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“Y ou are jesting,” said Walden in what appeared to be horror.

Richard grinned. “It isn’t that bad.”

“You—You are not serious,” his friend repeated, lowering his voice as another gentleman walked past them on the way out of White’s. “You’re saying this just to torment me.”

“Why would I lie?” Richard retorted, enjoying himself.

If he had known that his friend would take the news this badly, he would have told him over a week ago.

Walden’s eyes were wide. “Because… Because… Well, because you absolutely cannot do that!”

“And why not?” asked Richard calmly, taking a sip of the afternoon tea they had been served and wishing that it was something stronger. “It’s all aboveboard.”

Mostly. He had told his friend about the advertisement, how he had answered it, the strange interview he had endured with the beautiful Lady Evelyn Chance, and about how he was going there almost every day now to sit in a chair and be drawn.

The kiss, the way he could not take his eyes off her, that she had invited him to call her ‘Evelyn,’ how he’d taken his shirt off…

Those details had not seemed quite as important.

Walden’s eyes were still wide. “You cannot mean it. You are truly sitting as a model for Lady Evelyn Chance?”

“I am,” said Richard, rather proudly.

“Alone.”

“Just the two of us in her studio,” he said with a grin.

“And you’re keeping all of your clothes on, are you?” asked his friend with a knowing look.

Richard hesitated.

“Dear God, man!”

“Just my shirt—look, it sounds sordid when you say it like that!” Richard said hastily, glancing about them to ensure they were not being overheard.

They weren’t. There was a large crowd at the other end of the room engaged in an exuberant game of cards, their raucous laughter filling the room.

When he turned back to his friend, Walden was glowering.

“I don’t see why you have to get all prim and proper about this.” He knew well he should not have been alone with an unmarried lady, any lady, of their class. He most certainly should not have been posing partially in the nude for her. Or kissing her.

Still… No one outside a select few need find out. So was the lady ever truly in any danger?

“She’s a Chance,” Walden said flatly. “Have you no sense of preservation?”

It was not the response Richard had expected. “What on earth do you mean?”

“She has a brother and a father, three uncles, and goodness knows how many cousins, all of whom will be doing their very best to make sure you marry that woman if anything untoward occurs,” his friend said sharply. “You haven’t been doing anything untoward, have you? Have you , Lord Sempill?”

Using his full title, Richard noticed. His friend truly was worried.

“Look, she’s a Chance,” repeated Walden.

Richard could not help but grin. “She’s very beautiful.”

The whack on his arm was not undeserved, but it still hurt.

“You deserved that,” his friend said darkly. “Honestly! I knew you wanted excitement, even some danger now that you’re back from France, but this is not it!”

“All I am doing is sitting in a chair for a few hours at a time,” Richard said with a shrug, once again carefully editing the truth to what would be palatable for his friend to hear. “What’s the harm in that? I’d only be doing it here or at home, anyway.”

Walden frowned, but said nothing.

That kiss, that stolen moment with Evelyn, returned to Richard’s mind and he grinned.

It had been bold, and it had certainly gone beyond the expectations of propriety—far more than everything else they had done to ignore convention.

But it had been worth it. Oh, God, the way she squirmed in my arms before leaning in for more…

“The Chance family is very protective,” came the unwelcome intrusion from his friend. “They are known for it, renowned in fact for raising their children to be individuals, but individuals who must always be unimpeachable when it comes down to it.”

Good , Richard could not help but think. The last thing he wanted was for Evelyn to be doing that with any of her other models.

“You are going to be careful, aren’t you?”

Richard focused on his friend, and saw to his very great surprise, Walden was making strong eye contact, his pursed lips conveying the man’s genuine concern. “What is the worst that could happen?”

“I don’t want to attend your wedding to Lady Evelyn because you have a pistol at your back,” Walden said darkly. “Now listen to me, please. I know you never do, but this is important.”

“My wedding?” said Richard with a grin, the rest of his friend’s tirade lost in the thought of such a thing.

He had never concerned himself with the idea before.

That whack was again, deserved. “I am in earnest! Think before you do anything rash with that woman. They’re all impressive, yes, and the Chance family is a prestigious one—but all the more reason to be careful.

Men like you, men like us, we don’t marry the women we seduce.

