Mrs. Oliver sighed and sat back down in her chair.

Lord Bryant pushed himself off the doorframe. “It is settled then. Miss Oliver, you may stay, at least for today. But in exchange, Diana, you must answer my question. Did you miss me?”

Mrs. Oliver sniggered. “She’s been looking up every time a carriage drives by for the last three days.”

Diana sunk lower in her seat. She would have to fire Mrs. Oliver. There was no other option. But she couldn’t. Diana couldn’t spend all day in an office alone. “I have not,” Diana said.

“You haven’t looked up every time a carriage passed by or you haven’t missed me?”

“I didn’t look up every time a carriage passed by.” Diana scrunched her face together. “I know that for a fact. The last day and a half, I made certain not to.”

“Ah,” he said, striding toward her like a cat stalking its prey. He hadn’t brought a hat with him, and his typically over-styled hair was mussed slightly. Where exactly had he come from? He placed a hand on the exact spot of her desk that he had sat on before kissing her the last time he was here. His emerald eyes sparked with amusement. “So you did miss me.”

She raised her chin. “You took your portrait, so of course I did. I had nothing to display when I needed it.”

“My portrait that you drew from memory?”

She swallowed her blush. “Yes, that one.”

“That is where his portrait went,” Mrs. Oliver said. “I was wondering. She used to pull it out of her desk multiple times a day. She would even stroke it.”

Diana stood from her desk fast enough that the chair nearly fell over behind her. She grabbed the back of it to steady both it and herself. Mrs. Oliver was much too happy to tell Lord Bryant all of her most incriminating actions of the past few weeks.

“And you should have heard the sweet things she told those men about what you have done for her. Did you really lay your cloak over a puddle so she could cross it?”

Lord Bryant gave Diana a coy look. “That does sound like something I would do. I am generally known for my chivalry.”

Mrs. Oliver clapped her hands. Heavens above, did Mrs. Oliver live in a hole? Lord Bryant, chivalrous? Hearing the stories she had told investors come from Mrs. Oliver’s lips made them seem even more ridiculous. How had any of them believed her?

“What happened to the cloak?” Mrs. Oliver said. “It must have been quite ruined. And oh, the time you threatened a man’s livelihood if he so much as looked at her the wrong way. I tell you, Lord Bryant, by the time you actually did show up, I was starting to wonder if such a man could exist. Not to mention that drawing she had of you. Could a man be as handsome as that? But then you walked through the door, and it turned out the drawing didn’t do you justice—not at all.”