She put down her bread. “That only makes the whole business worse. You are correct that old scandal is bad enough—very bad—but add to that Mr. Butterfield, add to that an embezzler, add to that a duchess of dubious antecedents…even you, Elsmore, can’t charm your way past that much wrongdoing.”

He’d forgotten about Butterfield. “What aren’t you telling me, Eleanora?”

She resumed eating, but Rex doubted she was tasting her meal any more than he was tasting his.

“What is the point in telling you anything, Elsmore? You go on your way, doing as you please, ducal consequence ensuring that what you please is what everybody pleases. My life has been the opposite. What I wanted, what I longed for, was held away from me by every agent of Providence I encountered.”

She got up to pace, the dog pausing in his devotions to the ham bone, the cat hovering over her fish in the corner.

“I was born the wrong gender for my profession,” Eleanora went on. “I was born to the wrong family for a girl who desired above all things to be respectable. I was sent to London in the wrong company at the wrong age for the wrong reasons.” She fetched up against the hearth, her back to Rex as she stared into the flames. “I fell in love with the wrong man at the wrong time.”

The look she sent him over her shoulder—bewildered, impatient—confirmed that Rex was that man.

How could such a joyous revelation result in such misery?

“I fell in love with the right woman,” Rex said, rising. “I can finally see the right way to go on with my family. I am at last in possession of the means and motivation to run my bank properly. I need only hurl a few thunderbolts, banish a knave or two, and earn your trust and I can share my life with the right duchess—the only duchess—for me. If she will have me.”

“And you think you can hurl those thunderbolts and banish those knaves with nobody the wiser?” Eleanora asked as Rex stalked across the room. She watched his approach, her mouth pressed into a bitter line.

“I will for damned sure try, Eleanora. My happiness has lately come to matter to me, as has yours.”

They were within kissing distance, close enough that Rex caught a whiff of roses. Close enough that desire was trying to crowd out rational thought and largely succeeding.

Eleanora took a taste of him, her kiss flavored with butter.

Rational thought galloped off the field. “Do that again. Please.”