‘Oh, Papa, no. She loved you too much to punish you for loving her too much,’ she said and raised her hand to smooth it gently down his cheek as he looked as if he was about to weep for the loss of her mother even now. ‘And I understand. I know how it feels. I longed for Joe so much after he died that I used to pray I would die as well.’

  ‘Thank God you didn’t, my Mel,’ he said shakily.

  ‘Finding out I was carrying his baby stopped me doing anything reckless and I don’t think I was quite sane after he died. We had only just found out how much we loved one another and then he was gone, between one breath and the next. The world was so dark and blank without him that I really do understand how you felt when Mama died now.’

  ‘Maybe you do, but I don’t deserve that understanding. You lived for your child and I just ignored mine.’

  ‘For a while, but you did what I needed you to when I wasn’t capable of rational thought and saved my child from leading a miserable life. If you had let me cling to him, he would have had to fight being born illegitimate from the cradle to the grave. Now I see how other ladies’ bastards are treated I shudder. You were right; I had to give him up so he could have a better life than I could give him and I know you found him good parents.’

  Melissa wondered if feeling alive again was such a good thing as tears threatened to flow from her tired eyes. She felt as if she was saying goodbye to a wonderful dreamland where Joe had lived and they would have had several more children by now to run about with their eldest brother and never mind if their mother was supposed to be a lady.

  ‘But that’s enough of the past, Papa. It’s late and you look even more tired than I am.’

  ‘Aye, I am, but that brings us back to where you came in—where were you?’

  ‘Doing my duty as a mother,’ she admitted on a weary sigh. ‘And don’t argue you could have gone in my stead because you are too well known not to be caught red-handed.’

  ‘Did you find anything I could not have done as easily by asking?’

  ‘Yes, I discovered who bought Grandmama’s books and papers. I have a list of buyers that I intend to keep to myself so you can’t decide to do this for me.’

  ‘You insist I am too conspicuous.’

  ‘And you know as well as I do that I didn’t get all my quirks and impulsiveness from Mama’s side of the family, so stop trying to pretend I did.’

  ‘How can I leave you to it when you are looking for something that should never have been left about for anyone to find in the first place?’

  ‘I still don’t understand what came over Grandmama to do such a thing, but there we are, it did and now I must deal with it.’

  ‘Not alone.’

  ‘No,’ she agreed, and she really wasn’t alone with this problem. There was something of a crowd with Lord Lathbury wanting to pile into the fray alongside her father. ‘Now do let’s go to bed, Papa, it’s long after my bedtime.’

  He chuckled at the childhood rebuke to his over-lively daughter and agreed it was high time they both got some sleep.

  Chapter Seven

  Melissa thought it was going to be impossible to sleep after her eventful evening and was astonished when she woke up to see bright sunlight peeping through a gap in the shutters. That clock couldn’t possibly be right, she decided and blinked, then looked again. Lathbury said she was to meet him at ten o’clock or he would come here instead and it was half past nine already! She jumped out of bed and rang the bell, then ran into her dressing room, cursing herself for sleeping so deeply.

  ‘Wretched, wretched man, what right does he have to dictate where I go and when?’ None at all, of course, but the last thing she wanted was him coming here.

  ‘Oh, lawks, my lady, you’re already up and washed.’ Her maid interrupted Melissa’s frantic hurry to get dressed and out of the house in the shortest time possible.

  ‘I’m in a hurry, Ellen.’

  ‘I can see that, Your Ladyship. You’re making a rat’s nest of your hair and your stays need fastening properly before you throw that old thing over them any old how.’

  ‘You do it, then, but I have to be out of the house in ten minutes.’

  ‘I don’t know if I’ve ever seen you in such a tear to get out in the world.’

  ‘And this is you hurrying?’ Melissa muttered from behind the heavy curtain of hair Ellen had insisted on brushing despite her protests it could do without just this once.

