“Regrettably,” she said, “I do.”

It took a great deal to shake Felix Hartford’s good-humored equanimity. He prided himself on his ability to see the absurd in every situation. No matter if it hurt him. No matter if it broke his heart.

But today was no ordinary day.

He’d been up since before dawn broke, attending to yet another remnant of his late father’s distasteful legacy. An unknown legacy as far as society was aware. Hartford wished he might have been spared the knowledge of it as well.

There had been no chance of that.

His own mother had unloaded the burden onto his shoulders, confessing every sordid detail from her deathbed nine years ago. Hartford had been only twenty at the time, little equipped to face the reality his mother’s dying words had wrought.

Lack of readiness hadn’t alleviated his responsibilities.

He’d begun to view his father’s secret life as the many-headed Hydra of mythology. Nothing was ever fully resolved. Just when he’d lopped off one of the sea serpent’s poisonous heads, two more grew in its place. He was tired of it and, after this morning’s events, quite tempted to wash his hands of the business once and for all.

And now this.

Her.

Lady Anne Deveril was the last person he wanted to see at the moment. And, rather paradoxically, the person his heart most yearned to speak with.

But not about his family’s past.

And not about her family’s either. It was a past her mother seemed to cling to with increasing determination. Anne clung to it, too, in her way; a willing victim to Lady Arundell’s obsession with the dead.

Per usual, she was clad in lusterless black bombazine. An aggravating sight, though her mourning gown was one of impeccable cut. It molded to her delicate frame; the tightly fitted bodice, with its long row of dainty jet buttons, emphasizing her narrow waist and the lush curve of her magnificent bosom. Full skirts swelled over her hips in a voluminous sweep of fabric that made the most sensuous sound, rustling over her layers of petticoats and crinoline, when she moved.

He felt it as much as heard it, tickling his senses and thrumming in his blood.

Thank heaven she’d agreed to sit.

A seated Lady Anne was far easier to deal with than an Anne in motion. And she was almost always in motion, whether striding about in her mother’s wake or galloping down Rotten Row in company with her bluestocking friends. Mounted Amazons, all—and just as formidable.

He chose his next words with care. “Whatever it is you think you know—”

“What I know,” she said in the lemon-tart tones of a British schoolmarm, “is that you never met a frivolity you didn’t like. These columns you write are another of your childish diversions, clearly. I’m not here to judge.”

“No?”

“I’m here to make use of you.” She tapped one kid-gloved finger on the cover of the printed journal on her lap. “All you need do is say something of a spiritualist nature about this house of Blunt’s in Yorkshire.”