Gideon's mouth curved faintly. "My sweet Harriet," he murmured. "I am delighted to see that you are still unpolished."

She scowled up at him. "I assure you I am working very hard on that project, too, sir. But I must confess it is not as entertaining or as interesting as fossil collecting."

"I can understand that."

Harriet brightened as she caught sight of her sister among the dancers. Felicity, stunning tonight in a gossamer gown of peach pink, grinned cheerfully from across the floor before being swept out of view by a handsome young lord.

"I may be obliged to work at the business of being polished," Harriet said, "but I am pleased to say that Felicity is already a gem. She is becoming quite the rage, you know. And now that she has a respectable portion from Aunt Adelaide, she need not rush into marriage. I rather suspect she will want a second Season. She is having a wonderful time. Town life suits her."

Gideon looked down at her. "Do you regret that you are being rushed into marriage, Harriet?"

Harriet fixed her gaze on his snowy white cravat. "I comprehend, sir, that you feel obligated to go through with this marriage and that we do not have the luxury of allowing sufficient time to be absolutely certain of our feelings for each other."

"Are you telling me you do not have any feelings of affection for me?"

Harriet abruptly stopped staring at his cravat and raised her eyes in shock. She could feel the heat warming her face. "Oh, no, Gideon. I did not mean to imply that I had no feelings of affection for you."

"I am deeply relieved to hear you say so." Gideon's expression softened. "Come, the dance is ending. I will return you to your friends. I believe they are all quite concerned about you. I can see them staring at us."

"Pay them no heed, sir. They are merely feeling somewhat protective because of all the rumors that are floating about. They mean no harm."

"We shall see," Gideon murmured as he led her through the crowd to where the other members of the Fossil and Antiquities Society were gathered. "Ah. I see a newcomer has joined your little group."

Harriet glanced ahead, but she could not even see Lord Applegate or Lady Youngstreet. "Your height gives you a distinct advantage in crowds such as this, my lord."

"So it does."

The last of the crowd parted at that moment and Harriet saw the heavyset, florid-faced man who had joined her friends. There was, she realized, a very forceful, very striking element about him that was not particularly pleasant. He was large, although not as large as Gideon, but that was not what bothered her.

His intense dark eyes, which were riveted on Harriet, had a sharp, piercing quality that was unsettling. There was a bitter, angry curve to his fleshy lips. His gray hair was thinning on the top of his head but extended down his heavy cheeks in thick, curling whiskers. He reminded Harriet of one of the Evangelicals, those tireless reformers of the Church who railed constantly against everything from dancing to face powder.

The new corner did not wait for an introduction. His sharp gaze raked Harriet from head to toe and then he turned to Gideon.

"Well, sir, I see you have found another innocent lamb to lead to the slaughter."

There was a collective gasp from the small group of fossil collectors. Gideon alone appeared unperturbed.

"Allow me to introduce you to my fiancée," Gideon murmured, as if nothing out of the ordinary had been said. "Miss Pomeroy, may I present—"

The stranger interrupted him with a harsh exclamation. "How dare you, sir? Have you no shame? How dare you play your games with yet another rector's daughter? Will you get this one with child, too, before you cast her aside? Will you cause the deaths of yet another innocent woman and her babe?"

There was a collective gasp of dismay from the small group. Gideon's eyes hardened dangerously.

Harriet held up a hand. "That is quite enough," she said sharply. "I do not know who you are, sir, but I assure you I grow extremely weary of these accusations concerning his lordship's previous engagement. I should think that everyone would realize that there is only one reason why St. Justin would have called off his plans for marrying Deirdre Rushton."

The stranger swung his hot gaze back to her. "Is that so, Miss Pomeroy?" he whispered harshly. "And just what would that reason be, pray tell?"

"Why, that the poor girl was pregnant with some other man's babe, of course," Harriet said briskly. She was getting thoroughly annoyed with the malicious gossip. "Good grief, I would have thought anyone could have seen that right from the start. It is the logical explanation."

Silence gripped the onlookers. The intense stranger gave Harriet a wrathful glare that was clearly designed to dispatch her to perdition.

"If you truly believe that, Miss Pomeroy," he whispered thickly, "then I pity you. You are, indeed, a fool."

The man turned and stormed off through the throng. Everyone else with the exception of Gideon was gazing at Harriet in open-mouthed fascination.

Gideon's expression reflected an almost savage satisfaction. "Thank you, my dear," he said very softly.

Harriet frowned after the stranger's retreating figure. "Who was that gentleman?"

"The Reverend Clive Rushton," Gideon said. "Deirdre's father."

Chapter Ten

"I have never seen the like." Adelaide, still dressed in her wrapper, picked up her cup of hot chocolate. "I vow, the tale will be all over Town this morning. Everyone will be discussing the setdown Harriet gave Rushton."

Effie closed her eyes in resignation and groaned. "They will be gossiping about that scene even as they read the announcement of her engagement in the morning papers. Dear heaven, I cannot even imagine what they will all think. For an innocent young woman to be talking about such things right in the middle of a ballroom. It is beyond anything."

"I am not precisely innocent, Aunt Effie." Harriet, who was sitting in the corner of Adelaide's morning room, looked up from a recent copy of the Transactions of the Royal Society of Geology.

"Well, we are doing our best to pass you off as such," Adelaide pointed out.

Harriet made a face. "I do not know what all the fuss is about. I merely brought up what seems a perfectly obvious fact that appears to have been overlooked by everyone."

"You and your logical approach," Adelaide said grimly. "I assure you, the fact that Deirdre Rushton was pregnant when she died was not overlooked by anyone. I have heard more than enough about it since word got out that you were engaged to St. Justin."

"I meant the fact that the babe was someone else's. It most definitely was not Gideon's." Harriet went back to her Transactions.

"How can you be so bloody certain of that?" Adelaide demanded.

"Because I am quite certain that Gideon's sense of honor is equal to that of any other gentleman's of the ton. In fact, I will wager that it is probably considerably more developed than most. He would have done the right thing if the babe had been his own."

"I simply do not know how you can be so sure of him," Effie said with a sigh. "We can only hope you are correct in your assumptions about his honor."

"I am." Harriet picked up a piece of toast and munched enthusiastically as she continued to scan the pages of the Transactions. "By the bye, he will be calling at five this afternoon. We are to go driving in the park."

"He could at least allow the gossip generated by your scene with Rushton last night to die down before taking you into the park. The whole world goes driving in the park at five. Everyone will see you," Effie muttered.

"That is the whole point, if you ask me." Felicity grinned knowingly at her sister as she walked into the morning room. "I do believe St. Justin is intent on putting Harriet on display wherever and whenever possible. Rather like an exotic pet he has brought back from some distant land."