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Romantic love might ruin that.”
    He shrugged, his russet coat straining across his broad shoulders. “Perhaps it’s better this way. Simon is honorable, intelligent, and superlatively eligible. I could not hope for Tony to find a better husband.  It...it would be a waste of her warmth and love if she never married.” 
    She studied Adam’s profile, the strong chin and the powerful body, and wondered if he truly believed what he had just said. In her experience, platonic love was a female ideal.  When a man loved a beautiful woman, romance and passion were inextricably mixed. 
    Though Adam was lying if he said his feelings for Antonia weren’t romantic,  it was a noble lie, born of a generous love.  Anyone who had been in the room when Antonia met Simon Launceston would know the result was a foregone conclusion, and Adam was doing his best to deal with that devastating knowledge.
    He could have been furious or bitter at the shattering of his hopes.  Instead, he was acting with painful gallantry.  She wondered if Antonia realized just how much she would lose if she chose a different husband. 
    Wanting to distract him from his pain, she asked, “What were the circumstances that led you to grow up in the Spenston household? Antonia has never told me.”
    “No, she would not have mentioned,” he said. Without looking at his companion, he continued, “I’m baseborn.”
    Judith’s eyes widened, understanding now why he’d told Antonia that close association would do her reputation no good. His cousin had replied tartly that no one cared about such things, but Adam was right.  There were those who would condemn Antonia for treating a bastard connection with such familiarity.  She sighted.  “It shouldn’t matter, but in this imperfect world, it does.”
    “My father was a loose-screw cousin of Antonia’s father, some kind of political radical.” Adam gaze rested unseeing on the clear water rushing past in the brook. “He ran off with the daughter of a Nonconformist minister, and they lived together in London.  He was too radical to believe in marriage, even when his mistress bore a child. Both families cast them off.
    “When I was two, he was killed in a carriage accident, leaving my mother to fend for both of us. She worked as a seamstress. I can remember her sewing by the light of a single candle, her eyes red, wearing cotton gloves so that the chilblains on her hands wouldn’t damage the fine ladies’ fabrics.”
    He released his breath in a sigh. “By the time I was seven, she was dying, and she knew it. When she asked her father for help, he invited her to burn in hell for eternity.  So she wrote to Lord Spenston, whom my father had said was the most approachable of his relations.
    “By the time my mother’s letter reached Spenston, she was dead, and the landlady of the house where we lived had sold me to a chimney sweep to be a climbing boy.”
    Judith gasped in outrage. “How could she do such a thing?”
    “Very easily,” Adam replied dryly. “My mother was unable to work at the end, and our rent was in arrears. The landlady felt entitled to what she could get for the dead woman’s possessions, which included me. Maybe she even thought I was better off with the sweeper, since the alternatives were the parish or living in the streets. At least the sweeper fed his boys, though not much—bad for business if we grew too quickly.
    “Lord Spenston had never been close to my father, but he felt some sense of obligation to his cousin’s son. His agents located the sweeper, and Spenston came and bought me after I’d been there about three months. I believe I cost him three pounds, which represented a good profit to the sweeper, who had paid only thirty shillings to the landlady.”
    Judith’s mouth tightened at the reality concealed by the flat words. The treatment of climbing boys was a disgrace.  Most of them did not live to grow up. It was a form of slavery in the heart of Britain,