Reaching the opposite side of the street, the dog turned his focus on the bustling shoppers. He weaved through the crowd, snapping at a passing woman’s skirts and baring his teeth in a threatening matter. Never mind that he couldn’t have been more than half a stone in weight.

“Away with you!” An elderly lady in a plumed bonnet batted at him with her silk-ruffled umbrella. “Do something, Smithers,” she cried to the liveried footman accompanying her, “before he ruins my hem!”

Obedient to his mistress, the footman swung his foot to kick the dog back into the street.

But the wiry little mongrel was too canny.

He dodged away, setting his sights on another pair of shoppers up ahead—two stylish young ladies walking arm in arm. His gimlet eyes fixed on the voluminous mazarine velvet skirts of the smaller lady’s expensive-looking carriage gown. Mayhem was plainly on his mind.

With a sigh of resignation, Charles moved to intervene.

He was thinking more of the dog than the young lady. A shortcoming of his, to be sure. It was one that arose as much from upbringing as inclination. His compassion for animals frequently overshadowed his concern for the comfort of well-to-do human beings.

“Pardon me, ma’am,” he began.

The velvet-clad young lady turned to look at him in the selfsame moment the little dog latched onto her skirts. Her eyes widened in surprise.

They were blue eyes.

Impossibly blue.

Charles’s words of warning died on his lips. For an instant, he forgot where he was.

But only for an instant.

He may not be immune to the sight of a pretty face, but neither was he a green lad. He was nearly nine and twenty. A hardened soldier to the bone. He’d encountered plenty of beautiful women in his lifetime.

Though, admittedly, this female was something out of the common way.

And it wasn’t only the blue of her eyes, as rich and midnight-velvety as the fabric of her gown, it was the turn of her flawless ivory-and-damask-rose countenance.

But she was no milk-and-water miss. Not if her face was to judge.

There was an air of strength in the winged arch of her ebony brows and the firm line of her jaw. It was softened only slightly by the voluptuous curve of her mouth and the fetching cleft in her chin. A cupid’s thumbprint, he’d sometimes heard it called. The sign of a bold and sensuous nature.

It took an effort not to stare. Not to privately catalogue every contour and lilt in her vivid expression.

If she noticed the effect she had on him, she gave no sign of it. Her gaze dropped at once to the growling dog attached to her hem. A bemused smile touched her lips.

“Naughty boy.” She stretched out an elegantly gloved hand to gently remove the beast. “You mustn’t worry my skirts.”

“Don’t touch him!” Charles commanded.