Seducing an Angel by Mary Balogh

you wish, Maggie,” the Earl of Sheringford offered.
    The countess shook her head, smiling.
    “Actually,” she said, “it would be one-fifth of what Grandpapa is paying her, and if I were Mrs. Bessmer, I would not wish to annoy him.”
    She looked apologetically at Cassandra.
    “Lady Paget,” she said, “we are keeping you from your bed. Do forgive us. Stephen is going to take you home, I understand. Please allow me to send for a maid to accompany you.”
    “That will be quite unnecessary,” Cassandra said. “I trust Lord Merton to be the perfect gentleman.”
    The countess smiled again.
    “I am delighted that you came this evening,” she said. “Will I see you at my mother-in-law’s at-home tomorrow? I do hope so. I hear she has invited you.”
    “I will try,” Cassandra said.
    And perhaps she would. She had come here tonight to find a wealthy protector, not to force her way back into society. She had assumed that that was impossible, that she would always be an outcast. But perhaps she need not be after all. If the Earl of Sheringford could do it, then perhaps so could she.
    It was a long, long time since she had had friends—except for Alice, of course. And Mary.
    And then, at last, Lord Merton’s carriage drew up to the steps outside and he led her out and handed her inside before climbing in to sit beside her. He turned after a footman had folded up the steps and shut the door, to wave a hand to his family.
    “The perfect gentleman,” he said quietly without turning his head back into the carriage as it pulled out of the square. “It is what I have always striven to be. Allow me to be a gentleman tonight, Lady Paget. Allow me to see you safely home and then continue on my way to my own house.”
    Her stomach lurched with alarm. Had she wasted this whole ghastly evening? Had it all been for nothing? Was she going to have to start all over again tomorrow? She hated him suddenly, this perfect gentleman .
    “Alas,” she said, speaking low and injecting humor into her voice, “I am being rejected. Spurned. I am unwanted, unattractive, ugly. I shall go home and cry hot tears into my cold, unfeeling pillow.”
    She stretched out one hand as she spoke and set it on his leg, her fingers spread. It was warm through the silk of his breeches. She could feel the solidity of his thigh muscles.
    He turned to her, and even in the darkness she could see that he was smiling.
    “You know very well,” he said, “that not a single one of those things has even a grain of truth in it.”
    “Except, alas,” she said, “for the hot tears. And the unfeeling pillow.”
    She slid her hand farther to the inside of his thigh, and his smile faded. His eyes held hers.
    “You are probably,” he said, “the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.”
    “Beauty can be a cold, undesirable thing, Lord Merton,” she said.
    “And you are without any doubt,” he said, “the most attractive.”
    “Attractive.” She half smiled at him. “In what way, pray?”
    “ Sexually attractive,” he said, “if you will forgive me for such explicit speaking.”
    “When you are about to bed me, Lord Merton,” she said, “you may be as explicit as you wish. Are you about to bed me?”
    “Yes.” He slid his fingers beneath her hand, lifted it away fromhis thigh, and carried it to his lips. “But when we are in your bedchamber, the door closed behind us. Not in my carriage.”
    She was content, though her next move was to have been to lean forward and kiss him.
    He set their clasped hands on the seat between them as the carriage rocked through the darkened streets of London, and kept his head turned toward her.
    “Do you live quite alone?” he asked.
    “I have a housekeeper,” she said, “who is also my cook.”
    “And the lady with whom you walked in the park yesterday?” he asked.
    “Alice Haytor?” she said. “Yes, she lives with me too as my companion.”
    “Your former governess?” he asked.
    “Yes.”
    “Will