“I have had liaisons,” he said, watching how the flames danced on the silver epergne. “Encounters, trysts. Whatever you want to call the passing interludes men alternately obsess over and belittle. I did not see the point. A tremendous lot of bother for a few minutes of pleasure that any schoolboy can bring himself. I assumed that my flaws included both an excessive capacity for cogitation and a deficiency in my manly humors.”

Matilda rose and prowled toward him. “Your manly humors are abundantly sufficient, Tremont.” She took his hand and led him to the sofa. “You had me thinking of locking the door.”

“You too?”

Her smile was dazzling. “Naughty of me, but there you have it.”

That smile, and the bashful tipping down of Matilda’s chin, explained to Tremont why otherwise sensible fellows turned into strutting peacocks and wrote bad poetry. He longed to open the window and shout to the world, She wanted to lock herself in with me!

“We are not naughty, we are courting. Will you and Tommie join me for a walk in the park on the next fine day?”

She passed him his untouched plate. In Tremont’s mind, that food had been assembled in a different era, in a different land. Everything had changed in the past few minutes, and changed for the better. He bit into a sandwich, and even the mundane combination of bread, ham, cheese, and mustard was a more ambrosial offering than it would have been before.

“You don’t have to do that,” Matilda said. “Tommie is my son, and I appreciate that you are kind to him, but you need not do more than that.”

“I realized he is not Merridew’s offspring, because you never referred to him as such. You also said you never wanted to have children with Merridew, which raised the question regarding Tommie’s paternity. The boy has been twice-orphaned of a father, Matilda. Losing my father just the once nearly did me in. You cannot think my regard for Tommie is merely kindness.”

This rather unromantic recitation had Matilda blinking at her empty plate. “You suspected he wasn’t Harry’s?”

“You said as much, but one doesn’t pry into painful personal matters.”

She sniffed and set her plate aside. “And yet, knowing I was indiscreet, you still contemplated courting me?”

What was she going on about? “Knowing I am capable of murder, you still consider marrying me?”

“Not murder, Marcus. Defense of loved ones. Those men could not stand up against their senior officer, and he was commanding them to their deaths—not for the defense of the realm, but for his own glory, in defiance of more sensible orders. You did what was needful and risked your own death and disgrace in the process.”