"You cannot be so noble, Nicholas, so elevated in your spirit, you cannot-"

"Hush. That's quite enough. Let's be sensible here. You would like to know who you really are. I am acquainted with many different sorts of people from all over the world. I will have your portrait painted, perhaps a dozen miniatures, and I will have them sent out. We will discover who your parents were, Rosalind. Or, perhaps, one morning you will wake up next to me, and smile, and you will remember. I quite understand why your Uncle Ryder and Uncle Douglas stopped the search. But you will not worry about anyone ever hurting you again. I will protect you with my life."

Rosalind turned and ran out of the drawing room.

"Rosalind!"

"My lord, Miss Rosalind scampered out of the house. Are you responsible for this, my lord? Did you insult that sweet young pullet?" Willicombe, all puffed up, actually barred Nicholas's way.

"The pullet has nothing but air between her pretty ears. She ran out for no reason at all." Nicholas lifted Willicombe beneath his armpits, set him down to one side, and ran after her through the open front door. He paused when he saw a flash of her blue skirt swing around the corner.

He heard a yell and a shout. He came around the corner at a dead run to see her on her backside on the sidewalk, skirts billowed about her. Beside her sat a heavy matron, flushed to her eyebrows, hat askew, a lovely ruffled petticoat fluffed up about her knees, parcels scattered around her, her mouth open to yell again.

Nicholas quickly helped the woman to her feet, not an easy task, and gathered her parcels for her.

Chins wobbled as she shook her fist at Rosalind. "I am

Mrs. Pratt, sir, and I am the wife of Deacon Pratt of Pear Tree Lane. This young lady, sir, came flying out at me, fair to sending me to my maker, and it's Deacon Pratt who wants that pleasure. Lucky it was that my precious pork knivers didn't scatter themselves on the dirty ground. If she's your wife, sir, you need to clout her good."

"Yes, she is my wife, but she doesn't deserve a clout in this instance, ma'am, since it is my fault she was running and had the dreadful misfortune to hit you."

Mrs. Pratt crossed ample arms over her equally ample bosom and tapped her puce-colored boots. "Is that so? And what did you do, sir, to make this sweet young lady flee from you?"

"Well, I must be honest here, Mrs. Pratt. You deserve honesty. The fact is she isn't yet my wife. The second fact is that I asked her to marry me but she doesn't feel she's good enough for me, which is absurd. All right, I admit that if you look at her now, ma'am, sitting there rubbing her rear parts, looking as though she wants to burst into tears and scream at me at the same time, perhaps you'd agree with her. But standing upright or waltzing, an enchanting smile on her face, she's very fine indeed and will do me proud. And when she marries me, I will surely keep her from running over respectable ladies out doing their shopping."

"I've never eaten a pork kniver," Rosalind said.

The woman eyed Rosalind with disfavor. "You likely don't deserve one. Marry him or I will introduce him to my sweet nieces, who would never consider taking a single step away from him. Just look at him-he has all his teeth and nice and white they are, and there is no fat hanging off his middle, unlike Deacon Pratt, who wears a very wide belt to hold himself into his shirts. I have told him repeatedly not to be a glutton, but he looks at me and says a man must take his pleasure where he can. The gall, I tell him. Marry him, missy, marry him."

Rosalind stared up at Nicholas, wringing her hands again. "But, Nicholas-"

"You're not getting any younger," the woman said. "If I show him my nieces, he might turn his back on you fast enough. My little Lucretia is only seventeen."

Since Rosalind ignored Nicholas's outstretched hand, he turned to say to Mrs. Pratt, "Pray accept my apologies, ma'am, but she will wed me and thus I will not be available to make the acquaintance of Lucretia." Nicholas gave her a marvelous bow and a fat smile that made her chins wobble anew. Mrs. Pratt gave him a look that Rosalind now recognized as fast-crumbling female principles, and said, just this side of a simper, "Perhaps my lovely Lucretia is on the young side for you, sir, perhaps it is an older, more experienced lady who would suit you"-she patted the fat sausage curls over her ears then stared down at Rosalind with a good deal of antipathy-"not this harebrained knot-head who ran away from you."

"But you caught the knot-head for me, ma'am, and I thank you."

"Only in a very remote manner of speaking, sir. Well, now, I suppose there was no harm done." And Mrs. Pratt, all her parcels tucked beneath her arms, was gone with one long wistful backwards look at Nicholas and a sneer at Rosalind.

He stood over her, hands on hips. "Do you really want to sacrifice me to Mrs. Pratt's niece Lucretia?"

"She's only seventeen. You could mold her."

"You're only eighteen and I would rather mold you. Are you all right?"

"It is about time you inquired. No, I'm humiliated, and you had to rub my nose in it with your fine conversation with Mrs. Pratt."

"One must consider all Offers. I'm sorry to say this, but you deserved to be humiliated. Would you care to tell me why you bolted, or was I right on the mark?"

She looked away from him. "I simply couldn 't bear it."

"Bear what, for heaven's sake?"

"Your-your nobility."

He could but stare at her. "If only you knew," he said finally. He reached down a hand and jerked her up and into him, hard.

She said, her breath warm on his chin, "It's depressing, my lord. I cannot even execute a dramatic exit with any style at all. Blessed hell, I wish I'd scattered that dreadful woman's wretched pork knivers in the street. What is a pork kniver?"

"A cutlet that's baked with peonies and thyme until it resembles the leather on the bottom of your slippers. It is a challenge to all teeth. Quite tasty really."

He held her close, ignored the nanny and two children who passed close by. "So I am noble?"

"Yes, but what's important here is that I'm trying to be noble as well." She looked at his mouth, leaned forward, and kissed his neck. She actually felt the surge of energy pound through him. "It's difficult to be noble when you're holding me like this. Nicholas, are you perhaps feeling lust for me from that wee little kiss on your neck?"

"No, damn you, what I am feeling is abused. Now we have a good half dozen people staring at us, Rosalind. I am an important personage. Come along back to the house."

She took a step away from him. "All right, I have some distance from you and thus some perspective. Here it is, Nicholas. You are noble, I am noble. I will not, cannot, marry you. Take it to heart, for I mean it well."

"That sounds like you're quoting from Shakespeare."

"Well, naturally, since he provided me my name."

Nicholas said to the heavens, "I wonder if it would help me understand if I pounded my head against that stone wall over there." He looked at her, reached out, and managed to grab her hand. He pulled her after him back to the Sherbrooke town house. She didn't yell, for which he was profoundly grateful.

Douglas Sherbrooke, imposing in his black evening clothes and his head of thick white hair, eyed the newly arrived Nicholas Vail, Earl of Mountjoy, and felt a bolt of fear for

Rosalind. This young man was indeed honed hard to the bone, just as Ryder had said, and ruthless, he'd wager.

He watched the young man's eyes search the room until they found Rosalind, who was seated quietly in a wing chair by the fireplace. She looked pale to Douglas, not at all her usual laughing self, and the pale yellowish-green gown she wore didn't help. He frowned. Who had selected that gown for her? He would make sure she never wore it again.