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and released her hand. Her heart pounded against her ribs, whether from the excitement of her adventure or their mad dash away from it she wasn’t sure.
    “I had planned to talk my way out of the situation without resorting to violence, but your intrusion made that impossible.” Crispin raked a hand through his hair. “Did it look as if I required your help?”
    “No, you acquitted yourself quite well,” she admitted. Even a man without a cane might not be able to best five who were determined to take him down.
    Grace looked up into his face. He didn’t seem angry now. The scowl lines around his mouth faded, but his eyes glinted with the remnant of something like fear.
    “You were afraid,” she blurted out.
    “Yes, you little ninny, I was afraid for you,” he said. “What if they’d been smart enough to realize you were worth far more than my cuff links? I knew I could take those clods, but if they’d decided to snatch you and run off, I wouldn’t have been able to catch them.”
    He looked away from her, back up the dark path. He’d obviously honed his self-defense skills despite his infirmity. She suspected it cost him dearly to admit there were some things he couldn’t do.
    “May we sit for a moment?” she asked, settling onto a nearby bench without waiting for his answer. When he plopped down next to her, she noticed the long muscle in his thigh twitching beneath his skintight trousers. He laid a heavy hand on it to still the spasm.
    “If you don’t mind my asking,” she said, glancing sideways at him, “what happened to your leg?”
    “How convenient polite discourse is. Even if I do mind, you’ve already asked your question.”
    “Pardon me.” Grace worried her bottom lip.
    Her mother would say she’d committed two faux pas just then. Minerva Makepeace wouldn’t dream of asking a personal question. Conversing about the weather was always safe and recommended.
    And she’d never be indelicate enough to use the word “leg” instead of the more ladylike “limb.”
    “I don’t wish to pry.” Grace folded her hands primly on her lap.
    “Like hell you don’t,” he said with a laugh. “You’reburning with feminine curiosity, so even if I don’t tell you, you’ll ferret out the tale some other way.”
    Grace flinched. Not because of his casual swearing. Her father’s speech was always peppered with rude words and mild blasphemies that agitated her mother into near incoherence. Grace suspected that was precisely why he used them.
    No, she flinched because Crispin seemed to be able to hear exactly what she was thinking. How did he know her mind so well?
    “Ask anyone. They’ll tell you.” Crispin stretched his lame leg out to its full length and grimaced. “No doubt when you inquire around you’ll hear that my lover’s husband came home unexpectedly and I injured myself leaping from a second-story window.”
    “I can’t say I’m surprised.” She curled her lip at him in disgust. Private immorality was one thing. Making a public virtue of it, quite another.
    He laughed. “I started that rumor myself because it’s far more entertaining than the truth.”
    She rolled her eyes. “One wonders if you’re capable of the truth.”
    “When it suits me.”
    She shook her head at him. “You are without doubt the strangest man I’ve ever met.”
    “I don’t know whether to be flattered or sorry that you’ve met so few men.” He leaned toward her and she caught a whiff of his clean, masculine scent.
    Her toes curled inside her slippers.
    “On the grand scale of things, I’m really not so strange. Believe me, Grace, the world is filled with people who would permanently cross your eyes.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Take that gang around the Maypole, for instance.” He smiled indulgently at the bacchanalian-style revel.“Just to look at them, you’d think they haven’t a care in the world.”
    Grace nodded. In fact, her feet itched to join their dance on the broad green