And here Lord Gareth Armstrong thought that with the end of England's war with France, he was finally done putting out fires.

Exposing traitors. Spiriting agents of the Crown from one safe house to another. Decoding messages that meant the difference between life and death for thousands of British soldiers.

This, however, was the first actual fire he literally extinguished. A good thing he was wearing boots, since his brother hadn't given him the chance to go upstairs and change into more proper attire after his long, wearisome journey from the country—not that he would have come back downstairs if he could avoid doing so. For he was more than tired from the journey. He was still sick at heart from the events in Wiltshire, where he'd hoped to tie up the loose ends of a case involving a traitor on her way to Bristol to board a ship for the Continent.

A traitor he loved, or so he once thought. Only the knowledge that she betrayed King and Country—and yes, Gareth, too—had cushioned the shock of her death at the hands of old Lord Kingsley, who died of old age, and maybe distress at the treachery under his own roof, only moments later.

The new Lady Tyndall's bridal bouquet was now a blackened, smoldering pile of ash. He glanced up to see her still perched in the same place on the staircase, her face a picture of dismay. Her new husband gently wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "Lord Gareth saves the day—and innocent lives—again," he declared. "Let us be on our way."

They continued down the staircase amid cheers, while Gareth glanced around in search of Miss Benedict. She'd vanished, undoubtedly in mortification. Perhaps she ran outside to see her brother off—and maybe even ask him what he knew about her betrothal. As bride and groom sallied out the front door, Gareth took a step in their direction with the idea of seeking out Miss Benedict and—

And then what? Reassure her that the duke would still marry her? But surely that was his brother's place. Not to mention she didn't seem too thrilled about becoming the next Duchess of Bradbury. If anything, she seemed...well, as if she didn't believe it. But that was only because she apparently had no knowledge of it until a few moments ago. Gareth would never have mentioned it to her otherwise.

He could always ask if she was all right. She might have been badly burned if he hadn't been standing right there. Surely that was a legitimate reason to hunt her down? He was her brother-to-be concerned about his sister-to-be. Nothing wrong with that, surely? And since Gareth didn't see his brother, anyway—not that he looked all that hard, but then again, he shouldn't have had to, since Bradbury was one of the tallest men in London—he promptly decided he'd best go in his brother's place and ask Miss Benedict if she was all right.

He had to admit she intrigued him, perhaps because she thought they'd met before. "I would hardly call it a surprise, my lord, for I've known ever since our first meeting that this might happen," she'd told him. Initially, he assumed she referred to the first time she met his brother—until she reacted to his equally wrong assumption that she already knew of her betrothal to Bradbury with—what else? Surprise!

These were the sort of assumptions that in wartime could get a man killed. In peacetime, it could get him married.

Gareth's line of work during the war required him to remember names and faces, and neither her name nor her face was at all familiar to him. Nor did she strike him as someone who might have had the opportunity or even the inclination to entangle herself in traitorous activities. Even though she had to be somewhere in her mid-twenties—decidedly on the shelf, if not for her imminent betrothal—she still impressed Gareth as a sheltered innocent, not too unlike the younger chits who'd jostled her in hopes of catching the new Lady Tyndall's ill-fated bouquet.

He reached the front door in time to see Lord Tyndall standing up in the open carriage, tossing gold guineas every which way, while his sister stood on the far side of the carriage, chatting earnestly with her new sister-in-law until Tyndall sat down and the carriage rolled away amid cheers and showers of rose petals.

Everyone finally turned to file back into the manse while Gareth, like a fish swimming upstream—even if he was going down the steps—fought his way through the clamor to where Miss Benedict still stood, almost in the middle of Park Lane. She gazed back at him, raven curls peeping out from her flowered and shirred bonnet of pale green that matched her pelisse, a fetching frame for an oval face with a narrow chin and broad brow over her coffee brown eyes.

"I'm glad to see you're all right, Miss Benedict," he said. "You could have been badly burned by that bouquet."

"Thank you for coming to the rescue, my lord. You're the only gentleman here in boots." She peered up at him, studying him intently. "Are you absolutely certain we've never met before? I fancy we have."

