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It was why he conducted his business via letters.

“Should I send her away, Your Grace? Rocky is currently conversing with her in the foyer.”

Her?

Alistair’s gaze snapped to the butler’s, but his sparring partner was wearing his Faithful-Retainer-With-A-Stick-Up-His-Arse expression, and he couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

O. Wilson, the author of all those incendiary articles, was a woman?

His sisters had ceased their objections.

“Rocky is speaking with her, did you say?” Amelia prompted.

“Either she is very charitable, or can appreciate a finely turned ankle,” Amanda quipped, but she was glaring at Hiro as she spoke.

The butler dropped his bland look long enough to scowl at Alistair’s sister. “She was not admiring the footman, Lady Amanda, and neither should you.”

“It is impossible not to,” Amelia admitted.

Tapping the edge of the card against his desk, Alistair considered his options. Did she want to interview him?

A sudden, chilling thought caused his throat to tighten. Had she somehow discovered his secret? Had she tied him—the respected, if strange, Duke of Effinghell—to The Dark Knight?’

If so, he couldn’t ignore her.

He’d pay her bribe, if that was what was required.

Hiro was still bickering with Alistair’s sisters, but when the duke nodded to him, he blinked in surprise. But the butler shrugged and tucked the salver beneath his arm as he backed out of the room. Then Alistair knocked his knuckles against the desk. When he had his sisters’ attention, he flicked his fingers toward the door.

Luckily, they understood what he was asking.

They stood, still bickering—or perhaps planning—and turned to go. Only Amelia remembered to acknowledge him…not with a curtsey or a by-your-leave, but by sticking out her tongue at him.

Thank God she took the damn bird.

Alistair took a few moments to straighten the papers on his desk, then Hiro was holding the door open once more.

“Your Grace,” he intoned in that perfect pitch, “Miss Olivia Wilson, of The Daily Movement.”

Years of schooling had Alistair standing to greet his guest, but when he saw the woman who followed his butler through the door, his knees got stuck halfway, and he sat down again, heavily.

She wasn’t a lady after all.

Just a miss.

But now that he got a good look at Miss Olivia Wilson in the light of day, Alistair could admit there was nothing just about her.

She was curvier than the Society papers claimed was proper, and taller too. Her dark hair was braided into a simple crown atop her head, and her blue ensemble—while frayed along the hem and at the wrists—was perfectly respectable.

In short, she looked nothing like the screaming harridan he’d rescued last night.

“Your Grace.” When she sank into a curtsey, Alistair’s gaze dropped to her breasts.

Dear Lord, her breasts. They were…

He swallowed. Well, there were rather more of them than he’d been expecting, hidden as they’d been by that gray shawl she’d worn the night before.

The thought of those things pressed against his shoulder as she’d been fighting him… His cock twitched, and he was suddenly glad for the fact he was sitting down.