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awfully pretty.” He smiled a lazy, devil’s smile. “But you’re awfully old to be a bride.”
    “I’m only twenty-five,” she huffed.
    “How is it that no other fellow has snatched you up? How did you end up a spinster and having to settle for Stanley Oswald? Are you a secret drunkard? Are you a harpy? Why haven’t you wed?”
    “As far as I’m aware, I have no bad habits.”
    “Every female has some .”
    “Not me,” she insisted. “I’m boring and ordinary, and I haven’t married because no one ever asked me.”
    “So lucky Stanley swooped in before anyone else had a chance?”
    “Yes, and I’m not usually so crass, but I find you to be extremely rude, and I’ve been more than courteous. Will you please go away?”
    His grin widened. “You should be nicer to me.”
    “I’ve been plenty nice. In fact, I’ve been much too nice, and you’ve drained all my kinder impulses.”
    “Have I?”
    “Yes. Now go.”
    He tarried for the longest while, studying her, his blue, blue eyes digging deep.
    She’d never been so thoroughly evaluated, and the sensation was thrilling in a way she didn’t understand. She was warm all over, her pulse racing, the throbbing beat pounding in her stomach. Her nipples had tightened into taut, painful buds.
    To her astonishment, he reached out and laid a hand on her waist. With her wearing just the thin robe, it felt as if he was touching her, bare skin to bare skin. Her pulse hammered at an even faster clip.
    Cunning and intent, he seemed driven to do…something, and for a wild, shocking moment, she thought he might kiss her. There was a strange charge in the air as if any behavior might suddenly be permitted.
    Then he stepped away. A spark of energy had flared between them, and it sizzled out immediately.
    “I’ll see you at supper.” He hurled the remark like a threat.
    “I’m having a tray sent up to my room.”
    “Pity.” He extracted a key from his coat and offered it to her. “You’d better keep this and use it. In this ghastly house, if you don’t lock your door, there’s no telling who might sneak in.”
    She grabbed the key and flashed her most stern schoolteacher’s frown.
    “Goodbye, Mr. Talbot.”
    “Not goodbye,” he said. “We’ll be together soon—and often.” He spun and started out, muttering to himself, “This is going to be so amusing.”
    The comment aggravated her. He aggravated her, and though she should have kept her mouth shut, she couldn’t help saying, “Mr. Talbot?”
    He glanced over his shoulder. “Yes?”
    “Who exactly are you, and what is your position at Summerfield?”
    “Me? Why, I’m no one at all. But trust me, we’re about to become very closely acquainted.”
    He left, and she staggered over to the bed, waited a few seconds as she listened to his boots stomping down the hall. Then she rushed to the door and turned the key in the lock, double-checking to make sure it fit and that it worked.

CHAPTER TWO
    “Your home is lovely.”
    “Yes, it is.”
    “Thank you for inviting me.”
    Rose forced a smile and tried to look happy.
    She’d had the past week to conjure up images of what Mr. Oswald would be like, but none of them came close to the reality.
    He appeared hale and hearty, but still, he was seventy, and she was twenty-five. She emphatically scolded herself to stop fretting over the obvious, to stop concentrating on the negative, but it was difficult to ignore the facts.
    He was thin and wiry, bald as a ball, and while his eyes had probably once been a striking shade of blue, they’d faded to gray. Most disconcerting to Rose, he was shorter than she was, only by an inch or two, but it was odd to have to glance down whenever she spoke to him.
    It just seemed…peculiar. And jarring. Scraped raw were any foolish romantic notions she’d ever possessed about a handsome swain sweeping her away. From the moment Mr. Thumberton had explained the match, she’d understood that Mr. Oswald was older. She had to