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man no discretion? Well, if he preferred bluntness, she would oblige. She halted on the landing and turned to face him. He stopped a step below her, putting their eyes almost level. For some reason, that made her even more aware of his physical power. She repressed the urge to back away. "We've only just met, so how can I either like or dislike you?"
    "Since when is it necessary to know someone to dislike him? It's clear that you wish your father hadn't engaged me."
    "You look more like a marauder than a secretary," she said tartly. "And knowing my father, he didn't bother to ask for references. How did you learn about the position?"
    His gaze became opaque. "A friend of your father's told me."
    "Who?"
    "The gentleman preferred to remain anonymous."
    It was undeniably the sort of thing one of Sir Anthony's eccentric friends might do. "Do you have any letters of reference?" she asked. "Anything to suggest that you're not a fraud or a thief?"
    There was a faint tightening at the corner of his eyes. After a moment, he said, "No, though if you don't mind waiting, I suppose I could get one from the Duke of Wellington. He's known me for years, and I' think he considers me respectable."
    The matter-of-fact answer was quite convincing. Tacitly conceding the point, she said, "God forbid we should bother the duke over something so trivial."
    It was hard to concentrate this close to his face, which was even more fascinating than it had seemed at a distance. Piercing, charcoal-edged eyes that had seen sights she couldn't imagine. Skin tanned by a crueler sun than that of England. Lines of sternness and possibly humor. Once there must have been youthful softness over the hard planes of bone, but that had long since been scourged away. He made her think of a volcano: calm on the surface, but with unknowable depths of hidden fire.
    The captain said, "Am I missing any of the usual features?"
    "Faces interest me, especially those that have been well lived in." Her gaze went to the scar that curved from his cheek into the thick, dark hair at his temple. There was no puckering, only a pale, slightly raised line. She wanted to touch it, to find if it felt as smooth as it looked. Restraining herself, she asked, "Was that scar made by a saber?"
    It was not a tactful question, but he took it in stride, saying, "Yes, at Waterloo."
    So he had fought in that ghastly carnage. She had a vague recollection that the Rifle Brigade had been in the thick of the battle. "You were lucky not to lose your eye."
    "Very true," he agreed. "Since I wasn't handsome to begin with, I lost nothing of value."
    She wondered if he was trying to disconcert her. That was not easily done to a woman who had grown up in an artist's unconventional household. "Quite the contrary," she said thoughtfully. "The scar adds interest and emphasis to your face, like a highlight on a painting. Quite artistic, really. The Frenchman did a good job of cutting."
    She turned and resumed her ascent of the stairs. At the top, she led the way along the corridor. "The family bedrooms are on this floor. My father's is behind us, mine is to the left, and yours is here, overlooking the garden." His room shared a wall with her own chamber. That seemed far too close.
    She swung the door to his room open, then winced when she saw its state. "Sorry. This should have been cleaned after Tom Morley left." She should have known that one of the housemaids never did a lick of work if she could avoid it. The other, Betsy, was willing, but couldn't do everything. Rebecca
had
known, actually, but hadn't cared. She had an almost infinite capacity to overlook subjects that didn't interest her.
    Unperturbed, Wilding said, "Introduce me to the staff, and I'll arrange for the work to be done."
    "I'll take you down to the servants' hall in a few minutes." She drew a finger along the edge of the wainscoting and frowned at the thick dust that accumulated on the tip. The housekeeping really was disgraceful. "I look forward