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Marcus had had a thoroughly disagreeable few days, ever since the nightmare evening of Sir Humphrey’s dinner.

He’d gone home from that event in a kind of daze and lain awake all night, prey to all manner of roiling thoughts.

It wasn’t even the intense, almost painful sexual frustration he was experiencing that tormented him so.

Nor even, really, the shame of the shockingly frank things he’d said to Amelia, though they brought a fiery colour to his cheeks as he lay in the darkness and remembered them in excruciating detail.

He’d told her he wanted to… And God knows he had wanted to, and did still want to.

All that he’d said and much, much more. But that wasn’t by any means the worst of it.

It was the knowledge that he loved her that had hit him like a thunderbolt.

He thought himself an idiot for not realising it sooner when all the signs had been there.

But when they’d been speaking of their speedy marriage, he had been almost overcome by a fierce desire to agree, to add his voice to those of Sir Humphrey and his wife, and demand that Amelia should become his without further delay.

This week. Tomorrow! And it wasn’t, he’d realised a moment later, just because he wanted her in his bed.

Though he did. It was because he needed the engagement to be genuine.

He loved her, and he could think of nothing better than to marry her as soon as possible.

What had started as a fiction had become a fact for him. For him, though not, he knew, for her.

She was everything he had ever wanted in a woman, though he’d spent no time at all before this moment puzzling out what that might be.

He could easily have said, She is lively and clever, kind and caring and funny; she teases me out of my ill humour so that I cannot even remember why I was downcast. She is brave and beautiful and makes me want to be a better person for her.

I want to make love to her so badly not just because I desire her, but because I want a deeper connection with her than I have ever had with another person.

I want to know her utterly, and for her to know me.

I want to grow old with her. This was all true.

But it didn’t matter, none of the detail of it, beyond the plain fact that he loved her.

And she didn’t want him to. He could see that.

He was attuned to her now, even for knowledge that would hurt him, and he knew that over the last few days, the words, I think we should break off this foolish engagement!

had been trembling constantly on her lips.

If they’d been alone at any point, she’d undoubtedly have said it, which was why he had made sure that they never were.

He could see it in her lovely, stormy eyes: the false betrothal was making her deeply unhappy, and she wanted to put an end to it and take back her own life, free from the chaotic entanglement with his.

It was no consolation, or very little, to know that she desired him too.

She’d made that plain enough in those few precious moments when they’d held each other.

They had a physical bond, they shared that much, and it was all too easy to imagine what might have happened if their time together had been prolonged, and if one of them – he could not remember who it was now, but he thought it had probably been him – had not called a halt to their dangerous moment of intimacy.

He did imagine it, over and over again, imagined reaching ecstasy with her.

But he must be glad that it had not happened, because the last thing in the world he wanted was for her to be obliged to marry him because he had compromised her honour.

Well… that wasn’t true. The last thing he wanted was to lose her, or – hellish thought – for her to marry someone else, some oaf who didn’t deserve her.

But he couldn’t bear to have her forced into his arms. She was too open, too honest, to be able to conceal her regret, and he thought that it would slowly kill him.

Imagine if they’d even conceived a child, and that had tied her to him forever when she wanted to be free.

He should, he supposed, himself raise the subject of parting, as a matter of honour.

Give her the opportunity to reject him that he knew she wanted.

But he couldn’t quite bring himself to do it, because he knew that when their engagement was over, they would meet in the future as no more than awkward semi-strangers.

What a hideous thought that was; he found it close to unbearable.

And it was his own fault. He’d shared all the disreputable details of his involvement with Lavinia with her, and revealed to her all the shoddy, painful secrets of his past. He’d had to do it, in common decency, so that she knew exactly what she was involved with, but it was impossible to blame her for wanting rid of it all, and of him.

She must think him a heartless rake, a man without morals, like her father.

That stung, but he could see that it could be so.

Maybe she hadn’t even believed him when he’d told her he’d only lain with Lavinia once.

She knew that Priscilla could be his child, so why should she believe him when he tried to minimise his transgression?

She must think he was desperate to play down his involvement with Lavinia so that he looked less ramshackle in her eyes.

Men lied to women, and women knew they did.

Her father’s daughter of all people had every reason to be aware of this.

And it was impossible to forget that the disorder of his private life had nearly killed her.

She had not asked for nor anticipated that added complication, he would have cut off his right arm to spare her it, and every moment she was still publicly tied to him, she was still in danger.

For that reason, if for no other, he should set her free immediately.

It did no good to imagine what might have happened if he’d had as much chance to woo her and win her love as any other man; his foolish, reckless actions at the age of eighteen had made sure he could not come to her with a clean conscience now.

Lavinia was like a ghost from his past, haunting his present, tainting his future.

And after all Amelia had suffered because of her father and his dirty reputation, did she not deserve a man who had no such sordid ties?

He knew the answer well enough. No wonder he was miserable.

His mother was resting in her room that evening after a shopping trip earlier in the day had over-tired her, and his sister Helena was attending some damn dreary, pointless ball or other with the chaperonage of a friend’s grandmother.

Marcus had been intending to go with her, but his interest in dancing and making conversation on this occasion had plummeted dramatically when he had discovered that the Wyvernes did not mean to be there.

Neither Helena nor Lady Thornfalcon had been so inconsiderate as to laugh at him or otherwise mock him when he said that, as it happened, he really didn’t feel like going, though he didn’t suppose that they had missed the significance of his volte-face.

They might have mentioned that his engagement was not, in fact, genuine, and teasingly said that it was therefore odd that he should so burn to meet his faux fiancée and be despondent at her absence; he could only be grateful that they had not.

He was sitting in his library with Jeremy Gastrell then, a not particularly welcome visitor who did not seem inclined to take a hint and go away.

Thorn was aware that he was very poor company indeed tonight, gazing gloomily into the depths of a brandy glass as though he might find some solution to his predicament there, when a note was brought in to him on a silver tray.

He didn’t suppose it could be from Amelia, but still, he tore it open with pathetic haste, ignoring his friend’s ironically lifted brow.

Marcus then sat staring at the paper in a manner that had the footman who had borne it in to him shifting uneasily in his buckled shoes, probably wondering if his master had run mad, and what if anything he might be expected to do about it.

The missive read, in an antique, wavering hand with many blots:

Lord Thornfalcon

I write in great urgency, and have no time to explain how it comes about that I know all of your ridiculous doings – be satisfied to know that Sophie told me.

I have just discovered that Amelia has gone, alone, to the Opera House Masquerade this evening.

She claimed to be unwell after dinner, and I sent my maid up to her room to see if she could make her a tisane, but helas, she was gone.

My woman found a note discarded there – anonymous, but plainly from your sister-in-law – telling Amelia that you were in terrible danger if she did not attend.

It must be a trap, and I expect my poor granddaughter knew as much.

But she has put herself in danger in this reckless manner because she loves you.

Perhaps you do not care for her in the same way, since in my experience, most men are fools, and I am sure that you cannot deserve her, but even if you do not love her, please find her and make sure she is safe.

La méchante folle surely means to hurt her.

Do not delay, or you will have me to answer to, and when I die, I will come back and haunt you in the most disagreeable manner possible, I promise.

Delphine Wyverne

Marcus dragged himself out of his reverie and jumped to his feet, startling the waiting footman further, and Mr Gastrell too.

‘Come, Jeremy!’ he barked. ‘I may need you.’ There was no time to get a mask or domino – she could be in terrible danger, in pain, even now.

He must go. As the footman stood staring, Lord Thornfalcon ran out of the room in the direction of the stables, following by his vainly expostulating friend. A door banged, and they were gone.