What on earth must he say to her in private? And how would she go on, now that she had convinced herself she must not love him any longer?

No, she could not meet him tonight. She would return to her bedchamber when Aunts Julia and Grace went up, and he would not be able to do anything about it. She was determined to be a new person. Her own person. The old Beatrice Sinclaire wasted away in hopeless attachment to Lord Peter Cheriot. Well, not precisely wasted away. She ate and drank and enjoyed walks and read books and gardened and saw to her mother's needs, after all. But the new Beatrice Sinclaire would do all of that with a lighter heart, free of pathetic yearnings. If she were going to live life the way she wished, she could not hang on to unproductive imaginings.

Let him think whatever he liked, and do whatever he did. Bea would no longer be moved. She would resist his enticements however charmingly offered, and maintain a firm stance.

Her new life awaited her. It did not include Peter Cheriot.

June 29, 1821 He has never asked me why I refuse him. Today he only smiled and shook his head.

If he continues in this pattern, Diary, I shall be obliged to invent an excuse in the event that someday he requires an explanation.

I doubt he ever will.

CHAPTER TEN.

Tip strode along the corridor, his mouth set in a grim line, his jaw tight. She had escaped him. Willfully. Despite her promise to meet him.

Not exactly a promise, of course. Never a promise. But not a refusal this time, either.

Clearly she did not wish to speak with him. But he had something to say. So she could just listen. And he wasn't above going to her bedchamber to make it so. A man didn't come to an important realization in the course of an afternoon and let it sit without acting on it. Gentlemanly behavior, be damned. He'd had just about enough of it at this point.

He rounded a corner and nearly slammed into Thomas.

"Odd's blood! Watch your step, Cheriot."

"Watch your own," Tip growled.

Thomas frowned. "What's the matter? You don't look well."

"Good of you to notice." Tip took a hard breath, anger and impatience boiling beneath his skin. But he couldn't very well tell Sinclaire he needed to hurry off to interrupt his sister at bedtime.

A picture of Bea preparing for bed sliced through his imagination, staggering him momentarily.

Thomas's frown deepened. "Is there something I should know? Have you had news since I left the parlor? Did Iversly appear again?"

"No." Tip shook his head. "No news. I will escort Lady Marstowe and Miss Dews to the village tomorrow to speak with Lady Bronwyn's governess, as planned. Hopefully she will tell us something we can put to use."

"But you don't think she will." Thomas peered at him the way younger men often did, especially when it came to horseflesh-seeking guidance, answers.

"I don't know. But we must think of something. Iversly did not hoax when he said he is determined to end the curse at midnight tomorrow." Tip had never heard a man sound the way Iversly did when he spoke to Bea, desperate, with an undertone of despair so acute it dug into Tip's conscience.

He was not about to allow Lady Bronwyn or Bea to be sacrificed for Iversly's eternal contentment, but he couldn't help feeling sympathy for the fellow. The ghost's misery was the very thing that now drove Tip to speak to Bea. Iversly's fate was sealed, but Tip still had a chance.

He wanted Beatrice Sinclaire, for better and apparently for worse as well. One argument would not turn him into his father, and a single outburst did not make her his mother. He'd been cross with her in the first place because all that talk of warm bodies had him hotter than he'd been in months. Years. To prevent himself from grabbing her, he'd criticized her instead. Not very gallant, admittedly, but now that he realized what he'd done he could avoid it in the future.

Yes. They would get along fine.

"Tip," Thomas said hesitantly. "I've been thinking . . ."

"About what?" He struggled to bank his impatience. Control. Calm. Reason. His imagination conjured Bea in a diaphanous nightrail. Her bedchamber lay just ahead along the corridor. He nearly groaned aloud. "What, Tom?" he pressed.

"Iversly can marry only a maiden. He's said so any number of times. Only a maiden is able to break the curse."

"Yes."

"Well . . ." Thomas's brows slanted to a point. "It's only that-"

"Tomorrow we will discover a solution," Tip said quickly, suspecting where Thomas's thoughts had gone and not blaming him at all for it. He gripped the younger man's shoulder. The gesture seemed to comfort Thomas.

