Gareth had always prided himself on his ability not to let emotion interfere with his work—or for that matter, anything he did. Indeed, he could only recall two occasions on which he'd failed to do so.

The first time was when he went to Madame Delphine's to unmask—both literally and figuratively—a female traitor who was bringing English secrets for the Frenchwoman to pass on to her countrymen.

The second time was this moment, with Miss Benedict—Evangeline—locked in his half-embrace, the soft warmth of her body pressing into the increasing hardness of his own.

Then again, this wasn't really work. In fact, the longer she remained against him, the more it became pleasure, if not for the sparkle of tears in her brown eyes, and the trembling of her lips that he longed to quell with his own.

His arm still around her, he cast his gaze up at the sealed missive he'd purloined from Kingsley's waistcoat, and lowered it level with his shoulder for a closer look. Evangeline squirmed, inadvertently rubbing against his groin in a maddening fashion as she struggled to snatch it away from him, but he still managed to hold it out of her reach as he scrutinized the direction.

Mr. Regis Hurley Eyes Only.

The missing document carried by Lady Ruth Hale, left behind at Kingsley Hall after the previous Earl of Kingsley shot her dead.

He held it up for Evangeline's perusal. "As you can see, this isn't what you think it is. I must return this at once to Mr. Hurley."

He reluctantly loosened his embrace and she stepped back, looking everywhere but at him. "Well, don't I feel as if I'm the world's biggest fool? Oh, and there's my mother's express on the floor, almost hidden under the chair." She snatched it up and held it out to him for his own perusal.

His eyes raced over Lady Milner's words, and he tightened his jaw, pressing his lips together to suppress a curse. So she still intended to marry his brother—and to make matters even worse, she planned to reveal all to Evangeline upon their return.

Which raised an interesting question—had she revealed all to his brother? She must have. It would certainly explain why they'd eloped last night. Dane wasn't about to let Gareth or Evangeline or anyone else talk him out of marrying Lady Milner. What sort of hold she must have over Dane, Gareth could not even imagine.

Either way, it was out of his hands now. If it didn't bother Dane to marry a woman who'd almost been brought to climax by his younger brother, then why should his younger brother be bothered?

Yet he was, and he knew it was because he was attracted to that woman's daughter. How else to explain why he'd come running—or at least galloping on horseback—to answer her summons—or rather, threat to elope with Kingsley?

"Well?" she asked, her usually dulcet voice hoarse. "What shall we do?"

"I daresay we can't do anything," he said grimly. "I suppose we must accept the inevitable, no matter how distasteful..." He smacked his lips and fought the urge to spit, as if he really could taste it, "...it is. However, I gave my word that I would escort you and Lady Cranston north, and I still intend to do that. Right after I deliver this other letter to Mr. Hurley."

She stood before him, clasping her hands together as if in supplication, or even as if to steady herself, for now she trembled all over. She took a deep breath, and then another. "Concerning what she wrote about you..." Even her voice was shaky. Gareth wondered why her teeth didn't chatter. He glanced back down at the express.

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.

"That's easily explained," he said.

"Oh-oh-ohhh no-oo-oh it's no-ought," she quavered.

"It is, I assure you. I happened to see them both at VauxhallGardens last night, and she was wearing just such a mask. Obviously, that's the encounter she wishes to tell you about upon her return. All I did was inform her directly that I object to her marrying my brother, and so do you, and that the whole thing was a mad, bad, dangerous idea and she should cry off." He paused, furrowing his brow as her head moved vigorously from side to side. "Are you shaking your head to express something negative, or is that part of your overall tremors that leave me wondering what has you so frightened? Unless it's the prospect of Kingsley returning to force you into an unwanted marriage?"

"Www-we-ell, thaa-aat, too."

He lowered the express. "Miss Benedict."

She whimpered, and he thought he heard her mutter something along the lines of, "Ohhh, no-oo-oh, he's baa-aack to ca-ca-calling me Mmmm..."

"Evangeline," he said quickly. "What are you trying to tell me?" She couldn't possibly know about "what transpired" the first time he met Lady Milner in her butterfly mask.

She suddenly blew out a breath. "Never mind." Even her tremors subsided.

He cocked his head to one side. "That reminds me. You did agree to tell me what you wrote to Kingsley."

She gestured to the letter for Hurley's eyes only. "But I didn't write that to Kingsley!"

"No, but you wrote something to him, and you promised to tell me what it was if I—if I—" If he did what? Now he couldn't recall.

"If you opened that and read it," she supplied.

"This?" He waved the secret missive. "You saw the direction for yourself. I mustn't open it and read it."

"Then I don't have to tell you anything." Whereas a moment ago she looked terrified, now she appeared calm and relieved.

"Something frightened you just now," he said. "And if you wish me to escort you and Lady Cranston north, you will tell me."

"But you gave your word. You even said so."

"Perhaps I'll break it, and let Kingsley take you north, since you must have asked him to do so, only to have second thoughts about it. If I'm to make a similar commitment to you, Evangeline, then I believe I'm entitled to know the facts."

