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a choice in the matter. I refuse to go live in some rented cottage in the middle of nowhere because my late husband couldn’t stop with ruining his own life and had to drag me down with him.”
    “You know you will always have my support, Diane, whatever happens.”
    She drew a breath. “Yes, I know. Thank you, Jenny. That man does tend to make me wish to hit things.” Standing again, she brushed her palms down the front of her gown. She hadn’t so much as shaken his hand, but heat seemed to cling to her regardless. “You put the advertisement in the newspaper?”
    “ Oui. Beginning tomorrow. And I sent a note to Mr. Dunlevy. He will call at four o’clock today.”
    “Good. Considering that we’ve relocated the club to these premises, we’ll have to alter the floor plans somewhat.” Drawing her arm around Jenny’s, she forced a smile. “And we will make certain to put a brick wall between the club residences and my part of Adam House.”
    “A very thick brick wall,” her friend agreed.
    That left Diane the remainder of the day to revisit her decorating plans and see to the removal of the last vestiges of the Benchley family remaining in the house. Thus far the sale of a pearl necklace, two old vases, and a portrait—of someone who looked enough like Frederick that it actually gave her a nightmare—had only earned her ten pounds. But considering that that was more than Frederick had left her when he’d died, she considered it a fair beginning.
    *   *   *
    “So all that nonsense about you not recalling who Lady Cameron was,” Jonathan Sutcliffe, Lord Manderlin, commented, whipping his rapier up and toward the ground again in a swift salute, “that was what, you having a laugh at the rest of us?”
    Oliver adjusted his mask, flicked his own rapier sideways, and then lunged, digging the tip into the padded material covering Manderlin’s heart. “Perhaps.”
    “Touché!” the referee called, and the two men resumed their original places.
    “Good God, Haybury, do you have to go directly for the kill?”
    Beneath the mask, Oliver grinned. “Your heart is a very small target, Jonathan. I doubt that blow would have been fatal.”
    “Oh, very amusing. If my heart is small, yours must have turned to dust years ago.”
    “Fence!”
    This time Oliver feinted for a shoulder, waited for Manderlin to push his blade aside, then whipped the weapon down across the fine mesh of the viscount’s mask.
    “Touché!”
    “Are you attempting to dismember me, then? Generally you let me have a point or two to build my confidence before you destroy me.”
    “Apologies. I’m not feeling particularly charitable this afternoon, my friend.” In fact, he was quite happily imagining Diane Benchley standing opposite him, in her hands a parasol or something equally useless as he poked and prodded her at will. Yes, it was likely sexual, but he could hardly blame himself for that. The woman had been a tigress in bed. A demon, ripping beneath his skin to places he’d thought completely invulnerable. Taking his—
    “Touché!” jabbed into his ears a half second after Manderlin stabbed him in the gut. Oliver blinked.
    “Ha! Not invincible, are you?” Jonathan danced back and forth, swatting the empty air with his weapon.
    The half smile still on his face dropping into a scowl, Oliver backed to his beginning position. She was not allowed to make him weak. If it took living under her roof and playing her little game to prove that he’d moved well beyond whatever it was she’d nearly done to him, then so be it.
    “What, no chitchat now?” Manderlin taunted. “No witty ripostes or insults to my manliness?”
    Oliver jabbed a finger of his free hand at the referee, who swallowed. “Fence!”
    A minute later, Viscount Manderlin was flat on his back, suffering from a triplet of blows to his face, chest, and gut. Before their referee could finish calling out points or the outcome of the set, Oliver pulled off his mask and