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“Westall.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “The Colonel’s daughter?”

So he did recall the neighborhood, even if he rarely spent time there. “She’s a fine match. Respectable family, good lineage, beautiful manners. A lovely girl.”

“I have already found a girl for Giles to marry.”

“But the Baron wants Lily. He picked her out for Giles.”

“And we know my uncle cannot be trusted to take his own son’s wishes into account. Therefore I have taken the liberty of finding Miss Kemp for him.”

“Lily will be better.”

“You haven’t met Miss Kemp.” He finished unbuttoning his waistcoat and shrugged out of the piece, and Lord in heaven, his shoulders were just as broad without it.

Sophronia swallowed hard. She must keep her wits at all costs.

“Forgive me, but I think a woman who has already been married would be in a better position to arrange matches than a man who doesn’t keep a mistress for more than a few months at a time.”

He stepped toward her. “How would you know anything about my mistresses?”

Drat it, she was giving herself away. Sophronia hugged her shawl about her as if it could provide armor. “To—tonight. You said your mistress had jilted you.”

“On the contrary, I gave her congé.”

It was Sophronia’s turn to frown. “You gave her—leave?”

“She decided to treat my entire club to her histrionics. I concluded it was best we part ways.”

Yes, Rowden had always despised women in hysterics, or displays of any sort of emotion, really. He bolted at the first sign of tears.

“At any rate, that is why I am here in your house. The only reason,” she asserted. “So Giles and Lily might have the opportunity to become better acquainted.”

“You have not come to see me in twelve years. You did not write. You did not call⁠—”

“I was married, Rowden. Henry wouldn’t have liked it.”

He began stalking toward her, his footfalls soft, his manner all lethal grace, and his face unreadable in the shadows.

“And now, after all this time, you turn up in my house⁠—”

“The Baron’s house, actually. He rents it, I understand.”

“I rent it,” Rowden said, his tone full of wrath. “And though you haven’t had a thing to do with us for a dozen years, you suddenly presume⁠—”

“That is not true!” She twisted her shawl in her agitation, crushing the fine fabric against her bosom. “Aunt Edmons and I call upon your uncle and Giles all the time when they are home. And I have been to see Aunt Dobbs many a time here in London.”

He stopped. “Never while I was here.”

“Can I help that you are always gone, racketing about the Continent? Chasing fortunes through the gaming hells, dallying with courtesans, raking your way through Europe’s finest cities⁠—”

“I detect your real purpose. You have come to my room to scold me, after all this time, because I never took you any of those places, and you always wished to see more of the world.”

She opened her mouth and couldn’t speak. She had wanted to see more of the world. She still did. He had gone off without her, leaving her to make a devil’s bargain and then live with it, and all the dreams and hopes of her girlhood had disappeared that day Rowden stormed out of the family parlor. Melted like ice in the heat of high summer.

Her heart beat fast with a wild longing and that old, old ache. She’d feared this. That she would see him again, and everything would be ruined. They were different people. That old, easy rapport was impossible now. It was one more dream that maturity and her marriage would lay to bitter rest.

He didn’t speak, either. His eyes fell to her hands, fisting the delicate shawl against her bosom, and he went still as if he couldn’t look away. Was he surprised she would have fine things, when as a girl she’d never given one thought to her dress? Well, Kashmir shawls were part of the devil’s bargain she had made, along with that enormous empty house and this blank future she couldn’t see her way into. Instead, she was left here groping in the dark, trying to recall the woman she’d once been.