After a few rounds Alex wandered over. "Mind if I join you?"

Dunford shrugged. "Not at all."

The other men at the vingt-et-un table shifted their chairs to make room for the duke.

"Who is winning?" Alex inquired.

"Dunford," Lord Tarryton replied. "Quite handily."

Dunford shrugged again, a disinterested expression affixed to his face.

Alex took a sip of whiskey as his hand was dealt and then took a look at the face-down card. Glancing sideways at Dunford, he said, "Your Henry turned out to be quite a success."

"She isn't 'my' Henry," Dunford all but snapped.

"Isn't Miss Barrett your ward?" Lord Tarryton asked.

Dunford looked at him, nodded curtly, and said, "Deal me another card."

Tarryton did so, but not before saying, "I wouldn't be surprised if Billington came up to scratch on this gel."

"Billington, Farnsworth, and a few others," Alex said with his most affable smile.

"Ashbourne?" Dunford's voice was colder than ice.

"Dunford?"

"Shut up."

Alex suppressed a smile and asked for another card.

"What I don't understand," Lord Symington, a graying man in his mid-fifties, was saying, "is why no one ever heard of her before. Who are her people?"

"I believe Dunford is 'her people' now," Alex said.

"She comes from Cornwall," Dunford replied tersely, regarding his pair of fives with a bored expression. "Before that, Manchester."

"Has she a dowry?" Symington persisted.

Dunford paused. He hadn't even thought of that. He could see Alex looking at him with a quizzical expression, one eyebrow arrogantly raised. It would be so easy to say that no, Henry didn't have a dowry. It was the truth, after all. Carlyle had left the chit penniless.

Her chances at an advantageous marriage would be greatly reduced.

She could end up dependent on him forever.

It was damned appealing...

Dunford sighed, cursing himself once again for this revolting impulse of his to play the hero. "Yes," he sighed. "Yes, she does."

"Well, that's good news for the chit," Symington replied. " 'Course she probably wouldn't have had too much trouble without it. Lucky for you, Dunford. Wards can be deuced annoying business. I have one I've been trying to unload for three years. Why God invented Poor Relations I'll never know."

Dunford studiously ignored him, then flipped over his card, an ace. "Twenty-one," he said, not sounding the least bit excited at the fact that he had just won nearly a thousand pounds.

Alex leaned back and smiled broadly. "This must be your lucky night."

Dunford shoved his chair back and stood up, pushing the other cardplayers' vouchers carelessly into his pocket. "Indeed," he drawled as he made his way back to the door leading to the ballroom. "The luckiest bloody night of my life."

Henry decided that she would capture at least three more hearts before she had to leave, and she succeeded handily. It seemed so easy—she wondered why she had never before realized that men could be managed so effortlessly.

Most men, that is. The men she didn't want.

She was letting Viscount Haverly twirl her around the dance floor when she spied Dunford. Her heart missed a beat and her feet missed a step before she could remind herself that she was furious with him.

But every time Haverly turned her around, there was Dunford, leaning lazily against a pillar with his arms folded. The expression on his face did not invite the other partygoers to come over and try to engage him in conversation. He looked terribly sophisticated in his black evening clothes, unbearably arrogant, and very, very male.

And his eyes were following her, a lazy, hooded gaze—one that sent shivers up and down her spine.

The dance came to an end, and Henry sank into a respectful curtsy. Haverly bowed and said, "Shall I return you to your guardian? I see him just over there."

Henry thought of a thousand things to say—she had another partner for the next dance and he was on the other side of the room; she was thirsty and wanted a glass of lemonade; she needed to talk to Belle—but in the end she only nodded, seemingly having lost the power to speak.

"Here you are, Dunford," Haverly said with a good-natured grin as he deposited Henry by his side. "Or perhaps I should say Stannage now. I understand you've come into a title."

"Dunford is still fine," he replied with such urbane blandness that Haverly quickly stammered his goodbyes and was off.

Henry frowned. "You didn't have to scare him like that."

"Didn't I? You seem to be acquiring an unseemly number of beaux."

"I have not behaved in an untoward manner and you know it," she retorted, hot anger staining her cheeks.

"Hush, minx, you are attracting attention."

Henry thought she might cry upon hearing him use her friendly nickname in such derisive tones. "I don't care! I don't. I just want..."

"What do you want?" he asked, his voice low and intense.

She shook her head. "I don't know."

"I should think you don't want to attract attention. That might endanger your quest to become the reigning belle of the season."

"You are the one who is endangering it, scaring off my suitors like that."

"Hmmm. I shall have to rectify my damage then, won't I?"

Henry regarded him suspiciously, unable to discern his motives. "What do you want, Dunford?"

"Why, just to dance with you." He took her arm and prepared to lead her back onto the dance floor. "If only to put to rest any nasty gossip that we do not deal well with one another."