Angeline swallowed.

“I tried to talk him out of that curricle race,” he said. “I reminded him that there was Lorraine to consider. And at the time Susan was ill. She had a fever. Lorraine was beside herself with worry. She needed Maurice to be there with her. He called me a pompous ass. And then I said something that will forever haunt me.”

Angeline lifted her head and looked at him. He was staring off across the top of the tower with unseeing eyes. His hand fell away from her neck.

“I told him to go ahead,” Lord Heyward said. “I told him to break his neck if he wished. I told him I had everything to gain if he died, that I would be Heyward in his stead.”

She set a hand on his thigh and patted it.

“And what you said was provoked,” she said. “It had nothing whatsoever to do with the accident. Did you want him to die?”

“No,” he said.

“Did you love him?” she asked.

“I did,” he said. “He was my brother.”

“Did you want to be Earl of Heyward?” she asked.

He closed his eyes and pressed his head back against the wall.

“I did,” he said. “I always felt I could do a better job of it than he did. I wanted the title and position for myself. Until I had them—and did not have him. And now I have to watch his wife marry someone else. I am going to have to watch another man bring up my brother’s child. And I have to know that for Lorraine it is a happily-ever-after. I have to be happy for her because I am fond of her and know her life with Maurice was hell. But he was my brother.”

She gripped his thigh and said nothing. What was there to say? Except that no one is without pain, that pain is part of the human condition. And there was nothing terribly original in that thought, was there?

“As Tresham and Ferdinand are my brothers,” she said. “Perhaps they will never marry. Perhaps—But I will always love them, no matter what.”

He opened his eyes and turned his head toward her.

“It was your brother with whom mine was racing that day, you know,” he said.

“Tresham?” She frowned, and her stomach churned.

“I have always blamed him,” he said. “I even did it to his face at Maurice’s funeral. I suppose when sudden tragedies occur, we always feel the need to nominate some living scapegoat. But in reality Tresham was no more to blame for what happened than I was. For even if he was the one who suggested the race—and it was just as likely to have been Maurice—my brother did not have to accept. And even if Tresham overtook him just before that bend, he did not force Maurice to take the risk of pursuing him around it at suicidal speed. And Tresham did apparently turn back as soon as he saw the hay cart and realized the danger. He did try to avert the collision. He must have done, else he would not have seen it happen—he would have been another mile farther along the road. And he did see it. I have been unfair to your brother, Lady Angeline.”

“As you have been unfair to yourself,” she said. Oh, it could just as easily have been Tresham who had died in that race. How would she have borne it? Would she have blamed Maurice, Earl of Heyward? She probably would have.

“Yes.” He sighed. “Love hurts. And how is that for a clichй?”

She sighed. They were growing maudlin.

“I suppose my bonnet is lost for all time,” she said. “I liked it particularly well when I bought it last week. The blue and yellow reminded me of a summer sky, and the pink—well, I always have loved pink.”

“Last week,” he said. “It is number fifteen, then?”

“Seventeen, actually,” she said. “And today was the first time I had worn it. Well, perhaps the birds will enjoy it until it fades and rots into shreds.”

“Let’s go and have a look,” he said, getting to his feet and reaching down a hand to help her to hers.

They made their way carefully down the ladder and out of the tower back to the path. They stepped off it a little farther along and looked downward. The slope, covered with long grass that rippled when the wind gusted, was long and far steeper than the one they had climbed. Her bonnet was an impossible distance away, though impossible had never figured large in the Dudley vocabulary.

“I can get down there if I go carefully,” he said.

“Carefully?” She laughed. “One does not go down a hill like that carefully, Lord Heyward.”

And she grasped his hand in hers and started downward with him—with long strides and at a dead run. She whooped and screeched as they went and felt a few more hairpins part company with her hair. And then they were both laughing again and hurtling along as fast as their feet would carry them—and ultimately, alas, faster even than that. Angeline lost her footing first and then he came tumbling down too and they rolled together until the level ground with its longer grass close to the lake brought them to a halt. By some miracle they had missed colliding with any trees.

