“Lord Vickery?” Alice said, after a little.

“Miss Lister?” Miles raised a brow at her formal tone.

“I wondered,” Alice said, “why you felt it necessary to sleep outside my bedroom door in the first place. I assured you that there was absolutely no reason why you should.”

“I was there in case you needed me,” Miles said. He smiled suddenly, that flashing smile that always made her heart turn over. “My preference, as you know, would have been for sleeping in your bed, Miss Lister, but given that that is hardly appropriate at present, I wanted to be close by in case you cried for help.”

Alice tried to banish the strange warm feeling that his words evoked. He was protecting his interests, she reminded herself. Nothing more.

“It must have been unconscionably uncomfortable sleeping on that pallet,” she said.

Miles shrugged. “Not as uncomfortable as some of the places I have been obliged to sleep on campaign, I assure you.”

Alice looked at him. “You never talk about your time in the Peninsular.”

“War is not generally considered a topic for polite conversation.”

“I suppose not,” Alice said. “I would like to hear about it, though.”

She realized that she genuinely wanted to know. Anything that cast light on the formation of Miles’s character, on his history, fascinated her. She realized that she had absolutely no idea of the role he had had in the army, whether he had been injured and invalided out, or had resigned his commission. She tried to imagine the places he must have been and the things he must have seen. She found it impossible. In all her life she had traveled no farther than the seaside at Scarborough. Her life had been bounded first by the need to work simply to live and then by the behavior her mother had considered appropriate to a lady.

She also sensed the reluctance in Miles to talk. Once again, he was not anxious to reveal anything of himself. His mouth had set in a hard line. “I doubt that you would approve of my experiences, Miss Lister,” he said. “I lived by the very things that you condemn-chicanery, compromise, negotiation. That was my job.”

Alice frowned. “Whatever can you mean?”

“I was a diplomat, Miss Lister,” Miles said. “Oh, not the sort of diplomat who takes tea in the palaces in the capital cities of the world, but a backstairs negotiator who makes the dirty deals that keep the peace and keep the world turning, but whom every government would deny and disown if ever they came out.” There was a wealth of bitterness in his voice that Alice could not understand. “Every government connives secretly at such agreements, of course. They are all pragmatists at heart. They simply do not want to do the dirty work themselves. So that was my job and on the way I sacrificed plenty of people and my own principles along with them.” He looked down into Alice’s face. “If you knew even one of the deals that I had made,” he said, “you would be forced to condemn me utterly.”

“Tell me,” Alice said. She heard the pain in his voice and reached out instinctively to him. “Tell me,” she repeated, as the frown in his eyes deepened. “I cannot begin to understand if you do not explain.”

Miles dropped her arm and moved a little away from her. He drove his hands into the pockets of his coat.

“Very well. I was with Wellesley at Rolica a couple of years ago,” he said. “We took prisoner some local men who had been acting as guides for the French. The wife of one of them came to see me one night.” He closed his eyes. “I can see her now. She was pregnant, barefoot, in rags, with a child clutching at her skirts. She told me her man had only taken the French money because the family was starving. She begged me to save him or they would all die. I promised to help her. Even as I said it I knew I lied.”

Alice shook her head. “What happened?” she whispered.

“Wellesley wanted to make a bargain with the local resistance fighters,” Miles said. “It was early on in our campaign and we desperately needed allies. The leader of the partisans demanded we hand over the prisoners in return for the information we needed. I knew that if we did that, the men would all be killed for collaborating with the French. Very likely they would be tortured and die horribly. But still I negotiated an agreement with the guerrillas.”

Alice felt cold and sick and shocked. “You handed the men over?” she said. Her lips felt stiff as though she could not quite form the words.

“I did,” Miles said grimly. “Treaties are made in such ways, Miss Lister, for the greater good. I did it so that Wellesley had the information he needed to attack. He won the day. Those men were sacrificed so that every man, woman and child in this country could sleep more easily knowing that today will not be the day that Bonaparte invades.”

Alice made a little repudiating gesture with her hands. “I had no notion,” she said.

