Why did he have to sound so reasonable, so rational? Why couldn’t he have said something infuriating about it being inappropriate or irresponsible, or just wrong for a woman of her position to walk barefoot through the streets of London? All of which would have been perfectly true, but she would have felt entitled to object to such objections. Instead Petra said nothing, merely increased her speed, hoping for a nonchalant stride, her shoes dangling carelessly from her hands, trying to ignore him as he continued to keep pace with her.

But there was too much of him to ignore, even when he wasn’t saying anything. “I really don’t need an escort, Guy. I’m sure you must have better things to do.”

“As it happens I don’t find that I do,” he said. “Your stockings are shredded.”

As if she wasn’t aware of that fact, or for the sharply unfriendly ground beneath her bare feet, Petra thought, seething silently. She caught her foot in a tree root pushing up through the cracks of the paving stones and momentarily off-balance grabbed the iron railings in front of the house she was passing to steady herself, but not before Guy had caught her around the waist, pulling her against him, bringing them both to a stop.

“Dear girl, why won’t you accept that this is ridiculous and let me hail a cab?”

A lamentable stubborn streak had bedeviled Petra since the nursery. Every reasonable bone in her body said she should yield and be grateful, but she couldn’t bring herself to give in. She pushed away his supporting arm and walked on, once more trying not to limp.

Guy watched her for a moment. She had always been a spirited creature, even as a girl. Her size didn’t diminish that spirit in the least. And her girlhood promise had certainly been fulfilled, he reflected with a half smile, watching her striding along in her stockinged feet. Her chestnut hair gleamed, richly burnished under the streetlights, and those hazel eyes snapped as fiercely now as they had done all those years ago when something had annoyed her. At the moment, it seemed, he was the cause of her annoyance, but she really couldn’t walk alone carrying her shoes through the nighttime streets of Mayfair.

He followed just behind her as Petra reached the corner of the square, preparing to limp across Mount Street, picking her way over the dirty paving. A hackney came up behind Guy and he flagged it down.