“Would you please stop touching things?”

His eyebrows furrowed, and he pulled his hand away from the table. Placing his hands behind his back, he cleared his throat. “Are you aware that I am in the middle of a delicate situation with a lady at the moment?”

“You mean besides me?”

He pursed his lips together as if to argue the point but then gave up. “Yes, besides you.”

Who was she? And what exactly constituted delicate? “I was not.”

“I’m going to have to ask you to stop connecting your name with mine. Lady Emily is a frightened young woman in general, and I don’t need rumors of another scandal scaring her off.”

The soft way he said Lady Emily grated on her ears. “It seems to me your past scandals would be enough to do that for you. I don’t see why one more will hurt you.”

“Trust me, it won’t hurt me,” he scoffed. “Society is always harshest toward women.”

Lord Bryant reflecting on the difficulty of women’s lots in life? How quaint of him. “And yet you still manage to scandalize at least three a year.”

He sauntered from the table back to her desk, this time coming around to her side. “Oh, come now, not every year. Last year there were surely only two.”

She stood her ground, even though her immediate reaction was to want to step back, out of the sphere of his influence.

He sat on the corner of her desk with his long legs hanging over the side in a very un-baron-like manner, crossed his arms in front of himself, and waited for her reply. Blast. One more surface in her office that would remind her of his visit every time she looked at it. And her desk too. She spent hours here every day. Diana narrowed her eyes. She was no longer an impressionable young woman. She owned what was certain to become one of the most profitable businesses in London and nearly half of another. Lord Bryant would not get the best of her.

“Perfect—you can make up your deficit with me.”

“I refuse to damage your reputation, Miss Barton. That is final.”

Why was he being so stubborn about this? “And yet you are in the middle of damaging the reputation of Lady Emily. In what realm of possibilities is my reputation of more import than hers?”

“I am the one who decides whose reputation needs sullying. This could ruin your possibility of getting married. And I would rather not come to blows with your brother a second time.”

He and Nate had come to blows? Why in heavens? Oh, of course.

Grace.

“Nonsense.” Diana shrugged. “Every one of the ladies you scandalized ended up getting married. At least the ones I’ve heard of.”

“But not necessarily to someone of their equal.”

“You seem to be under the impression that I am a diamond of the first water. I am simply Miss Diana Barton, and I have managed to damage what reputation I did have by buying a railroad company.”