Yes, Gareth should have been relieved to hear Ethan's words. By all rights he should have laughed at the knowledge that his previous fears were all for naught. Instead, he was enraged at Lady Milner's betrayal of his brother. What an act she'd put on for Gareth at VauxhallGardens the other night! The woman was almost as wicked—and not in a delightful way at all—as the late Lady Ruth Hale, who'd spied for France and England alike.

"The Marquess of Frampton," Ethan declared. "None other than your own uncle. Surely you must find that match more tolerable than one with your brother."

"Frampton! By God, I do." His widowed uncle, instead of his brother! Gareth's head swam. "But does my brother have any idea that she's playing him for a fool? He's a duke! And she's nothing but—but—"

"Miss Benedict's mother," Ethan supplied. "Alas, my wife's own parents don't approve of Lady Milner. It just about killed them to sit at the dinner table with her last night. Yet they don't care to be reminded that somehow, they survived."

Gareth paced aimlessly around the graveled courtyard. The carriage and cattle, by now, had moved on. "My brother loves her. He must."

"You don't know for certain? He didn't tell you?"

"He told me his reasons for marrying her were none of my concern. Yet what other reason could there be? She's a widow more than a decade his senior. She can't provide him with heirs. She isn't an heiress, and even if she were, he doesn't need the money. And if it's for companionship—well, he scarcely needs to marry her for that. No, it must be love, and he doesn't want to admit it because dukes aren't supposed to marry for love."

"Yet they do," Ethan pointed out. "Witness my own brother, the Duke of Lanchester, married only a fortnight ago to Miss Penelope Jones—and for love. The Duke of Halstead..."

"You're right, they do. You may add the Duke of Bradbury to the list. All the more reason I must continue my pursuit of them, before..."

"Before what?" Ethan prodded. "Sooner or later, he's going to learn the truth. Do you want to be present when that happens?"

"But I could warn him..."

"Gareth." Ethan grabbed his shoulder and Gareth stopped his frenetic pacing. "You're not his mother. Bradbury is a big boy. What's the worst that can happen once he learns the truth? Are you worried he'll challenge Frampton to a duel, and end up dead?"

"There is that, I suppose," Gareth conceded. "I have no wish to inherit my brother's title, whether it's because he married an older widow or got himself shot in a duel over her. And he is, after all, headed for FramptonCastle to shoot. I merely assumed it was for grouse."

"I don't think that's what worries you," said Ethan. "It's your brother's life, your brother's heart. Why not worry about your own, for a change?"

"Perhaps I am worried about my own. Suppose, after learning of Lady Milner's betrayal, he threatens to cut me off if I marry her daughter?"

Ethan widened his eyes. "Oh, then you do have an understanding with her?"

"I don't even have that."

"I thought she was desperate to marry."

"But not desperate enough to marry me, and since leaving London, I think I know why."

Ethan was silent, apparently waiting for his friend to continue.

"I believe she wants to marry for love," Gareth said.

"And she doesn't love you?"

Gareth thought of what happened in the kitchen at Tyndall House: Evangeline leaping into his arms. Throwing her own arms around his neck. Pressing herself against him, kissing him deeply, expressing to him in a dozen different ways how happy she was to see him in the wake of her devastating confession that she feared might have disgusted him, or even repelled him away from her for all time.

Her eagerness to let him finish what he started that night at Madame Delphine's—even if he still had yet to finish it.

"I think she does," he said slowly. "The problem is that I—well..."

"That you don't? Yet you want to marry her? For what? Her dowry?"

"I don't need her dowry," Gareth said quickly, sharply.

"Then why marry her?"

Gareth couldn't possibly tell his friend, or anyone else, the real reason he felt compelled to marry Evangeline. He wished it could be for love. And while he was fond of her, he couldn't say with any certainty yet that he loved her. It wouldn't be enough to say the three words. She would have to be convinced in some other way.

And that way did not include seduction to consummation. She'd rightly label that an effort to force marriage by compromising her even more than he had already.

Even as he had these thoughts, Ethan said, "Call me out if you will, but let me guess. You unwittingly found yourself in a compromising position with her."

Gareth skewered him with a piercing glare. "I might have called you out if you hadn't said 'unwittingly.'"

"You're not the kind of man who would go out of his way to do that sort of thing. You're too honorable for that, Gareth. Yet ironically, that's why you're so willing to marry her even if she isn't as willing. Who else knows about it?"

Gareth wasn't about to tell him it was Lord Kingsley. Nor would he tell him that Evangeline had attended Madame Delphine's Cyprian ball at the behest of her cousin and Lady Ruth's sister, Lady Flora Benedict. Even though Ethan was his friend and he trusted him more than just about anyone else, the fact that two other people already knew of Evangeline's alleged ruin were two people too many.

"No one," he said. "I thought I was meeting someone else, and it turned out to be Miss Benedict."

"I take it she wasn't meeting anyone else?"

