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down her right side like a fever, even though there was a foot of air between their shoulders. Her stomach muscles were tied in knots—not to mention her tongue.
    She despised the fact that she could feel none of the ease that Miss Raycroft and the Calvert sisters had felt with him earlier. He was only a man, after all—and a shallow man at that. He was not anyone she would wish to impress. All she need do was be polite.
    Not a single polite topic presented itself to her searching brain.
    She was twenty-three years old and as gauche as a girl just stepping out of the schoolroom for the first time. But then she never had stepped outside the schoolroom, had she?
    She was twenty-three years old and had never had a beau.
    She had never been kissed.
    But such sadly pathetic thoughts did nothing to calm her agitation.
    She might have spent the past eleven years in a convent, she thought ruefully, for all she knew about how to step into the world of men and feel at ease there.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 
    By the time they were halfway to Barclay Court by Peter’s estimation, he had spoken six words and Miss Osbourne had spoken one.
    â€œWhat a lovely day it is!” he had said as a conversational overture at the outset, smiling genially down at her—or at the brim of her bonnet anyway, which was about on a level with his shoulder.
    â€œYes.”
    She walked very straight-backed. She held her hands firmly clasped behind her back, an unmistakable signal that she did not want him to offer his arm. He wondered if she simply had no conversation or if she was still bristling with indignation because he had compared her to a summer’s day—though he was in good company there, was he not? Had not Shakespeare once done the same thing? He rather suspected that it was indignation that held her mute, since she had been speaking in more than monosyllables with Mrs. Raycroft less than half an hour ago—though he would swear her eyes had never once strayed his way. He would have known if they had since his eyes had scarcely strayed anywhere else
but
at her.
    He had been puzzling—he still was—over that strange thought he had had when his eyes first alighted on her.
    There she is.
    There
who
was, for the love of God?
    It was a novel experience to be in company with a lady who clearly did not want to be in company with him. Of course, he did not usually find himself in company with lady schoolteachers from Bath. They were, perhaps, a different breed from the women with whom he usually consorted. They were quite possibly made of sterner stuff.
    â€œYou were quite right,” he said at last, merely to see how she would respond. “This summer day was not
really
made warmer and brighter by your presence in it. It was a foolish conceit.”
    She darted him a look, and in the moment before her bonnet brim hid her face from view again he was dazzled anew by the combination of bright auburn hair and sea green eyes—and by the healthy flush the fresh air had lent her creamy, flawless complexion.
    â€œYes,” she agreed, doubling her contribution to their conversation since leaving Hareford House.
    So she was not going to contradict him, was she? He could not resist continuing.
    â€œIt was my heart,” he said, patting it with his right hand, “that was warmed and brightened.”
    This time she did not turn her face, but he amused himself with the fancy that the poke of her bonnet stiffened slightly.
    â€œThe heart,” she said, “is merely an organ in the bosom.”
    Ah, a literalist. He smiled.
    â€œWith the function of a pump,” he agreed. “But how unromantic a view of it. You would put generations of poets out of business with such a pronouncement, Miss Osbourne. Not to mention lovers.”
    â€œI am not a romantic,” she said.
    â€œIndeed?” he said. “How sad! There are no such things, then, you believe, as tender sensibilities?