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days’ time.”
    “She already knows, I take it?”
    “Yes—a cold, impartial telegram. But I want to see her. She deserves that.”
    “It might not be easy.” Mr. Collins put his hand on Steven’s shoulder. “If you’d like me to go with you, I will. I am her solicitor too, you know.”
    Steven shook his head. “She’ll be angry with me, and you need have no part in it.” He shrugged, and Collins released him. “I’ll cheer myself up helping Rose—the dowager duchess, I mean. Fortify myself for my task.”
    Collins gave him a knowing look. “The
very beautiful
dowager duchess.”
    “Beauty isn’t everything. I’ve learned that a time or two.” Steven couldn’t stop his sudden grin. “This one’s beautiful all the way through.”
    “You’ve said that a time or two as well, Stevie.”
    “This is different.”
    “Heard that one too.” Collins returned the grin. “When you get your heart broken, look me up, and I’ll pour whiskey down your throat. Again.”
    “I won’t get my heart broken,” Steven said. “This is different, because it’s not a romance. I’m helping her; she’s taking my mind off my troubles.”
    “Yes, of course.” Collins’s words were drowned out as a hansom clattered to a stop at the doorman’s signal. “Don’t you break
her
heart. She doesn’t deserve that.”
    “No fear,” Steven answered. “Go do what you’re best at, Collins, and stop giving me advice on romance. Be off with you.”
    Collins stuck out his hand, shook Steven’s, and scrambled into the hansom. Steven watched the man drive off, his emotions mixed. Whoever got their heart broken in this business arrangement, Steven was certain, it wouldn’t be Rose.
    He put aside such maudlin thoughts as he headed out of the rain back into the hotel. His heart beat faster as he ascended the stairs, knowing Rose awaited him at the top. He wondered, between steps, whether his need to make up for his failure had prompted him to help her.
    But when he opened the door, and Rose turned from the window with her welcoming look, Steven knew he’d not taken up with her for any feelings of guilt. He’d walk through fire for this woman. Steven only just met her, but already she’d changed his life.
    If nothing else came of this, he’d be a different man when he left her, and for that he’d be forever grateful.
    ***
    Sittford House, seat of the Dukes of Southdown, lay in Hampshire, far enough from London and other cities to be free of smoke and grime. These days, with trains as swift as they were, the journey was not more than an hour or two.
    Steven booked a first-class carriage for himself and Rose. Journalists lay in wait for them outside the hotel, and managed to be in the train station as well. They wanted to know where Rose and Steven were going.
    “Business,” Steven told them, and let them make of it what they would. “You know how betrothals are.”
    “When will the banns be read?” someone asked. “Or will this be a Scottish wedding?”
    “We’ll wed in Scotland,” Steven said. “With family.” He tipped his hat. “Good day, gentlemen. Ladies.”
    Rose said nothing at all, only gave them her winsome smile. The smile sent Steven on flights of wicked fancy, but he could see the journalists didn’t approve. Perhaps if Rose had been demure and walked about with her head bowed, she might escape more of the scurrilous stories. The journalists might have decided that her late husband had married a nurse to take care of him in his dotage, instead of a lively woman to give him back his youth.
    Rose Barclay was anything but demure, Steven thought as the maid fussed around to settle her into the compartment. Though her frock was buttoned to her chin, and she wore only mourning jewelry, her color was high, her eyes sparkling, her head lifted. All the black clothes in the world couldn’t repress her vibrancy.
    As the train slid out of the city, and the maid left them, Rose looked about her as though this