They lay still for a few moments, laughing and half winded, side by side, hand in hand. And then he raised himself up on one elbow and gazed down at her, their laughter suddenly gone, their eyes locking.

Her arms came up about his neck at the same moment as his pushed beneath her, and they were kissing in the long grass as though their lives depended upon melding together with no space between them or in them or through them. As though they could somehow become one person, one whole, and never ever be lonely or loveless or unhappy again.

When he lifted his head and gazed down at her, into her eyes and into her very soul, Angeline gazed back, and knew only that she had been right. Oh, she had been right to fall in love with him on sight, to continue to love him, to want more than anything else in life to spend the rest of it loving him. And she had known—oh, she had known that he was not a dry old stick at all but capable of extraordinary passion. She had known that he was capable of loving her with that forever-after sort of love that sometimes seems not to exist outside the pages of a novel from the Minerva Press but actually, on rare occasions, does.

Oh, she had been right. She had known.

She loved him and he loved her and all was right with the world.

His eyes were bluer than the sky.

And then, in a flash, she remembered something else and could not believe she had forgotten. She had resolved to be noble and self-sacrificing. For Miss Goddard loved him too, and in his heart of hearts he loved her. They were suited to each other. They belonged with each other. And not only had Angeline pledged herself to bringing them together, but she had also told Miss Goddard about her plan and enlisted her collaboration.

Oh, what had she done?

When Lord Heyward opened his mouth to speak, Angeline placed one finger over his lips and then removed it again hastily.

“And this time,” she said, smiling brightly at him, “you do not owe me a proposal of marriage. You do not. I would only refuse again.”

He searched her eyes with his own and then moved without another word to sit beside her. He was silent for a while. So was she. She doubted she had ever felt more wretched in her life. For not only was her heart broken, but—worse—she had betrayed a friend.

She was going to have to redouble her efforts.

Lord Heyward was looking up into the tree in which her bonnet was stuck. It was an awfully tall tree, and the bonnet was awfully high up it.

“It can stay there,” she said. “I have sixteen others, not counting all the old ones.”

“Plus all the ones that will take your fancy before you leave London for the summer,” he said. “But that is a particularly, ah, fancy one.”

He got to his feet, and almost before Angeline could sit up he was climbing the tree with dogged determination. It seemed to her that there were simply not enough foot- and handholds, but up he went anyway. Her heart was in her mouth long before he was high enough to unhook her bonnet from the branch with which it had become entangled and toss it down to her. Which was strange really because her heart also seemed to be crushed beneath the soles of her shoes. How could it be in both places at once?

And her stomach was churning with terror.

“Oh, do be careful,” she called to him as he made his way down again. And she spread her arms, her bonnet clutched in one hand, as if she could catch him and keep him from harm if he fell.

He did not fall. Within minutes he was on the ground beside her again, watching while she tied the ribbons of the bonnet beneath her chin and tucked up all the untidy locks of her hair beneath it.

“Thank you,” she said.

“I am sorry,” he said simultaneously.

“Do not be,” she told him. “Sorry, I mean. You are not responsible for everyone who crosses paths with you.”

“Even when I kiss them?” he asked.

“Even then,” she said firmly, and turned to make her way along the bank of the lake toward the more cultivated lawn that led in a long slope up toward the house. Now that they had moved clear of the trees, she could see Mr. and Mrs. Lynd and the Reverend Martin on the far bank. They were talking with Ferdinand and Miss Briden. There was no sign of Miss Goddard and Lord Windrow—or of any of the others for that matter.

Lord Heyward fell into step beside her. He did not offer his arm. She made no move to take it. They walked in silence.

How could she, Angeline thought. How could she have fallen in love with him again when she had pledged herself to bring him to a happy union with Miss Goddard, who was her friend? No, not fallen in love again, she thought bitterly. She had never stopped loving him, had she?