Tremont wrapped her gloved fingers in a light grasp. “You have fought every battle on your own, Matilda. Why take this on as solo combat too? Do you doubt my thespian capabilities? Fear not. I impersonated a peer of the realm for years, when all I really wanted to do was think, putter, and ponder. In the army, my role was regimental whipping boy for my superior officer. In the stews, I took on the part of neighborhood scribe. Harry will never take me for a besotted earl. I am not a swindler, but I can play a part.”

The coach came to a halt at one of London’s inevitable traffic tangles.

“Harry is something beyond a swindler,” Matilda said. “He is like a fox that regards a decimated henhouse as a good night’s work. He doesn’t hate the chickens he kills. It’s just that he’s hungry, and they do taste ever so lovely, and somebody went to all that trouble to pen them up for him. Other people, with few exceptions, are so many chickens to him, and he doesn’t really grasp that his fine night’s work destroys lives. He has his funny little rules—he abhors violence, considers it the tool of fools and drunks—but he lacks what you or I would recognize as morality.”

“And nothing,” Tremont said, scowling out the window, “nothing in your upbringing, your education, or your wildest nightmares prepared you to be under the authority of such a one as he. Let’s walk.”

Before Matilda could reply, Tremont had popped down from the coach and was holding the door for her. She followed and was soon on the walkway, being escorted in the direction of Tremont’s town house.

“Listen to me, Matilda,” he said, after giving the coachman instructions. “You must put from your mind any thought of sparing my sensibilities. If you want to set me aside, I will accede to your decision. I will hate that you made that choice, but I will understand.”

“Why am I doomed to take to my bed men with either too little honor or too much? The last thing I want to do is set you aside.” They turned the corner, and even Tremont’s house brought the man to Matilda’s mind. Elegant and spruce without putting on airs.

“No, that is not the last thing you want to do. The last thing you want to do is be parted from your son.”

“What?” Matilda came to a halt and disentangled her arm from Tremont. “You aren’t making any sense.” Even as she said the words, she knew that Tremont always, without fail, made sense.