She was a seductive jade whose sooty eyelashes and luxurious hair were begging for kisses.

She was an untidy baggage who had fibbed her way out of an unpleasant spot.

She was the first woman in years who spoke to him as if his lame leg was merely an inconvenience.

Obviously he should avoid her at all costs.

He straightened up and left the room without saying good-bye. An incivility, he thought to himself on the way down the staircase.

Incivility is sometimes warranted by a man’s instinct for self-preservation.

Quill headed for his study with the blind determination of an exhausted plow horse that smells his barn up ahead. He threw himself into his neglected reports, poring over the table of figures that summed up the reasons Quill might be desirous to hold shares in Mortlake & Mudland, Victuallers to the Crown.

And yet, when a footman opened the door and announced that Quill had a visitor, he didn’t hesitate. He couldn’t bring himself to give a hang about Mortlake & Mudland. A bitter loneliness was twining around his heart and making it impossible to concentrate. It was even threatening to cast him into self-pity. Quill had learned years before, in the face of the world’s unrelenting sympathy, that to pity oneself was the way to a morbid hell.

But he was surprised when he read the card. Lord Breksby was the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, on the verge of retirement, or so they said. They had only the slimmest of acquaintances with each other.

Breksby bustled in, rubbing his hands and looking not at all like a man on the edge of retirement. “Good day, sir! I trust you are not overly inconvenienced by my importunate visit?”

Quill ushered him to a chair, wondering not a little what had brought Breksby out of his elegant office in the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Downing Street.

“I called to speak to your father, not realizing he was out of the city.”

Quill nodded. “I would be pleased to send him a message. Or, if your visit is a delicate one, I would be more than happy to give you my father’s direction in Bath, Lord Breksby.”

“There’s nothing secret about my visit,” Breksby said jovially. “As a matter of fact, I was calling to congratulate your father on young Mr. Peter’s upcoming nuptials. Heard you will soon be welcoming the presence of Jerningham’s daughter in London. By Jerningham I mean the younger one, of course. Richard Jerningham, brother of the late duke.” Almand, duke of Jerningham, had died recently, leaving the dukedom to his fourteen-year-old son.

“Miss Jerningham arrived today,” Quill observed cautiously. Every nerve was alert. Breksby could not possibly have journeyed over here just to exchange chitchat.

“I won’t beat about the bush,” Breksby said. “We need your father to help us, Dewland. Or perhaps I should say, we need Miss Jerningham’s help.”

Quill frowned.