He’d sacrificed his past. Blotted it out entirely, and her along with it.

“We traveled a great deal,” St. Clare said. “My schooling was haphazard at best. But the adventures I had. No man could wish for a better education.”

“Tell me,” she encouraged him.

And he did.

He told her about his youth. About the Grecian Count with whom he’d raced yachts in the Mediterranean. The dangerous little Italian who had taught him swordplay in Venice. And the perpetually foxed scholar his grandfather had employed to tutor him, a man who had doggedly followed them from Italy to Egypt and back again before, at long last, expiring of drink outside a disreputable tavern in Rome.

“I met Lord Mattingly and Lord Vickers not long after Napoleon was exiled to St. Helena,” St. Clare said. “We traveled together for over a year before I was obliged to rejoin my grandfather.”

“And then…?”

He shrugged. “And then I came home to England.”

She felt a sudden flush of anger toward him. “But it’s never been your home, has it? Indeed, it must seem very strange to you after a lifetime spent abroad.”

“It isn’t strange at all,” he said. “Not a day of my life has passed that my grandfather hasn’t spoken of England. He’s described every facet of fashionable society. Every stone and timber of our estate. I always knew it was my destiny to return here.”

She had to look away from him for a moment, else risk losing her temper. Good lord above. What a pantomime this was. What an absolute farce. She wanted to shake him until he admitted the truth to her.

But she couldn’t force him to do anything.

She didn’t dare try, not when there was the faintest shadow of uncertainty about who he was. And she was uncertain, more now than she’d been before he’d started his tale. How could she not be when he looked as he did and talked as he did? When he had wealth, and a title, and the support of the Earl of Allendale?

“Does it not get tedious living with your grandfather?” she asked. “A man of your age?”

“In Grosvenor Square?” He shrugged. “On occasion. But I’m not bound to stay there.”

“You have another residence?”

For a moment it seemed he would not answer. And then: “I keep a set of rooms at Grillon’s. A place I can go when I want a bit of privacy.” His mouth hitched in an apologetic smile. “It’s not something I generally make known.”

A set of rooms at Grillon’s.

Heat crept into Maggie’s face. She was no green girl. She knew why a gentleman might keep rooms at a hotel. Privacy indeed. “Why did you come back? Do you mean to settle here?”

“I told you,” he said. “I mean to court you.”