“I have plenty of dresses.”

“Your dresses are fine,” Hattie said unconvincingly. “But they are all . . . gray.”

“They are.”

“And they all . . . look the same.”

“Because it saves me half an hour a day, not needing to think about assembling an outfit.”

Besides, gray was a practical color for a woman whose daily activities invited dust and ink splats onto her garments. Garments she and Mrs. Heath had to painstakingly clean every Saturday. She caught Catriona’s harangued gaze; no doubt she had been besieged by Hattie prior to her arrival. Heiress to a Scottish earldom or not, Catriona felt most comfortable wrapped in her old Clan Campbell tartan shawl, with her black hair in a plain bun and her nose buried in a Byzantine parchment. Poor Hattie.

It took not twenty seconds for the girl to throw up her hands. “Lemon yellow,” she cried. “With your coloring, you should wear lemon yellow, perhaps for a morning dress. Mauve, and light blue and powder blue for an elegant walking dress, at most a soft dove gray, but never this dreary shade of slate. Cerise for a striking evening gown. Consider crimson for the most stunning entrance at a ball. No intricate patterns for you, but clean lines—I’d recommend adding touches of softness with plush textures instead. Truly, Lucie, I see such potential!”

“You overwhelm me, my dear.”

“Be careful if you do go shopping with her,” said Annabelle. “The last time I let her choose my gown, I found myself wearing magenta and scandalized the ballroom.”

Hattie gave her a smug look. “And then a duke fell hopelessly in love with you and made you his duchess. Indeed, I’m a terrible friend.”

A glance at the advancing hour on the tall pendulum clock made Lucie feel queasy. She put down her cup.

He should not preoccupy her, but she might as well come prepared.

“Hattie—”

“Yes?” Hattie’s expression was immediately hopeful.

“I have a query about Lord Ballentine—”

Hattie raised a hand to her mouth in delighted shock. “The Lord Ballentine, rake extraordinaire?”

“The very same. He recently received the Victoria Cross.”

“Yes?”

“What act of bravery did he commit? Do you know?”

This prompted a mildly offended look. “Of course. He ran toward danger instead of away from it.”

“Every soldier does so.”

Hattie shook no. “Apparently, he went above and beyond. I understand his battalion had become trapped against a rock face in an ambush, with only scarce cover, and his captain had been shot.”

Annabelle’s mouth turned downward. “How dreadful.”

“Indeed—and worse, the men could not recover the captain because the place where he lay was still in a direct line of fire—and they knew they would soon be picked off one by one, too, as they could not quite determine where the attack came from.”

Skepticism was written plain on Catriona’s face. “How did Lord Ballentine escape the trap, then?”

Hattie’s cheeks reddened. “Apparently, there was an element of chance. He had been trailing behind—there are rumors he was missing without leave.” Her voice dropped to a hush. “He had been taking a bath in a nearby stream . . . now, this was not in the papers, but I heard Mrs. Heathecote-Gough say he was not even fully clothed when the incident occurred.”

“Typical,” muttered Lucie.

“Lord Ballentine, upon hearing the gunfire, very recklessly and in a state of undress, set out to locate the hidden source of the attack and approached the post from a dead angle. Then he proceeded to eliminate as many as he could with just a revolver until he ran out of bullets, and by then he was upon them and vanquished the rest of them in close combat—but then, when he tried to recover the captain, he was shot through the shoulder by an ambusher he had not effectively dispatched after all.”

“So he was careless,” Lucie said. “Also typical.”

Hattie’s eyes widened with disapproval. “He saved lives, Lucie. He shielded the captain with his own body while his comrades rallied and overwhelmed the shooter. Then he led them to safety through enemy territory while wounded. That said,” she allowed, “he is still a rogue for bothering Annabelle at the winter ball.”

“Definitely a rogue,” Annabelle said darkly. “A hero and a pest, a man can be both.”

“Then again, it did spur Montgomery on to declare his feelings,” Hattie suggested.

“Of sorts,” Annabelle said, and her cheeks turned rosy.

