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looked grim and unhappy.
    She knew exactly what she had to do.
    “You wish me to release you from our engagement,” she said.
    Shock flared in his eyes. “How did you know?”
    She freed herself from his grasp. What was she to say now? It could not be anything that remotely resembled the truth. The truth was too personal and they had never spoken of intimate things. Their relationship had been entirely superficial.
    What she wanted to say was:
    “I know we cannot marry because I have always been aware that there is something between you and Lady Elizabeth Scarlet that is too powerful to be ignored, and I do not wish to play second fiddle to it for the rest of my life. I am sure she is in love with you and that you desire her in a way you never desired me…”
    No indeed, the perfectly judged, beautifully behaved Miss Flora Minchin could never utter such words to her betrothed, no matter how much she knew them to be true.
    “I think that we would not suit.” She smiled brightly at him. “I have thought it for a little while.”
    He was looking at her as though she had taken leave of her senses, which in all probability it must seem she had. Not suit? How could they not suit when there was not sufficient emotion in their relationship for them ever to disagree on anything? How could they be anything other than perfectly matched when he had the title and she the money? He was afortune hunter and she an heiress looking to be a countess. She knew that marriage was a business arrangement, or so her parents had told her, with their banking fortune that had bought everything they had ever wanted except, it seemed, an Earl as a son-in-law and the prospect of a dukedom, almost the highest estate imaginable, once Nat’s father died.
    Flora got to her feet and moved away from him, smoothing her immaculate skirts as she walked across the room.
    “It is fortunate that you called this morning,” she said, “and that we have had the opportunity to resolve this before it was too late.”
    Nat was shaking his head. He raked his hand through his hair. “I ought to explain to you—”
    Flora raised a hand to stop him. This would never do. The last thing she wanted from him was that he should explain. “Please do not,” she said.
    “But I cannot let you take the sole responsibility for this.” Nat sounded anguished. “It isn’t right that you should bear that.”
    It was Nat Waterhouse’s tragedy, Flora thought, that he was too honorable a man to do what many other men would do in his position and cravenly accept the lifeline she was throwing him. Many a man, she was aware, would have crept out by now, abjectly grateful that she had absolved him of all responsibility.
    “If you are to be free, my lord,” she said gently, “you cannot have it any other way. A lady is allowedto change her mind. A gentleman is not in honor. It is as simple as that.”
    “I don’t deserve for you to make it so easy for me,” Nat said. He sounded grim. He came to her and took her hand in his, pressing a kiss on the back. Once again Flora’s heart did not flutter, but stayed beating as calmly as it always had.
    “You are an exceptional woman, Flora Minchin,” he said. “I had no idea.”
    “Which rather illustrates why we should have been badly suited,” Flora countered dryly. “Let us leave it at that.”
    She could tell he did not want to go and leave her with the unconscionable mess of canceling a marriage on the wedding day itself. She could tell that every muscle in his body was straining to tell her the reason for his defection and to take the blame. She could even tell that he wanted her to lose her temper, to rant at him, scream and cry, because in doing so she would somehow lessen the intolerable guilt he was feeling.
    It gave her a small amount of satisfaction to appear totally calm and to deny him that relief. She was human, after all.
    She waited until he had gone out and Irwin, the butler, had closed the front door very