“Do you not?” he said curtly. “You think I am making polite small talk, Miss Huxtable? You were warned that I am a rake of the worst order. You ought to heed such warnings, especially when they come from someone like Con Huxtable, who knows me very well indeed. You ought to have known what was happening as soon as I singled you out for attention back on the grand avenue-or even sooner, when I gazed at you eating your strawberry in the box. And you doubtless did know-you surely cannot be such an innocent as to have been entirely ignorant of my intentions. But you thought you were strong enough and worldly enough to handle me, did you not? Women are prone to the belief that they can handle and even reform society’s rakehells and tame them with love. Is that what you were envisioning with me this evening?”

She did not answer immediately. Her arms had fallen to her sides. At any moment he expected hysterics or tears. And damn it all, he was going to have to find a way of dealing with it. And why the devil was he being so brutal to her?

“No, not at all actually,” she said. Her voice had stopped shaking. “I thought to take some pleasure from you, Lord Montford, since you are so very famous for giving it. Alas, that fame has been greatly exaggerated. You have disappointed me. I expected a great deal better of such a notorious rake. And why ever would I wish to reform you when you are a disappointment as you are, or tame you when you are already far too bland? I have no such ambition, you will be relieved to know. Yes, let us go back, by all means. There is nothing more to be gained from remaining here, is there?”

He was startled into a bark of laughter.

Well.

That was a masterly setdown if ever he had heard one.

There was perhaps considerably more to Miss Katherine Huxtable than he had ever suspected. But it was too late now to find out of what that more consisted. Not that he wished to find out. Quite the contrary. One thing he would do quite assiduously for the rest of both their lives was stay as far away from her as the size of the globe would permit. It would not be impossibly difficult, he supposed, since she would surely be just as determinedly avoiding him.

But good Lord! Devil take it!

Alas, that fame has been greatly exaggerated. You have disappointed me.

He suppressed the inappropriate urge to add a shout of laughter to the short bark that had already escaped him.

She had somehow restored his good humor. He had not destroyed her, then. She had not collapsed in a quivering heap of weeping womanhood.

And why ever would I wish to reform you when you are a disappointment as you are, or tame you when you are already far too bland?

The devil! He really did like her.

Far too late.

“I will lead the way out,” he said, stepping back onto the path. “Follow me closely.”

“Not too closely, thank you very much,” she said coolly, and stepped out after him. “I do not believe this evening will present any more dangers against which I may need your kind protection.”

The minx!

And so they went single file after all.

4

CECILY was wide-eyed with admiration.

“You actually walked alone with Lord Montford,” she stated when she appeared briefly in Katherine’s dressing room soon after they had returned from Vauxhall. “I would have been terrified. I very nearly swooned when he appeared with Miss Finley. I do not know how she dared bring him even if he is her brother. Con will kill us, not to mention Elliott. And did you observe Lady Beaton when he first arrived? I thought her lower jaw would drop all the way to the floor of the box. One could only feel sorry for her, for there was nothing she could do about it, was there, unless she chose to make a scene. And that would have been worse than anything. Whatever did you talk about, Kate? My tongue would have tied itself in a dozen knots before I had gone ten paces.”

“I do not remember what we talked about,” Katherine told her. “We conversed on a number of different topics.”

“Well, I do not care what anyone says about his reputation,” Cecily said with a sigh and a marvelous lack of consistency. “I think he is by far the most handsome gentleman in the ton-not counting Con, of course. Oh, and your brother.”

“Constantine is very handsome,” Katherine agreed. “It is his Greek heritage. Your brother is just as handsome. Indeed, they look a great deal alike.”

Cecily’s brother was Elliott Wallace, Viscount Lyngate, Katherine’s brother-in-law.

“And I believe Stephen will have more than his share of ladies sighing over him when he is a little older,” Katherine added.

After a little more conversation and a series of yawns, Cecily finally went off to bed-to Katherine’s great relief. She really did not want to talk with anyone. She did not want to think either. She wanted to sleep, preferably for a long, long time.