Gareth shook his head. "She was just there. In the meantime, her mother sent her an express informing her that she is eloping with my brother, but Ashdown seems to think that's not what the message says, and that you might be able to enlighten us on what it means. Lady Milner certainly makes no mention of throwing my brother over for Lord Frampton or anyone else. Let us go inside and find Miss Benedict, and she can show it to you."

Ethan led Gareth into the cavernous front hall of the manor, where Evangeline, flanked by Grace and Charlotte, was slowly making her way up the enormous grand staircase, a single flight of stairs that soared almost into the domed ceiling over their heads. The women's voices echoed, making it nearly impossible to discern what they were saying, not that Gareth was particularly interested unless it had to do with him.

"Miss Benedict," Gareth called out to her.

She turned to survey him. She'd already doffed her bonnet, and her dark hair was loose and disheveled—not too unlike the way it was in the kitchen of Tyndall House. Gareth's groin instantly stirred at the memory of her lying nude on the trestle table, arching her hips as—

"Yes, my lord?" Her tone was icy as it echoed, a far cry from the warm, eager female who practically leaped into his arms the other night.

"Perhaps you would show Lady Milner's express to Lord Ethan here, and he will tell us what Ashdown says we missed."

Evangeline hesitated, while Grace and Charlotte exchanged looks on either side of her. They knew. She fished the express out of her reticule as Gareth slowly ascended the staircase, stretching out his hand to receive it.

He silently passed it to Lord Ethan, who stood at the foot of the staircase. And at the very same moment it was out of his hands, Gareth realized he'd just made a monumental mistake.

For in light of what Ethan told him about Lady Milner only using Bradbury to make Frampton jealous, Gareth had an ominous, sinking, sickening feeling that if he could read the express again, he'd see the message between the lines. He hastened back down the stairs. "On second thought, Ethan, give it to me. I believe I'll see it on a second reading."

"No doubt you will," Ethan said, unfolding the express and skimming over the contents. "And now that I'm reading it, I can see how you might have missed it. But that's because you didn't know and I do."

"Know what?" Evangeline asked, still frozen on the staircase, though Grace and Charlotte continued to hover on either side of her, as if they meant to be ready in case she decided to end it all by throwing herself down the stairs.

Ethan started reading it aloud. "'Dear Evange—'" He abruptly paused and glanced up at her. "Is it line or lean?"

"I prefer lean, but I'll answer to line if it suits me to do so," she said, starting down the staircase. "My family and friends—" She gestured to the two women behind her, "—call me Evie. Usually. My mother is being inexplicably formal in this case, perhaps because she's displeased with me."

"I gather that as well." He resumed reading aloud. "'Do not worry about me. I am traveling with the Duke of Bradbury to FramptonCastle. I hope to repeat what happened the last time we were there—but with a different bridegroom, of course!'" He glanced up at her. "That different bridegroom does not necessarily mean Bradbury."

Evangeline blew out a long sigh as she slowly sank onto the steps and whispered, "Frampton. She means the marquess. Of course." She closed her eyes and slapped a hand to her bosom. "Thank heavens. I've always thought he'd make a more suitable husband for her. Then she won't be marrying the duke, after all."

"But she's deceiving him," Gareth pointed out.

Her eyes snapped open, flashing with annoyance. "So what if she is? You didn't want them to marry anyway, did you? Or have you changed your mind about that, now that you know—well, you know what you know now."

He met her angry gaze. "I abhor betrayal of any sort, be it treason or infidelity."

Ethan glanced up from the express. "I don't suppose what he knows has anything to do with what transpired the night he says he met your mother in her butterfly mask?"

Gareth had all but forgotten that was in the express.

Ethan glanced back down. "'When I do see you again, we shall talk about Lord Gareth Armstrong and what transpired on the night he says he met me in my butterfly mask.'" He eyed Gareth askance.

"That's not quite as scandalous as it sounds," Gareth said. "I'll tell you what I told Miss Benedict. I saw her mother with my brother at VauxhallGardens the other night, and she was wearing a mask in the shape of a butterfly. I took her aside and told her my objections to her marrying Bradbury. That's all. Nothing really transpired." He retrieved the express and handed it back to Evangeline. "I apologize for not discerning the truth the first time I read it, Miss Benedict. You're right about one thing. Frampton is a more suitable match for her. Perhaps it's not my affair if she's deceiving my brother, but as Ethan already pointed out to me, Bradbury is a grown man and I'm not his mother. So I see no point in continuing to pursue them. However, I gave my word to see you and Lady Cranston safely to Yorkshire, and that is what I shall do." He glanced past her to Grace and Charlotte, both of whom looked thoroughly bewildered. "Did Miss Benedict tell you already? Oh, no, Lady Cranston did as soon as she stepped out of the carriage, didn't she? Miss Benedict is going to become her paid companion. Or maybe she is already." He smiled at Evangeline, who, not surprisingly, did not smile back.

Instead she turned and dashed up the staircase, tearing between Grace and Charlotte as she did so.

But not before he glimpsed the tears glistening in her brown eyes.