightly along the length of her nose for a moment before withdrawing it, adjusting his position, clearing his throat, and gazing out across the lake.

She felt rather as if she had been branded with liquid fire.

“Will the duke not marry?” she asked.

“Bewcastle?” he said. “I very much doubt it. No woman is good enough for Wulf. Or perhaps that is not strictly fair. Since he inherited the title and everything that went along with it at the age of seventeen, his life has been devoted to performing his ducal duties and being head of the family.”

“And what do you do, Lord Rannulf?” she asked him. “While your brother occupies himself with his duties, what is left for you to do?”

He shrugged. “When I am home at Lindsey Hall,” he said, “I spend time with my brothers and sisters. I ride and hunt and fish with them and pay social calls with them. My closest friend, Kit Butler, Viscount Ravensberg, lives nearby. We are still close, despite a nasty quarrel a few years ago that left us both bruised and bloody and despite the fact that he is now married. I am on friendly terms with his wife too.

When I am not at Lindsey Hall I like to be active. I avoid London whenever I can and soon tire of such places as Brighton, where all is frivolity and idleness. I went on a walking tour of the Scottish Highlands last year and of the Lake District earlier this year. The exercise and experience and company were good.”

“Do you read?” she asked.

“Yes, actually.” He looked at her with a lazy smile. “Surprised?”

She was neither surprised not unsurprised. She knew so little about him, she realized. And she should, of course, be content to let things remain that way.

“I suppose,” she said, hugging her knees, “the sons of dukes do not have to work for a living.”

“Not the sons of the duke who sired me,” he said. “We are all indecently wealthy in our own right, not to mention Bewcastle, who owns large chunks of England and part of Wales too. No, we do not need to work, though of course there are traditional expectations of younger sons. Aidan as the second son was intended for a military life and did his duty without a murmur. He sold out only recently—after his marriage. Bewcastle had expected to see him a general in another year or two. I as the third son was intended for the church. I did not do my duty.”

“Why not?” she asked. “Is your faith not strong enough?”

He raised his eyebrows. “I have rarely known faith to have much to do with a gentleman’s decision to make the church his career,” he said.

“You are a cynic, Lord Rannulf,” she said.

He grinned. “Can you picture me climbing the pulpit steps of a Sunday morning, holding my cassock above my ankles, and delivering an impassioned sermon on morality and propriety and hellfire?” he asked her.

Despite herself she smiled back. She would hate to see him as a clergyman, sober and pious and righteous and judgmental and joyless. Like her father.

“My father had images of me wearing a bishop’s miter,” he said. “Perhaps even the Archbishop of Canterbury’s. I would have disappointed him had he lived. I have disappointed my brother instead.”

Was there a thread of bitterness in his voice?

“Do you feel guilty, then,” she asked, “for not doing what was expected of you?”

He shrugged. “It is my life,” he said. “Sometimes, though, one wonders if there is any shape, any meaning, any point to life. Do you demand such things of your life, Judith? What possible shape or meaning or point can you discern in what has happened recently to your family and to you as a result?”

She looked away from him. “I do not ask such questions,” she said. “I live my life one day at a time.”

“Liar,” he said softly. “What is ahead for you here? Nothing and nothing and nothing again down the years? And yet you do not ask yourself why? Or what the point of going on with life is? I believe you do, every hour of every day. I have seen the real Judith Law, remember? I am not sure, you see, that that vivid, passionate woman at the Rum and Puncheon Inn was the act and that this quiet, disciplined woman at Harewood is the reality.”

Judith scrambled to her feet, holding his coat about her with both hands.

“I have been here too long,” she said. “I will be missed and Aunt Louisa will be annoyed. Will you leave first? Or will you—will you turn your back while I dress?”

“I will not peep,” he promised, resting both wrists over his knees and lowering his head.

She dropped his coat to the grass beside him.

“It is damp inside, I am afraid,” she said.

She peeled off her still-damp shift as fast as she could and pulled on her dress. She twisted her wet hair into a knot and hid it beneath her cap. She put on her bonnet and tied the ribbons firmly beneath her chin.

Nothing and nothing and nothing again down the years.

Her teeth chattered as she hurried to make herself look presentable.

“I am dressed now,” she said, and he got to his feet in one fluid motion and turned toward her.

“I do beg your pardon,” he said. “I upset you.”

“No, you did not,” she assured him. “I am a woman, Lord Rannulf. Women are accustomed to boredom, to futures that spread ahead of them without...”

“Hope?”

“Without any promise of change or excitement,” she said. “Most women live dull lives, whether they marry or grow old as I will do, dependent upon the charity of their wealthier relatives. This is the real me, Lord Rannulf. You are looking at her.”

“Judith.” He strode toward her and possessed himself of her hand before she could even think of snatching it away.

But he stopped abruptly, looked down at the ground between them, sighed audibly, and released her hand after squeezing it painfully tightly.

“I do beg your pardon,” he said again, “for making you maudlin when just a short while ago I had you laughing. I must get back too, Miss Law. I daresay my grandmother is ready to return home. I’ll go around the hill and come at the front lawn from the side. You will go over the hill to the back of the house?”

“Yes,” she said and watched him stride away without once looking back. Soon he was out of sight. She drew a deep breath and released it slowly. She really had not wanted to start knowing him as a person.

She had not wanted to find anything likable about him. Her prospects were dreary enough without regret being added to them.

Regret! Did she regret the answer she had given him three days ago, then? No, she did not. Of course she did not. He had made clear today the sort of woman who would suit him as a bride, and she did not qualify on any of the counts. Besides, when he married, it would be only for the purpose of producing sons to carry on his name. He would reserve all his charm, all his energy, all his passion for such women as the nonexistent Claire Campbell.