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Martingale’s voice calling from the corridor.
    “Promise me,” he’d begged against her skin.
    She’d nodded, retrieved her still-tingling hand, and hurried after her teachers. The rest of the tour she’d hugged her hand to her heart even as she hugged the memory.
    Even now, she found the memory potent. He’d been so romantic, so dashing, made up of equal parts of danger and delight. It had taken little to persuade her to throw everything she’d been taught out the window, if only she could be with him. What a shame he had turned out to be someone who cared for nothing but himself. A greater shame, she supposed, that she’d spent much of the intervening five years bemoaning her choice. No more. She had worked too hard, come too far.
    Whatever the cost, she vowed, Jareth Darby would find it much more difficult to persuade her of anything this time.
     

Chapter Five
     
    Jareth lost no time in attempting to see Eloise again. The hesitation he had felt in approaching her vanished in the face of her coolness. She offered him the first challenge he had been given in a long time. With Cheddar Cliffs as the prize, he could not fail to meet that challenge. Determined to make his case, he appeared at her home at the fashionable hour of three in the afternoon.
    “I regret to say,” her hard-faced butler informed him with a nose so high Jareth wondered he didn’t drown in the rain, “that Miss Watkin is not at home.”
    More annoyed than deterred, he tried again the next day and the next, leaving his card each time. He tried calling early and late. He tried returning in a quarter hour in hopes he might catch her coming home. In all cases, the butler refused to allow him admittance.
    He kept trying, but, by Saturday evening, he had yet to renew the lady’s acquaintance. He considered breaking his word to Lord Nathaniel and accosting her in public but decided against it. She was just as likely to cut him again. He resolved to wait on her front step until she returned, if need be. Eleanor, who with Justinian had joined him at the theatre, pointed out that Eloise would likely not be receiving until Sunday afternoon and he might as well come to church with them in the morning. Neatly cornered, he’d been unable to find an excuse to disagree.
    The service at St. George’s Hanover Square was uninspiring. In fact, it seemed calculated to annoy him, being based on the text of David and Bathsheba. The similarities with his reason for leaving London did not go unnoticed. Of course, David had lusted after Bathsheba, and he had merely rescued Lady Hendricks. He did not think it wise to mention that to the good minister.
    As his mind wandered with the sermon, so did his gaze. He noted with amusement who was squirming and who was snoring. Several ladies seemed intent on attracting his attention, even a couple with husbands in tow. The mothers of the younger ones seemed equally intent on disabusing any notions of his suitability. They at least knew better than to put stock in his attendance at church.
    One particular young lady two rows in front and to the right continued to glance back at him. The third time he noticed, he realized it was the Miss Sinclair who had bumped into him at Almack’s. The light from the nave candles danced over her red-gold hair and silhouetted her slender form. She should have looked angelic, only her glances toward him were anything but. Only the obviously pointed whispers from the woman next to her (he assumed her mother) forced her gaze to remain forward for the last part of the service.
    It was only as he rose to leave that he saw that Eloise had been sitting a few rows behind him. She wore a white muslin gown trimmed with pink rosebuds and satin ribbon. He had no trouble picturing her as an angel. Unfortunately, that only reminded him of their first meeting again. A shame all he could ask of her was her forgiveness. A greater shame that she would not even grant that.
    She saw him watching her and