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W ell, Richard had known it would be awkward, the next time he saw Evelyn. He had just not realized how awkward.

“Ah, you must be the model whom we’ve heard absolutely nothing about!” declared the woman with cordial eyes and a gracious smile. “Come in, come in!”

There was nothing Richard wanted to do less than enter the Earl and Countess of Lindow’s home, but there did not really seem to be much choice.

“Mama, Rich—Mr. Richard cannot—”

“Oh, you’ll get far too cold in that studio of yours this afternoon,” Lady Lindow was saying to an argumentative Evelyn as they all stood in the hall, Richard drenched to the bone and Evelyn not much dryer. “Besides, I do believe it’s a tad wet out.”

Richard smiled weakly. This was not how he thought his afternoon would go.

It had started off quite normally. Evelyn had sent him a note saying she had a few hours available this afternoon and, if he would not mind, would he call upon her for some drawing?

He had almost left the house without one of his boots on, much to the chagrin of his butler.

But the heavens had opened as he had walked over London, not bothering to take his own carriage and then unable to find a hackney cab when the rain had come pouring down, and so he had resigned himself to a most uncomfortable wet sitting.

Would the chair be quite well, after he had lounged damply in it for most of the afternoon?

As it turned out, the concern was no longer necessary. The butler—Cawthorne, it appeared—had been instructed to keep a look out.

“As soon as Evelyn told me she would be painting this afternoon, I simply insisted she use the old music room,” the countess was telling a sopping-wet Richard, to the accompaniment of drips onto the marble floor.

“That studio is all very well in the dry weather, but it can be an absolute ice house otherwise. No fire!”

“I don’t want fire that close to my paints,” Evelyn was muttering. “And I got quite wet enough bringing in my equipment, anyway.”

It was true—she was a tad sodden. In fact, now Richard came to look at her, she was very sodden. Delightfully so. Her gown was clinging to every curve, the edges of her skirts sheer thanks to the heavy rain—

“Ahem,” came a rather severe voice.

Richard jumped, expecting to be called out by the Earl of Lindow within a moment. Instead, he accepted the towel the ill-natured butler was offering. “Oh. Thank you.”

“You won’t be disturbed in there. It’s out of the way and now the children are grown, we find little use for that room,” Lady Lindow said airily, as though she frequently invited drenched strangers into her home. “I thought Evelyn could use it as a studio, but—”

“There’s not enough light.”

The last four words were chorused by Evelyn, her mother, the butler, and a young woman who looked remarkably like the artist, though she wearing a man’s greatcoat around her shoulders and a scarf around her neck.

“Not so fast!”

Richard jumped. The words had been spoken as a malediction, Lady Lindow’s friendly demeanor suddenly disappearing.

The young woman scowled. “You cannot keep me here. I am no prisoner!”

Evelyn rolled her eyes while the butler shook his head despondently. Richard was astonished to see the Countess of Lindow sigh heavily.

“Lucy Chance, you know that wasn’t what I was going to do.”

“And if you try to keep me here,” the woman whom Richard recognized now as the sister who had accompanied Evelyn when they had first met said passionately, “I shall be a prisoner only of conscience!”

“You’re making a scene, dear,” Lady Lindow said blithely.

Richard smiled weakly as he tried to towel his hair a little dryer. “Oh, don’t mind me.”

“It’s only one of Evelyn’s models,” Lady Lucy said dismissively. “Besides, as a working man himself, I am certain he would support me! Why, the outrages perpetuated on the working class—”

“No one wants to hear about the working class, dear.”

“Aha!”

“Look,” said the matriarch of the family, and Richard found himself smiling as he watched the scene play out, “the working classes are a large proportion of the country, yes? Estimates range from seventy to eighty per—”

“And yet they have no power, no privileges of—”

“—their combined income alone is worth—”

“Come on,” said a quiet voice by his elbow.

Richard jumped. He had been so taken with the debate as it genially raged between mother and daughter that he had not noticed Evelyn step toward him.

She was smiling. “They’ll be at this for… oh, I don’t know. Half an hour?”

“And it doesn’t worry you? I mean, such an argument?” he asked quietly, rubbing the towel over his face.

When he dropped his arm carrying the towel to his side, it was to see Evelyn grinning.

