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in his eyes. “Damned peculiar,” he said immediately.
    I gave him an affronted stare. I had, of course, heard the word damn many times, but it was not very nice of him to say it to me. Nor did I like his disparagement of my idea.
    He continued as if he had not seen my outraged look at all, “To put it bluntly, Miss Newbury, outside the gambling tables, your father and my uncle did not move in the same social circles. I cannot imagine any circumstances under which my uncle would agree to take on the indigent daughters of a notorious gambler as his wards.”
    I felt myself flush. “Your uncle was scarcely a paragon, Lord Winterdale. He was a card cheat, after all.”
    “Ah, but the ton does not know that, do they?” he returned blandly. “Nor do they know that he was being blackmailed by your father. All they know was that he was, as you say, an extremely respectable man—which, regrettably, your father was not.”
    His words made me angry, but reluctantly I had to admit that they also made sense. “But it sounds so suspect that Papa would have left Anna and me the wards of a twenty-six-year-old man, who, from what I understand, has an extremely disreputable reputation!”
    Those reckless eyebrows lifted, and I said with dignity, “I am sorry, my lord, but that is what I have heard from everyone I have talked to. It just looks . . . suspect.”
    He shrugged, a supple, elegant gesture. “I am afraid there is nothing we can do about it, Miss Newbury. We must just rely on my Aunt Agatha’s undoubted respectability to counteract my own regrettably disreputable reputation. And I can assure you that while Aunt Agatha may be a dragon, her consequence in good society is enormous. She is a personal friend of several of the patronesses of Almack’s, and this ball she is throwing will be attended by all of the most important people in London.”
    I bit my lip. “I don’t like her,” I said. “Haven’t you noticed how horrid she is to Catherine?”
    “No one is forcing you to go through with this come out if you don’t choose to, Miss Newbury,” he said. His eyes drifted pointedly to the pile of bills under his hands. “If I remember correctly, it was you who blackmailed me, not the other way around.”
    “You don’t have to keep reminding me of that,” I said irritably. “I can only assure you that I did what I did out of necessity, not desire.”
    He gave me a cool, ironic look that only increased my ire. The fact that he was in the right and I was in the wrong was utterly infuriating.
    Then he said unexpectedly, “Do you ride?”
    I could feel my whole face light up. I had had to leave my beloved mare Corina down at Weldon Hall, and I missed her more than I could say. “Yes,” I said, “I do.”
    “Would you like to come for a ride in the park with me this afternoon? It is a fine day, and I have a nice sensible gelding in the stable whom you could ride.”
    Nice and sensible also sounded boring, but I was so happy at the thought of being in the saddle again that I didn’t object. “A ride sounds wonderful,” I said sincerely.
    “Very well. I will tell Fiske to have the horses ready for us this afternoon. Be in the stable yard a little after four.”
    For the very first time since we had met, I gave him a real smile. “Thank you, my lord,” I said. “That will be absolutely lovely.”
    He looked back at me, his face inscrutable, and did not reply.
    * * *
    As in many of the homes in Grosvenor Square, the stables were immediately behind the house, separated from the terrace by a small garden. I arrived in the stable yard at exactly four o’clock and stood looking around with curiosity.
    The stable building and the carriage house took up most of the available space and were built of the same brown brick as was the house. I thought with pity of the poor horses confined within the stable with no place to be turned out for exercise or fresh air. It must be hard to be a horse in London.
    As I was