“Now,” she said, “I am your mistress.”

As though it were the pinnacle of achievement to which all properly brought-up young ladies ought to aspire.

Good Lord! All his relaxed contentment fled out the window.

“You dashed well are not,” he said. Had she misunderstood? She could not possibly have. He had talked of marriage. He had told her he was going to make her another offer. “You are going to be my wife.”

“After you have asked nicely and I have said yes,” she said, “back at Hallings tomorrow or the next day. Today I am your mistress. Your secret mistress.”

“Mistresses get paid for their services,” he said. “We are going to be married, Angeline. Just don’t get any ideas about refusing me. I swear I’ll—”

“When we get up later to dine,” she said, both hands on his chest now close to his shoulders, her face hovering over his, her hair like a curtain on either side of them, “you will pay me—what is an appropriate sum? But no matter. It is merely a token payment. You will pay me one sovereign, and it will be official. I am your secret mistress. It sounds very wicked. It sounds delicious. Admit it.”

Indignation wilted and he laughed.

“Edward,” she said softly.

“Angie.”

“And that will be another secret,” she said. “Your name. I will only ever use it when we are together like this.”

“Man and mistress?” he said. “Employer and mistress? Is it going to cost me a sovereign every time? It could get expensive.”

“You can afford it,” she said. “You can afford me. You have to, do you not, for you cannot live happily without me. You have already admitted it. My price, though, is one sovereign to cover the first eighty years. After that we will negotiate.”

“In that case,” he said, “I will be generous and make it a guinea.”

“I will always call you Heyward when we are not alone together like this,” she said, “and no one will know. I will be your secret mistress all the rest of our lives and no one will suspect a thing. My brothers will always think you are nothing but a dry old stick and will pity me and wonder how I can stand such a dull marriage.”

“That is what they call me?” he asked her. He took her by the elbows and eased her down so that her bosom was against his chest and her face was a mere couple of inches above his own.

“That is it,” she said, smiling. “They have no idea, and they never will.”

Her eyes were bright with warm laughter and love. His own smile faded.

“Angeline,” he said, “that is precisely what I am, you know. I cannot countenance any wildness in myself or extravagance or drunkenness or debauchery or gambling or recklessness—apart from today, that is, when I have broken just about every rule I could possibly break. I will never change. I am just an ordinary man, a very proper man, a dull man. There will be very little excitement in your life if—when you marry me. If is no longer an option for you, I am afraid. But you must not glamorize me. You will only be the more disappointed when the truth becomes apparent to you.”

Her smile had softened. She laid her head on his chest, turning her face so that one cheek was against him.

“You still do not quite understand, do you?” she said softly. “I do not want you to change. I fell head over ears in love with you the first time I saw you just because you are who you are. You were there behind me at that inn before Lord Windrow came inside, were you not? Yet you uttered not one improper word. When he did, you chose to reprimand him rather than ignore him or leave the room. When he would have fought you, you pointed out how illogical violence would be under the circumstances, even though I am sure you could have beaten him and even though you then stood accused of being a coward. When he would have left, you stepped between him and the door and insisted that he apologize to me. And then, rather than speak to me when we had not been formally introduced, you left without a word. I did not know for sure until then that there were gentlemen like you. I had experience only with gentlemen like my father and my brothers and their friends. I did not want to marry anyone like them, for whoever I chose would not remain faithful for long, and how can there be marriage and parenthood and contentment and friendship and happiness and growing old together unless there is fidelity? Maybe my mother would have been different if my father had been. Maybe she would have been happy. Maybe she would have remained at home more. Maybe she would have enjoyed us—me. From the moment I saw you, I wanted you. I desperately, desperately wanted you. And not just someone like you, though that is what I had hoped to find when I left home, even though I doubted and still doubt that there are many such men. I wanted you just as you were, and I want you just as you are. I want you to live your dull, blameless life of duty and responsibility. I want you to be a very proper, perhaps even stern husband. I want you to make me feel you care. I want you to be a father who spends more time than is fashionable with his children. And in private, when we are alone together, I want you to be Edward, my secret and wonderful lover.”

His chest was wet. But he would have known anyway that she was weeping. Her voice had become increasingly unsteady as she spoke. He wrapped his arms about her and pressed his smiling mouth to the top of her head.

“Actually,” she said a few minutes later, and her voice was steady again, “it is silly to say I do not want you to change. For we all must change or remain static in life, and that would be quite undesirable. We would still think and speak and act at the age of thirty and sixty as we did at the age of fourteen. Of course we must change and ought to change. You did not love me at Vauxhall. You only lusted after me, or, if that is too vulgar a notion, then you were simply affected by the seclusion of that clearing among the trees and by the moonlight and the distant music. When you came the next day to offer me marriage, you did not believe in love, not romantic love, anyway. Now you do. I thoroughly approve of that change in you, though I do not suppose it is a real change, is it? You have always been a loving person, after all. It is just that you had not yet opened your heart to that extra dimension of your being. And I have changed too. I knew that I would have no trouble finding a husband once I had made my come-out, for I am Lady Angeline Dudley and all sorts of men would want to marry me even if I looked like a hyena and had the personality of a toad—not that I know anything about the personality of toads, of course. I may be doing them a dreadful injustice. Perhaps they are the most fascinating of creatures. But you know what I mean. I hoped to find a man worthy of my love, though I really did not believe I could ever be worthy of his. I have always thought myself ugly and stupid and unladylike and … Well, a whole host of other depressing things. But now I know that I am beautiful and bright and an original and … Am I being boastful?”

He was laughing softly but with great tenderness too, for there was sudden vulnerability in her voice again. He rolled over with her until their positions were reversed and she was lying flat on the bed with him half over her. He kissed her eyes, her mouth.

“Angie,” he said, “never stop talking, my love. You are an eternal delight to me. Or if I may make an instant amendment to what I have just said, do stop talking occasionally so that I may snatch a few hours of sleep each night and so that I may concentrate upon making love to my secret mistress whenever the spirit moves one or the other of us or both and so that I may read the morning papers and the morning post and … Well, I daresay you know what I am saying. But never cease your chattering. And before you ask, I adore today’s bonnet. I assume there is straw beneath all the flowers? You must have a particularly strong neck to hold up all that weight.”

And then they were both laughing, their noses brushing together.

“You lie through your teeth,” she said. “You think it is hideous.”

“Not so,” he protested. “On this occasion I speak the solemn truth. When I stepped into the parlor downstairs earlier, I thought for a moment that I had opened the wrong door and had gone into the garden by mistake. A beautiful garden.”

She gazed wistfully up at him.

“You punched Lord Windrow on the chin,” she said, “because you thought he was abducting me.”

“So much,” he said ruefully, “for unnecessary violence.”

“You were quite, quite splendid,” she told him. “But poor Lord Windrow, when really he has eyes for no one but Miss Goddard.”

He frowned.

“He had better not hurt or compromise her,” he said, “or he is going to meet with more than just a single punch to the jaw.”

“But she has eyes for no one but him,” she said, wrapping her arms about his neck. “Can you not see, Edward, that they are perfect for each other?”

The logic of women again!

“He really is not a committed rake,” she said. “I have realized that for some time. He has merely been waiting to fall in love with someone who will hold him steady for the rest of his life. Besides, he loves his mother.”

He frowned for a second or two longer, for he really was not convinced. But then he could not help laughing. Perhaps there was room in this life for women’s logic as well as for his own far more sensible reasoning skills.

He kissed her, an action that took care of an indeterminate number of minutes—but who was counting?—before he withdrew somewhat reluctantly.