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shade too affable? The thought that he might be laughing at her was an uncomfortable one. In an effort to retrieve the situation, she went on, “Anyway, you don’t look to me like the kind of man who would be satisfied with a package tour.”
    “You would be surprised at what I can be satisfied with,” he answered, his firm lips curving in a smile as he caught her swift upward glance. The bright look in his eyes dared her to comment.
    She took the dare, though from a different angle. “Is that so? And I suppose you would just love an afternoon tour by double-decker bus, one that ends with a visit to the Tower of London?”
    “Actually,” he said with a judicious air, “a guided tour of the Tower is the practical choice. Advance ticket holders get waved in ahead of the regular tourists; you don’t have to stand in line at the gates.”
    “Yes,” she said heartily. “And I was thinking of a walk around Hyde Park first, for the exercise after sitting so long on the plane.”
    His gaze widened as he pushed back his plate. “All in one day?”
    “I also had in mind getting to the park by the underground, just to see if I can figure out the system. No taxis.”
    “Right.” His voice was hollow.
    “I don’t have much time to get everything in,” she said, suppressing a smile. “Of course, I’ll understand if you decide you’d rather not follow me around after all.”
    “Never crossed my mind,” he said, the words deliberate as he waved a hand at her plate. “Eat up. We have to move fast if we’re going to keep to the schedule.”
    She had been so sure he would back down. Now she was trapped into joining forces with him by her own badly timed levity. But what could it hurt, after all? They would be in public every step of the way, and far too busy for problems.
    The biggest obstacle to completing her program was Rone.
    He did his best to distract her with offers to rent a rowboat and row her about the lake in the park, or buy her a cup of tea and a cucumber sandwich for a picnic under the flowering horse-chestnut trees. He pointed out the unexpected color combinations of the pale, gray-white English office workers lying on the jewel-green grass and slowly turning lobster red in the unexpectedly warm afternoon sun. He lagged behind to listen to the doomsday preachers and anarchists at the Speaker’s Corner, and insisted on taking a half-dozen photos of Joletta as she stood beside a thatched keeper’s cottage where bluebells grew.
    At the Tower, he whispered suggestions for making off with the crown jewels as they snaked past them in the endless queue. Falling behind the others as they looked at the ravens in the courtyard, ravens required by legend to remain in the Tower to keep it from falling, and England with it, he was all pity for the poor birds. They were, he said, modern prisoners suffering cruel and unusual punishment; because ravens mate on the wing, having their flight feathers clipped to keep them from leaving doomed them to celibacy.
    Joletta laughed at him and did her best to ignore him by turns as she juggled her shoulder bag, camera, and notebook in the attempt to record everything she saw. She made careful notations of distances and times and anything else that could be numbered, from streets and roads to turrets in the Tower. It was some time before she realized that Rone, for all his foolishness, was helping her. He took over carrying the camera bag early in the day and often reached to hold the notebook when she was using the camera. Now and again he took her shoulder bag and slung the strap over his own shoulder when it appeared to be getting in her way. She was grateful, until she noticed him glancing over her notes, reading them.
    As she took her shoulder bag from him outside the Tower once more, she gave him a long, direct look. He endured it for a moment, then lifted a brow.
    “Yes, ma’am?”
    “Nothing,” she said after a moment, forcing a smile.
    His helpfulness came from his