Gareth swiftly withdrew his hand and grabbed her night rail from seemingly nowhere, throwing it over her as he blew out the candle.

Evie would have cursed if she were in the habit of doing so, and happened to know any such words off the top of her head. Since she didn't, all she could do was huff in frustration for a second time as she sat up and leaped off the table, hastily pulling the night rail over her head just as the kitchen door swung open to reveal the butler, candle in hand.

"Miss Benedict!" he exclaimed. "I do beg your pardon! I had no idea..."

She turned her back to him. "Of course you didn't."

"I thought there might be an intruder. The housekeeper awakened me and said she thought she heard noises down here. She even thought she might have seen a prowler outside..."

Apparently, the housekeeper couldn't sleep either, if she was peering out her window all the way up in the attic and thus saw Gareth skulking about.

"There's no one outside," she gasped, barely able to speak. "I was hungry and came downstairs for a bite of that bread."

"Are you certain you're all right, miss? You sound as if you've been running from the hounds in fright."

"Oh, nothing like that, nothing at all," she said quickly and tremulously. "Go on back to bed. I'll be right up behind you."

"Should I leave the candle for you?"

"No, I came down here in pitch darkness, so I daresay I can find my way back without one. Good night now, and do tell the housekeeper I'm sorry to have disturbed everyone."

Lumsden left with his candle, plunging Evie back into darkness.

"My lord?" she whispered.

From somewhere in the shadows, he softly replied, "After this, I think you should call me Gareth. And after this, I think I should leave for the night, but rest assured I'll be back at daylight to take you and Lady Cranston north."

Once again, he was going to leave her without finishing what he started, but this time, she understood. It wouldn't do for them to risk being caught by the butler or housekeeper. An odd thought, since it had been even more dangerous at Madame Delphine's.

Yet she felt just as frustrated now, just as ready to explode, as she'd been that night.

She felt his warmth, smelled the spicy scent of him, and heard his footsteps gingerly approaching her. "I must go," he whispered. "There will be other opportunities, Evangeline, I promise you. We are going to marry."

She should have been thrilled. At last! But now a question needled her. Did he love her? Evie believed she might be in love with him, only...well, why didn't she just say it? Maybe it would prompt him to respond with the same three words.

Alas, she wanted to hear it first from him. She'd feel like a fool if she said it first, especially if he didn't respond in kind.

Not to mention she didn't want him saying the words unless he really, truly meant them. Why was it even important? All she wanted was to marry before her mother did the same a fourth time.

Now she couldn't help feeling that "all she wanted" was no longer enough.

He slipped his fingers under her chin, holding it as he brought his lips to hers. He didn't kiss her so deeply or passionately this time, but it was sweet nonetheless.

As he gently broke the kiss, she asked, "Why are we going to marry?"

A too long, and thus very ominous pause before he answered, "Because I've ruined you, for which I should apologize."

Oh, lordy. Already he regretted doing what he just did, even if it still remained unfinished.

"I'm sorry, Evangeline. I know that's not how you wanted it, but—"

"Please don't say anything more." She couldn't bear to hear what lay beyond that but.

He didn't love her. She was a fool to expect it.

But thank heavens for small favors—he wasn't blackmailing her into it, like Kingsley.

"May I say good night?" he asked.

"Yes. Good night." She spun around and felt her way to the kitchen door, fleeing the scene before she burst into tears in his presence.

Before she started screaming. She wondered if it was because of the unfinished business—for lack of a more apt word she couldn't think of at this ghastly hour or in her equally ghastly state—or because he didn't love her.

Yet. If ever.

How was she supposed to make him love her? She couldn't. As she trudged up the steep back stairs, she wondered how she was able to fall in love with him without any effort on his part—unless one wanted to call the unfinished business effort—while he showed no inclination to do the same.

Was it because she'd known all along, since that night at Madame Delphine's, who he was, whereas he'd assumed, until yesterday afternoon, that the woman he ruined was her mother?

That had to be the case. He just needed more time. And with any luck, the journey north would buy that time.

