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people I sought to avoid when I quit London.”
    He was regarding her closely, his expression hard to read, and then he did the most unexpected thing: he patted her hand. A gentle, glancing stroke of his fingers over her knuckles.
    The gesture should have felt condescending, but instead it was… comforting.
    “Society is the very devil.” He topped off her wine. “As the heir to a marquess, I can only sympathize with your disparagement of it. And my condolences on the loss of your father. I’m hoping my own lives to a biblical age.”
    He sounded very sincere in this wish, very human. Hester tried not to be disconcerted by that.
    She’d thought dinner would be a struggle, but by the time he was asking her to finish his serving of trifle, she realized more than an hour in Spathfoy’s company had been… enjoyable.
    “We’ve almost lost the light, Miss Daniels, but is there time for a short turn in the garden? A stroll before retiring settles the meal and is a personal habit of mine. If nothing else, I can look in on Flying Rowan.”
    She could not politely refuse, and it wasn’t pitch dark yet. He assisted her to her feet, taking her hand then tucking it over his arm. He touched her with a certain competence, a male assurance that suggested handling women came instinctively to him.
    She could not quite resent him for this—being handled competently was too rare a treat—but Hester vowed she would not be swayed by his abilities in this regard. He was an invading army of one, and his company manners did not make his mission any less suspect.
    “The roses are particularly lovely,” she said as they moved across the terrace. “Mary Fran spares no effort in their care.”
    “My grandmother was quite the gardener. My Scottish grandmother, that is.”
    “And you must have seen her gardens at some point?”
    He walked along beside her, making a gentlemanly accommodation to her shorter stride, and yet she felt him hesitate at the question.
    “I did. For a succession of boyhood summers, I was sent to my grandparents while my parents attended various house parties in the South.”
    He said nothing more, revealed no memories of those long-ago summers, so Hester was casting about for a polite topic they hadn’t yet exhausted, when an odd, ugly sound split the evening gloom. Beside her, Spathfoy paused.
    Hester shuddered, wanting to put her hands over her ears. “What is that? It sound like a child in distress, a very young child.”
    “It’s a fox, and I’ve been told that sound is Reynard’s attempt to attract a mate.”
    “Pity the poor vixen, then, if that’s his best effort at courtship.” Hester wanted to move, to get away from that unpleasant, raucous noise, though it didn’t seem to bother her escort.
    “The female’s lot is often unenviable, or so my sisters would have me believe. Which is your favorite rose?”
    They made a circuit of the entire garden, until Hester’s head was beginning to ache with the unaccustomed amount of wine she’d consumed and the burden of being sociable to a man she did not like or trust. He left the impression that being cordially pleasant was no effort for him, so thoroughly ingrained were his gentlemanly inclinations.
    “It is nearly dark,” Hester said. “Shall you visit your horse?”
    “Let’s sit for a moment. It has been some time since I paused to appreciate the fragrance of roses on the evening air.”
    Mother of God, he sounded wistful, and there was nothing for it but she must sit with him. Hester appropriated a wooden bench between the Bourbons and the Damasks, hearing the seat creak when Spathfoy came down beside her.
    “I see a lamp burning in the opposite wing from my bedroom, though I doubt you have servants biding on the ground floor.”
    “Aunt Ree’s rooms are on the ground floor to spare her the stairs and put her closer to the kitchens if she’s in need of a posset at bedtime.”
    As they watched, Lady Ariadne herself bobbed past a window, her