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“How did you become acquainted?” she asked.

“He and Mother met at a house party last year. The host was a friend who’s known Mother since she was a little girl. But enough of this. Tell me, Mrs. Parkem, are you as mad for the idea of attending this ball as my mother?”

“Unlike Mrs. Wark, I’m unlikely to find myself with an invitation, and I should fear I wouldn’t know a soul,” she said carefully.

“You would know me,” he said.

“But just one person at an entire ball . . .”

Like a trout on the line, Wark took the bait. “Would you like to attend? I could arrange everything.”

“I hardly know what to say,” she said. That much was true. The ball was only weeks away. By then it could be too late. She needed to figure out what Wark was up to as soon as possible, and that meant forcing more meetings with him now.

“It isn’t as though you don’t have a dress,” he said with a laugh.

She smiled thinly at the joke. “No, as a dressmaker I do have the luxury of choice when it comes to gowns. I was thinking more of the fact that it’s been so long since I’ve spent any time in society. I shouldn’t know where to begin.”

A lie. Her mother had drilled into her the correct way to behave among Eyemouth’s tiny group of acceptable families. Only a few had met with Jean Malcolm’s approval, but Lavinia had dined and danced with all of them. That had been the side of her world that Andrew had never been privy to, mostly because her mother and father had made it abundantly clear that he was unwelcome.

“You should start earlier. Brush some of the rust off,” said Wark.

“That is an idea,” she said carefully.

“Come to the opera with me.” He said it as a challenge more than an invitation, as though daring her to go to that very public place where she would be on his arm and on display to everyone. If she appeared at Wark’s side, there would be no stopping the rumors. Everyone from his business associates to her clients would speculate about whether she’d become his mistress and, given the very great difference in their social standing, it would take them no time to decide that she was.

“I’ve never been fond of opera,” she said.

Determination fired in Wark’s eyes, no doubt because she hadn’t out-and-out refused him as she had so many times before. “Then share my box at the theater. Or we could dine privately at a restaurant.”

Private boxes and private rooms. Perfect places for assignations. Exactly the sort of place she didn’t want to find herself penned in with this man. Andrew hadn’t been thrilled when she’d said that she was going to call on Mrs. Wark that morning. He’d probably explode if she agreed to a dining room with a door that could lock and a discreet staff who knew when to knock and when to simply disappear. She wanted to believe it was because Andrew’s deeply ingrained instinct to protect would win out over all else.

Or she could be horribly wrong. What had he called her? His asset. Hardly a term of endearment for a woman he’d once claimed to love.

“I have a better idea,” said Wark, cutting through her dithering. “Come to dinner on Tuesday,” he said.

Her pulse began to race. “Dinner?”

“Some of my most trusted business associates will be there. We’ll be a small party, with my mother acting as hostess.”

His associates? Those were the very men Andrew wanted her to find out more about. If they were the ones behind the royal visit, surely they’d be tied to whatever plan Wark was working toward. Lavinia could mentally jot down the names of those men and their conversations, all without risking public scrutiny.

“How delightful,” she said brightly, even as her hands shook. In accepting this invitation she was taking the next step. This next encounter with Wark wouldn’t be circumstantial. It would have intention, thrusting her farther down this path Andrew had started her on. In accepting this invitation, she was fully in.

For the two thousand pounds. For Caleb.

A grin spread over Wark’s face. “Why, Mrs. Parkem, have we finally come to an agreement that it would be far better for us to be friends than to be merely landlord and tenant?”

She could hear all the implications weighing down his words, but she pushed past all of her concern. “Sometimes circumstances change, Mr. Wark, and, as I said, it’s been so long since I donned a pretty dress and went to a dinner party.”

His fingers touched hers and slithered up her wrist before bringing the back of her hand to his lips. She wore no gloves when she was working, and the feeling of his cold, slightly damp skin against hers nearly made her shudder.

The kiss lingered longer than was appropriate, and when his eyes met hers there was no mistaking the desire there.

“We could always dispense with the formalities of getting to know one another over dinner,” he said.

Lavinia was tiptoeing on paper-thin ice now. She wouldn’t allow herself to be seduced in the name of Andrew’s cause—that was several steps too far—but neither did she want Wark to believe he would never talk her into bed. This was a man who liked the chase and the victory of a difficult kill. It was what had kept him coming back to her shop over and over these past two years, collecting rent he could’ve sent someone else for.

“I’ve found,” she said, carefully extracting her hand from his, “everything in life is heightened by the anticipation of wanting it and not being able to have it quite yet.”