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landlord—and, more to the point, the land
lady
—arrived home within the next few hours, she was going to be sleeping here tonight quite unchaperoned in a room close to that of Mr. Lucius Marshall, who was horribly attractive even if he was also just plain horrible.
    She lowered her head and got to her feet, pushing out her chair with the backs of her knees as she did so.
    â€œI will go and see if the kettle is boiling yet,” she said.
    â€œWhat, Miss Allard?” he said. “You are allowing me the final word?”
    She was indeed.
    As she hurried off into the kitchen, her cheeks felt suddenly hot enough to boil a kettle apiece.

3

    It was the damnedest thing, Lucius thought when he was left alone, getting to his feet and going in pursuit of more ale.
    She was clad quite hideously in a brown dress a few shades lighter than her cloak. It was high-waisted, high-necked, and long-sleeved and about as sexless as dresses came. It draped a tall figure that was slender almost to the point of thinness. It was a figure that was as unvoluptuous as figures came. Her hair was much as he had expected it would look when she still wore her bonnet. It was dressed in a purely no-nonsense style, parted ruthlessly down the middle, drawn smoothly back at the sides, and coiled in a simple knot at the nape of her neck. Even allowing for the flattening effect of a bonnet, he did not believe she had even tried this morning to soften the style with any little curls or ringlets to tease the masculine imagination. The hair was dark brown, even possibly black. Her face was long and narrow, with high cheekbones, a straight nose, and a nondescript mouth. Her eyes were dark and thick-lashed.
    She looked prim and dowdy. She looked—and behaved—like the quintessential governess.
    But he had been dead wrong about her, nevertheless.
    For some reason that he had not yet fathomed—and it had to be the sum of the whole rather than any of the individual parts themselves—Miss Frances Allard was plain gorgeous.
    Gorgeous, but without anything in her manner that he found remotely appealing. Yet here he was, stuck with her until sometime tomorrow.
    He ought to have been happy to leave her alone in the kitchen, since she seemed content to be there. Certainly she did not put in any further appearance after drinking her tea and then clearing the table. Fortunately, she appeared to have taken just as strong an aversion to him as he had to her and was keeping out of his way.
    But after half an hour he was bored. He could go out to the stables, he supposed, to discover if Peters and the other coachman had come to blows yet. But if they had, he would be obliged to intervene. He wandered into the kitchen instead—and stopped abruptly just inside the door, assaulted by sights and smells that were totally unexpected.
    â€œGood Lord!” he said. “You are not attempting a beef pie, are you?”
    She was standing at the great wooden table that filled the center of the kitchen, her sleeves rolled up to her elbows, a voluminous apron wrapped about her, rolling out what looked suspiciously like pastry.
    â€œI am,” she said as he breathed in the aroma of cooking meat and herbs. “Did you think I was incapable of producing such a simple meal? I shall even contrive not to give you indigestion.”
    â€œI am overwhelmed,” he said dryly, though really he was. Poached eggs had never been high on his list of favorite dinnertime fare.
    There was a smudge of flour on one of her cheeks—and both the cheeks were flushed. The apron—presumably belonging to a very buxom Mrs. Parker—half drowned her. But somehow she looked more appealing than she had before—more human.
    He reached out and picked up a stray remnant of pastry from the table and popped it into his mouth a moment after she slapped at his hand—and missed it.
    â€œIf all you are going to do is
eat
the pastry when I have gone to the