“I don't know,' he said irritably. 'Is it meant to improve you?'She swiveled toward him, eyes wide with shock.'Because nothing could,' he added. Her mouth dropped in astonishment. Blotchy scarlet rushed her complexion. One would have thought he'd shot her.Oh dear God!He realized belatedly how wrong it had sounded.'No! God... that is to say.. nothing is necessary to improve you. Nothing could possibly make you better... than you already are.”

“What are your pleasures and pursuits, Lord Moncrieffe?" Miss Eversea asked too brightly, when the silence had gone on for more than was strictly comfortable or polite.That creaky conversation lubricant. It irritated him again that she was humoring him. "Well, I'm partial to whores."Her head whipped toward him like a weather-vane in a hurricane. Her eyes, he noted, were enormous, and such a dark blue they were nearly purple. Her mouth dropped, and the lower lip was quivering with shock or... or..."Whor... whores...?" She choked out the word as if she'd just inhaled it like bad cigar smoke. He widened his own eyes with alarm, recoiling slightly. "I... I beg your pardon - Horses. Honestly, Miss Eversea," he stammered. "I do wonder what you think of me if that's what you heard.”

“And though she could scarcely even feel them, her lips formed the words, and sound emerged, sounding frayed, and small and cracked, forged in her somehow before she was born, since before time, words meant only for him.“I love you.”Three of the most powerful words in the world offered to one of the most powerful men in London in such a small voice.And at first she thought nothing at all had happened. He didn’t blink. But then she realized she’d somehow set him . . . softly ablaze. Emotion burned from him, and his eyes . . . she would never forget his eyes in this moment.His hands remained at his sides.Which is when she noticed they were trembling.God help her, that’s when she felt tears begin to burn at the back of her eyes.One got away. And she brushed her hand roughly against it.And the man who never cleared his throat . . . cleared his throat. And his voice, in truth, wasn’t a good deal louder than hers.“Then it’s just as well that I love you, Genevieve.”

“It’s…” She couldn’t finish.“Don’t try, Miss Redmond,” he agreed, shading his eyes. “There are honestly no suitable words, so we shall not fault you for failing to find them. Nothing makes a man feel more like God than sailing a ship over the sea with no land in sight. And nothing makes a man feel less like a God than clinging to a shred of ship exploded by lightning in a storm.”

“Don’t be tedious, Lavay. If it’s so necessary for you to know,” he said ungraciously. “She won a contest.”There was a short stunned silence.“You…played a game?” Lavay said this slow, flat incredulity, hilarity suppressed, clearly trying to picture it. “And you lost to a…girl. What manner of contest was this? Ribbon-tying?”Flint felt ridiculous now, in retrospect, which was doing nothing to settle his temper. “I challenged her to aim a dart…let’s just say it landed rather serendipitously in the right spot,”he finished curtly. “She was lucky.”“You speak metaphorically, Captain? She aimed a dart as in the vein of Cupid?”

“He began to stand, and saw Lyon stiffen, poised to do whatever he needed to do. He, like Lyon, could throw himself on a pyre, too. Because fire cleansed. She’d won, and he’d lost.It had stopped mattering. Her happiness was indistinguishable from his own. No matter what became of him, he wanted her to know he loved her.“You’d best get out of here, Redmond. Your secret is safe with me.”Lyon’s eyes flared in wary surprise. He froze. And his smile, when it came, was slow, and crooked, and he looked very like Lavay when Lavay was being insufferably knowing.“Ah. You do love her more than life. Splendid. And that, my dear Lord Flint, is what I came here today to discover.”Whatever he felt was between him and Violet. “Go before I change my mind, Redmond.”

“He would ask nothing else from life if he would be allowed to protect and cherish her for the rest of his.”