“Few people do.” Miles’s expression was dark. “They do not want to think about the price paid for their security.”

“But does it not appall you?” Alice burst out. “It’s loathsome, vile, that men will do that to their fellow men. It’s hateful-I feel contaminated even knowing about it!”

Miles’s expression was closed. “I have told you before, Miss Lister, that I am the most cynical of men, so no, it does not trouble me unduly. There is a price for everything and this is the price for peace. War is ugly business, which brings us rather neatly back to where we started and why this is not a fit topic of social discourse.”

“I do not understand what it was that drove you to such work in the first place,” Alice said. She felt frighteningly adrift, grasping after anything that might explain this terrifying coldness in Miles.

“You do not need to understand,” Miles said. His tone utterly forbade any continuance of the conversation. Alice heard it, ignored it and plowed on.

“I know that something happened to cause an estrangement from your family,” she said. “Was that what prompted you to join the army and take on such a role?”

“Miss Lister,” Miles said in a voice with an edge that flayed, “I have no desire to pursue this discussion any further.”

“No, but I do,” Alice argued. “I need to understand you. I need to know what drove you from your family-”

“You need to do neither of those two things, Miss Lister,” Miles said. His voice was very quiet now but absolutely icy. “I suppose you have some foolish, romantic idea that if you are able to reconcile me with my family you can heal whatever wounds you fondly believe me to be suffering. I fear that such happy endings exist only in your highly colored imagination.”

They had reached the marketplace, and Lizzie and Mrs. Lister had turned to wait for them on the steps of the Pump Rooms. Alice tried to arrange her face into an expression of normality in case they guessed at the turmoil inside her. The initial shock she had felt at Miles’s harshness was ebbing now but she felt a little strange. He had spared her nothing in trying to drive her away from him. He had been cruel and contemptuous. She wanted to believe that he had only done it because deep down he was angry and hurt at whatever it was that had set him on such a destructive course in the first place. She could not believe that he was truly so hard that he had no gentleness left in him. How could he make love to her with such skill and tenderness and yet rebuff all the efforts she made to be close to him? It baffled her that sometimes she could feel she was starting to understand him, that she was so drawn to him, and then he could demonstrate such indifference and remind her in the starkest possible terms that the only thing he felt for her was lust, not love.

She glanced up at his face. He looked handsome, cool and remote, and his eyes met hers directly and with no expression in their depths. He made no attempt to reassure her or to apologize for upsetting her or even to smooth matters over with light conversation.

I am the most cynical of men…

She searched his face for answers and he smiled faintly at her though his eyes were still cold.

“Don’t look so stricken, Miss Lister,” he murmured. “You knew the depths of my depravity from the start. If you ever thought you could reform me, this should prove to you that you cannot.”

Alice caught his arm as he made to walk away from her. “But I want to help you-”

Something raw flared in Miles’s eyes. “You cannot, nor do I wish it,” he said. He grabbed her upper arms. “You are confused,” he said roughly. “You think that because I want to make love to you that there is some bond between us. I am sorry to disillusion you once again but what I need from you is very simple, Miss Lister, and it does not require emotional intimacy.”

He turned away from her to hold open the doors of the Pump Rooms for Mrs. Lister. Nothing could have made it clearer that their conversation was at an end.

“May I fetch some spa water for you, ma’am?” he inquired pleasantly. “They say it is most efficacious for the health.”

Alice sank down onto one of the pretty wrought-iron seats scattered about the rotunda, and Lizzie planted herself next to her. “Are you quite well, Alice?” she asked. “You are looking most dreadfully pale. Lord Vickery’s wooing must lack style to leave you looking so wan.”

Alice watched Miles as he strolled over to the counter to procure the spa water. He looked as cool and indifferent as usual, quite as though their quarrel had not occurred and he had not hurt her so deliberately or so profoundly.

“Lord Vickery was telling me about his time in the army,” she said. “Oh, Lizzie, I feel so stupid and naive. I had no idea that such terrible things went on-”

“He should not have told you if it was going to upset you,” Lizzie said stoutly.