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it open to permit a lady—not so young—in a garnet red pelisse, her dark auburn hair swept up and tucked under a jaunty hat, who was juggling a plethora of bandboxes and packages to enter.
    She swept in, her face alight, a smile curving lush red lips, as Bowden hurriedly said, “I believe this is the gentleman you’ve been waiting for, miss.”
    Miss Duncannon abruptly halted. Animation leaching from her face, she looked across the room and saw him. After a moment, her gaze slowly meandered upward, until it reached his face.
    Then she simply stared.
    Clearing his throat, Bowden retreated, closing the door behind her. She blinked, stared again, then baldly asked, “ You’re Colonel Delborough?”
    Del bit his tongue against an impulse to respond, “You’re Miss Duncannon?” Just one look, and his vision of a biddable young miss had evaporated; the lady was in her late twenties if she was a day.
    And given the vision filling his eyes, why she was still a miss was beyond his comprehension.
    She was… lush was the word that sprang to his mind. Taller than the average, she was built on stately, even queenly, lines, ripely curvaceous in all the right places. Even from across the room, he could tell her eyes were green; large, faintly slanting up at the outer corners, they were vibrantly alive, awake and aware, alert to all that went on around her.
    Her features were elegant, refined, her lips full and ripe, elementally tempting, but the firmness of her chin suggested determination, backbone and a forthrightness beyond the norm.
    Duly noting that last, he bowed. “Indeed—Colonel Derek Delborough.” Sadly, not at your service . Quashing the wayward thought, he smoothly continued, “I believe your parents made some arrangement with my aunts for me to act as escort on your journey north. Sadly, that’s not possible—I have business to attend to before I can return to Humberside.”
    Deliah Duncannon blinked, with an effort dragged her senses from their preoccupation with shoulders and a wide chest which should by all rights have been encased in a uniform, replayed his words, then abruptly shook her head. “No.”
    Moving further into the room, she set her boxes and bags on the table, distractedly wondering whether a uniform would have increased his impact, or lessened it. There was something anomalous in his appearance, as if the elegant civilian garb was a disguise. If the intention had been to screen his innately vigorous, even dangerous physique, the ploy had failed miserably.
    Freeing her hands, she reached up to extract the long pin securing her hat. “I’m afraid, Colonel Delborough, that I must insist. I’ve been waiting for the better part of a weekfor you to arrive, and I really cannot journey on without a suitable escort.” Setting her hat on the table, she swung to face the recalcitrant ex-colonel—significantly younger and immeasurably more virile than she’d envisioned him. Than she’d been led to expect. “It’s quite unthinkable.”
    Regardless of his age, his virility, or his propensity to argue, for her, it was, but the last thing she intended to do was explain.
    His lips—mobile and distractingly masculine—firmed. “Miss Duncannon—”
    “I expect you’re imagining that it will simply be a matter of bundling me into a carriage with my maid and household, and pointing north.” Pausing in the act of removing her leather gloves, she glanced at him and caught a telltale twist of those disturbing lips; that had, indeed, been precisely what he’d planned. “I have to inform you that that’s very definitely not the case.”
    Dropping her gloves on the table behind her, she lifted her chin and faced him squarely—staring down her nose as well as she could given he was more than half a head taller than she. “I must insist, sir, that you honor the obligation.”
    His lips were now a thin line—one she wanted to see relax and curve into a smile…what was the matter with her? Her pulse