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She regarded him for a long time. Simon had known that Miss Brown had blue eyes. He’d always thought them noteworthy in that they were quite a dark shade. He might even have called them navy, and how often does a person see navy eyes? Now, though, he could see that while he had not been mistaken per se, his adjective—navy—had been insufficient. There were flecks of dark gray there, too, and the ring around the outer edge of the iris was such a dark blue, he might even call it black. Or perhaps not black, but—

“I would like you to ruin me.”

It was a good thing Simon was sitting, for he was certain his legs had stopped working. They felt like blancmange. He couldn’t have heard her correctly. Had she not just said she was here on a matter of business? “I beg your pardon?”

She huffed a small sigh, as if she were his governess and finding him not up to snuff. He ought to be offended, he supposed. This was his house, and she was saying the most outrageous things; she could hardly fault him for his bewilderment.

“I suppose I shall have to provide some context.”

“Please do,” he managed, congratulating himself on the mild—on the surface of things—delivery he achieved.

“I must ask that you hold what I’m about to tell you in the strictest confidence.”

“All right.” Though perhaps he oughtn’t be so easy with his agreement. What if she confessed a crime?

No, not Miss Brown.

But where had that confidence come from? Simon thought he knew Miss Brown, but did he truly? He conversed with her when he called on Archie’s household. She lent him novels.

Could criminals not converse and read novels?

No. Simon’s acquaintance with Miss Brown might have been, on the surface of things, superficial, but he did know her. He couldn’t quite explain how, but he did.

“You can tell no one what I am about to reveal.” She leaned in, lowered her voice, and whispered, with as much fervor as any actress, “Not even Lord Harcourt.”

It was possible to apply many adjectives to Miss Brown. She was intelligent, well-read, kind, and pretty. And, if he trusted his gut, not criminally inclined. He sometimes wondered if she was also impatient, perhaps even quick to anger, for sometimes, only very occasionally, he thought he saw a flare of something forbidding in her otherwise accommodating demeanor. Even so, he had never thought to call her melodramatic. He would have laughed if he wasn’t so befuddled.

“You must promise,” she said, “and I know you are a man of your word.”

“You do? How?” The question was beside the point, but he needed to know the answer.

“I have followed your Parliamentary career. Your votes, your speeches, the causes you champion. They speak to your good character.”

“Miss Brown, you’ll forgive me for saying that I don’t think most people would rate parliamentarians as moral paragons.”

“Surely it depends on the parliamentarian. Everyone heard you give that speech during the trial of Queen Caroline, in which you argued for the rights of ladies to divorce their husbands on the grounds of adultery.”

He shook his head. “What has that to do with anything?”

“I have, in the years since, considered you a champion of women. I admit I have read that speech nigh on a dozen times. I became rather fixated on it for a while, if you must know.”

Simon shook his head. He was at sea.

“And you were initially bound for the Church, were you not? Certainly a vicar is a moral paragon.”

“I do not think you have met many vicars.”

“My lord. You are morally upstanding. A man of good character. I know this.”

Perhaps he oughtn’t to be arguing. If he knew Miss Brown without having spent a terrible lot of time with her, perhaps she likewise knew him. Regardless, her insistence was flattering.

“We digress,” she said. “I am in need of help, is the point. Help in the form of ruination, and I can only tell you why if you promise to keep my counsel. I trust that you will do so, if you say you will.”

What could he do but agree, if not on moral grounds—one ought to help ladies when presented with the opportunity to do so—then because he might die of curiosity if he didn’t get to learn why the on-the-shelf companion to Archie’s elderly mother believed herself in need of help in the form of ruination.

He placed a hand over his heart. “All right.”

She mirrored his gesture, placing her hand over her heart, and if he didn’t know better, he would have said she performed a spell to align their heartbeats—she was wearing that severe black dress—but of course that was ridiculous. The pang in his chest was merely a reminder that he had yet to eat dinner—he’d been working too intently to eat this evening and had rebuffed the tray Mrs. Tavish had attempted to deliver.