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notion of something more than mere flirtation, but each time womanly instinct had warned her away.
    And then had come that day, some months past, when she’d come upon him unawares and realized with a stark and sudden clarity that perhaps her instincts had warned her away for a very good reason. That perhaps his flirtations really were meaningless; his depths farther beyond her reach than even she had imagined.
    Lazonby was thirty-five years old, and there was no woman in his life—nor had there ever been, so far as she knew. And Anisha had begun to wonder if she now understood why; if perhaps his passions drove him in an altogether different direction.
    But it almost didn’t matter, for he was her brother’s dearest friend—and her friend, too. More than friendship, however? No. Lord Lazonby was too closed off inside; too obsessed with his mad, furious notions of truth and revenge. And Anisha was wise enough to know a façade when she saw one; wise enough to know that on some level, she really didn’t know him at all, and likely never would.
    So Anisha had looked about for something to distract her from those dancing, devilish eyes. And as a result, she had proceeded to do what she now feared was a very foolish thing. She had listened to her brother.
    She had done precisely what she’d told Lazonby she would not do.
    Irritated by the recollection, Anisha plopped a huge pat of butter in the middle of her kedgeree. The fact that she did not particularly like the dish—and certainly never added extra butter—seemed this morning to have escaped her. She stabbed into it with a vicious relish.
    At the opposite side of the breakfast table, Lucan lowered his head and eyed her warily across his eggs. After cutting him a decidedly irritated glance—perhaps the third or fourth of the morning—Anisha began to chew. A small part of her was angry; not with him but with Raju.
    She had come here in large part for Lucan’s sake, so that their elder might give the young man a bit of gentlemanly direction—or at least a hard boot in the arse. Now here she was in London, still staring at Luc over breakfast, and Raju was off on a months-long wedding trip.
    So today was decidedly not the day for Lucan to ask for money.
    Again.
    But he had.
    Men, she had begun to believe, were nothing but a plague.
    But Lucan was still looking at her across the breakfast table from beneath his sweep of long, almost feminine eyelashes. Lady Anisha slammed down her fork with an ominous clatter.
    “Stop it , Luc,” she warned. “Do not dare look at me with those great, pitiful eyes. I shan’t do it, I tell you. Just because Raju has gone abroad does not mean I have suddenly lost my spine, for I quite assure you I did not need him to shore it up. I am quite put out with you all on my own.”
    Lucan hung his head another notch lower. “Just a loan, Nish, until Midsummer’s Day?” he pleaded. “Just enough to—”
    “To what?” she snapped. “To pay off your bookmaker? Your haberdasher? Your mistress? Let me remind you that in the last year or better, you have frittered away every penny of your allowance and once even landed yourself in a sponging house. And but for my mercy, there you would still likely be.”
    “No, I’d have graduated to debtor’s prison as Raju intended,” he said glumly.
    “As I’m painfully aware.” Anisha shoved away her tea with the back of her hand. “So I got you out. And at extortionate terms, too. And I suffered Raju’s wrath for my efforts. So yes, pray do not let it come to that again. Well, go on. What is it this time?”
    “Baccarat,” he muttered into his plate. “At the Quartermaine Club. And now there’s nothing else for it. I must behave as a gentleman ought, and you know it as well as I. The nabob stench is still near enough to draw flies.” His voice turned grim. “And I will not have it said, Anisha. Not of me, and certainly not of you .”
    It was Anisha’s turn to look away—not that she