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thought, he must wish now that he hadn't.
    "Your Ladyship," he said to Mary as they came at last to Roddy's corner of the room. "Good afternoon. I trust you had a pleasant morning's walk to town?"
    "Quite, thank you," Mary said curtly, and Roddy had from her hostess the fleeting, agitated vision of a refusal to be driven into the village that morning by her husband's unvalued acquaintance.
    Roddy was frowning at that when Geoffrey took her hand and transferred it to Iveragh's. "Miss Delamore," Geoffrey said gravely. "May I present Faelan Savigar… Lord Iveragh."
    "I'm honored, Miss Delamore," the earl said, and Roddy found herself transfixed once again by coal-rimmed eyes of the clearest, strangest blue. He lifted her gloved fingers to his lips and pressed a firm kiss there without taking his eyes from hers. She swallowed. The spur-of-the-moment notion that had possessed her in Newmarket now seemed to border on insanity. Had he actually come to court her? There seemed to be a question in his glance, but without her gift, she trusted nothing. Still, if she could not fathom Iveragh's thoughts, she could be perfectly certain of the chilling emanations of disapproval from the rest of the company as he lingered a split second too long over her hand.
    It made her angry. What right had they to hold their noses in the air? Every one of them had some scandal in the closet, and though Roddy was a little unclear on exactly what Iveragh had done to earn such dislike, it could hardly be worse than some of the secret desires Roddy could have told about the most respectable matrons present. In a mood of challenge, she smiled back at Iveragh and said warmly, "Oh, but we've met before, I think—and not so long ago! Have you forgotten?"
    A shock wave of consternation swept through the room at her comment, but Roddy saw only the earl's face. It changed at her words, fleetingly but unmistakably, just a slight widening of his ice-blue eyes, a warming of the skeptical set of his mouth. Somehow Roddy knew it was a rare look that he gave her. "You're quite impossible to forget, Miss Delamore," he said softly. "I didn't know but what you might have decided to forget me in the interim."
    "Not at all, Your Lordship." She was well aware of the double-edged nature of her words, and her heart sped a little in conspiratorial excitement. "I believe I said at the time that I hoped I might see you again."
    "So you did." He turned to Lord Cashel, who was handing Mary up from her chair. "Yes, of course, Geoff, go on. You've done your duty manfully."
    Geoffrey nodded, and then looked back at the two of them as Mary turned away. "Dragons," he muttered, under cover of a cough, which reinstated him somewhat in Roddy's estimation.
    Iveragh stood back a little, turning partly toward the window as if, having finished his conversation with Roddy, he was interesting himself in some activity outside. She sat staring down at the handkerchief in her lap, far more aware of his silence beside her than of the busy hum of thought and conversation that emanated from the rest of the room.
    Even so, his low address startled her. "You astonish me, Miss Delamore. Are you not dismayed?"
    Roddy cast a glance up at him, and found that, to all appearances, he was still staring out the window. She took his cue, and bent her head before she answered softly, "I don't know what you mean."
    "Don't you? I should think it would be obvious that your entire acquaintance has taken me in extreme dislike."
    "It's no concern of mine what they think of you," Roddy retorted.
    He stiffened perceptibly. "I beg your pardon," he said. "Of course it's no concern of yours."
    The sudden hardening of his tone made her glance up again, realizing he had misinterpreted her offense. "I meant," she said quietly to his dark profile, "that what these people may think of you does not affect my own opinion in the least. I shall draw my own conclusions, Your Lordship."
    He was silent for a moment, and from the corner