Evie's heart nearly leaped into her throat at the sound of the door knocker, and she dashed past the butler to answer it herself. She threw the door open. "Lord Gareth, I—" She abruptly went speechless at the sight of a man much shorter than Lord Gareth, and not as well dressed. He doffed a cap and held out a sealed message. "An express for Miss Benedict."

"He sent an express? That's all I'm to expect from him? Oh, but I beg your pardon. I realize you're only the messenger. I suppose you get shot often enough in your line of work for the tidings of others. Thank you for this." She was about to close the door when Lumsden neatly stepped past her to give the messenger a coin.

For Evie didn't usually answer the door to receive messages.

She scurried into the drawing room as she tore open the express. She could only imagine what he wrote: Felicitations on your forthcoming marriage to Kingsley. Please give my regards to the Duke of Bradbury and the Marquess of Frampton should you happen to meet them en route to your destination. And Lady Milner, should she happen to be in their company.

Instead, the urgent message was from her mother.

Dear Evangeline,

Do not worry about me. I am traveling with the Duke of Bradbury to FramptonCastle. I hope to repeat what happened the last time we were there—but with a different bridegroom, of course!

Lady Cranston will act as your chaperone until Ross and Tabitha return from Brighton.

When I do see you again, we shall talk about Lord Gareth Armstrong and what transpired on the night he says he met me in my butterfly mask.

Your loving mother

Evie's internal organs suddenly felt as if they were all fighting with each other, or even rearranging themselves inside of her, with her heart where her stomach should have been, her stomach in her throat, and her lungs somewhere below her navel. She certainly felt a great deal of air moving about in that vicinity, threatening to crash like thunder and with a frightfully similar noise to boot.

For that last paragraph could mean only one thing—Evie's mother somehow found out that Evie didn't go to Lady Whitbourne's masquerade ball that one fateful night.

Did Bradbury repeat to her mother what Evie had told him on the staircase last week? Worse, had he told Gareth in such a way as to malign her? Would they force Gareth to marry Evie when they returned from the north?

Of course Evie wanted to marry. But she didn't want to marry Gareth because he'd ruined her—especially when he didn't even know he'd ruined her. She certainly hoped he didn't know yet. If not for the fact he foolishly believed he'd been with her mother that night, they might have had a chance to become more properly acquainted.

Like normal people. With normal relatives. They might even have fallen in love.

But Evie knew that what happened wasn't the duke's fault, or her mother's.

It was her cousin Gerald's wife, Lady Flora, who took Evie to Madame Delphine's that night. And her mother's brother, Lord Forrestal, who saw Evie in her mother's mask and butterfly necklace, and naturally assumed he was seeing his own sister in the same place where he'd found her years before, when she ran away from home to avoid an arranged marriage.

Evie paced the drawing room, debating whether she should show the express to Lord Gareth—if she ever saw him again. Perhaps he wasn't at Bradbury House. Maybe he was traveling with his brother and her mother, and that was how her mother knew about That Fateful and Scandalous Night. She must have penned and sent this express from a posting house. Why didn't she just leave a note on her pillow, unless she wanted to be far away before Evie discovered her latest plan to elope? Again?

She cast frequent glances out the window, but saw no sign of Lord Gareth, or—thank heavens—Lord Kingsley. If he happened to come calling, and discovered Evie was here without any of her family, he might well spirit her away to Gretna Green, too.

Where, oh where was the footman she'd sent to Bradbury House? At the very least, he should have returned by now with a message—either from Lord Gareth, or from his staff that he was away. She stormed into the front hall, determined to go down below herself in lieu of tugging on the bell pull and waiting—for she was so blessedly sick of waiting, waiting, waiting for everyone and everything, from footmen to a proposal of marriage, that—she stopped short as a door behind the staircase swung open and out stepped the footman in question, out of breath from having dashed up the steep staircase she knew led to the kitchen below.

"Well? Do you have a message from Bradbury House?" she asked.

"Aye, Miss Benedict. His Lordship told me to come back here."

"His Lordship being Lord Gareth?"

"Aye, Miss Benedict."

So he hadn't left with his brother and her mother! That in itself was enough to make Evie sigh in relief. "Well? And?"

"That's all he said."

"He said? You mean he didn't write a reply to the message I sent?"

"No, Miss Benedict. He said he had no message for me to pass on to you."

"He said that?"

"Aye—"

"In those exact words?"

"Well, not exact, miss. I took your note to the trade entrance like I'm s'posed to, and told 'em I was to wait for a reply. Their butler took it upstairs to His Lordship. Then he came back down and said His Lordship wanted to see me. So he took me upstairs to His Lordship, who asked me what happened to Lady Milner, and I said only that she didn't come home last night and you were worried. Well, we're all worried. That's when he told me to come back here. I told him you wanted me to wait for a reply to her message. He said, 'I have no message for you to pass on to Miss Benedict.' Those were his exact words. Then he tossed me a coin, wished me a good day, and his butler saw me out the same way I came in. Did I do wrong, miss?"

Evie couldn't very well shoot this messenger, either. Besides, she knew whom she really wanted to shoot. "You did precisely as I instructed. Thank you."

