The fine hairs on the back of Laura’s neck stood up. She cast a discreet glance from Mr. Archer to Henrietta and back again. He wasn’t obvious in his admiration for her friend. He didn’t stare at her unduly or insinuate himself into her conversation with George. But during tea, Laura had more than once observed Mr. Archer look at Henrietta in a cold and faintly calculating manner.

Was that why such a man as he had come to their village? Not as the hero of the story, but as the villain?

There was certainly something dangerous about him. Something hard and predatory. It was part of what made him so thrillingly handsome. That edge of subtle menace. Rather like a feral wolf.

Was he hunting in Lower Hawley?

Her mouth pressed into a frown. She didn’t know Mr. Archer. Even so, she’d thought better of him. He’d seemed different somehow. A rare and mysterious creature in their midst.

But he wasn’t different at all. He was—if her instincts were correct—nothing more than a garden-variety fortune hunter.

She’d seen enough of them over the years. Gentlemen in reduced circumstances who came to pay court to Henrietta and her inheritance. They were the impoverished nephews and second cousins of the county gentry. Men who were ill-equipped to snare a wealthy wife on the London marriage mart, and who believed they’d have better odds with a vulnerable country heiress.

Henrietta had always dispatched such predatory gentleman with ruthless efficiency. She was certain to extend the same courtesy to Mr. Archer once she realized what he was up to.

Or so Laura hoped.

“Do you have a profession, Mr. Archer?” she asked.

He was silent for a long moment, the fall of his boots on the hard-packed earth the only sound as they entered the wilderness garden. “Are you asking me if I work for a living?”

The path narrowed, curving through trees that bowed inward into an arch, providing a leafy canopy against the blazing afternoon sunshine. “Do you?”

“I’m not obliged to.”

“You’re a gentleman of independent means?”

“I’m a gentleman,” he said. “A gentleman doesn’t soil his hands with labor, Miss Hayes. Independent means or no.”

The path grew narrower still, necessitating that she walk even closer to his side. It was entirely by design. Henrietta had once confessed that the landscape artist her father had employed so many years before had dreamed up the wilderness garden at Edgington Park as a trysting place for lovers. Every step through the trees brought one closer to the object of their affection.