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it.
    He had not winced even though he must have felt pain. He was reclined in his chair, one elbow resting on the arm, his head propped on his hand while he regarded her with half-closed eyes.
    “I am sorry,” she said. “The blood had dried.”
    He half nodded and she set about the task of cleansing the wound with warm water before applying the balsam powder she had found among the housekeeper’s supplies.
    She had nursed her father through a lingering illness until the moment of his death a year and a half ago. Poor Papa. Never a robust man, he had lost all his will to live after Mama’s passing, as if he had allowed disease to ravage him without a fight. By the end she had been doing everything for him. He had grown so very thin. This man’s leg was strong and well muscled.
    “You are new to London?” he asked suddenly.
    She glanced up. She hoped he was not going to start amusing himself by prying into her past. It was a hope that was immediately dashed.
    “Where did you come from?” he asked.
    What should she say? She hated lying, but the truth was out of the question. “From a long way away.”
    He winced as she applied the powder. But it was necessaryto prevent the infection that might yet cost him his leg. The swelling worried her.
    “You are a lady,” he said—a statement, not a question.
    She had tried a cockney accent, with ludicrous results. She had tried something a little vaguer, something that would make her sound like a woman of the lower classes. But though she could hear accents quite clearly, she found it impossible to reproduce them. She had given up trying.
    “Not really,” she said. “Just well brought up.”
    “Where?”
    It was a lie she had already told. She would stick with it since it immediately killed most other questions.
    “In an orphanage,” she said. “A good one. I suppose I must have been fathered by someone who could not acknowledge me but who could afford to have me decently raised.”
    Oh, Papa
, she thought. And Mama too. Who had lavished all their love and attention on her, their only child, and given her a wondrously happy family life for sixteen years. Who would have done their utmost to see her settled in a life as happily domesticated as their own if death had not claimed them first.
    “Hmm” was all the Duke of Tresham said.
    She hoped it was all he would ever say on the subject. She wrapped the clean bandage securely but loosely enough to allow for the swelling.
    “This stool is not high enough even with the cushion.” She frowned and looked around, then spied a chaise longue adorning one corner of the library. “I suppose you would rain down fire and brimstone on my head if I were to suggest that you recline on that,” she said, pointing. “You could retain all your masculinepride by remaining in your library, but you could stretch your leg out along it and elevate it on the cushion.”
    “You would banish me to the corner, Miss Ingleby?” he asked. “With my back to the room perhaps?”
    “I suppose,” she said, “the chaise longue is not bolted to the floor. I suppose it could be moved to a place more satisfactory to you. Close to the fire, perhaps?”
    “The fire be damned,” he said. “Have it moved close to the window. By someone considerably more hefty than you. I will not be responsible for your suffering a dislocated spine even if there would be some poetic justice in it. There is a bell rope beside the mantel. Pull on it.”
    A footman moved the chaise longue into the light of the window. But it was on Jane’s shoulder that the duke leaned as he hopped from his chair to take up his new position. He had flatly refused, of course, to allow himself to be carried.
    “Be damned to you,” he had told her when she had suggested it. “I shall be carried to my grave, Miss Ingleby. Until then, I shall convey myself from place to place even if I must avail myself of some assistance.”
    “Have you always been so stubborn?” Jane asked while