He kissed her forehead, a brush of warmth in the growing chill. “I will never love another as I love you, Eleanora, and I will not pretend otherwise to spare your sensibilities. We are honest with each other. Your candor is an attribute I have always treasured about you.”

She could never be honest with him. “I am sorry, Elsmore. We would not suit.”

He stepped away, his gaze going to the snowy expanse spreading out from the manor house below. He owned a small kingdom, but more than that, he carried responsibility for a kingdom’s worth of souls. Above all else, Ellie regretted leaving him alone with that burden.

“We should be going,” she said. “Cook will expect us back in time for dinner.”

Elsmore offered his arm, and they descended into the gloom of the stairway without another word.

*  *  *

Rex wasn’t giving up without a fight, and he had Eleanora Hatfield to thank for igniting his willingness to join battle. For too long, he’d been the doting brother, the indulgent cousin, the dutiful nephew. His largesse was so taken for granted that petty thievery had sprung up among his nearest and dearest.

He’d deal with that affront upon his return to London. For now, he had one more night with Eleanora, and he would use it to give her every possible doubt about her rejection of his suit.

“How did you come to be an auditor?” he asked, tossing another log onto the fire in her sitting room.

“By merest chance.”

She’d been quiet all through dinner, and when Rex would have taken himself off to the solitary splendor of the ducal bed, she’d clasped his hand and led him to her quarters.

“I cannot believe chance alone resulted in your expertise, Eleanora.” He sat beside her on the sofa and draped an arm around her shoulders. She cuddled up as if this had become their routine, which in a very few days, it had.

“I was without means,” she said, “my family having come into some bad luck. My cousins and I were loose on the streets for most of the day, and because dressing as a boy was safer, that’s how I went about. I was slight and easily hid my gender.”

Rex hated that she’d been left to fend for herself, that she’d known poverty and danger. “Go on.”

“I took any odd job, of course. Crossing sweeper, errand boy, porter, links boy. I was loitering outside a haberdasher’s, hoping for some packages to carry, when a gentleman emerged, his footman trailing behind and laden with parcels.”

Rex saw those children every day, cluttering up London’s streets, scavenging its alleys. He’d never considered that some of the destitute were girls whose very gender made them even less safe than the boys.

“Tell me the rest, Eleanora. If I have to call out some old blighter because he disrespected you, I will.”