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think I've ever had such a scold. No, but I admit I don't expect one in your position to be so fearless."
    "My position?"
    "You who must live subje ct to the will of others. You who must dress just so," with a flick of his fingers he indicated her pale gray muslin day gown, almost the same shade as her dull evening gowns, "and behave just so to keep a position that pays poorly and commands little or no respect."
    "How clearly you enumerate my disadvantages. Very well. Yes, all that is true. Would you prefer I bow and scrape like a servant for fear you will apply to the Trents to have me turned off?"
    "Others would act so."
    "Is that what you like?"
    "God, no. Quite the opposite."
    She looked at him, and he at her, his eyes searching her face. "Why bother with this?" she asked in honest confusion. "I have nothing for you. I am nobody."
    "I do not know. It was an impulse."
    "An ill-thought one. Go away."
    He looked at her gravely for a long moment, then smiled a faint smile. "Very well," he said, and got to his feet. "Good afternoon." He tipped his hat and walked off into the trees, an easy, lithe stride at odds with his excellently tailored clothes.
    "Mincing dand y," she tried out in an ill-natured murmur too quiet to reach his ears, but did not like the sound of it on her own tongue. It did not fit him, and besides: "I am becoming a shrew." Twenty-five, a confirmed spinster, a disregarded governess and now, albeit briefly, the object of attention for a rake. An unpleasant character to lay claim to, but there it was. No point denying the truth. "You would be scandalized, Grandmere." But no, if her dear grandmother and mentor was here the old lady would probably laugh and shrug and snap her fingers, tolerant of the vagaries of people.
     

 
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER FIVE
     
    He stared across the table at her. She was contemplating her fan of cards with a faint wrinkle between her brow, her eyes flicking from them to the table, and back again. He watched her mouth turn firm as she made her decision and discarded, then cocked her head sideways at Mr Scott who sat beside her.
    That mouth of hers was very lush. He wondered why he had not noticed it the first time he saw her. Then she had seemed nothing out of the ordinary. A dark-haired woman with a narrow face, fine-boned and a littl e haughty. In fact he barely recalled the moment of their meeting. He might even have met her last time he stayed with the Trents, and forgotten it. She had been governess here for two years, apparently.
    Blessed if he could recall her.
    She sat very upright, shoulders back and head held high. Her figure was almost painfully slender, and he would have assumed her an ascetic if he had not felt the heat of her response that night in his room, fierce passion winning past initial hesitation.
    She was no nun.
    Whatever pleasures of the flesh she might avoid, a sexual fire burned inside her.
    She knew he looked at her. She had avoided his gaze this past hour, while they played, and he saw pink rise to and recede from her pale skin. Yes, she was aware of him. He wanted her to look at him with those dark blue eyes, to glare and set her chin so that lower lip pouted out just a little further.
    Yes.
    Though more, he wanted to see her smile at him. She had a beautiful smile. It transformed her completely, with hints of mischief and complicity suddenly waking on that stern face. Suddenly she could seem an elfin creature, brimming with vigorous energy.
    But no, she only smiled at others, not at him. With him she pulled back into that perfectly correct, upright stance and her eye s went cool and distant. It piqued his curiosity. Not that the disapproval of women was completely foreign to him. As many turned up their noses at him as allowed themselves to be charmed, and that had never bothered him. Too well he knew how easily an offended frown could become sighs and surrender with the right application of flattery and seductive certainty. It was an ability he had