  ‘If you stop arguing, we’ll be done all the quicker,’ Ellen said with exaggerated patience.

  Melissa sighed and wondered when she had become so helpless she could no longer dress herself. Still, this was London and she was vain enough to want to be presentable for this appointment with the man who had kissed her breathless last night. She tried hard not to remember how delicious it felt to be kissed by a powerful and fully mature adult male, but her heart thundered at the memory and it took all her willpower not to touch her needy mouth as if his had just left it.

  No! She couldn’t want gruff, defensive and stubborn Lord Lathbury so urgently it was like a constant prickle of heat under her skin, she chided herself, but hot need raged defiantly inside her anyway. None of the reasons she lined up to convince her rebel body it couldn’t have him seemed to stop her feeling so different since she had met him that she hardly recognised her own face in the dressing mirror and hastily turned her gaze away.

  ‘There, now sit down again and we’ll soon be done,’ Ellen said tersely.

  Her maid expertly flipped a gown over Melissa’s newly dressed hair, and she glanced in the mirror again as she stood up like an automaton for Ellen to button up the dove grey pelisse suitable for half-mourning because she knew perfectly well her own fingers were not up to the task. Trying for some sort of rational thought to cling to in a newly puzzling world, Melissa decided soft grey quieted down her embarrassing hair much better than last night’s dark rose silk, but it was the only fashionable evening gown that had been delivered so far.

  She caught herself drifting into a reverie of watching Lord Lathbury spellbound by her in her latest new outfit. She felt so out of sorts with herself that she tied the ribbons of her new bonnet so punishingly tight that Ellen clicked her tongue.

  ‘You’ll scratch your face on the straw, my lady,’ her maid said as she undid and retied the ribbons. ‘You’re clearly not yourself this morning and I hope he’s worth it,’ the woman said with a sly smile and a nod at the relentlessly ticking clock as if to say wasn’t she in a hurry?

  ‘So do I,’ Melissa muttered and didn’t bother to rebuke an old friend when it would only make her sure she was right about the man she was in fluster about. Her son was worth it, though. Lathbury might be, if not for the fact she had a son. So, this was only a matter of business. No reason to panic or feel as if she was perched on the edge of a precipice and in danger of stepping off into thin air.

  * * *

  ‘You are fashionably late, my lady.’

  Adam put his watch back in his pocket and raised his eyebrows. Flustered and ruffled from hurrying to their rendezvous, she was even more breathtaking in broad daylight than she had been in candlelight. He had hoped she would seem less fascinating in the merciless light of an April morning, but she had disappointed him. Sunlight picked out intriguing gold and chestnut lights in her fiery hair and showed off the flawless creamy skin he wanted to explore inch by tempting inch until he knew her inside and out.

  How he wished he could rid her of every stitch of the silvery grey outfit she probably thought subdued her bright hair, when it only made him want to snatch off her bonnet and unloose its beauty to the April breeze, then get her somewhere they could remove the rest of it with undue haste before they outraged the few park-keepers and early strollers abroad at this unfashionable hour of the day.

  ‘I was debating with myself whether to stroll round to Wiston House and see if your father is at home to visitors this morning,’ he lied. If he told her what he was really thinking about, she would probably run all the way back to Shropshire and bury herself in the country for another decade.

  ‘I’m here now and it’s only ten past ten,’ she said with a resentful look that made him want to kiss her into a better humour, or maybe he had best enjoy the challenge of watching her in a bad one as they were in a public place. At least the fashionable crowds who would flock here in a few hours’ time to see and be seen were not even out of bed yet, and he had better not think about beds any more.

  ‘I take it you aren’t at your best of a morning?’ he managed to say smoothly—there were advantages to once having been a dashing young baron after all.

  ‘Certainly not on this one,’ she muttered with a dour look to say she would like it a lot better without him.

  ‘You did have a late night and are probably not used to breaking and entering and sneaking round strange houses for goodness knows what reason.’