Now what was she to do? She thought Lord Gareth didn't want his brother marrying her mother any more than Evie did. Had he concluded there was nothing he could do to stop it? Had he, along with her mother, discovered that Evie was the masked woman he'd pleasured at Madame Delphine's? But if that were the case, why didn't he come to offer her marriage? Or did he surmise that was a lost cause as well, since she'd stupidly informed him that she would elope with Kingsley if Lord Gareth didn't come to Tyndall House posthaste? She'd only mentioned that in hopes it would bring him, or even her mother had she been at Bradbury House, rushing back over here.

Oh, what a mull she'd made of everything. As usual.

She might as well resign herself to the fact that her mother was about to marry yet again, while the only way Evie would ever make it to the altar was via the offices of Kingsley's blackmail.

She should have summoned all of her courage, both crumbs of it, and told Lord Gareth the truth. At worst he would refuse to marry her. She'd played the scenario in her head many times.

Marry you? Just because you think I ruined you at Madame Delphine's? Miss Benedict, you were already ruined just by going there. How do I know you haven't been there on other occasions, and you're only targeting me because you believe I have the best prospects of all the men you must have allowed liberties?

She didn't believe for a moment that he might react with, That was you? Why, I've been looking all over for you ever since that night. I haven't been able to get you out of my mind all this time. I've fallen in love with that mysterious masked lady. And now that I know it's you, I must offer you marriage.

Too easy. It would never happen. Maybe to her mother, but never to Evie.

The door knocker banged again, startling her out of her anguished reverie. Could that possibly be Lord Gareth?

The footman stepped past her to open the door and upon glimpsing the caller, Evie's heart dropped even lower, this time from her stomach and down to her feet.

"Miss Benedict?" Kingsley practically shoved the footman aside as he crossed the threshold. "How convenient for me to come here and see you in your very front hall, as if you're just waiting for me to call. Oh, I say, that rhymes, doesn't it? Hee-hee! The weather is fine. Let us go driving, so we might become better acquainted. And I wish to show off my future countess to all of London."

For a moment Evie feared she might have lost her voice in the recent rearrangement of her interior parts.

"No need to say anything," said Kingsley. "Just come along."

She peered over his shoulder to his waiting equipage, consisting of a plain, enclosed carriage of the sort not usually employed by any respectable lord to show off his future countess to all of London, as if she were some sort of trophy. The door sported no crest, and the coachman wore no livery resembling anything normally seen around Mayfair. Indeed, the whole thing fairly reeked of "hired conveyance." And being so, it probably did reek, too—to high heaven.

That was the sort of carriage used by rakehells for elopements, abductions, and forced seductions, not necessarily in that order, but all ways for two people to become better acquainted, as he proposed. Evie realized she wasn't that eager to beat her mother to the altar, or even the blacksmith's anvil, or she might have leaped head first into the thing already.

She finally found her voice in its usual place. "Oh, but—oh. Then you must have received the message I sent to you the other day?" Unless he somehow intercepted the one she sent to Lord Gareth an hour ago.

"Delivered by none other than this footman here, the day after I called on you," Kingsley replied. "I might have come sooner, but I had to settle some affairs first. I'm glad you've agreed to see reason. Most women don't even know what it is, but then they don't need to. They need only be silent and obey."

Oh, dear God. Evie would rather die a spinster than marry this lout. "I'm afraid I can't come out today, my lord. My mother is ill."

"But you're not. And she has a maid to look after her, surely. Now come along." He reached for her arm, but Evie swiftly backed away.

"Her maid has the day off," Evie said firmly. "So it falls to me to look after her."

"I'm certain she won't mind if you come with me for just an hour or so. Now let us go."

Evie continued backing her way to the staircase. "Very well, but first let me tell her, so she won't think I've aban—"

"Send the footman upstairs to tell her."

"That's just it. 'Twouldn't be proper for the footman to enter her bedchamber. Just let me run upstairs very quickly and tell her and then I'll be right back down." So saying, she scurried up the stairs with no idea how she was going to squeeze out of this. She only knew that by hook or by crook, she was not setting so much as her little pinky toe in that carriage.

Perhaps she could pretend to suddenly catch whatever she pretended was ailing her mother. She'd read about the Black Death of the fourteenth century. She recalled the account of a doctor who called on a plague victim, only to contract the disease himself and die right there at the patient's bedside. People were easily panicked by such things. Evie certainly was, but then at this moment, she was panicked by just about everything.

She thought of barricading herself in her bedchamber. But sooner or later, Kingsley would surely come upstairs to break the door down. And then there was the matter of Lady Cranston, still recuperating in the guest bedchamber.

There was only one thing to do. Evie would have to escape down the back stairs. Thank heavens for back stairs! She dashed into her bedchamber to grab her spencer jacket, bonnet, and reticule. She'd have to go to Bradbury House on foot, without a chaperone, and hope to heavens Lord Gareth was still there.

She donned the green spencer jacket over her paler green sprigged dress. She pushed the bonnet onto her head and commenced fumbling with the streamers.

"Good God," said a man's voice from somewhere in the room.

Evie emitted some kind of noise between a gasp and a shriek, while her heart shot all the way up from her feet and past its proper place, vying with her stomach for supremacy over her throat.

"You really are going to elope with that cur, aren't you?" he continued. "I should just leave you to it."