“Because you are looking at me now as you used to do then.” She made an attempt to square her shoulders. “Why?”

“Perhaps because I feel like I did then,” he said in a strange, low voice. “Like a beautiful little mystery wrapped in self-righteous modesty and recklessly brave determination has just landed before me and I don’t know quite what to do with her.”

Her heart blocked her throat. “You could—”

The door opened.

Kiss her.

“My lord? Oh. Pardon me, my lady.” The butler bowed. “Joseph said I would find you here, my lord. Captain Masinter’s carriage has arrived. He awaits you on the street.”

“Thank you, Simpson. I will be down directly.”

The butler withdrew.

“Well, there you have it,” he said easily, the intensity gone from his gaze. “There is apparently more carousing to be had, and at only eleven o’clock in the morning. Ah, the life of a hedonist on the town.” He moved away from her.

“You cannot be serious,” she uttered to his back.

“I am not,” he said, his hand on the door handle, his head bent. “Of course. But I’ve nothing else to say, Arabella. So that shall have to suffice for you.”

Her stomach hollowed out. “It does not. But I don’t suppose I have any choice in the matter. Luc, why did you set guards on me at Combe? Do you not trust me, after all?”

“I trust you,” he said.

“Eleanor thought that you assigned Joseph and Claude to protect me.”

For a moment he was silent. “Did you believe her?”

“I don’t know. From what do I need to be protected?” Her foolish heart and his indifference to it.

“Tonight we will have dinner guests,” he only said. “Nothing inappropriate during mourning. Only a few close friends to announce your arrival in town.”

“I—”

“The housekeeper will see to all the arrangements. You needn’t do anything to prepare for it except dress suitably.” He looked over his shoulder. “Wear your hair down, please.”

“I am in mourning. And a married woman. It would not be seemly—”

“Wear it down, Arabella.” He left.

SHE SPENT SEVERAL hours that afternoon closeted with Adina and Mrs. Baxter, who took to wedding planning with gleeful enthusiasm. Adina’s wan cheeks colored prettily with her excitement. When conversation turned to a debate about which florist would provide the freshest roses in November, and a disputation on how the river would not be especially odiferous in this season so they needn’t arrange for nosegays, Arabella went to dress.

She had dismissed her maid and was sitting at the dressing table considering the expanse of bosom and arm that her ebony gown revealed when Luc entered.

“Ah. The lady at her toilette. A man’s greatest fantasy and nightmare at once.”

She tried to breathe evenly as he approached behind her and she looked at him in the mirror. He wore black well, the kerchief about his brow now a mere extension of his forbidding beauty.

“Nightmare?” she said.

“Feminine decisions, of course. For instance, which jewels to wear.”

“I haven’t any—”

He drew forth a box from his coat and opened it. In the mirror two strings of crimson gems glittered in tiny gold florets. “I thought perhaps since you were accustomed to wearing rubies and gold, this gift would not be rejected.”

“They are beautiful, Luc.”

“I imagined them glimmering from within your hair.” He caressed a neatly confined lock from her brow back to the combs that pulled it away from her face. Then he captured it all in his hand and drew it away from her shoulders. “You do not wear the ring tonight,” he said as though he had not before accused her of infidelity with that ring.

“I . . . No.” Perhaps if she told him, he would not scorn her. But she was afraid. “Thank you. You are generous.”

He set the box on the table, withdrew an earring, and dressed her with it. “A beautiful woman needs no embellishments. But a prideful man may give them to her nevertheless.”

She allowed him to place the other earring on her and she turned her head to watch the gems sparkle in the candlelight. He lifted a hand and stroked her cheek softly, then her neck, then her shoulder. She drew in a steadying breath, her breasts pressing at the edge of her bodice full and round and tender with the echo of his touch. She wanted him to touch her and trust her, and to give her cause to trust him in return.

One of them must begin it.

“Many years ago my sisters and I were told that the rightful master of this ring knows our real parents. We were told that the man is a prince.”

His caress halted.

“Reiner?”

She met his gaze in the mirror. “We do not know who he is, only that he would not recognize the ring unless one of us first wed him.”

His hand fell away from her and moved to his neck cloth. He peered at himself in the mirror and made a minuscule adjustment to the linen. “That sounds like a Gypsy tale if ever I heard one.”

“You think me foolish. And you are correct, for I was foolish to believe in the story. But I keenly wished to know my father. And I wished to know if my mother was the woman that Reverend Caulfield always said she must have been to have abandoned us. If she was a whore.” She swiveled around to look directly up at him. “Do you believe me? About the ring?”

“What reason have I not to?” It was not a statement. It was a question for her.

At this moment she could beg him to believe in her fidelity. She could insist that she would never take another man to her bed like Adina had taken a lover, perhaps like her own mother had long ago, producing three so very different daughters that to believe they shared the same father was naïve. She could tell him that he needn’t hide her in the country with guards to watch her every move because she would never be unfaithful to him.

But she had already told him this and he was still holding secrets from her.

She took up a lacy black shawl and went to the door. “Our guests will arrive shortly. I shouldn’t like to be late.” She turned and for an instant thought she saw a shadow of bleakness on his scarred face. Then it was gone. Possibly she had only imagined it.

She waited for him to come to the door and open it for her, and went down the stairs on his arm, the Comte and Comtesse of Rallis appearing to all the world like they were in perfect accord with each other.

AFTER DINNER, A sumptuous affair with a dozen removes, sparkling conversation, and much laughter, a game of cards was gotten up among the gentlemen. Alone with the ladies, Arabella negotiated the torturous trek between governess and comtesse with every sentence she uttered. Her guests were people of sophistication, though, and all of them affectionate toward Luc, and Captain Masinter and Lord Bedwyr’s easy acceptance of her made it natural.

After midnight she climbed the stairs to her bedchamber thoroughly exhausted. Luc did not come to her bed. Lying awake, she heard him leave his bedchamber and descend the stairs, but he did not return.

After breakfast, leaning back into her cushions, the round lump of her baby protruding from her excessively slender body, Adina waved Arabella away when she offered to assist with the wedding arrangements. Mrs. Baxter busily opened invitation replies and wrote names carefully on the ever-growing list of guests. Arabella left the women to their enjoyment.

Joseph was again at her side, which she took to mean that Luc was not in the house. Accompanied by her burly footman, she made her way to the front of the house and began exploring rooms. When she came upon a modest-sized chamber furnished with a desk, two chairs, and a sideboard sporting an array of crystal carafes and glasses, she backed out of the doorway. Then she paused and went in again, shutting the door in the face of her guard, with a smile for him.

Her nerves were raw, her head aching and stomach queasy. A spot of brandy seemed just the thing to take the edge off of her agitation. Whenever it was that Luc allowed her to see him again, she would be calm and strong and not allow his teasing and secrets to hurt her.