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Daisy looked at her from head to toe, and then darted toward her, a tin of lip color in hand. “You are exquisite. Smile at him, and he’ll fall at your feet.”

Livie didn’t agree. Did honor and reputation matter more to Joshua than she did? He had gotten over the first affront—when he thought she was asking him to interfere with his father’s judgment—because he’d been mistaken. He hadn’t risked his honor by finding Bernadette.

If he didn’t marry Regina, he would be branded a dishonorable scoundrel throughout polite society.

Worry spun through Livie’s mind. Her father wasn’t her father, and he was likely a murderer. She was either the daughter of a criminal or illegitimate or both. She kept trying to weigh her certainty that she and Joshua belonged together against an equal certainty that marrying her would result in his being shunned by his superiors in the British Army.

What could she—what should she say to him when he came?

In the end, it didn’t matter

He didn’t come.

She, Daisy, and her aunt sat through four courses, Lady Wharton too angry at her brother to do more than growl; even Daisy’s chatter couldn’t distract her mother. Livie tried unsuccessfully to stop watching the door, hoping that Joshua would come in five minutes … In another half hour … In an hour.

After their tea grew cold and bitter, Lady Wharton led the way upstairs, still grumbling. Heart leaden, Livie removed her pretty gown, washed the paint from her face, brushed out her curls, and let her maid braid her hair.

Joshua had honor deep in his bones. An honorable, betrothed man does not engage in clandestine correspondence with another woman. He doesn’t answer that woman’s summons. She blew out the candle and stared into the moonlit room, wryly amused to discover that her father—or was it Cassio?—had been right.

The dark shore of the heart may engender fornications, murders and thefts.

She wanted to steal Joshua.

She could cheerfully murder Regina.

She wanted …

She wanted what no lady wanted.

Fornication.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

WHO DESERVES HONOR?

Livie was still staring bleakly into the moonlit room, brushing away the odd tear, when she heard a carriage draw up before the house. The night soil man, she thought numbly. But that vehicle usually trundled through the alley to the servants’ entrance in the rear. Perhaps the milkman on an early round? But again, why—

She sat bolt upright as Daisy’s footsteps pattered down the corridor to the staircase. Frowning, Livie swung her legs out of bed, caught up her bedside candle, and lit it from the embers in the fireplace. Her heart started thumping so hard that it felt as if her ribs might crack. Thank goodness her aunt slept in the back of the house.

When footsteps came up the stairs, she opened her door—and stopped short. Daisy put her finger to her lip and pulled someone very large from the shadows behind her.

Someone male.

Livie grabbed his hand, drawing him into the room. Daisy closed the door quietly from the corridor, and though Livie didn’t hear a giggle, her imagination supplied it.

They moved without thought or words: Joshua’s arms wrapped around her, his cheek against the top of her head, both of them murmuring inarticulately. Livie clung to him, breathing his earthy, clean scent, unwilling to raise her face. She couldn’t kiss him.

Because—

“You’re betrothed to another woman,” she said, pulling away.

“No.” Joshua stepped toward her, cupped her face in his hands, his broad fingers reaching all the way to the back of her head. “How could I marry another woman? I love you.”

Even in the dim light, she could read his expression, and part of her melted with pure happiness. Yet she had to say it: “You compromised Lady Regina, and my aunt says that you are betrothed.”

He bent his head and brushed his lips over hers. “Lady Wharton is mistaken.”

Despite Livie’s shiver at his kiss, her aunt was so rarely wrong that she shook her head. “Were you seen kissing her?”