Lucie was still struggling with visions of a murderous, partially nude Tristan Ballentine when the pendulum clock whirred and announced with a bong that she must take her leave and meet the man.

Chapter 6

Early morning had transitioned into a warm midmorning with not a whisper of a breeze to cool her curiously overheated face. She arrived in front of Blackwell’s bay windows feeling sticky and vaguely provoked by the sight of Ballentine’s maroon coat. It shone like an errant chestnut in the summer sun, while the man himself looked pleasantly cool and collected. She had observed him awhile before he had noticed her, because he stood head and shoulders above the flow of pedestrians going past the bookshop while she was all but submerged in it.

The corner of his mouth tipped up when she halted in front of him.

He lifted his top hat. “My lady.”

A sunbeam struck off his auburn hair as if it were polished copper. She was certain she’d heard a woman sigh in the crowd moving past.

“I have half an hour to spare,” she said.

“That suits my schedule perfectly.”

He was going back to London, she supposed. She swept up the three steps and into the bookstore, sending the bells above the door jingling erratically.

A dozen heads swiveled toward her in the dim heat: pale, bespectacled student faces. Eyes widened, possibly with recognition. Too many people in this town knew of her, or perhaps, they knew Tristan. Anyone would find it sensationally curious to see Lady Lucie Tedbury with the prize rake of London in tow. Quite literally. Tristan was looming behind her, standing too close after her abrupt standstill. His scent curled around her, warm and disturbingly familiar. She could have picked out of a line with her eyes closed.

She made for the narrow staircase.

The coffee room on the second floor was no larger than the shop below, fitting perhaps ten patrons on the few tables clustered around the cold fireplace. They were alone. On a hot day, except for the keen specimen downstairs, students were either abed or drunkenly floating down the river Cherwell in a punt. Tristan certainly knew how to pick a secluded place in plain sight.

By the time he pulled back a chair for her at the table next to the window, she was feeling prickly like a hedgehog. The face he was putting on was too harmless for her liking, not a leering stare or smirk in sight.

“Coffee,” he said to the waiter who had bustled in with a fresh white tablecloth. “Milk and three sugars for the lady, black for me. Unless”—he glanced at her—“you take your coffee differently these days.”

For a moment, she was tempted to say that she did. It appeared someone had spied on her during breakfast in her previous life at Wycliffe Hall.

“Milk and three sugars it is,” she muttered.

The table was small. Observed from the outside, they were friends taking coffee, their knees in danger of touching beneath the tablecloth.

And this close, she noticed changes in Tristan’s face that the dark had concealed during their encounter two days ago. Months after his return to England, his skin still had the honeyed hue of a man who had marched for miles under a foreign sun. There was a first hint of horizontal lines across his brow. Faint purple crescents were smudged beneath his eyes, as though he had slept little. None of it detracted from his beauty, but it gave him a harsher varnish. Something else was different, and it took her a moment to identify it as the absence of the diamond stud. Had she imagined it there on his ear a few nights ago? Was Ballentine not just growing older, but growing up? She could not help but wonder, then, what changes time had wrought upon her own appearance.

“You look lovely, Tedbury,” he said smoothly, as though her thoughts had been written plain on her face. “May I compliment you on your well-preserved complexion?”

“I would rather you did not,” she said. “In fact, before I discuss any matter with you at all, I must know: what were your designs on the Duchess of Montgomery at the New Year’s Eve ball?”

He blinked at her slowly. “What?”

“Montgomery’s New Year’s ball. I heard you were trying to coax the duchess to accompany you outside after a dance.”

“Ah. She was plain Miss . . . Country-Bumpkin, then, wasn’t she.”

“That’s of no consequence to my question.”

An emotion was brewing in the depth of his gaze. “If I were the type of man you evidently take me for, would I tell you the truth?”

“I would know if you were lying.”

His smile was derisive. “I doubt it.”

“Very well.”

Before she could come to her feet to make good on her threat and leave, he braced his elbows on the table and leaned in close, a startling intensity flaring at the back of his eyes.