"My dear Mrs Babbacombe." Alfred was the first to gain her side.

"Dare I hope you've found the evening to your taste?"

"You've proved a most welcome addition to our ranks, ma'am." Ormesby was close behind.

"I do hope we can entice you to spend more time with us--I, for one, can think of little I'd like better."

Lucinda blinked; before she could answer, Lord Dewhurst joined them.

He took her hand and bowed low.

"Enchanted, my dear. Dare I hope for some time to further our acquaintance?"

Lucinda met his lordship's calm but distinctly warm gaze--and wished herself elsewhere. Heat tinged her cheeks--then, from the corner of her eye, she saw Harry. Watching.

Drawing in a steadying breath, Lucinda smiled at her three would-be cicisbei.

With what she hoped they understood as a pointed disregard for all they had hinted at, if not said, she calmly stated,

"If you'll excuse me, gentlemen, I believe I will retire early." With a benedictory smile, she swept them a curtsy; they immediately bowed low.

Rising, Lucinda headed straight for the door. Confident she had avoided a potential quagmire, head high, she glided from the room.

Harry stared after her.

Then uttered a single, pungent expletive and spun on his heel. He exited the room by the windows to the terrace. At speed.

Millie simply stared--then lifted her shoulders in a baffled shrug-and glided after Mr Harding.

Lucinda climbed the stairs and traversed the corridors, engrossed, not with the details of her imminent departure nor yet imaginings of what she had escaped.

Lady Coleby's revelations of Harry's long-ago disappointment filled her mind.

She could imagine, very clearly, how it must have been, how, with the impetuosity of youth, he had laid his love at his chosen one's feet, only to see it spurned. It must have hurt. A great deal. The fact explained many things--why he was now so cynical of eve, not marriage itself, but the love needed to support it, the intensity he now harnessed, that certain something which made so many women view him as dangerous--excitingly but definitely so- and his emotionally cautious nature. Reaching her roQm, Lucinda shut the door firmly behind her. She looked for a key, grimacing regignedly when she discovered there wasn't one.

Thanks to Lady Coleby, and her lack of what Lucinda felt was any proper feeling, she could now understand why Harry was as he was. That, however, did not excuse his behaviour in engineering her present predicament.

Eyes narrowing as she considered his perfidy, Lucinda glided across the room, lit by a single candelabra on the dressing table, and gave the bell pull a definite tug. The door opened. Her hand still clutching the embroidered pull, Lucinda turned.

To see Harry slip around the door.

He scanned the room and found her.

"There's no point ringing for your maid--the house rules forbid servants the upper corridors after ten."

"What?" Lucinda stared.

"But what are you doing here?"

Harry closed the door and looked around again. Lucinda had had enough. Eyes narrowing, she sailed across the room to confront him.

"However, as you are here, I have a bone to pick with you!"

Rea.s.sured they were alone, Harry brought his gaze to her face as she halted, slender and straight, before him.

"Indeed?"

"As you well know!" Lucinda glared up at him.

"How dare you organise to have me invited to such a gathering as this? I realise you might be somewhat irritated because I did not accept your proposal--' She broke off as the thought occurred that she, like Lady Coleby, might be said to have rejected him.

"But the circ.u.mstances were nothing like those of Lady Coleby. Or whoever she was then." With an irritated wave, she dismissed Lady Coleby.

"Whatever your feelings in the matter, I have to tell you that I view your behaviour in this instance as reprehensible! Utterly callous and without justification! It is totally inconceivable to me why you--' " I didn't. "

The steel beneath the words cut through her denunciation.

Arrested in mid-tirade, Lucinda blinked up at him. "You didn't?"

His jaw set, his lips a thin line, Harry regarded her through narrowed eyes.

"For a woman of superior sense, you frequently indulge the most remarkable notions. I didn't arrange to have you invited. On the contrary." His tone turned conversational, his accents remained clipped; the undercurrent was positively lethal.

"When I discover who did, I'm going to wring his neck."

"Oh." Lucinda backed a step as he closed the distance between them. Her eyes met his; abruptly, she stiffened and stood her ground.

"That's all very well--but what are you doing here now?"

"Protecting you from your latest folly."

"Folly?" Lucinda coolly raised her brows--and her chin.

"What folly?"

"The folly of the invitation you just, all unwittingly, issued."

Harry glanced at the bed, then the fireplace. The fire was lit, a smallish blaze but there was plenty of wood by the hearth. An armchair sat before it.

Lucinda frowned.

"What invitation?"

Harry's gaze came back to her face; he merely raised his brows at her.

Lucinda snorted.

"Nonsense. You're imagining things. I issued no invitation-- I did nothing of the sort."

I.