The Seducer by Madeline Hunter

angled, thorny lines around his dark form.
    He strolled over. “Are you reading for pleasure or because you are bored?”
    “A little of both.”
    “Then the pleasure can wait while we relieve the boredom. I have decided the day is too fine to spend on business and have called for the carriage. We will visit the Tuileries.”
    She looked down on her old cloak. “I must decline. My new things have not arrived.”
    He took the book from her hands. “It is only a carriage ride. You do not need to look like a duchess.”
    She accompanied him through the house, thinking she would rather not ride alone in a carriage with him again. She had never entirely recovered from the long journey from Rouen.
    The carriage waited in all its splendor. Daniel settled across from her and the wheels rolled.
    That sense of familiarity, of intimacy, instantly rushed over her with the closing of the door.
    She would not let their closeness unsettle her this time. She would demand some information, and he could not get away. It had been convenient of Jeanette to get a headache on a day Daniel was not occupied with his affairs, and Diane did not intend to waste the opportunity.
    He glanced at her, barely, to assure himself of her comfort, and then turned his gaze out the window to the passing city.
    Not this time, Monsieur St. John.
    “How did you find me?”
    “I was passing the landing and looked out the windows and saw you in the garden.”
    “I am not speaking of finding me in the garden. I refer to years ago. How did you come to be my guardian?”
    He turned his attention on her. “I am not your guardian, at least not legally.”
    “That only makes me more curious.”
    “I expect it does. I knew your father through business. One day I received a letter from him, written hastily. He said that he was called out of the country suddenly and asked me to see to your care until he returned.”
    “It was kind of you to agree.”
    “I could not refuse, since he had already left by the time I received the note.”
    “You must have been a good friend, if he made such a request.”
    “Not really. I always suspected that he turned to me because I was in London and available.”
    So her father had left her to the care of a casual acquaintance, a very young man who had probably resented the obligation.
    “You must have been very young for such a charge.”
    “In some ways. In others, not young at all.”
    She had not expected the story to be this embarrassing. “Why didn’t he send me to his family?”
    “I believe that he was estranged from his family. As to your mother’s family, I do not think that was convenient either. She was dead, and your father never spoke of her.”
    That made sense. Diane had vague memories of her father, of his dark hair and blue eyes. Mostly she remembered the anticipation of his occasional visits and the joy of his attention. She had no such recollections of a mother. There had been an old woman, however, whom her mind’s eye saw a bit more vividly than it did her father. Apparently that was not her grandmother.
    “Why didn’t you return me to my father?”
    “I could not. I arranged for an older couple to care for you, but when no word came, and no one had news of him, I realized that I would have to make other arrangements. What with the war . . .”
    His quiet tone told her the truth that his words avoided.
    Stark reality hit her in a series of shocks, as though someone kept punching her chest.
    Her father was dead.
    So was her mother.
    She tried to block the onslaught, but the blows kept coming.
    She had no family.
    There was no reason to search for her life, because there would be nothing to find.
    The blankness that existed inside her would never be filled the way she had dreamed. Now that void quaked, as if a mournful cry had shouted and just kept echoing.
    Admitting the truth left her horribly bleak. She dropped her gaze so Daniel would not see her reaction.
    “His name. What was my father’s