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your…appearance when you first arrived, I did not greet you with the warmth and hospitality due my father’s guest. I do hope that, during the rest of your stay, you will allow me to make amends for that regrettable lapse.’
    Of all the things she might have said, that apology was perhaps the most unexpected. In his observation, a Beauty was generally too complacent about her own worth and too absorbed by her own concerns to notice or care about the feelings of lesser beings.
    Had some traumatic event—perhaps the tragic loss of her mother the previous summer?—spurred her to this unusual sensitivity? Whatever the cause, the perception and empathy she’d just displayed hinted at a character as sterling as her beauty.
    A beautiful lady of gentle birth and sterling character who was already fully capable of managing a vast estate would be a prize indeed on the Marriage Mart this spring. The more discerning London gentlemen ought to fight each other to vie for her hand.
    A pang of sadness flashed through him that in neither wealth nor title would he be considered worthy to enter that contest.
    But then, he wasn’t in the market for a wife, certainly not a wealthy, well-born one eager to plunge herself into the London society, he now disdained. Shrugging off that stab of regret, Greville said, ‘Shall we exchange mutual apologies, then? I shall beg pardon for not initially appearing worthy of your hospitality.’
    â€˜Very well, mutual apologies it is,’ she agreed with a smile.
    Greville caught his breath. Frowning, Miss Neville had been lovely; uninterested, she was the handsomest woman he’d ever met, but with those tempting lips curved upwards, the smile adding a glow to her cheeks and an appealing softness to her countenance, she was magnificent.
    The warmth of her expression flowed like molten honey over his cold heart, glazing it with sweetness. Smiling back, he glanced into her eyes and was captivated.
    Ah, how mesmerising were the turquoise-blue depths, scintillating with highlights like a white-capped sea under a blustery fair sky! Greville could cast himself adrift in them for ever.
    He felt almost dizzy, his equilibrium unexpectedly upended by a force too powerful to resist. He felt as if he’d been tossed to the deck by a ‘wind shot’, the blast of air from a passing cannon ball that could knock a man off his feet, though the ball itself never touched him.
    The attraction was so strong, he instinctively wished to move closer, catching himself from doing so only at the last moment.
    For several seconds they both remained motionless. Had the blast he felt affected her, too? he wondered. Certainly she had gone still and silent, her lips slightly parted but mute, her wide eyes staring back into his. She was shaken, he concluded with a wild upswing of joy.Every sense exulting, he felt the nearly irresistible urge to close the distance between them and kiss her.
    Mercifully, good sense intervened. He stepped back, making himself recall why kissing the daughter of his host was not a good idea, even though other parts of his body enthusiastically endorsed such a course.
    She broke the fraught silence then, saying something about returning to the house that his still-dazed ears were barely able to comprehend.
    Pull yourself together, Greville. Though initially he’d merely thought to amuse himself, tweaking this pretty miss with her superior sense of worth, he now felt the strongest compulsion to discover more about her.
    â€˜Let me walk in with you,’ he said, deliberately slowing his pace while he reassembled his scrambled wits to produce some suitable conversation to prolong their interlude. ‘You’ll be wanting to return to your duties, which, I understand, are considerable. Luke, the footman who acted as my valet this morning, told me about the sad losses your family has recently suffered. Please accept my condolences, Miss Neville. However