When he went outside again to tend his horse, Anne tried desperately to gather her wits about her. She had become uncommonly shy in the past few years, especially in male company. Yet now she was very much alone with a man who could only be described as very male indeed. She was agonizingly aware suddenly of her own appearance and her total lack of charms. Why, he had looked upon her and spoken to her more as if she were a thing than a person. She supposed that the unusual circumstances and his recent escape from an extremely uncomfortable situation gave him some excuse for his imperious manner. He had almost ordered her to build up the fire and to provide him with food and drink, just as if she were a servant. But still, she thought, hurt despite her common sense, he would not have spoken to Sonia so-or even to her, had she looked more the fashionable lady.
Anne did not know what to do when the man returned to the house. His exquisite physique and perfectly tailored clothes, revealed when he removed his greatcoat, confirmed her suspicions that she was dealing with a nonpareil and destroyed any small vestige of self-assurance that remained to her. And if it had not happened then, it most certainly would have happened a moment later when he told her his name. A viscount! She had never before met a titled member of the nobility despite the fact that her grandfather had been a baron. And this man called her Anne, without so much as a by-your-leave. Perhaps the aristocracy was permitted such familiarities, she thought dubiously.