"Right then. Good night, Tip."

"Good night, Tom." Tip watched him continue down the corridor toward his chamber. When he heard Thomas's bolt knock in place, he pivoted around and went the rest of the way to Bea's door.

No answer met his knock. He set his jaw and turned the latch.

Moonlight crept through partially drawn curtains, but no woman sat at the dressing table or lay upon the bed. Tip's heart beat uncomfortably fast. He drew the door closed and started up the corridor again.

He found her in the dining chamber. She stood before a window, looking out onto the dry moat and hill sloping out from the side of the castle. Bluish-silver light illuminated her hair caught up in a knot, glinting off the satiny tresses like river water at night and caressing her lovely neck and graceful collarbone. The moonlight defined her figure in silhouette, tracing each gentle curve, her gown a mere glove upon her intoxicating body.

Tip took a long breath.

She looked over her shoulder, hesitating before turning to him fully.

"I thought you meant to avoid me after all," he managed to say in what sounded to him like an unremarkable tone. It must have been, because she remained perfectly placid. Entirely unlike earlier when her eyes sparkled with emotion and he had to struggle not to drag her into his arms.

Good. Her return to normalcy would make this easier.

"I did. But then I changed my mind," she replied.

"I'm glad." He crossed the chamber, folding his hands behind his back. Better to trap them than use them impulsively. He didn't entirely trust himself. "I hoped we could speak. Actually, I hoped I could speak, if you will hear me out."

Her brow furrowed, but she nodded.

"We have never quarreled before, in my recollection," he began, winning a flicker of her lovely lashes. "Frankly, I didn't believe it was possible. No, wait-" He held up a palm as her lips parted. "I am many unenviable things, but intractable is not one of them. At least concerning most matters," he added.

She looked wary. "What do you mean?"

"You expressed yourself very clearly this afternoon, and I was a boor about it. I apologize for that."

She took her soft lower lip between her teeth. Tip's temperature inched a notch higher.

"Thank you, I think," she said. "I can tell you are about to add 'but,' aren't you?"

"Not in the least. I have no intention of backtracking on that apology."

"Unintentional backtracks do occur occasionally."

"Then let them, if you will. They will not come in the way of our friendship."

She blinked but did not speak. Her eyes were luminous and rich in the moonlight. He could lose himself in those lucent eyes and never wish to find his way out again.

"I realize it has been barely a sennight since I last requested your hand in marriage," he said, tightening his fingers together behind his back. "This evening, however, I understand matters between us somewhat differently."

"I should hope so," she said, her voice unusually thin.

"I believe more firmly than ever that we should suit, Bea." He had to unbind his hands to get on one knee, but he trusted in his newfound sense of measured calm that he would be able to restrain himself from employing them inappropriately. If they could speak civilly so soon after a tremendous row, he could contain his lust. At least for a while. "Will you marry me?"

Her entrancing eyes popped wide and her delectable mouth fell open.

"Are you insane, Peter Cheriot?"

"Not yet." He hoped she meant the question rhetorically. His heart lodged in his throat. "And I fully intend never to be. Marry me, Bea."

Her expression grew if possible more astonished. "Didn't you hear a word I said this afternoon?"

"Every one of them." Except perhaps a few. He'd been excessively distracted by the pressing need to throw her on the floor and make violent love to her.

"Then to whom, exactly, do you think you are proposing?" Her breasts rose on a hard breath. Tip stood up so as not to be quite so dead-on with the entrancing sight.

"You. There is no one else in the room that I can see, ghosts notwithstanding." This was not going so well. "Say yes, Bea."

"No." She looked pained. Her eyes closed tight for an instant. When she opened them again, they were bright with unshed tears. "No, I will not marry you. I will not."

"You will not?" He had not anticipated this. He should have. He was, perhaps, the greatest idiot alive. "Again?"