  ‘It wasn’t an entertainment,’ she told him resentfully, and, as she clearly had no idea her testiness was more temptation to kiss her sweet lips again, he couldn’t accuse her of coquettishness.

  There was something far too straightforward and brave about her and she had upended his preconceptions of what women expected of a man like him. He badly wanted to find out more and not frighten her back into her shell again, so he must bite down on this need to kiss her witless and not arguing with his wickedest intentions and behave himself.

  ‘Really?’ he said. ‘It felt like a party to me and from the look of my weary servants this morning I believe they thought so, too.’

  ‘You know perfectly well that’s not what I mean and you seem far too cheerful after a night like that.’

  ‘Ah, but I have good reason to be cheerful because last night I met you.’

  ‘Bah!’ she said, and he was delighted. She had forgotten to hide her true spirit behind the blankly enquiring look and pretend coolness. He ought to be serious and forget how much brighter his world had been since he kissed her and she kissed him. But he had enjoyed every last second of it and some things were unforgettable.

  ‘I assure you it was a great honour to be the first man to lay eyes on the reclusive Lady Melissa Aldercombe in more than a decade.’

  ‘That’s not all you laid on me,’ she told him crossly, then looked annoyed with herself for reminding them both they had kissed like lovers last night. ‘Now look what you made me do,’ she accused him, with such a fierce frown that he reached to smooth it out before he remembered they were in public.

  He was pretty sure nobody had seen that giveaway gesture of intimacy and he snatched his hand away as if she had burned him. She did start at his touch, as if she felt the charge of something elemental sparking between them at the slightest contact as well, then she shook her head like an irritated cat with her fur being rubbed the wrong way.

  ‘And you exaggerate; I met gentlemen under my grandparents’ roof and when we visited friends, so I am not as reclusive as you make out.’

  ‘Most of Mr and Mrs Granger’s friends must have been elderly and I doubt many of them could see you that well after a lifetime poring over their books.’

  ‘Just like you, then,’ she said, then seemed to remind herself she was supposed to be a cool and controlled female who didn’t much care what anyone thought of her. A pity, he decided as he watched her put fetters on her temper. ‘That was rude; I apologise,’ she said distantly and with her eyes on the horizon.

  It was his turn to frown. ‘I prefer plain dealing to a refusal to say anything significant lest it comes back to bite you.’

  ‘In your shoes I would be grateful I am too polite to say what I really think, Lord Lathbury,’ she told him, and he grinned and held out his arms as if offering her a free shot at his person with whatever weapon she had handy.

  ‘For heaven’s sake, call me Adam, Melissa. I cannot endure all this my lord this and my lady that nonsense with all these secret meetings stacking up around us to make such rigid formality look like folly.’

  ‘No, the folly would be in encouraging an intimacy that will bite like an asp if it ever comes out, my lord. You have a little sister and I have my own reasons to avoid scandal. We are the merest acquaintances who met by chance last night.’

  ‘What are your reasons, then?’ he asked, carefully ignoring that last sentence doing its best to set them at a stony distance from one another, and he couldn’t oblige her and fade meekly into the background. It would paint his world black and white again instead of these rich colours—like an etching of a great painting that should glow with colour and depth, but was a mere suggestion of itself in print. He felt sick and oddly vulnerable as he thought about his life before she had stolen into his house last night and showed him what he was missing.

  ‘Private,’ she said starkly, and her mouth set in that stubborn line he was beginning to be very familiar with.

  ‘Very much so if they are why you cut yourself off from the world when you should have been too young and foolish to have secrets worth keeping,’ he said, and jealousy suddenly took the edge off his curiosity.

  What if her grand secret was another man? She could be some lucky devil’s secret wife or forbidden love for all he knew. The very idea left him feeling hollow, but she would have rebuffed him last night if she owed her loyalty to someone else. Somehow he knew she would keep a promise, however dearly it cost her, and he was hardly temptation incarnate so she must be free.

