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that I am not in the habit of indulging in such subterfuges, my lord. I am eight-and-twenty," she added smoothly, her eyes still fixed defiantly on his harsh face.
    "Eight-and-twenty?" he repeated, and Athena caught a note of surprise in his voice.
    So, she mused with an odd flash of pleasure that the earl had thought her younger that she was, his lordship was not infallible. He had misjudged her. Briefly, Athena regretted not shaving three or four years off her age, but that was precisely the tack he would expect her to take, she thought, and an outright lie—besides being distasteful to her—would only confirm the unfavorable opinion he already had of her.
    An uncomfortable silence pervaded the room, and Athena dropped her eyes to her clasped hands, forcing herself to relax. She could feel the earl's eyes upon her, and knew that he was assessing her, perhaps to discover why his son had fallen within her coils. She was quite sure that St. Aubyn thought of her modest attractions as quagmires into which Peregrine had been lured by a scheming fortune hunter.
    "I presume that my son is aware of this fact?"
    Athena raised her eyes and smiled faintly. "Oh, yes, indeed, my lord," she replied in her softly modulated voice. She knew that her voice was one of her attractive features—too many gentlemen had remarked upon it for her to believe otherwise— and she wondered whether she could use it to pacify the hostility of the man before her.
    "And you thought nothing of enticing an innocent boy of nineteen to make a cake of himself over you, I suppose?"
    His tone was harsh, and the words intended to wound. Athena's smile faltered. No, she thought, it would take more than a pleasant tone to deflect the earl's hostility. It would be difficult enough to be minimally civil.
    "It was never a case of enticing, my lord. I can assure you that—"
    "You will never convince me that a female of your looks and experience had the least trouble bedazzling an impressionable boy into believing himself infatuated."
    Athena swallowed the angry retort that rose to her lips. "You overestimate my powers of persuasion, my lord. And my experience, too, I might add. I was married at eighteen and widowed only recently, so I cannot imagine what experience you refer to." She deliberately refrained from acknowledging the earl's casual reference to her looks, although she could not help wondering which of her feminine attributes he considered noteworthy enough to bedazzle a gentleman.
    She heard the crack of derisive laughter again and flinched.
    "Do not play the innocent with me, madam," the earl drawled, his gaze raking her face with studied insolence. "Do you really expect me to believe that you have received no offers of a more—shall we say—mundane nature during your stay in London? I cannot believe that a penniless widow with a pretty face did not attract the notice of a few of our notorious rakes."
    Athena pushed herself out of the chair and stood, her knees trembling, staring at the earl across the wide expanse of the desk. She could not believe what she was hearing. Had this man actually suggested that she was better suited to be some gentleman's light-skirt than Peregrine's wife? It did nothing to mitigate her anger to remember that she had indeed received offers of carte blanche from at least two erstwhile protectors.
    Lord St. Aubyn smiled wolfishly. "Can you deny it, madam?" he said softly.
    Athena kept her voice under control. "No, I do not deny that I have received indecent offers from men who are all too eager to take advantage of an unprotected female. But you are off the mark, my lord, if you believe that I would ever consider such an arrangement. I may be impoverished, but I am not lost to all sense of decency."
    "How very touching," he drawled, his dark eyes full of insolence again. "So I take it that you prefer to beguile an innocent boy into taking a step that he will rue for the rest of his life?"
    The echo of this ugly accusation