“And Wentworth and Penrose has no idea what a treasure they have in you.” She was so much more than an auditor. She should have been a bank director, if not manager of the whole enterprise.

“My wages are generous, Elsmore. Wentworth and Penrose treats me well, and I manage my money carefully.”

By purchasing portable items of silver, like an itinerant peddler never welcome anywhere for long. The notion made Rex demented with worry for her.

“Do you fear Penrose and Walden will learn of your humble origins, Eleanora?”

“His Grace of Walden knows something of my past,” she said. “He respects my privacy.”

Well, hell. “Does your privacy require that you sleep alone tonight?”

She rustled about until she was straddling Rex’s lap. “My privacy requires no such thing. I will have my bed to myself for the rest of my days, I’d like to spend this last night with you.”

Even as she commenced kissing him and casting his wits to the night wind, he gathered a scintilla of comfort from what she’d admitted: She did not foresee another man taking his place in her bed, and that was fitting, because he’d never love another as he loved her.

*  *  *

Ellie’s tale about the great good fortune that had befallen her outside the haberdashery all those years ago was the truth. She could disclose that much of her past only because she and her duke would say farewell on the morrow, likely never to see each other again.

That should have been a relief, should have been a burden lifted, to think of parting from a man who saw her too clearly and cared for her too dearly.

Ellie had cried for days when her mother had moved to France. She’d cried for two hundred miles when she had left her grandparents in York. She’d told herself then that attachments came at too high a cost, and had kept her distance since that day from even her own sister.

The prospect of parting from Elsmore multiplied her capacity for regret by ten, but then, he’d increased her capacity for joy a hundredfold.

“You’ll stay with me tonight?” she asked, curling down against his shoulder.

His arms came around her, so welcoming and sheltering. “Of course, if you want me to, Eleanora. That you find me acceptable for a dalliance but not as a suitor is puzzling.” His tone balanced humor and genuine bewilderment. His touch on her back was beguilingly gentle.

My cousin stole from your bank and put your whole family at risk of ruin. A hanging felony, and probably the least impediment to further dealings with Elsmore. My other cousin has worked every rig and scheme known to the criminal mind, and my father taught them everything they know. Instead, she kissed Elsmore with all the regret in her, for the time they could not have together, for the truths she could never share with him.