We don’t seduce daughters of great houses. ”

“ You don’t,” said Richard, winking as he rose.

“Richard Sempill—”

“And I won’t,” Richard said with a sigh, waving the White’s footman nearer to bring his things and assist him with shrugging on his jacket and placing his top hat upon his head. “Right. I have an appointment to keep.”

Walden groaned. “With Lady Evelyn, I’ll be bound.”

Richard winked again. “Maybe.”

There was certainly a spring in his step as he walked down the street toward the Earl of Lindow’s household.

Evelyn had not actually engaged his sitting services for this afternoon, but she had said only yesterday that he should pop by the studio whenever he was in the area.

Well, he was in the area. Now he had walked to it. Why not pop in?

Richard did not bother knocking at the front door. Instead, he stepped down the side of the house, past the kitchen door, and toward the studio.

“I thought I would drop by,” he said in his most charming voice as he reached out and opened the studio door.

As he tried to open the studio door. The thing wouldn’t budge.

Ah . It had not occurred to him that when Evelyn said that he should pop by, she may have in fact popped out.

His shoulders slumped. Right. Well, now there was nothing to do but return home and try not to dwell on the nightmares.

“Are you the model?”

Richard whirled around. “I beg your—”

“Yes, you’re him,” said a gentleman perhaps a few years younger than himself.

He had that imperious air so many of the Chances had, but a softness around the eyes and the impressive cut of his suit suggested he was an eldest son.

He was seated on the terrace at the back of the house, a book in one hand and an apple in the other.

“My sister has given such an exact description of you, there’s no mistaking you. ”

An exact description…

Richard was somehow uncertain whether to be delighted or concerned. “‘Description’?”

The man, who had to be Lord Percy Chance, unless Evelyn had several brothers, grinned. “Never fear. It’s not nearly so uncouth as all that. She’s an artist, my sister, and so she described you as a tall man with a sharp expression at all times.”

A sharp—

The man laughed. “There it is.”

Shifting on his feet, Richard was unsure whether to be flattered or offended. “Thank you. I think.”

“Did you have an appointment with her?” Now Lord Percy’s face was more sharp.

Well, he has a right to be , Richard reminded himself. A stranger had just walked around the side of the house and attempted to break into the man’s sister’s art studio. That was what it could have looked like.

“I didn’t exactly have an appointment,” Richard said carefully.

Hell, if he had known that he was going to meet Evelyn’s brother, he might have put more thought into his attire.

He knew he ought to have had a valet, but he had not yet hired one since he had let the last go before his venture to France.

Smith had been old, too feeble to accompany his master in the work required of him.

Richard’s time on the Continent had only accentuated the frivolity of engaging such a servant.

As it was, without a valet, this morning, Richard had thrown on the nearest things himself when he had awoken, running late as he had been to see Walden.

Walden’s words echoed most uncomfortably in his mind.

“She’s a Chance. Have you no sense of preservation? She has a brother and a father, three uncles, and goodness knows how many cousins, all of whom will be doing their very best to make sure you marry that woman if anything untoward occurs…”

So the brother knew about him. Did he know that Richard posed for the earl’s daughter with no chaperone in sight?

Richard straightened up. He hadn’t compromised the lady, not really—the kiss did not count, for some reason, and he was not sure why. All he had done was attempt to find Evelyn. Blast. Lady Evelyn.

“She’s over there, in the garden.” Lord Percy gestured.

Glancing in the direction he had pointed, Richard could see a figure through a grove of trees. He had taken the person to be the gardener, nothing more. A figure kneeling over a flowerbed with a trowel generally was a gardener, at least in his experience.

“Ah,” he said aloud.

“Yes,” said Evelyn’s brother, with a hint of suspicion in his voice now. “I say, you are… I mean, this whole thing is aboveboard, isn’t it? When my sister said she was paying a man to sit for her… Well.”

Yes, well. No more needed to be said.

Tempting as it was for Richard to reveal that he was in fact a viscount, and therefore perhaps ‘worthier’ of spending time with an earl’s daughter, he restrained himself.

He really should have told Evelyn that, the first time they had met. Or the second time. Or the third.

Better she hear the truth from his lips rather than her brother, he was certain.

“I would do nothing to harm your sister’s reputation,” Richard said aloud.