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to her question. Finally he turned to her again. “I have enough money, and I care not for the petty posturing of your so-called quality. Beauty fades, although yours is the kind that lasts and grows more attractive with time.”
    Genie blushed again, that he thought she was pretty. Elgin had considered her red-tinged hair too gingery and garish, her figure too slim, her nose too short. Then again, he had loved her sister, a rounded blond goddess of a girl.
    Ardeth was still looking at her, as if he could see through her black gown, through her protests. “ A woman’s spirit, her heart, and her soul are what matters. I have seen yours, and you are a true lady. Helping you will help me atone for past sins, verily. You ask what other benefit I will reap. In return I ask your assistance.”
    Genie laughed, but without humor, trying to encompass his strength, his confidence, the very aura of power that surrounded him. The passing soldiers gave him wide berth and downcast eyes; the officers nodded respectfully, from a distance. Women simply stared, licking their lips like dogs at a butcher shop. This man could need nothing from anyone, and she said so.
    “Nay, I do need aid in returning to your world. That is, to England. I do not know all of its ways.”
    She recalled that he’d told Major Lord Willeford of his family’s living abroad. That might explain some of his odd turns of speech and manners. “You will learn quickly enough from the gentlemen at the coffeehouses and men’s clubs.”
    “Pompous prigs and wastrels cannot help me find something I have lost. You can.”
    “Here, in Brussels?” Genie was prepared to search every square inch, in return for what he had already given her.
    “I hope not. If so, I must leave it behind, for my affairs require me to get to England. My investments, my estate and inheritance, all need my presence, to say nothing of the College of Arms, confirming my succession to the earldom.”
    Genie was confused, a not-unusual state when dealing with Lord Ardeth. “But if you leave, how will you find your, ah, missing treasure?”
    “I am not precisely certain what it is that I am looking for.”
    Well, that made things as clear as mud. “Then how can I help?”
    “By letting me help you, if you can understand that.”
    “As your wife?”
    “I suppose I could give you an annuity, find you a secluded village here in the Low Countries to live where no one will doubt one more British war widow, or perhaps Wales or Scotland. I could hire a companion so your conventions are satisfied, and I could stay away so no one questions our relationship or your morals. I understand that comely widows are always subject to conjecture and improper proposals, but you could have your babe in peace and live a quiet life, unless you choose to create another scandal.”
    “I never set out to become grist for the gossip mills.”
    “Yet it follows you like flies to honey.”
    Genie took a moment to think about this new offer. “I could repay you, eventually.”
    They both knew the impossibility of that.
    Ardeth went on. “Aside from the dullness, you would still be a fugitive in hiding. If anyone learned of your past, you would be vilified. If anyone knew of my financial support, you would be deemed a fallen woman. I would not be there to protect you from village louts, or your son from suspicions of bastardy. You could not enter the world you were born to lest someone recognize you. Worst of all, you would be living more lies. Is that what you want?”
    She did not want to be beholden to anyone, but she did not want to be left behind. The hours after Elgin’s death, before Lord Ardeth entered the hospital and her life, were the most terrifying agony Genie had ever lived through. Abandoned, ostracized, alone. She did not wish to face that again.
    “A marriage license can remedy all of that. What is mine would be yours. A home of your own—no, several houses—that need a woman’s touch. A fortune to