“This, an argument? Oh, you’ve haven’t known us Chances long.

No, this will likely as not end in a grand speech about the rights of man, a counter speech about the rights of women, a quick terminology discussion about whether man can mean men only or include women as part of humanity, and then they’ll leave the house together. ”

“‘Together’?”

“Oh, yes,” Evelyn said cheerfully. “My sister will go along to Newgate Prison, as planned, and my mother, after leaving her in the care of another lady advocate, will visit the lending library in search of a dictionary. We lost our one here. I think our dragon ate it.”

Richard blinked. Perhaps there was more water in his ears than he had realized. “‘Dragon’? ‘Newgate Prison’?”

“We always call our dogs ‘dragons.’ Don’t ask me why. It started so long ago,” said Evelyn with a shrug, as though what she was saying was entirely comprehensible. “Percy’s dragon right now is called Ermintrude, but she means well. Come on.”

There appeared to be nothing else to do but follow her.

Richard had been here once before but had not paid much attention to his surroundings. Now, however, he was highly conscious of where he was dripping. Axminster rugs, the finest Turkish carpet, hardwood floors…

“You’re wealthy,” he said aloud before he could stop himself.

The embarrassment came swiftly and painfully. Hell, this was why he had never ventured out into polite Society since his return from France. No matter what he tried to do, no matter how hard he worked, he was always going to be nothing but a provincial viscount with no true manners.

Did I just say that to an earl’s daughter?

Evelyn did not appear offended. In fact, she laughed. “I suppose I am—or at least, the family is. A few good investments my father made when he married my mother. He called it gambling. She called it a certainty.”

Richard was attempting to understand this when Evelyn took a left.

“Lady Evelyn?”

That French accent caused Richard’s breath to hitch. He could not explain why. He had met many amiable French people, despite his work in their country.

“Laurent,” said Evelyn, her hands clasped. She cleared her throat as she gestured at the open room in front of them. “I suppose Mother told you I’d be practicing my art in old music room today.”

“Yes, she sent me to join you.” The lady’s maid studied Richard from head to foot. “But she is half out the door herself. If I were to make myself scarce and attend to some of the needlework in my room…”

Evelyn tossed her head back and stepped into the room before them. “Yes, yes, thank you. You were with us the entire time.” She did not even hesitate as the lady’s maid sent a wink Richard’s way and kept walking down the hallway. “Here we are.”

It was certainly a room that had been out of use for a while.

There was—not a mustiness in the air, but something that told anyone walking in here that the place had not been disturbed in a long time.

Dustsheets covered the pianoforte and harp in one corner.

Otherwise, the place was spotless. But it felt… unloved. Uncared for.

“None of the Chances are musical, then?” Richard asked as Evelyn closed the door.

Closed it, and locked it.

He swallowed. Now what the blazes had she done that for?

His concern must have shown on his face, for Evelyn shrugged. “I frequently lock doors when I’m painting. If there’s anything more disruptive to my art than being interrupted, I haven’t found it yet.”

Her words burned into Richard’s mind and reminded him sharply of the last time they had met.

“How would you know what a gentleman and a lady say to each other in the dead of night, when they are all alone?”

Oh, hell . Well, he supposed it wasn’t possible that they could return to how things had been. Whatever that had been like.

He had been a complete dolt and he knew it. The thing was, Evelyn now knew it, and that was information he simply couldn’t get back. It was infuriating. And it had all been of his own doing.

“But no, we’re not.”

Richard blinked. Not what?

“Musical,” Evelyn said with a laugh, answering his unspoken question.

“I think Lucy can carry a tune best of the three of us, but in all honesty, that particular branch of the arts isn’t something any of us are good at.

Which is a shame. My mother thought her skills would come through in us.

Mathematics and music, after all, are very alike. ”

He was getting turned around here, and it appeared there was to be no letup in the conversation.

Mathematics? Music?

“I brought my travel easel in and thought we could continue here, if you are amenable,” Evelyn said briskly, stepping over to the easel and pulling a set of pencils toward her. “If you are, of course, willing to continue.”

Willing to continue.

Oh, he was willing for so much more. That was the trouble, Richard realized with a sinking sensation. He wanted more. And yet at the same time, he couldn’t give her more.

He hadn’t even told her his full name.