Now she was trembling again, but this time she clenched her fists and stiffened all over, as if that would subdue her shakes. It wasn't working too well.

"It must be dreadful," he said.

"If I tell you, you might wish not to have anything more to do with me after this."

"Only if you're about to confess that you're a traitor to the Crown. I can forgive just about anything but that."

She gulped. "Anything but that?"

He offered her a slight smile. "Just about."

"Those two words don't reassure me any more than that little hint of a smile."

"It's that dreadful, what you can't bring yourself to tell me?"

She averted her gaze. "You might think it's dreadful."

He slowly stepped toward her. "What about you? Do you think it's dreadful? Or do you only fret that other people might find it dreadful?"

She fixed her gaze on the fireplace, looking as if she was deeply pondering his questions. Or even as if she were gathering the nerve to throw herself into the grate and immolate herself. Alas, there was no fire.

"I don't think it's dreadful at all," she said. "I merely find it to be a complication."

"Yet you're convinced that everyone else, including me, would find this complication to be so utterly dreadful that the only thing worse is treason?"

"Yes."

"But it's not treason?" he asked, holding up the sealed document again. "It has nothing to do with this document I found in Kingsley's waistcoat? You know nothing about it? This isn't what you thought it was?"

She shook her head all the while.

He thrust it back into his pocket and ventured another step toward her, and when he spoke again, he softened his voice. "I wish you would tell me, Evangeline."

"Why?" she whispered, still facing the fireplace. "Why is it so important that you know?"

Gareth wasn't certain how to answer that, except to admit that he'd come to care for her—and he didn't even know how that happened, except their mutual objection to the marriage of his brother to her mother had thrown them together.

"If you don't wish to marry Kingsley," he said, "and if you want to make sure he doesn't plague you anymore, then I need to know those pesky, stubborn facts before I can form a plan to ensure he never bothers you again. It's evident he has some sort of hold over you." Just as he suspected her mother had one over his brother. "I can help you break free of that hold, Evangeline. You simply have to tell me what it is."

She finally turned her head toward him. To his dismay, her brown eyes still glittered with the threat of tears, and his heart twisted.

"Again—I don't think it's bad," she said, "but everyone else would, if they knew."

"But it isn't treason, is it?"

"No."

"Then do tell me already."

"Promise you won't be furious?"

Gareth chuckled and shook his head.

"Why do you shake your head? Does that mean you won't promise not to be furious?" she cried, her eyes wide and wild.

"No, it only means I suspect this is all a tempest in a teapot. That it's not as bad as you're trying to make me think it is."

"Kingsley thinks it's bad enough to hold over my head!"

"Very well, Evangeline. Instead of telling me what it is—because I'm almost convinced by now that you never will unless I flay it out of you—just tell me how he happens to know about it, but no one else does."

She averted her gaze again. "Lady Flora Benedict knows about it, too. Indeed, she's the one who told me who—who you were."

He knit his brow. "Who I was? Where was this?"

"And that you had a tendre for her sister, until you discovered her with another man. That's why you were so downcast that you—you found yourself...keeping company with me." As if a man had to really hit rock bottom to settle for the company of Evangeline Benedict. "It's why you object to my mother marrying your brother."

Evangeline couldn't possibly know the real reason for that. Gareth chuckled again and said, "I object to the match because he should marry someone young enough to fill his nursery. I have no desire for the responsibilities of his dukedom."

"No, you object because you don't want your brother to marry someone you think you—you dallied with, to put it mildly..."

Gareth felt the blood drain from his face as he stared at her with an expression he knew to be not of anything so mundane as disbelief, but downright horror. She knew!

She continued stammering, clawing in vain for an appropriate verb. "—someone that you already—well, that you ruined! Only—"

"Your mother actually told you about that? Told you? About that?" With each question, Gareth's voice rose higher in pitch till it finally cracked on that.

"No, my mother did not tell me about it, because she was never there. But I was!" Evangeline even jumped on using the first person.

"You were?" He stared at her in befuddlement. "Oh, you mean because Kingsley said so? He's such a sapskull, naturally he thinks that was you that night. He wants to think it's you, because unlike your mother, you come with a dowry. Well, I must hand it to him—for a sapskull, that's quite a diabolical plan he cooked up!" Gareth burst into laughter. "Oh, I do apologize, my dear Evangeline—I know it's not amusing to you, and I even understand why you think the whole thing means that you're the lady ruined. But you mustn't think—"

"Aaagh!" she roared like a tigress, even curling all ten of her fingers into claws as she stamped a foot and rolled her eyes in what Gareth might have thought was exasperation, except—well, she had to be absolutely seething about this, and he couldn't blame her.

Still, he had to come up with some way to defuse this. "And here you thought I was the one who'd be furious to hear about this. I must say..."

She curled those claws into fists. "Not to mention you thought Kingsley was the sapskull!"

"He still is."

"And so are you!"

"I beg your—"

"That wasn't my mother to whom you did you-know-what at you-know-where on you-know-which-night," Evangeline raged. "That was me, you muttonhead! Me!"