Until now.

Christian-

I need your help. There’s no one else I can turn to.

L.

That was all the words her note had contained, yet between them those bare words spoke volumes.

His feet continued steadily down the treads. He should make her wait, yet he couldn’t imagine what had brought her there. Nor could he imagine why his staff at Allardyce House in Grosvenor Square had divulged his whereabouts. His butler, Percival, was a paragon of his calling; nothing short of a force of nature would have induced him to disobey his master’s express orders.

Then again, the lady presently occupying the front parlor had qualified as such from her earliest years.

Stepping off the last tread, he studied the parlor door. It was closed. He could turn around and retreat, and let her wait for at least ten minutes. Even fifteen. The desperation in her plea guaranteed she would wait. Not meekly-meek wasn’t in her repertoire-but she would grit her teeth and remain until he deigned to see her.

Some part of him wanted to hurt her-as she’d hurt him, as he still hurt. Despite the years, the wound was raw; it still bled.

The faint elusive scent of jasmine drew him to the door.

It was curiosity, he told himself, that had him reaching for the handle. Not the incredible, irresistible attraction that had from the first drawn them together-that even after twelve years of neglect and eight years of disillusion still arced across a crowded ballroom.

And made him ache.

Opening the door, steeling himself, he went in.

The first surprise was her weeds. He paused in the doorway, rapidly assessing.

Seated in one of the armchairs flanking the small hearth, the chair facing the door, she was clothed in unrelieved funereal black, dull and…On any other lady it would have looked somber. On her…even fully veiled as she was, the depressing hue did nothing to dim her vitality. It screamed in every line of her svelte form, a humming, thrumming energy, harnessed to some degree but forever in danger of escaping-exploding; she only had to move a gloved hand to instantly attract and fix any man’s attention.