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No one could be
    more unprepossessing than myself."
    Charlottescowled. "Do not feed me that Banbury tale. You Most certainly are not a potato pudding. just
    the opposite, in fact."
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    26
    Amanda Quick
    He stared at her. "I beg your pardon?" "You must know very well, sit, that your spectacles are a poor
    disguise." "Disguise?" He wondered if he had got the wrong address and the wrong Charlotte Arkendale.
    Perhaps he had got the wrong town. "What in the name of the devil do you believe me to be concealing?"
    "Surely you are not suffering from the illusion that those spectacles mask your true nature." "My true
    nature?" Baxter lost his grip on his patience. "Bloody hell, just what am 1, if not innocuous and
    unprepossessing.
    She spread her hands wide. "You have the look of a man of
    strong passions who has mastered his temperament with even
    stronger powers of self-control." "I beg your pardon?"
    Her eyes narrowed with grim determination. "Such a man cannot hope to go about unnoticed. You are
    bound to attract attention
    when you conduct business on my behalf I cannot have that in my man-of-affairs. I require someone
    who can disappear into a crowd.
    Someone whose face no one recalls very clearly. Don't you understand, sit? You give the appearance of
    being rather, well, to be quite blunt, dangerous. "
    Baxter was bereft of words.
    Charlotteclasped her hands behind her back and resumed her pacing. "It is quite obvious you will never
    be able to pass for a dull, ordinary man-of-affairs. Therefore, you must see that you would not
    do at all for my purposes."
    Baxter realized his mouth was hanging open. He managed to
    get it closed. He had been called many things, bastard, 111mannered, and a great bore being among the
    more common epithets. But no one had ever labeled him a man of strong passions. No one had ever
    claimed that he looked dangerous.
    He was a man of science. He prided himself on his detached, unemotional approach to problems,
    people, and situations. It was a
    -ts.@
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    trait he had honed to perfection years ago when he discovered that, as the bastard son of the Earl of
    Esherton and the notorious Emma, Lady Sultenham, he would be forever excluded from his rightful
    heritage.
    He had been a subject of speculation and gossip since the day he was born. He had learned early to
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    seek refuge amid his books and scientific apparatus.
    Although some women initially found the notion of an affair
    with the bastard son of an earl somewhat exciting, especially when they learned that he was a very
    wealthy bastard son, the sentiment
    did not last long. The weak flames generated in the course of his infrequent liaisons burned for only a
    very short time before sput tering out.
    His affairs had become even shorter in duration since his return
    fromItaly three years ago. The acid burns on his back and shoulders
    had healed but he was marked for life.
    Women reacted to the raw, ugly scars with shock and disgust. Baxter did not entirely blame them. He
    had never been handsome and the acid lacerations had done nothing to improve his looks. Fortunately,
    his face had been spared. He was, however, fed up with the inconvenience of having to make certain that
    the candles were snuffed and the fire banked before he got undressed and climbed into bed with a lady.
    On the last such occasion, some six months ago, he had nearly brained himself on the bedpost when he
    had tripped over his own boot in the inky darkness of the widow's unlit bedchamber. The incident had
    put a distinct damper on the remainder of the evening.
    For the most part, he sought his satisfactions and pleasures in his laboratory. There, surrounded by his
    gleaming beakers, flasks, retorts, and blowpipes, he could avoid the empty conversations and frivolous
    pursuits of the Polite World. It was a world