“Harry would have told me to distract the girl by examining her wares so he could pinch three bouquets from her, which he’d either sell to the next flower girl he came across, or use to flatter ladies from whom he wanted something.”

Harry again—Harry and his rotten schemes. “Are you having second thoughts about this courtship, Matilda?”

She sat up straighter on the bench. “Not in the least.”

Her assurances sounded genuine. Matilda was clever, independent of spirit, and kind, and she was not a dissembler. Tremont guided the horse into Hyde Park, intent on cutting across Kensington Gardens on less crowded thoroughfares. The park was quieter and, given the weather, all but deserted of wheeled traffic.

“Are you having second thoughts?” Matilda asked.

“My thoughts…” Tremont drew the horse up onto the verge and tried to gather up the flock of mental doves that passed for his thoughts these days. “I have never been in such a muddle. You debate the Apostle Paul’s attitude toward women as enthusiastically as you argue the merits of donkeys over mules. You have a recipe for removing wine stains from linen, good little churchwoman that you are, but you kiss like… Your kisses have been much on my mind, Matilda.”

“As yours have been on mine.” She offered that rejoinder as politely as if she were remarking on the nippy weather.

“I doubt that. We are to inspect the ledgers now that we’ve called upon your auntie. I have been hoping—desperately—that you’d use the afternoon to instead make a thorough inspection of me. Of my person.” His physical, male, desperately preoccupied person.

A snowflake drifted by while Tremont marveled at the complete abandonment of verbal restraint that had recently befallen him. One did not proposition his intended in the frigid confines of the park in the middle of a weekday after taking tea with the lady’s dragon auntie.

“You… you want me to inspect your person?” Matilda was beaming—beaming—at her violets.

Or perhaps one did precisely that. “Every inch of me, preferably on a fluffy bed behind a locked door, where we shall all the pleasures prove, with apologies to old Mr. Marlowe.”

The silence that ensued was comfortable. Matilda had a vigorous mind, and her thoughts required sorting and framing every bit as much as Tremont’s usually did. He awaited her reply, confident that she would match him honesty for honesty.

“The men are hiding something from us,” she said. “Whispering in corners, singing too loudly, and very much on their manners at meals. I wanted you to know that, and we must discuss it, but we can discuss it later.”

The men were always up to mischief. Betting on illegal prizefights, falling in love, taking in stray dogs, and so forth.