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He sighed. “You shouldn’t have.” He still held her close, and she could feel his heart thumping rapidly.

“But why? Why must you pretend⁠—?”

“Shh.” He silenced her with another searing kiss. “Don’t even ask. I cannot tell you, and prefer not to lie.”

She swallowed her next ten questions. “Will you do this forever?”

He was quite still for a moment, his eyes roving over her face. “No.”

She let out a pent-up breath of relief. “Then when you said you couldn’t come to see me again⁠—”

He sighed, releasing her and pushing up his spectacles to pinch the bridge of his nose. “I meant it. But you...” He shook his head. “Mariah, no one can know who I am. And not merely your father, who would be well justified in shooting me.”

“Oh.” That silenced some of her curiosity even as it made her heart flutter. When she had asked before if he were doing something dangerous, he hadn’t answered. She never suspected he risked his life by coming to see her, though.

“I ought never to have spoken to you,” he went on. “I’ve broken so many rules, it hardly bears contemplating.”

“Then why did you?”

His eyes flashed toward her, hot with raw desire, and with a shock Mariah recalled the feel of his hands, pulling aside her nightdress to free her breast. She felt the hungry pull of his lips against her inner wrist, and the sensual creature within her stirred.

“Why did you accost me in the park?” he asked quietly.

Her cheeks were burning, but she didn’t look away. “You know why,” she whispered.

He turned aside first, pushing the spectacles back into place. “We must neither of us do it again.”

“I don’t agree to that. I promise to be patient,” she added quickly as he gave her a sharp look. “But only if you promise me⁠—”

“I cannot promise you anything.”

She didn’t like that line of conversation. She changed the subject. “Will you be punished?”

His face softened and a slightly cocky smile quirked his mouth. “Not if no one ever knows.”

“I won’t tell a soul,” she vowed. “No one.”

“Not even Miss Bennet?”

Mariah blushed. She’d completely forgotten about Joan. “How did you know I’d told her?”

He just raised his eyebrows and looked at her over the top of his spectacles. Then he shrugged. “You cannot change it, so it doesn’t matter. But you mustn’t reveal anything else, and not just for my sake.”

Her eyes rounded. “Why?”

Harry just gathered her close again. Mariah pressed into him, knowing they were running out of time. “Don’t ask me any more,” he whispered. “Not now.”

She nodded, then pulled back. “Will you at least show me what you really look like?”

He met her eyes. Then, slowly, he straightened, his hunched shoulders falling back, his coat shifting into an odd lump. He removed the spectacles and peeled off the misshapen coat.

“Do you always wear spectacles?”

“Only to read,” he said. She ran her fingertips over the lean slope of his cheek, the joint of his jaw. His eyes closed and he inhaled a deep breath at her touch. “Your hair is... ?”

“Brown.” He ran one hand lightly over his shaggy head. “It’s powder. A stage trick.”

She nodded solemnly, scrutinizing his face, trying to commit everything about it to memory. Who knew when they might have another moment like this?