She was forced to both think and talk the following afternoon, though, when the dowager Viscountess Lyngate returned from a drive in the park, where she had met and talked with Lady Beaton. She sat at tea in the drawing room with Katherine, Cecily having gone off to the library with one of her new friends and that young lady’s maid. Lady Lyngate was only very gently reproachful.

“You are twenty years old, Katherine,” she said. “Older and considerably more sensible than Cecily. I do not doubt that your behavior was above reproach last evening-it was not your fault, after all, that Lord Montford was of your party. It was most unfortunate that we had no advance warning. However, gossip is everyone’s favorite occupation in London during the Season, and even the faintest possibility of impropriety can feed drawing room conversation for a week or more and seriously compromise a lady’s reputation. It might be wiser in the future, my dear, to avoid Baron Montford’s company altogether, or, if that is impossible as it was last evening, to remain with everyone else of your party at all times so that no one can have any reason whatsoever to couple your name with his. He really is beyond the pale of respectability, you know, charming as he can be when he sets his mind to it. But since you did walk with him last evening and allow yourself to lag behind the others-though I do blame Lady Beaton for not keeping a far more careful eye upon you-I do hope he was the soul of honor.”

She looked inquiringly at her young charge.

“Oh, but of course he was,” Katherine assured her.

“Of course.” Lady Lyngate smiled. “He is, after all, a gentleman despite his shocking rakehell ways, and he knows how to behave in genteel company. I daresay his reputation is somewhat exaggerated anyway. No one can be quite as wild as he is reputed to be.”

“No,” Katherine agreed.

“This has not been a scold, Katherine,” the dowager assured her. “It has merely been a word of caution from someone older and perhaps wiser in the ways of fashionable society than you. I have only your best interests at heart.”

“I know you do, ma’am,” Katherine said. “I appreciate your concern. It is very kind of you to care.”

“Not at all,” Lady Lyngate said, leaning forward in her chair to pat her hand. “You are missing your family, are you not?”

“Oh,” Katherine said, and to her surprise and embarrassment tears filled her eyes, “yes, I am. I have never been separated from them for so long before now.”

Even when Vanessa had been married to Hedley Dew and living at Rundle Park with him and his family, she had been less than a half hour’s walk away, and one or more of them had walked the distance almost every single day.

The dowager clasped her hand and squeezed it.

“Perhaps,” she said, “Elliott and Vanessa ought to have taken you with them after all. It is not even as though they are to miss all the rest of the Season, is it? They will be back here soon.”

“They wanted me to stay here,” Katherine said, dabbing at her tears with her handkerchief. “They wanted me to stay and enjoy myself. And of course I am doing just that.”

“Of course you are,” the dowager said kindly. “Was Vauxhall as lovely as ever?”

“Oh, even lovelier, ma’am.”

Katherine longed for her sisters and brother with a gnawing ache. Yet she was glad they were gone from town. What would she say to them today? How would she stop herself from blurting out the whole sorry, sordid story to them? She needed time to recover.

It was pointless to ask herself what she had been thinking last evening. She had not, of course, been thinking at all. Or not rationally anyway. It was quite horrifying to realize how quickly and easily she could succumb to the seductive charms of a practiced rake and to the base cravings of her own body.

In her own mind she had even called it love.

She had thought herself gloriously, passionately in love with a dashing, dangerous man.

How gauche of her. How… humiliating!

She would have allowed him…

No, she would not. At every moment she had been about to stop him. She would have done so before it was too late.

No, she would not have done.

It had already been too late.

She had him to thank for the fact that she was not irretrievably ruined today-a fallen woman.

It had all been calculated, deliberate on his part. He had set out quite coldly and deliberately to seduce her. He had arranged to be of her party at Vauxhall, and he had plotted to draw her away from the others and onto that dark, deserted path-and then off it behind a tree. He had planned it all.