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could be drawn, really. Her eyes were spectacular, a disconcertingly direct and clear green, a bit tilted, long dark lashes fanning from them. A mouth full and gently curved, soft-looking, just barely pink. The color of her skin when she blushed, her lips were. It hardly seemed necessary for a vicar’s daughter to have eyes like that, or a mouth like that, or skin so luminous it seemed to create its own light.
    And he couldn’t shake the sense that there was something familiar about her. Perhaps it merely had to do with her timeless sort of beauty.
    “Well, yes,” Wyndham continued. “I thought it was why you’d paid Miss Fairleigh any attention at all. You don’t think she’s pretty, Rhys? You can scarcely call her anything else. Despite her unfortunate years-old frocks and her pious plans for her future. Or…is that what you like about her?”
    “She’s clever,” Rhys said mildly, not addressing the question of whether or not she was pretty. Or mentioning the fact that he had, for a moment, been genuinely entertained by his exchange with Miss Fairleigh. “But she’s also more than a little self-righteous. I think it will be diverting to prove a point.”
    “What precisely did you have in mind?”
    Rhys straightened and cupped his hands over the top of his cue, rested his chin atop his hands. “She claims she cannot be seduced.”
    “You cannot have sat in the corner and discussed seduction with the proper Miss Fairleigh while I played cards with her friends and Sophia.” Wyndham said this with awe. He’d acquired a good deal of respect for Rhys’s power over the female of the species.
    Rhys laughed, but opted to remain cryptic. “Let’s just say I think it will be diverting to broaden Miss Fairleigh’s horizons.”
    “How will I know when her horizons have been broadened?”
    “She’ll blush in my presence. She’ll stammer. She’ll fawn. She’ll be speechless.” Rhys ticked off the list, sounding bored.
    “Oh, I see. The usual way.” This was how women behaved near Rhys typically, anyhow.
    “And then she’ll go back to Tinbury ever-so-slightly enlightened, and she might just pleasantly surprise whoever eventually marries her.”
    “Good God, Rawden, you don’t propose to—”
    “Relieve her of her virtue? No. But I do intend to relieve her of a little of her innocence.”
    Wyndham took his shot. An abysmal one. He shook his head regretfully. “How do you propose to do it?”
    “I haven’t yet decided.”
    But he knew that he could. Miss Fairleigh didn’t know it, but she was proud. She was clever. She was proud of being clever. He also suspected she possessed a temper and an imagination, for he’d watched her listen to him today, her eyes abstracted, taking in his words. Feeling his words.
    A clever man would know how to take advantage of the clues Miss Fairleigh offered to what other aspects of her nature might lie dormant.
    Rhys smiled to himself as he sank the ball of his choice in the pocket of his choice.
    He was a very clever man.

    CHAPTER FOUR
    A ND AT BREAKFAST the following morning at last, there was a familiar lean figure in somber clothing helping himself to kippers from the sideboard. Sabrina’s heart gave a little leap.
    Geoffrey turned and saw her, and looked startled. “Sabrina! What on earth?”
    “Are you surprised to find me here, Geoffrey?” She said it almost breathlessly.
    “I confess I am. But may I also say that I’m pleased?” He smiled at her, recovering nicely from his surprise.
    Geoffrey had such a pleasant way of speaking. Her father occasionally allowed him to give the sermons, and he chose many pretty words to make his point. “You may.” She smiled back at him.
    He lowered his voice. “And good heavens, what brings you to the den of my scandalous cousin?”
    Sabrina dimpled a little. “I am a guest of Lady Mary Capstraw. I am traveling as her companion.”
    She saw Geoffrey look puzzled for a moment, and then his face registered the