  ‘Well, they are,’ she said.

  ‘They are what?’ He struggled to remember what they were talking about before he tortured himself with that notion—her reason for avoiding polite society, he recalled now.

  ‘Private. My reasons for not making my debut or joining the ton since are my own to keep. I have the right to privacy, my lord,’ she said with a look halfway between puzzlement and exasperation, and it made him want to kiss her all over again.

  He struggled with the certainty he would still want her if she had half a dozen secret husbands and a lover or two on the side. ‘True, but we are going round in circles and I thought you didn’t want me to demand an interview with you in the open, so to speak.’

  He had come here meaning to persuade her to carry on looking for whatever she was looking for with his help. He had begun with honourable intentions towards her, but her presence subverted them. Now he just wanted to see her again until she was as knotted up in desire as he was, and what did that make him? Best not to know, he told himself grimly.

  ‘I don’t,’ she confirmed with a stubborn set to her delicious mouth that made it look even more kissable.

  ‘Then tell me what you are up to before I send my visiting card every day until your father agrees to see me. This way is quicker and will prevent gossip.’

  ‘As if you care about that,’ she said scornfully.

  ‘I do care. I have a sister’s reputation to worry about as well as yours this Season.’

  ‘Then consider hers and let me worry about mine, Lord Lathbury,’ she said, and something dark and painful under her flat words made him want to hold her until she forgot past, present and future in his arms. Best not, at least not in the middle of Hyde Park with time marching on round them.

  ‘I can’t do that, my lady,’ he told her. He was in too deep to let her search every private library that might hold her grandmother’s papers without him.

  ‘Why ever not?’

  ‘Because you’re not very good at it and heaven knows what you’ll get up to behind my back.’

  ‘My business and my risk,’ she said curtly, as if she really thought he would shrug and walk away as if she didn’t matter.

  ‘You made it mine last night.’

  ‘Because you were bored and uncomfortable, and quizzing me seemed better than returning to your guests and playing the good host. That’s not an acceptable reason to interfere in a lady’s life, my lord.’

  ‘It is for me. For now it will be enough if we walk back to Grosvenor Square as if we are nothing more than polite acquaintances strolling in the same direction. At this hour of the day we may be forgiven the lack of a maid or footman if we manage to get you home before the polite world sees us.’

  ‘My father’s servants have enough to do without running about after me.’

  ‘This is London; you need one with you and it will make you conspicuous if you refuse to bend to the rules of polite behaviour.’

  ‘If you say so,’ she said as if she intended to do whatever she wanted never mind what he said.

  ‘I do and I used to be an expert on staying just the right side of the line not to have to marry a society beauty. You should take my advice if you don’t want to have to wed me to save us a scandal.’

  ‘You sound as if you were a devil with the ladies once upon a time, my lord. Is that what you are trying to do with me?’ A short pause while he glared at her for taking his advice so lightly. ‘Make me your flirt,’ she explained as if she didn’t even care, and it hurt.

  ‘I am not flirting with you and the truth is I don’t know what I am doing with you. You are a complete mystery to me, Lady Melissa.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Whatever we are or are not we must walk before the fashionable throng turn up for their ritual exercise and find us here before them and still arguing.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ she said suspiciously. He could have provided a long list of all the things he would like to do to shock the fashionable throng to their sophisticated marrow, but decided it wasn’t the time or place to let her know she had all his attention and a bit more he hadn’t even known he had until he met her.

  Chapter Eight

  With a loud sigh to let him know she was doing so reluctantly, Melissa laid the very tips of her fingers on the crook of Lord Lathbury’s mockingly offered arm. Even with her gloves and his impeccable dark blue superfine coat sleeve and all the rest of his gentlemanly attire between her and his powerful body, she was so aware of him it was difficult to hear what he was saying for a fuzzy moment, as if her body had been waiting for a lover like him for so long it was determined to have him by hook or by crook.