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it.”
    “Why?” she asked. “Why would you want to do that?”
    “A number of reasons.” Most of which he wouldn’t share with her just now. For example, he wouldn’t tell her that she was the most interesting woman he’d met since returning to England. And he wouldn’t tell her that he did plan on kissing her again—with her permission, of course. Most of all, he wouldn’t tell her that he wanted to help her—to make sure she didn’t get caught and sent somewhere that would ruin her beauty and crush her spirit. She wouldn’t likely welcome anything that sounded like pity or even concern. Not the Eve Stanhope who’d confronted him in his drawing room this morning like a kitten standing up to a pack of dogs.
    “I don’t like having competition,” he said finally. “I especially don’t like someone impersonating the Orchid Thief and doing a poor job of it. Really, Miss Stanhope, a daisy.”
    “And I suppose you have unlimited access to orchids,” she said.
    “As a matter of fact, I do.”
    One eyebrow went up in positive disapproval. “That doesn’t surprise me.”
    “Where is the crime in owning orchids?” he demanded. “Why do you dislike the rich so intensely?”
    “They’re stupid and petty, and they think they’re superior when what they really are is lucky in choosing their parents.”
    Oddly enough, he’d thought exactly the same—at least of the nobility in England. But coming from her it sounded so much more insulting, especially because she no doubt included him in her analysis. “That’s not true of all of them…all of us.”
    “Name an exception.”
    Me, for one, he might have said, but he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to hear her reaction to that. “My parents. And my brother was a wonderful man.”
    “I’ll take you at your word on that.”
    “Thank you.” I think. “Now, will you agree to allow me to help you?”
    She lifted her chin and looked into his face—the perfect picture of defiance. “No one helps me.”
    “Very well.” He took a breath and then another. “Will you agree to be my partner?”
    “Let me understand this,” she said. “You’ll buy me dresses and loan me your carriage.”
    “Not exactly. We’ll go to parties together in my carriage.”
    “And what will you take in exchange?” she asked.
    “One half of the proceeds of our larceny.”
    “And the cost of the dresses will come out of your half?” she asked, looking at him as if he’d become unhinged.
    Perhaps he had. Here he was, staring into the face of a woman who was pretending to be someone she wasn’t in order to steal jewels she had no right to, and he was begging her permission to help her do it. “As you pointed out, I don’t need money.”
    “Then what is it you do need?”
    Excitement. Freedom. Any number of things that would make him sound like a spoiled child to her. But there was one thing she might understand.
    “As the heir to an earldom, I’ll have to choose a wife soon,” he said. “All of society knows that.”
    “You can’t mean to marry the princess of a country that doesn’t have a princess, can you?”
    “Of course not. But if it appeared that I was courting you, all the husband-hunting young ladies and their mothers might leave me alone. At least for a while.”
    She greeted that with some skepticism, if he could read the cold light in her eyes correctly. “So, you’d want me to accept your advances. At least publicly.”
    “They wouldn’t be very amorous advances. You’ve remarked yourself on how stifling society is.”
    “No stolen kisses?” she asked. “No passionate embraces behind the potted palms?”
    In fact, he’d like something exactly like that, although he’d take great care not to be interrupted. But he wasn’t going to admit that to her. “Nothing like that. Just enough intimacy—within the bounds of good taste—to convince my family and any young ladies with designs on me that I’m taken. You could manage that much,