Too Dangerous For a Lady by Jo Beverley Page A

church, I think, and you’re too old to join the navy.”
    â€œNot a promising path anyway in peacetime.”
    â€œThe law?” she suggested.
    â€œToo much book work.”
    â€œDiplomacy?”
    â€œToo much wandering.”
    â€œNot trade, then. I have it. You must become a Bow Street Runner and put your wicked ways to good account.”
    He chuckled. “Perhaps I should. It’s a shame ladies have so few ways of earning their keep. I’m sure you could turn your hand to any profession.”
    She shook her head. “Too much book work or wandering.”
    â€œTrade?”
    â€œI’m not at all enterprising or adventurous.”
    â€œPerhaps you don’t know yourself. Remember how you ventured onto that terrace with me, ripe for adventure.”
    â€œThat was different.” Thank heaven dim light would hide any blush.
    â€œI wonder. Was your mother very cross?”
    â€œNo. She understood. I miss her.”
    â€œWhen did she die?”
    â€œFour years ago.”
    â€œMy condolences.”
    â€œThank you. Are your parents still alive?”
    â€œNo,” he said, but his tone was odd and she remembered some things he’d said six years ago. His mother had been French and had been caught up in the violence of the revolution there. She’d been of a nervous disposition, but she’d been deeply loved.
    â€œWhat is it?” she asked, and, without thinking, leaned to touch his hand.
    He turned his hand to take hers, rubbing her fingers with his thumb. The warm connection rippled up her arm. “My father died in 1814 and my mother a year later. But she’d not been fully alive for a long time. Perhaps as long as I’ve known her.”
    â€œBecause of her experiences in France?”
    â€œYou remember. She saw a brother murdered by a mob, and she and her mother only just escaped with their lives. Her father sent them to safety in England, but later he, another brother, and many relatives perished on the guillotine.”
    She tightened her hold. “How horrible. It’s scarcely believable that such things happened just across the Channel and not that long ago. How could people become so cruel?”
    â€œCruelty seems to lurk like a plague. It takes only a fissure in the social order to release the poison.”
    â€œIt could never happen here.”
    â€œI pray not.” He looked down at their joined hands. “She could seem fairly normal when I was young, though we all knew she could be upset by crowds or any hint of violence. She stayed close to home and everyone shielded her from disturbance. That sufficed until my father died. I was away in the army, but when I came home, I heard the story. Despite seeing his body, she insisted he’d been guillotined and hid away for fear of the same fate. She became terrified of strangers, especially men. Then, perhaps a blessing, she slid back into her youth, when her world was tranquil and her family and friends were still alive. Early in the marriage my father had some rooms done over in the French style and after his death she lived entirely in them, with two French servants, and responded only to her maiden name. In that world I didn’t exist. I became a stranger to her.”
    All she could do was squeeze his hand.
    â€œIt’s cold. You should go to bed.”
    She rose but lingered. “You’ll feel the cold, too.”
    â€œI’ve known worse.” Then he drew her into his arms. “That interrupted kiss,” he said, and put his lips gently to hers.
    It was, she supposed, exactly the sort of kiss he’d have claimed from a seventeen-year-old at her first ball—slight, but sweet beyond bearing. When it ended, she rested her head on his shoulder, wishing hopelessly for everything to be different. How cruel it was that she’d found him again only to have him snatched away by poverty.
    Great-uncle Peake.
    If he was rich and dying, and if