Babette looked a bit less crestfallen. “You’re becoming too attached to me?”

“A man needs his dignity, Babette.” That qualified as an eternal verity. “With your sheer friendliness, your affection, your laughter…you put me at risk for foolishness. Better to leave before you set your hook and while we are still friends, wouldn’t you say?”

She finally took the paper. “What is this?”

Stephen put a gloved hand on the door latch. “You can read it for yourself.”

She opened the paper before he could make his escape. “This is the deed to a tea shop, my lord. You bought me a tea shop?”

The shop, the inventory, and the articles of the clerk who’d been working there for the past two years. The enterprise was operating at a healthy profit too, and Stephen had topped up its cash reserves and inventory as well.

“Bracelets as parting gifts show an execrable lack of imagination, and the pawnbrokers take ruthless advantage of anybody trying to hock such baubles. A tea shop will generate income and give you an option if you’re ever injured in the course of your profession. There’s a price, though, Babette.”

She tucked the deed out of sight. “What price?”

“You keep the terms of our parting to yourself. Say you inherited a competence from an auntie or that a friend of the family willed you the means to buy the shop. Keep my name out of it. Put it about that I’m off to the grouse moors when I quit Town. Grumble at my pinchpenny ways and tell everybody I’m a bad kisser.”

She peered around at her rooms, which were far more comfortably appointed than they had been several months ago. The carpet was Savonnerie, the drapes Italian brocade. The tea service was Spode—not antique, but certainly pretty.

“You are a splendid kisser, my lord.”

“If you insist on lavishing such compliments on me, I really must be going.”

Babette put her hand over his on the door latch. “You will drop in to buy tea from me from time to time?”

He’d more likely send a spy, at least until she was walking out with some worthy fellow. “You intend to keep the shop yourself?”

“I’ll give notice at rehearsal tomorrow and speak to Clare about coming to work for me. She can dance for only a few more weeks.”

An inordinate sense of relief followed that announcement. “Perhaps I’ll look you up when I return to Town, but don’t think we can resume where we left off, Babette.”

“My name’s Betty. Betty Smithers, purveyor of fine teas and sundries.”

“Betty,” he said, brushing a kiss to her cheek. “Be well and say grumpy things about me.”

She grinned. “You’re an awful man who has no sense of humor and no eye for jewelry.”

“Just so,” he said, lifting the latch. “And I make you late for rehearsal with my endless selfish demands on your person. You are well rid of me.”

Stephen left her smiling by the door. By the time he’d retrieved his horse from a sleepy groom in the mews, his relief at a friendly parting was fading. He liked Babette, of course, and was fond of her, but then, he liked most women, and was fond of all of his lovers.