was the seventh daughter of the Earl of Lister. But he disowned her when she chose to marry my father.”
“Did she regret the decision?” A sinking feeling labored his steps.
“Yes.” Again her eyes scanned the park, looking everywhere but at him. “Eventually, she realized that their worlds were too far apart.”
“Perhaps it was not their worlds but their temperaments that were at odds.” He was grasping at straws but he did not like the expression on her face nor the hard set of her shoulders.
Finally, she turned to him. “My lord—”
“Winston.”
“Lord Winston. What is it you hope to accomplish by walking with me?”
Unable to take the cold way in which she spoke, he caught hold of her hand and tugged her beneath the canopy of a willow tree. Quiet surrounded them, and her bright hair turned bronze in the shadows. She glanced pointedly at his hand clutching hers, but he did not let go. “I want to get to know you.”
Beneath her straight red brows, her brown eyes studied his face. “What is the point of getting to know someone whom you could never…” She sucked in a sharp breath, and her jaw went tight. “With whom you could never have a relationship?”
“Says who?”
Her brows snapped together. “Do not be obtuse. A duke’s son and a merchant’s daughter live in separate spheres. They do not commingle.”
“To my knowledge, there is no law against it.”
Her gaze was direct and snapped with impatience and intelligence. It made him hot and breathless. She glared. “There is a social law, and you well know it.”
A gust of wind rushed over the grass and whipped about them, and a long strand of her vibrant hair broke free from her practical bun to tickle his nose. Gently, he tucked it back behind her ear, not quite touching her, but wanting to. “Social laws are broken all the time.”
“To ill effect.”
He smiled then. “It’s always going to be like this, isn’t it?”
She scowled. “What is?”
“You picking away at my logic, and me finding new ways to prove you wrong.” And he could not wait.
She blushed beautifully. “You talk as if we’re to have a future.”
“Because we will.”
She frowned. “It won’t… I’m…”
“You’re what?”
She huffed out a breath. Most unladylike. Most refreshing. “My life is complicated. I have responsibilities.”
He moved just a bit closer. “I would not ask you to forgo them. I simply want…” So many things. He touched her cheek, a fleeting caress. “When I’m with you, I have no name,” he whispered. “No title. It’s just me. Just you. I want to keep that feeling, to keep you with me.”
There. He’d said it. And her nose wrinkled. “I don’t…” She paused, appearing utterly confounded by him. Confusion, he gathered, was a new thing for Poppy Ellis. And though the flush in her cheeks grew redder still, she spoke plainly. “Men don’t usually fancy me.”
He knew what it cost her to say it, and instinctively, he knew she was trying to scare him away by her admission. London society maintained a pack mentality; the undesirables were culled. What she did not know was that her brutal honesty made him admire her all the more.
He held her gaze with his. “This man does.”
Chapter Four
Jack Talent was going to be a problem. Mary had known this as soon as she’d seen him sneering at her from the deck above when she had embarked with Mrs. Lane. He always looked at her as if he knew something about her that others did not. As if he saw inside of her soul and found her lacking. It rankled. Who was he to pass judgment upon her without so much as a by-your-leave? Or scowl at her when she knew he was guilty of his own crimes? Worse still, he was now at Inspector Lane’s side. No doubt he would soon be whispering vitriol in his ear, much as he’d done with Ian Ranulf.
She would not let him. Not with so much at stake. Thus when she spied the arrogant tilt of Talent’s dark head weaving through the crowd, she followed. It was an easy task; the man held little regard for those around him and simply cut through the slower-moving people like a scythe through dead grass. Mary moved just as quickly, but delicately, having long ago learned to slip and twist through a crowd without gaining any more notice than one would give a gentle breeze.
Talent turned a corner, headed, if she could believe it, toward the shuffleboard deck. Laughter