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He didn’t bother to ask again. “Appalling!” he said sharply.

“No!” she said. And then, “That is, I don’t mean to tell you anything!”

Unless Helene was very wrong, there was an unusual expression in Mayne’s eyes—at least, she had never heard tell that the Earl of Mayne was a sympathetic man. People said he was hard, driven, debauched as her own husband. She bit her lip. What if he decided to ruin her? But the look in his eyes…

She was wrong. That wasn’t sympathy. “Whatever it is that your husband has done to you,” Mayne said with precision, “that made you return to him under such humiliating circumstances, I’m going to kill him for it.”

The stark chill in his voice froze Helene’s marrow. “He hasn’t done anything!” she said, with a little gasp.

Clearly he didn’t believe her. Who would have thought that the man known for bedding most of London had such a principled streak to him? “Rees hasn’t threatened me in any manner at all,” she assured him. “I am staying in the house of my own free will.”

Mayne spoke through clenched teeth. “You needn’t explicate,” he said. “I’ll free you from the bastard if it’s the last thing I do.”

“No, no!” Helene said, anxiety coursing through her blood. “I don’t want to be freed, truly I don’t! I like being Countess Godwin.” She clutched his hand. “Can’t you understand, Mayne? Rees and I are friends.”

“Friends?” his voice had a frozen edge to it. “A friend doesn’t make his wife live in proximity to a whore!”

“I should think that you, of all men in London, would understand. You are known, after all, for consoling ladies whose marriages are something less than…ideal.” Which was a nice way of saying he had slept with many married women, so who was he to cavil over married persons’ behavior?

His eyes flashed. “There is no similarity whatsoever. I would never offer such an insult to any lady, let alone to my own wife.”

“Rees and I are friends,” she said again. “Don’t you understand? We married years ago, and there’s no feeling between us other than a mild friendship.” She pushed away memories of very different feelings. She had to convince Mayne that she was in the house of her own choice or he would kill Rees. She could see it in his eyes.

“Mild friendship,” he repeated. “But every feeling of yours must revolt from proximity to a strumpet.”

Helene let a teasing little smile cross her face. “There’s no strumpet in the house,” she said with deliberate falsehood, knowing he didn’t believe her for a moment. “Yet I do believe that you may have overestimated the sanctimonious side of my character, Lord Mayne.”

“I feel as if you are changing before my eyes,” he said, staring at her.

She shrugged, knowing that her breasts moved with a delicious, unsteady wobble when she did so. “I am Countess Godwin, and I prefer to stay that way. I am helping my husband with his opera because he asked me to do so. I do not feel a particle of feeling for him beyond that fact.” She let her hand slide to Mayne’s knee. “Naturally, I would be most distressed if you felt moved to imprudent action. I could never be intimate with a man who had injured my husband.”

Helene felt quite pleased with herself. For someone who had judged herself as having no subtlety whatsoever a mere year ago, she was developing a finely tuned dramatic sense. Perhaps she ought to audition to play the lead in one of Rees’s operas.

Mayne obviously couldn’t quite figure out what was going on. She let her fingers stay for a moment on his knee and then pulled them away. “I shall be at my husband’s house for a month only,” she said tranquilly. “Naturally, after that point I shall reenter society. You do see how much I honor you with this confidence, my lord?” She leaned back against the seat and sure enough, his eyes flew to her chest.

“I am nothing if not discreet,” he said promptly. “But, Helene—”

Helene didn’t want to talk about it anymore. In fact, the only thing she really wanted was to retreat to Rees’s safe, messy music room and forget about this whole conversation, but she could hardly throw Mayne out of the carriage. Not when he might spread the tale to all of London and ruin her irrevocably, or—worse—do some injury to Rees.

“Garret,” she said softly, interrupting him.

He was no idiot. He had her hand again and was pressing kisses in her palm, although for some reason Helene now found it irritating rather than enjoyable.

“Yes, darling?” he asked.

“I must allow you to return to your carriage in a mere five minutes,” she told him.

The light burning in his eyes almost made her uneasy. He looked as if he wished to gobble her up, like an ogre in a fairy tale. “I’ve never met a lady who had your refreshing attitude towards marriage,” he said, almost hoarsely. “I feel as if I never lived before this moment. I’ve never met a truly honest woman.”

Helene suppressed a rather irritated sigh and let him press more passionate kisses on her hand. Thank goodness, Rees had taken up the challenge of fatherhood before she engaged herself further with Mayne. She would have never been comfortable with his passionate conversation. It made her feel embarrassed. Rees’s brusque comments were more her style, in truth.

“You will be the making of me,” Mayne was saying. “I never thought there was a woman so genuinely honest. So—so candid.”

Feeling a pulse of guilt, Helene smiled at him. Why on earth was she bothering with this folly? Hopefully by the time she emerged from Rees’s house, Mayne would have forgotten all about her. Everyone said he had the attention of a butterfly.

He was kissing his way up her wrist now. It is truly quite odd, Helene thought to herself, how little I appreciate these kisses after yesterday’s encounter with Rees. The very memory made her turn rather pink, and then suddenly she realized that Mayne had slipped from his seat and was sitting beside her.

“You blush like the merest lass,” he was saying in a throaty voice, “and yet you have the sophisticated wit and intelligence of a grown woman. I didn’t think there was a woman like you alive, Helene!”