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with her pride about six hundred miles ago, and she very much feared it was going to get worse.
    Dead tired, yet filled with restless energy, she drifted back into the smoking parlor, where the light from a single sconce wavered, casting odd, shifting shapes up the walls and along the shelves. She flung herself down on the tatty old sofa and was immediately struck by a warm, already familiar scent. MacLachlan. Unmistakably. Then she saw the coat tossed so carelessly across a nearby chair. She tried to ignore the tantalizingly masculine scent which teased at her nostrils, and instead picked up a fine, leather-bound book from the untidy heap on the tea table.
    She studied the small gold letters on the spine. Théorie Analytique des Probabilitiés by de Laplace. Esmée flipped it open, then muddled along in her bad French just far enough to realize that the author’s theories, which had something to do with arithmetic, were far above her head. And far above MacLachlan’s, too, she was sure. Perhaps the book had been left out as a sort of decorative pretense? But when she looked about the messy, malodorous room, she quickly cast that notion aside. No, there were no pretensions to refinement here.
    Curious now, she picked up another. This book was very old indeed, its brown leather binding badly cracked. De Ratiociniis in Ludo Aleae by someone named Huygens. This one she could not read at all, for it was in a language she’d never seen. But again, it contained a great many numbers and mathematical formulas.
    What on earth? She dug deeper. Beneath another six such books was a sheaf of foolscap, filled with chicken scratch and numbers. On the whole, it looked to be the ramblings of an insane mind—which fit what she’d seen of MacLachlan so far. But all the fractions, decimal points, and strange annotations were beginning to give her a headache. Esmée restacked the lot, blew out the sconce, and returned to Sorcha’s side.
    Relief surged at the sight of the child’s face, so serene and happy. Yes, she had agreed to MacLachlan’s outrageous proposal. What else was she to do? Leave Sorcha, merely to preserve her own good name? One could not eat a pristine reputation. One could not sleep on it or shelter under it. And who else would give them a home together?
    MacLachlan might be a rogue and a scoundrel—he was without a doubt lazy and self-indulgent—but he showed no evidence of cruelty. That surprised her. In her experience, the handsomest men were often the cruelest. Was not Lord Achanalt a sterling example?
    She let her gaze drift about the room, taking in the gold silk walls and the high, narrow windows with their opulent draperies. It was smaller, yet far more elegant than anything they’d had in Scotland. It was a miracle MacLachlan had not tossed them into the street. It was what she had expected; what she had steeled herself for. Indeed, it was just what her stepfather had done. For a moment, Esmée’s anger got the better of her grief. Of Achanalt, she’d long expected the worst. But her mother? How could she just die and leave them to the mercy of that man?
    As she undressed, Esmée noticed the ormolu clock on the mantel. Half past one. Her coach to Bournemouth would be leaving in five hours. If ever she were going to change her mind, the turning point was tonight. She might be a grass green girl from the Highlands, but she had every idea that once she remained alone in this house with a man of MacLachlan’s repute, her employability in a decent household would be at an end. Worse, even in a state of dishabille, he was handsome. Dangerously so. Esmée did not like him, no. But her mother’s blood coursed through her veins, and that, too, was dangerous.
    But despite her fears, and her strange mix of grief and anger over her mother’s death, there was a tenuous hope kindling in Esmée’s heart. As she slowly bathed in the warm water Wellings had sent up, Esmée let herself savor the feeling. He was going to do