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information, all the same.”
    “Naturally.” He stepped forward. “Any man so quick to express his opinions must be well-informed, yes?”
    “Absolutely,” she replied. He rewarded her with a wicked grin that spawned a hundred molten butterflies inside her chest and made her wish that she could read the forbidden spin of his thoughts. “ Get away, you fool! You’re in a private conversation with a complete stranger and losing every rational thought in your head like some brainless flirt every time he smiles! ” an inner voice warned her in panic. She straightened her shoulders and stiffened her spine before taking a symbolic step back. “I meant to merely apologize for . . . intruding.” She bent her knees to offer a somewhat shaky, if shallow, curtsy before straightening again. “I’ll just go back to the party and leave you to your . . . observations.”
    “And had you been planning on hiding up here?”
    “No. I was—catching my breath.” The lie was ridiculous. No one climbed a flight of back stairs to creep about a dusty gallery to “catch their breath.” “Well, good night.”
    She turned and began her retreat, but a feminine curiosity too strong to ignore made her turn and look back. He hadn’t moved, and he made no effort to disguise the fact that he was watching her as she withdrew. She lifted her chin defiantly and asked her question. “You never did say what you were doing up here, did you?”
    “No, I didn’t.”
    The pause lengthened as she waited for him to offer an excuse, and it was clear by his stance and expression that she wasn’t going to get one so easily. A small twinge of her first impression of him, as a deadly predator not to be trifled with, returned. “And if I asked you directly?”
    “I would probably say I was catching my breath.” He smiled again, and this time the heat that bloomed inside of her betrayed itself on her cheeks. Haley put up a gloved hand to suppress the blush and then turned and fled.
    There’d been no introductions. It was unthinkable to even consider asking his name or offering hers at such an unorthodox encounter. But what kind of gentleman stood in unlit galleries and made no effort to defend himself? He’d been dressed in evening clothes as any respectable guest would have been, but now she felt a measure of genuine alarm at the idea that he may have been some sort of burglar or criminal lurking in the shadows above them all. And I directed him to Mr. Bascombe’s private library!
    She pushed away the ridiculous notion of courteous burglars in evening coats with a stern internal lecture on the rules of small talk. The temperature and number of guests—why can I never remember to just mumble something innocuous about how warm the room is or to compliment the party for its popularity?
    At the door at the bottom of the staircase, she hesitated. The crush of the guests awaited her, and Haley took a long, slow deep breath to try to recapture an illusion of calm. If the stairwell had been wider, and there wasn’t the imminent threat of that stranger following at any moment, she’d have indulged in lingering there a while longer. But she wasn’t foolish enough to risk one more misstep.
    Horrifying enough if anyone notes me coming back through this door and then sees him coming after! They’ll think it was some preplanned tryst! It was a new thought and one that propelled her quickly through the door.
    Luckily, the few guests in the hallway didn’t appear to make any special note of her unorthodox reentry, and Haley made an effort to move without any guilty haste to draw their eyes. To avoid Lady Pringley, she deliberately chose another doorway at the far end of the salon nearer the card tables and demurely began a quiet search for Aunt Alice.
    After a few minutes the bobbing yellow feathers at last betrayed Aunt Alice’s whereabouts, and Haley felt a small measure of her anxiety dissipate at the sound of the woman’s familiar chatter. “I