“That would not do, so I am pleased to hear that you are not one of those. I would prefer to have nothing to do with inventors. They are extremely strange people, by all accounts. Of course, sometimes it is a useful trait. My father’s blacksmith was excellent at making pipes with strange bends in them.”

Mayne looked at his hands.

“Perhaps when we have children you will feel differently,” Sylvie said. Her voice was so sympathetic and yet nonplussed that Mayne couldn’t help but smile at her. He leaned over and dropped a kiss on her nose, even though she strongly disapproved of public displays.

“You’re very dear, do you know that?”

“No, I am not. I am very fortunate. I like being precisely what I am: a lady. I like to go to balls, and talk to my close friends.”

“That’s true enough,” Mayne said, taking her hand. “I can never find you because most of the time you are ensconced in the ladies’ retiring rooms, chattering away.”

She smiled at him. “That is where all interesting things happen at a ball.”

“Would you ever be happy spending a great deal of the year on my estate?” he asked, knowing the answer.

Her smile did not falter. “Never. But Mayne, if you decide that living in the country will make you contented, I am perfectly able to take care of myself. Your house here in London is in an excellent location. Once I have renovated it to the French style, it will be very comfortable. And then I have so many friends. I believe I shall be quite happy at—how do you call them in England?—house parties. Yes, that’s it. I would much dislike to think of myself as a shackle on your ankle.”

“A poetic simile,” Mayne said wryly. “I should miss you.”

“But we face a great many years together. I am certain that we shall like to live in different places for periods of time. I have often observed that the best marriages are so. I would much dislike it if either of us were unhappy, Mayne.”

“Where will the children be?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Why, where children are supposed to be. In the country, in town, wherever they wish to be.”

Mayne laughed. “They won’t express wishes for some time.”

“I dare say,” Sylvie said. “I know nothing of children, you understand, Mayne. But our children will be perfectly amiable, I am sure.”

She was so cheerful, so genial, so courteously willing to live apart from him for their entire lives. And from their children too, he had no doubt. And yet: he looked at her again. Sylvie was no ogre. There was the beautiful little pointed chin, and wide, friendly eyes with an inquisitive, intelligent gleam to them.

“Don’t you wish there was more to life than this?” he asked again, rather desperately.

And saw those beautiful eyes fill with concern. “I do not.” She said it with certainty. “May I speak frankly?”

“Of course!” He took both her hands.

“I come from a country where many people, young women of my mother’s age, were brutally killed for nothing more than being who they are. They were born to rule, not to work. Born to a life of pleasure, rather than toil. I was lucky enough that my father became a friend to Napoleon rather than an enemy—at least until he saw the truth of that regime—and yet I see the horror of it, in my mind, you understand? I know what happened in the Bastille: the cruelties, the loss, the terrible loss of it.”

Inside his palms, her hands curled into fists. “How can you ask me if I want more than this life? I am so lucky to have this life! I sit here, dressed with such elegance as my friends and relatives once enjoyed, eating exquisite food, in no danger of my life, and in no fear, and you ask me if this is enough?”

There was a moment’s silence between them.

“Oh God,” he said, “I’m so sorry, Sylvie. I’m a bastard to have even asked.”

But she caught herself up. The fierceness faded from her eyes, replaced with her inimitable self-possession. She slipped her hands from his and smiled at him, that intelligent, assured smile that had first attracted him. “I am very happy. It would be unthinkable for me to be otherwise.”

“I see that. I expect you are the best possible person for me to talk to on this matter.”

“It is often so with friends. I find that when I talk to a friend, and learn her perspective, my view of the world shifts.”

“Friends,” he said. “But surely we are more than friends, Sylvie?”

There was nothing in her smile that was more—or less—than friendly. “To be friends is the greatest love of all between people. This lovers business—pah! It goes in the night. I have seen it so. You, Mayne, of all people, know that this emotion does not last. I decided long ago to have nothing to do with it, and I have found it a wise decision.”

He leaned toward her and ran a finger down the curve of her cheek. “I love you, Sylvie. I feel that passion for you.”

“Our friendship will take us beyond the point when you feel that for me. Perhaps I should not say so, but I have been told that there are certain similarities between your past and that of this Hellgate. I do not in any way wish to diminish or discount your feelings, but according to these Memoirs, it seems you have felt this passion on a regular basis…for one or two weeks only?”

He was grinding his teeth. “I did not write those Memoirs.”

“Of course not,” she said, shocked. “But you did have many of the relationships that lie at the heart of the account, did you not?”

She read the look in his eyes. “You must not feel terribly!” she cried. “Because we speak frankly to each other, we need not feel hurt when, after a few weeks of these intimacies, you are not so passionate anymore. We will not cry over the inevitable. I shall never make you a scene because you gain interest in another woman. You have always been discreet in these things, Mayne. Everyone says that of you. You are the consummate gentleman.”

“I had hoped…” he said. But he wasn’t sure how to finish the sentence.

She raised a hand. “You needn’t ever worry that I shall disgrace you. While I understand a gentleman’s desires, I do not share them. It is not for me, this life of sneaking in and out of bedchambers.” She gave a delicate shudder. “To be blunt, Mayne, your children will be your own, and I shall create no scandals.”

Should he thank her?

But she had turned away and was waving toward the next table. “There is lovely little Josie! Have you noticed how delightful she appears this evening? A new modiste can change a woman’s life, and your sister has done an excellent job of drawing away Darlington…”

She chattered on, but Mayne wasn’t listening. He was staring at a tasteless lobster patty and thinking that in balance, perhaps it would have been better if he was wholly French rather than only half. At least if he were on the way to the tumbrel, he would have been caught up by events, taken by death.

Oh for God’s sake, he thought. Don’t be such a melancholic sap.

He looked up and caught Josie’s eye. She was sitting with Skevington, who showed every sign of a man who would be calling on Rafe within a week with a generous settlement in mind and a ring in his pocket.

“Mayne,” his sister Griselda called. “Don’t you have a horse running in the Ascot?”