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do us part.”
    â€œTill death do us part,” he repeated. “Aye, there’s the rub. I understand a woman’s desire to be wed, but never say you don’t indulge in affaires de coeur on the side.”
    â€œI respect you far too much to play coy. Yes, of course, I enjoy the company of men. But my life is complicated. It’s all a matter of timing, you see. When one is freshly bereaved, one must have comfort, mustn’t one?” She blinked languidly at him. During the early days of each of her bereavements, she often had more than one lover at her beck and call. “But once I am actively seeking a husband, as I am now, it is not practical to take a lover. Gentlemen tend to resent that sort of thing in a prospective bride.”
    â€œYour logic is unassailable.”
    â€œSo I go into a period of nun-like abstinence when I’m on the husband hunt.” She sighed.
    He shook his head. “The life cycle of the man-eating she-spider is endlessly fascinating.”
    â€œYou beast!” She swatted him on the chest.
    â€œI take it back, but you must admit you are unlike most women,” he said, hands raised in surrender.
    â€œOnly in that I am more honest about my needs and wants than most.”
    â€œPoint taken,” he conceded. “Help me understand, my dear. Once you marry, I take it you are faithful to your husband.”
    She slanted him a sly glance. “As faithful as he is to me.”
    â€œSo, no.”
    â€œNot so far. You see, I’ve yet to find a man who can love with singleness of heart—not even Lucius, my first husband. Do you know I caught him in the linen closet with a chambermaid while we were on our honeymoon?”
    â€œThe dog.”
    â€œHe was, but his behavior wasn’t all that remarkable from what I hear of other marriages. It’s naive to expect fidelity,” Chloe said. “Of course, if a gentleman is discreet, there’s no real harm done. If a husband of mine keeps a ladybird in a discreet nest somewhere, who am I to complain? He has his life. I have mine. I simply engage my own lover and everyone’s happy.”
    â€œEspecially your lover, I expect.”
    â€œUse your imagination.” She leaned forward so he could get a good look down her décolletage. Lord Blackwood understood her. They’d be good together. “What do you think?”
    His mouth went slack below his neat mustache, and he dragged his eyes back up to meet her gaze with difficulty.
    â€œI think it’s in my best interests to see you wed posthaste.” Blackwood leaned toward her, tilting his head in preparation for a kiss. She was of a mind to let him have it this time.
    However, before their lips met, someone cleared their throat in the open doorway to the parlor with a loud “ahem.”
    Chloe straight-armed Lord Blackwood and turned to find Wilkenson, her butler, standing under the lintel, his back stooped, his face frozen in its perpetual hangdog expression. Whether happy or sad, his eyes were always droopy and his jowls sagging.
    He’d be a wizard at the poque table. Fair hand or foul, it would never show . “What is it, Wilkenson?”
    â€œA Lord Hartley to see you, my lady.” Wilkenson advanced toward her bearing a single card on a silver salver. “Shall I show him up?”

Five
    â€œWill you swim into my net?” said the angler to the trout.
    â€œYou’ll love its charms so very much, you never will want out.
    But if by chance you do, you see, don’t cry that life’s unfair.
    I’ll take you home and fry you up and then you’ll cease to care.”
    If this is the sort of thing they read to children these days, I wash my hands of the next generation altogether!
    â€”Phillippa, the Dowager Marchioness of Somerset
    â€œHartley, how good of you to visit me.” Chloe rose and extended her hand to the handsome young lord. And how nice that she was at home, en