And, unless Alex was very much mistaken, Miss Talbot did have a fondness for George. Whether that fondness was mutual, it was difficult to tell. But if it was…

Good God, had George Wright offered up his own sweetheart to satisfy his debt?

“Is this your first visit to Surrey, Mr. Archer?” Miss Talbot asked, still clinging to George’s arm.

“It is, ma’am.”

“George said in his note that you’d only recently returned to England. Whereabout are you from originally?”

“London.” Alex came to walk at her opposite side. “My parents removed to Paris while I was still in leading strings.”

It was the same old lie. One he’d told countless times over the years. He’d almost begun to believe it himself.

“I can’t say I blame them,” Miss Talbot replied. “I don’t know how anyone can bear London. All that smoke and dust and fog. It plays havoc with my father’s health. It’s why we never go into the city.” She gave him a look of polite enquiry. “Do your mother and father still reside in France?”

“Regrettably, no. I lost them during the cholera epidemic of ’33.”

“Archer was raised by his godfather, Baron Reynard,” George said helpfully. “A gentleman of some repute.”

“A baron, did you say?” Miss Talbot’s eyes flickered with interest. “Are French barons the same as English ones? Or are they—” She stopped short. “Ah! There’s Blodgett with the gig. And look, George, there is Miss Hayes, just as I told you she’d be.”

A battered one-horse gig rolled up the drive, coming to a halt just ahead of them. The elderly driver was hunched over the box, a tweed cap pulled down over his face. Beside him on the box sat a young lady in a faded gray skirt and caraco jacket, a flat-crowned straw hat atop her head.

Alex stopped with the others.

And then he stared.

Good God, it was his water nymph. The woman he’d rescued from the pond—or failed to rescue, as it were. But she didn’t look like a water nymph now. Rather the opposite. Her back was ramrod straight, her gloved hands folded primly in her lap, and her hair—that midnight veil that had been tangled with flower petals and leaves—was bound into a tight roll at her nape.

“What are you waiting for, George,” Miss Talbot said under her breath. “Go and help Laura down.”

Laura.

There was nothing extraordinary about the name. It nevertheless sent a mild shock through Alex’s frame. Not a shock of heat—certainly not the kind of heat he’d anticipated feeling for Miss Talbot. This was something else. Something new and deeply unsettling. It was awareness. Some variety of…recognition.

“Allow me.” He didn’t wait for Miss Talbot’s permission. He reached the gig in a few long strides.

Miss Hayes saw him coming. Her eyes widened almost imperceptibly.