Uncle Alfred had been quite right at the time, but Lottie wasn’t a naive nineteen-year-old anymore. Perhaps it wasn’t that the problem was unsolvable, but that she needed to change her answer. Alec might not want a family, or a wife, but he must want something. And she hadn’t imagined the heat in his eyes, just like she hadn’t imagined the evidence of his desire the previous day.

Lottie twisted the warm sheets in her hands. She had spent the last five years waiting for someone else to spark even a hint of what she had once felt for Alec—and it had all come to nothing. Worse than nothing. For no matter what Alec or Uncle Alfred tried to say, her reputation had already been irrevocably damaged the night she publicly rejected Ceril Belvedere.

Lottie had been blindsided by the priggish young man’s ardent kiss on Lady Arlington’s balcony, as well as the clumsy proposal that followed, but she had refused him in the gentlest terms she could think of: “I’m afraid we don’t suit.”

At first Ceril appeared to be equally blindsided by her answer, but then his rather pallid complexion turned bright crimson and his slender frame began to quake.

“You—you’re rejecting me?” he sputtered, staring down at his freshly polished shoes. She had never seen him speak with such emotion before. About anything.

Lottie couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. She, too, was familiar with the pain of rejection and moved to pat his shoulder. “I apologize for any disappointment this may have caused you; it was never my intention.”

But before she could make contact, Ceril suddenly looked up; his dark eyes were filled with hatred and Lottie immediately drew back her hand. Her suggestion seemed only to anger him further. “Disappointment?” he snarled. “Your father was nobody. I will be an earl. You should be grateful I ever paid an old maid like you any mind.”

Lottie knew she should walk away then. Knew she should keep her mouth shut, and not cause a scene. Let him throw his little tantrum and be done with it. After all, he was hardly the first man to spout such drivel, but the trouble was Lottie hadn’t ever felt this tired before.

She was angry. Affronted. And she refused to listen to this horrid little man cast aspersions on her beloved father, whose life had been worth ten of his.

“Yes,” she seethed. “How could I not be grateful for the attention given to my fortune.” She stepped forward until it was Ceril’s back against the wall. “And my father may not have been born into a title, but he certainly possessed enough sense to balance his accounts.”