Upon reaching her bedchamber, she collapsed across her bed, and cried herself to sleep.

Unfortunately, due to the excitement of his surprise visit, coupled with the fact that he'd left her unsatisfied again, she wept into her pillow for several hours before she finally drifted into slumber just before dawn.

* * *

Gareth overslept again, but assured himself that Evangeline had likely overslept, too. As for Lady Cranston, she might have been all set to leave London yesterday afternoon, but he'd wager she was also still in bed, just on general principle. En route to Tyndall House, he stopped at Doctors' Commons to acquire a special license.

Upon his arrival at Tyndall House, he was surprised to find both ladies ready to go.

"If I may have a word with you, Miss Benedict?" he inquired, very properly, very politely, in the presence of Lady Cranston.

Evangeline sat just as properly and politely on the sofa next to Lady Cranston, resembling nothing like the naked wanton he'd pleasured on the trestle table downstairs only hours ago—and just like that, he felt himself hardening, and held his beaver hat over the falls of his buff breeches. Her eyes were red-rimmed and slightly swollen, as if she had a bad cold, but he knew it was because she'd slept little.

Yet he didn't recall ever seeing her look more dignified than she did at this moment, as she replied to his query with a very proper, very polite, "Yes, my lord?"

Not in front of Lady Cranston. "Perhaps you have a book room where we could talk?"

Before Evangeline could respond, Lady Cranston interjected, "Are you implying that I should leave the two of you alone?"

"No, my lady. I was merely suggesting that Miss Benedict and I should go someplace where we could be alone to speak freely to one another."

"Which is precisely why I cannot allow it," Lady Cranston said indignantly. "Unless you've come to propose marriage to her..."

"It just so happens I've already done that," Gareth replied, wondering why Evangeline was gently shaking her head as if to deny it.

"Indeed? Then why is she shaking her head? Perhaps you've asked, but she hasn't accepted."

Considering Evangeline was keen to marry, especially before her mother did—again—Gareth saw no need to argue the point. "If you ladies are willing to wait just one more day to journey north, we can marry today. I have the special license."

"Oh, is that why we've been waiting all this time?" Evangeline inquired.

Why was she suddenly behaving this way? Gareth fought to conceal his bafflement. "Are you saying you'd rather wait for your brother's return? Your mother's, too? Or do you wish to elope to Scotland?"

"Lady Cranston and I wish to leave London now," Evangeline said crisply. "And if you do not keep your word to escort us, my lord, then we shall have to find someone else. Perhaps Lord Kingsley will return today for another chance. I daresay he's even more desperate than I am."

Gareth, by now, no longer had any need to conceal the falls of his breeches behind his hat. He stared at the woman he thought was Miss Evangeline Benedict, wondering what in God's name happened to the woman by that name. Whoever that was sitting on the sofa next to Lady Cranston not only didn't resemble the naked wanton he'd pleasured on the trestle table downstairs only hours ago—he was absolutely certain she wasn't that person at all.

Lady Cranston rose to her feet. "If you haven't asked her, Lord Gareth, then I suggest you do so without delay. I'm weary of London and wish myself back in Yorkshire as soon as possible. Will it not be possible today?"

"Very well, I will ask her," he agreed. "But will you give us a moment to do so?"

Before Lady Cranston could respond or move any further, Evangeline piped up, "Before you ask, my lord, I would ask that you tell me why you wish to marry me."

"In front of Lady Cranston?" His voice almost cracked with disbelief.

"Very well, I shall wait in the front hall." Lady Cranston bustled to the drawing room doorway. "But from there I shall refuse to go anywhere but into a carriage bound for Yorkshire!"

The bemused butler, who'd been hovering near said doorway all this time, closed the door behind her, leaving Gareth and Evangeline alone.

He lowered his voice to just above a whisper. "We discussed this last night—or early this morning—or rather, we discussed this the last time we met, did we not? I've compromised you. Other people know you've been compromised—Lord Kingsley, Lady Flora, and who knows who else, unless you wish to count Lord Forrestal. Either way, I must marry you. Will you marry me, Evangeline?"

