Though she knew romantic love in itself was not an impossibility. She had only to consider her sister’s case. Vanessa had been deeply in love with Hedley Dew, her first husband, and Katherine strongly suspected that she loved Lord Lyngate just as much.

“Or perhaps,” she admitted, “there is such a person but I just cannot recognize him. Perhaps the fault is in me. Perhaps I was just not made for soaring passion or tender romance or-”

Vanessa patted her reassuringly on the arm and laughed.

“Of course there is such a man,” she said, “and of course you will recognize him when you find him and feel all the things you dream of feeling. Or after you have found him, perhaps, as I did with Elliott. We were married before I knew how much I loved him-or that I loved him at all, in fact. Indeed, I have still only just admitted it to myself, and I am not at all sure it would not alarm him dreadfully to know it, poor man.”

“Oh, dear,” Katherine said. “This does not sound at all encouraging, Nessie. Though I am sure Lord Lyngate would not be alarmed.”

They looked at each other sidelong and both chuckled.

But perhaps the fault really was in herself, Katherine thought in the coming days and weeks. Perhaps she had too rigid a notion of what the man of her dreams would look like or behave like. Perhaps she was just looking for love in the wrong places. In all the safe places.

What if love was not safe at all?

That startlingly unexpected and really rather alarming question occurred to her when she was at Vauxhall Gardens one evening.

Margaret and Stephen had just gone back to Warren Hall to stay, Margaret because she was upset over the recent news that Crispin Dew, her longtime beau, had married a Spanish lady while with his regiment in the Peninsula-though she would never have admitted it if confronted-and Stephen because at the age of seventeen he could not yet participate fully in the social life of the ton but could get back to his studies and prepare himself for Oxford in the autumn. Vanessa and Lord Lyngate had gone with them to spend a few days at Finchley Park, their home nearby. Although Katherine would have been more than happy to go too, she had been persuaded to remain in London for the rest of the Season to enjoy herself. So she was staying at Moreland House on Cavendish Square with Viscount Lyngate’s mother and his youngest sister, Cecily, who was also making her debut this Season. The dowager Lady Lyngate had promised to keep a maternal eye upon Katherine.

But that eye was perhaps not quite as watchful as it ought to have been, Katherine concluded during the evening on which she and Cecily joined a party at Vauxhall Gardens organized by Lord Beaton and his sister, Miss Flaxley. Their mother had undertaken to take charge of the party of young people, and the dowager Lady Lyngate had decided upon a rare evening of relaxation at home.

It was a party of eight young persons, not counting Lady Beaton herself-and it included Lord Montford of all people.

Baron Montford was a gentleman who had been specifically pointed out to Katherine as one of London’s most disreputable and dangerous rakehells. The warning had come from one of his friends and therefore someone who ought to know-from Constantine Huxtable, in fact, her wickedly handsome, half-Greek second cousin, whom she had met for the first time only recently when she had moved to Warren Hall with her family. Constantine had been obliging enough to take both her and his first cousin, Cecily, under his wing here in London, escorting them about town to see the sights and to meet new people whom he considered suitable acquaintances for them. No chaperone could possibly have been stricter on that point, though Katherine suspected that he knew any number of less savory persons and was perhaps even friendly with them.

There was Lord Montford, for example. That gentleman had approached them in the park one day, calling a greeting to Constantine as if he were his closest friend in the world. But Constantine had merely nodded to him and driven on by without stopping to make introductions. It had seemed almost rude to Katherine.

Baron Montford was mockingly handsome, if such a word could be used to describe a man’s looks. Even if Constantine had not proceeded to warn her against him after that chance meeting, Katherine was sure she would have taken one look at him and known that he was a rake and someone best avoided. Apart from his good looks, the careless, expensive elegance of his clothing, the assured skill with which he rode his horse-all attributes of numerous gentlemen she had met during the past several weeks-there was something else about him. Something-raw. Something to which she could not put a satisfactory name even when she tried. If she had been familiar with the word sexuality, she would have known it as the very one for which her mind searched. He positively oozed it from every pore.

He also oozed danger.

“If I should see either of you so much as glancing his way at any time for the rest of the Season,” Constantine had said after Lord Montford had ridden by and he had explained who the man was and why there had been no introductions, “I shall personally escort the culprit home, lock her in her room, swallow the key, and stand guard outside her room until summer comes.”

He had grinned at each of them as he spoke, and both of them had laughed merrily and protested loudly, but neither Cecily nor Katherine had been left in any doubt that he would do something dire if he ever caught them consorting in any way at all with that particular friend of his.

All of which, of course, had piqued Katherine’s interest-quite against her will. She had found herself stealing curious glances at Lord Montford whenever she saw him-and because they moved in largely the same social circles, that was often enough.

He was even more handsome than she had thought from that first glimpse in the park. He was tall without being too tall, slender without being thin, and firmly muscled in all the right places. He had thick, dark brown hair, which he wore rather longer than was fashionable, and there was one errant lock of it that was forever falling over the right side of his forehead. His eyes were dark and slumberous-though perhaps that was not quite the right word. They looked sleepy because he often kept his eyelids drooped over them, but Katherine had come to realize that the eyes beneath those lazy lids were very keen indeed. Once or twice she had even met their gaze and been forced to look beyond him on the pretense that she had not really been observing him at all.

Each time her heart had thumped rather uncomfortably in her bosom. He was not the sort of man one wished to be caught observing. It was at such moments that the word mocking leapt to mind.

He had a handsome, arrogant face with the right eyebrow often cocked higher than the left. His finely chiseled lips were usually slightly pursed, as if something rather improper were proceeding in his mind.

He was a baron and was reputed to be enormously wealthy. But his company was not courted by the very highest sticklers of society. Constantine had not exaggerated about his reputation for unbridled wildness, for taking on any mad and dangerous challenge anyone was willing to wager on, for hard, reckless living and wicked debauchery. Several matchmaking mamas, even some of the more aggressively ambitious ones, avoided him as though he had a permanent case of the plague. Or perhaps they avoided him more because they feared he would turn those keen, mocking eyes on them, raise his right eyebrow, purse his lips, and make them feel as if they were three inches high if they presumed to suppose that he might pay court to their daughters-or even dance with them.

He never danced.