She shook her head. “I’m cooking dinner, Patrick. She knows who baked that cake, but I think you should take it over.”

He sighed. His mother was matchmaking and he didn’t like it, but he’d look like a coward if he wormed out of it. Besides, he probably needed to settle things with Gwen. The last time he’d seen her had been during the disastrous party on the yacht when he fished her cousin out of the water. He owed her the respect of a proper farewell, even though it wasn’t going to be easy on either of them. He loved her, but nothing could ever come of it.

He put the glass cover over the cake and set off for the streetcar stop. It took forty minutes to get to Blackstone College, all the while awkwardly holding a cake on his lap, but soon he was walking down the tree-shaded avenue to her house. The leaves were just beginning to turn, the sun was setting, and it looked as pretty as a postcard as he headed up the walk to her front door.

Gwen’s artistic flair could be seen everywhere. Chrysanthemums bloomed in the garden, and lovely ironwork scrolls framed the door. He swallowed hard and rapped the iron knocker, feeling a little foolish holding a cake in front of him.

After a moment, a beautiful blond woman answered the door. “Can I help you?” she asked.

He was taken aback. “I’m looking for Gwen Kellerman.”

“She doesn’t live here anymore,” the blond woman said, her voice cool.

He couldn’t believe it. He angled his head to look past the woman and down the hallway of Gwen’s house. The furniture was different, and a little girl with braces on her legs read a book in the front parlor.

“Are you Vivian?” he asked, and his stomach sank when she replied in the affirmative. Unbelievable! How many times had he nagged Gwen to get moving on that unenforceable will her scoundrel of a husband had scrawled? She obviously hadn’t, and now she’d lost her house because of it. “Where has she gone?”

Vivian crossed her arms. “Who are you? Are you from the college?”

He shook his head. “I’m her lawyer. Where has she gone?”

“She’s gone to live on some sort of boat. I have no idea where it is.”

The Black Rose. It had to be. It wasn’t right that Gwen should be ousted from her home because she couldn’t stand up to her faithless husband’s mistress. She deserved better than that.

“Here,” he said, thrusting the cake into Vivian’s hands. He couldn’t be saddled with a cake when he had work to do.