"Maybe we have. But where and when do you think that was? I'm quite certain I would have remembered you."

She scoffed. "And what makes you say that?"

He pondered that a moment before replying, "Let's just say I pride myself on never forgetting a name or a face. And I would vow I've never seen your face until today. Or, for that matter, heard your name. Mind you, my brother introduced us barely half an hour ago. Perhaps you saw me at Almack's last season or the season before?" Or even the season before that, considering her age, though he knew better than to go that far. "Maybe we stood across from each other in one of the assembly rooms?"

She gazed at him for a long moment, as if contemplating that possibility, only to say, "I've never been to Almack's, my lord."

"Well, I know I haven't seen you at White's or Brooks' or Boodles, for the obvious reasons," he said. "I doubt I've seen you at a house party, for surely we would have been introduced to each other on such an occasion. And I don't believe I've ever encountered you while riding across the street through Hyde Park. Do you ever attend the theater or the opera?"

She took the time to consider that, too, as if she couldn't remember whether she'd ever attended the theater or opera. She finally said, "Occasionally. Maybe once or twice every season."

He favored her with a warm smile. "There you go. You must have seen me in Drury Lane or Covent Garden." During the war, those had been ideal places for clandestine meetings with people who gave him valuable information from France.

She did not smile back. Indeed, he couldn't help feeling she looked a trifle vexed at his own smile, which he did not offer to just anyone. "How could I have seen you and picked you out and remembered you in such venues, my lord? Especially if you're sitting in one box up high and I'm in another on a lower level. I might have to lean far out and risk falling into the pit just to catch any glimpse of you."

He suppressed a sigh. "You do have a point, Miss Benedict, though perhaps it was during an intermission. Very well, I suppose when all else fails, there's always VauxhallGardens."

He inwardly smiled at the thought that he'd had even more clandestine meetings at the famous pleasure gardens across the Thames—and not all of them related to his work.

Why was she shaking her head and looking at him as if he were the biggest fool in London?

And why did he feel as if he were the biggest fool in London? Possibly in all of England?

"You've never been to VauxhallGardens?" he asked.

"Never. Yet I'd dearly love to go sometime."

"Perhaps my brother will take you there once the betrothal is official."

She whirled around to fly back up the steps, muttering something that sounded like Ugh!

He swiftly followed her. "Miss Benedict! May I ask why you are so averse to the idea of marrying him? I must say, I find your reaction to the entire notion to be quite perplexing."

She paused on the threshold to glower at him. "Because you think every spinster dreams of marrying a duke? Only the title-seeking, fortune-hunting ones do, I suppose."

"Well, aren't they all?"

"They most certainly are not," she said crisply. "It might interest you to know that not every feminine heart leads to a duke, or even an earl. Sometimes, the heart leads us in directions we never dreamed of."

"And you've never dreamed of marrying a duke?"

"Not for a moment, my lord."

"I take it you didn't have the chance to ask your brother what he knew before he departed?"

"I wouldn't trouble him with something like that when he's about to leave on his wedding trip," she replied. "It's hardly a conversation we can have in front of a hundred people while he's boarding a carriage with his bride. I trust it can wait till he and Tabitha return from Brighton. Surely the duke doesn't intend to marry me before then?"

"I should think not," Gareth conceded.

A woman's voice interrupted them. "Oh, there you are, Evie! I was wondering what happened to you."

"Mother." The single word came out of Miss Benedict in a whispered gasp, as if she feared a scolding or worse for speaking to a strange gentleman—or at least one who hadn't been introduced to her mother first.

Gareth shifted his gaze to an older version of Miss Benedict, with the same raven hair and brown eyes, but more flamboyantly dressed in tiers of pink ruffles and flounces from throat to—and then his eye caught the necklace. He didn't recognize the woman wearing it, but he recognized that necklace at once and knew exactly where he'd seen it before.

And touched it before, studying its facets as his fingers felt the pounding of her heart beneath it.

No. It wasn't possible.

Was it?

This was Miss Benedict's mother?

Oh, worse than that...