She was all at sixes and sevens, she thought crossly. The purity of her dislike for Guy Granville was now sullied with unwanted responses to his physical presence and a host of memories of the good times that summer. Oh, she could still conjure the bad aftermath, but now the good intruded on the clarity of that long-ago hurt. But he was still arrogant, still condescending, still too sure of the effect he had on women, all women, she remembered now. It had been the same ten years ago, but she had been so flattered to be the focus of his attention she hadn’t given a second thought to his flirtations with anyone else. And there had been plenty of them, she thought with the inconvenience of hindsight.

Gingerly Petra stepped onto the bath mat and hopped to the dresser stool to dry her feet. At least they were now clean, although still sore. She brushed her teeth, shrugged into her nightgown, unpinned her hair and pulled a cursory brush through the chestnut tangle, drained her glass, turned out the gas and slipped into bed.

* * *

“Lordy, Miss Petra, what ’appened to your stockings?”

Petra opened her eyes onto her now sun-filled bedroom and struggled up against the pillows. “I had to walk home without my shoes, Dottie,” she mumbled to her maid, who was looking aghast at the strips of shredded silk she’d picked up off the floor.

“Whatever for?” the girl asked, discarding the ruined stockings and picking up the apple-green gown Petra had dropped over a chair.

“Heels,” Petra said succinctly, leaning sideways to take the cup of tea on her bedside table. “They hurt my feet.”

“Not made for walking.” Dottie pointed out the obvious as she hung the dress in the wardrobe. “Will you go downstairs for breakfast?”

Petra glanced at the pretty ormolu clock on the mantel. It was gone nine o’clock and Diana and Fenella would be here at eleven. “No, I’ll have an egg and some toast and coffee up here, please. Could you run my bath?”

She sipped her tea, considering the events of the previous evening, and found that she was still as confused by her feelings as ever. When she thought of how he smiled that condescending smile, of the lightly patronizing tone of his voice, she felt only the familiar intense dislike, but then her body let her down. Her body remembered the feel and the scent of him, the warmth of his eyes when they were fixed upon her, as if they saw only her, and no one else existed outside the charmed circle of his gaze. And she went all gooey, Petra thought disgustedly, setting her empty cup aside.