To his continuing bewilderment, she studied him for a long moment, as if she had to—well, think about this, as if there was anything to think about. But what?

She might have been desperate enough to select some poor sapskull and trick him into compromising her, but that was not the case. Instead, another woman had tricked her into going to a place where she could hardly escape being compromised. And Gareth, who ordinarily did not patronize such places except in the line of duty for the Crown, had been the man who compromised her.

"If we must marry," she finally said, "then why ask?"

He gazed at her ruefully. "I know this isn't how you wanted it. It's not how I wanted it, either. But—"

"Then how did you want it?" She didn't ask it. She fired it.

"That's a good question," he conceded.

"Then you must have a good answer." Bang again.

"Alas, I do not. I daresay no one wants it this way. But I must do the honorable thing."

"You must?"

"I want to do the honorable thing," he amended. "Evangeline, I will tell you now that I opposed my brother's betrothal to your mother because I couldn't bear the idea of him married to a woman that I—with whom I was—" Why did she sit there so unbearably calm, looking as if she were about to pass judgment on him? As if he'd done something no one else would forgive, not even she? He stumbled on, "By the same token, I can't bear to see you married to someone else, knowing that I—that we—"

"No one else will be marrying me," she said flatly.

"Then why not marry me?"

"Because no one else will?" she asked sharply.

"No, because—well, aside from what I've already said, I daresay we get along with each other better than many couples I could name, and perhaps you could name, too. And I do care for you, or I wouldn't have come back last night—or this morning."

She nodded. "You do have a point."

Yet Gareth couldn't help thinking it still wasn't enough for her.

"I want a real family life," he went on. "That means I want my wife to remain at my side, instead of staying out in the country while I remain in Town. That's how my parents were. My mother died in childbed at the family estate in the north, while my father was in London and my brothers and I were away at school. Our father went abroad for many years to forget his grief. He only came back to England to die on the same day we found out that our other brother, Linus, had been killed on the Peninsula. Since then, Lord Frampton, who was married to my father's sister, and his son Ned are the only family Dane and I have had."

Evangeline looked pensive. "I'm so sorry," she said softly. "My brother and I never had a real family life, either. My mother was disowned by her own family after she married my father—only weeks after her first husband died. That was the arranged marriage she ran away to escape. The first husband had a fortune that would get her family out of debt. My father's family disapproved of her, too, and by extension, me and Ross. Papa died at sea en route to India, where he and Mama hoped to start a new life—while Ross and I remained at school in England. But today I still have my mother and brother, and now that he's married, I have a sister now. And I would like a husband who keeps me at his side."

That was just the sort of husband Gareth wanted to be.

"All the more reason we should marry, Evangeline. We can start a new family together."

Yet she still looked hesitant, as if that still wasn't enough.

She rose to her feet. "It's a momentous decision, so I should like to think about it, and not rush into anything as my mother always has."

Gareth couldn't argue with that logic. Still, he was flummoxed by her apparent reluctance to accept him. What more did she want?

She stalked past him to the door. "Will you take us north now, or should we see about hiring a post chaise for ourselves or worse, take the mail coach?" She threw the door open and joined the butler and Lady Cranston without a backward glance.

Lady Cranston's voice drifted over Evangeline's shoulders into the drawing room. "Did he ask, my dear?"

"No, he didn't. I fear we shall have to make our own way to—"

"You have nothing to fear," he called out, as he marched into the front hall. "Lest you doubt it, Miss Benedict, I am a man of honor, a man of my word, and I will take you and Lady Cranston to wherever you wish to go."

And he would marry Miss Evangeline Benedict, even if he had to make her fall in love with him to do it.

That's when it dawned on him. Bloody hell!

She was right. He really was a sapskull, and a muttonhead to boot.

Maybe she hadn't yet figured it out for herself, but Gareth was fairly sure he'd just hit on the answer to what more did she want?

She wanted to marry for love.

And so, he had to admit, but only to himself for now—did he.