"Nothing has changed since last week, has it?" She obviously meant this question rhetorically.

He shook his head to clear it of bewilderment. It had changed, at least in his estimation. They had quarreled like lovers, yet hours later they could sit through a perfectly pleasant dinner conversing on various topics, and all was well again. That ought to count for something. His parents had never moved from passionate anger to pleasant companionship so quickly and easily. They cried for days, moped for another week, then finally fell back into each other's arms as enamored as they'd been before, despite broken furniture, carriages, and horses, and the wagging tongues of society in their wake.

Bea's impassioned speech roused his desire more than ever. But he could control that. He'd been controlling it for years already, like this afternoon when he'd controlled it by calling her a doxy.

Perhaps his control had been less than perfect, after all.

"Of course something has changed." Her voice pitched on a peculiar note. "I have changed. You are not now offering marriage to the same woman you did seven days ago." She lifted a hand and swept back a twist of dark hair that had slipped over her cheek. Tip ached to do it for her, to stroke the satiny tress and caress her soft skin. Dear God, if he couldn't have her soon, he might actually go mad.

"Then will this new woman marry me?"

"No! Oh sweet heaven. No," she insisted. "No." Her eyes were fraught with distress.

He swallowed hard. He had caused this. Her unhappiness.

Dear God, no.

"So, that is a refusal, I understand."

"You are insane." Her voice broke. "Or suddenly an imbecile."

She was entirely correct. Only a complete fool would continue asking the same woman for her hand after she refused it so many times. Only a buffoon of the lowest order would put his heart on the line again and again to have it crushed, and rather savagely this time.

He was indeed a fool for this woman. A hopeless imbecile. But he never wanted to hurt her. Yet somehow he clearly had. He deserved to be horsewhipped.

"All right," he said, taking a deep breath in a vain attempt at steadiness. "You have made your point. I regret to have distressed you."

She nodded, dashing the back of a slender hand across her damp eyes.

They stood like that for a handful of seconds, a minute perhaps. Tip didn't know. He didn't care. The only thing he truly cared about, it seemed, was entirely out of his reach. And this time-this blasted out-of-control, emotional, tear-dashing time-it must end. Each time she had refused him in the past he'd held out hope that someday she would accept. But he could not deceive himself any longer. Her response now, so unlike her previous measured demurrals, made it perfectly clear.

"Do you know, Peter Cheriot," she said, her voice quiet and uneven, "all these times you have offered marriage to me, you have not once asked why I refuse you."

The words blindsided him.

He floundered for a response. "It is not my business to ask."

"It is if you insist on offering again."

Abruptly, Tip's crushed heart made way for his neglected temper. "That is absurd."

"I think you don't want to know."

"What?"

"You do not want to know why I won't marry you. It is safer for you that way."

"What in the devil's name are you talking about? There is nothing whatsoever safe about offering marriage to a woman."

"Precisely my point." She breathed hard, her eyes bright again. "You do not wish to marry. You ask me again and again in the certainty that I will refuse you, so that you can feel satisfied you have made the effort and never be obliged to admit to yourself that you do not actually want a wife."

"I do so want a wife. I want you." Dear God, he sounded like a child. Worse yet, like his father.

"I don't believe you," she countered. "If you truly wished to marry me, you would ask me why I refuse you each time."

No, he wouldn't, for the single reason that he feared her response.

Everyone knew what a profligate his father had been, and the shame of his parents' public battles and reconciliations. For God's sake, Tip's beautiful, sparkling sister, a noblewoman, had married a country curate to escape the ton's gossip. Tip didn't want to hear Bea confess that she couldn't be with him because she did not trust him not to carry on in his parents' mode. So he kept asking, hoping his constancy would prove to her that he was not cut from that cloth.

"See?" She backed away, blinking rapidly. "You cannot bring yourself to ask me why."

Tip's hands fisted at his sides, his jaw tight enough to break his teeth. If it meant even the slightest chance of winning this woman, he would force himself to ask her. And finally he would hear the answer that would smash his hopes once and for all.