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white-knuckled fist about her throat. Having her daughter ripped away by a rake who didn’t love the little girl would crush her. And terrify Aimee.
    Maddie glanced at her aunt and found mischief sparkling in her eyes. Unease prickled along her spine.
    “ No, Aunt Edith. He cannot know about Aimee. Colin and I went to great lengths to have Aimee’s official birth date recorded as a full six weeks later than actual. We wanted no hint of scandal attached to her.”
    “ There is a Hindu saying,” began Vema in her soft, sing-song voice, “‘All things we desire but do not have are found when we enter that space within the heart; for there abides all desires that are true, though covered by what is false.’”
    Maddie stared at the Indian woman. “You believe I secretly love this man but have convinced myself I do not?”
    “ If not, why have you never shown interest in another man, even your own husband?” countered Edith.
    “ Because I learned my lesson the first time.”
    Edith’s expression chastised her. “Come now, you are far too young to put yourself on the shelf. Admit that you have always cared for Mr. Taylor.”
    Her headache now beating with a vengeance, Maddie stood. “Both of you have gone mad. Well and truly mad. If I wanted another husband, I would certainly find a man other than Brock Taylor.”
    “ Perhaps.” Edith eyed her shrewdly. “But in my long life, I’ve discovered that the more one protests, the more she desires what she denounces.”
    Desire Brock? Maddie had wanted the terrible man at one time, true. After he left her five years ago, it had seemed forever before she could think of anything or anyone but him, much to Colin’s irritation.
    Today, she wanted him gone. Forever.
    Maddie glared at the two women, a suspicion taking root in her mind. There was one thing this duo loved even more than gossip, and she would not stand for it.
    Thrusting her hands on her hips, she stared at them both. “Save your matchmaking schemes for another. I cannot and will not marry that man!”
    Edith merely smiled, blue eyes deceptively innocent. “Whatever you say, my dear.”
    #
    Afternoon cast the brightest of spring rays through Maddie’s parlor window when she slammed her account book shut. If throwing the slim volume against the wall would have netted her different sums, she would have cheerfully succumbed to the temptation.
    Weariness making her ache, she rose from her chair, stretching her neck to ease hours spent hunching over her dwindling accounts. Aimee needed new dresses, and though she was hard on her clothes, Maddie couldn’t bring herself to chastise the girl. Her daughter deserved childhood innocence, as much freedom from the cold reality of their finances as Maddie could provide.
    Edith’s small stipend of fifty pounds a year from her late husband, Mr. Bickham, helped a bit. That, along with the two hundred pounds per year provided by the farmlands her father had left her in Warwickshire, barely kept them with life’s necessities.
    Anxiety gripped her. Brock’s offer would solve so many problems—but create others that were both permanent and dismaying.
    At a knock upon the door, Maddie called out, “Yes?”
    “ Matheson, my lady,” came the servant’s crisp voice through the door. “Mr. Taylor has come to call.”
    Apprehension and anger, along with something fluttery she refused to name, raced through her. How dearly she would love to instruct Matheson to send Brock away, but she must persuade him to compromise and agree to some settlement of her debts without marriage. She had to make him understand that she would not succumb to his demands.
    Her headache returned. “Show him in and leave us.”
    “ Very good, my lady.”
    The quiet click of the door moments later unnerved her. She glanced up to find her nemesis hovering just inside the room, his sharp gaze completely focused on her.
    For a heartbeat, Maddie could not breathe. The room and its tattered drapes faded