Her Prodigal Passion by Grace Callaway

before, lad, and decided it wasn't a trip worth repeating."
    Paul clenched the crystal.
    "What's done is done," Kent said quietly. "The only thing a man can control is the present."
    Paul's grip on the glass tightened ... and then he let go.
    Hell's teeth, Kent was right. He had been down this particular path before, and it had led him straight to hell. He had no intention of going there again.
    He blew out a breath. "I seem to have lost my thirst."
    Kent's chin lowered in approval.
    "In that case," Mrs. Kent said, "I suggest we make our way out. There's to be a lecture in the Ivy Room, and indeed,"—she paused delicately—"I believe Miss Sparkler was headed in that direction."
    Normally, he couldn't give a damn what others thought of him, but with Miss Sparkler, it was … different. Maybe, in this instance, different was good. Sudden energy buzzed through him, a feeling not unlike the rush he experienced during a boxing match. He'd just stared down one of his demons; surely he could take on a stubborn miss.
    He made his decision.
    He would speak to Charity, try to fix the animosity between them.
    "Lead the way," he said.

ELEVEN
    Charity followed the trail of guests to the Ivy Room, a high-ceilinged chamber with a leafy trellis stenciled over the mint green walls. The rows of chairs had filled up quickly, leaving only a few empty seats near the back. Charity considered abandoning the enterprise, yet she had promised to attend and wasn't one to go back on her word. Neither was she a coward. She refused to flee to her chamber and give into an unprecedented bout of tears.
    She was done crying over Paul Fines.
    "Please take your seats everyone."
    Lady Helena's clear tones came from the front of the room. Beside the marchioness stood a gentleman with silver spectacles and a stern, schoolmasterish bearing that made Charity hastily slide into one of the remaining seats.
    "I have the great pleasure of introducing our speaker for this evening," Lady Helena said. "Dr. Ernst Frankel is renowned for his work in the science of cranioscopy, and tonight he will be lecturing on the diagnosis of temperaments from the shape of the human skull. Please join me in welcoming our distinguished guest."
    Excited murmurs and applause swirled through the room.
    "Thank you," the doctor said in a heavy German accent. "To begin, I draw your attention to the map of the human brain."
    His pointing stick whipped against the poster on the stand behind him, so sharply that several members of the audience gasped and twitched in their seats.
    Dr. Frankel's lecture proved a welcome distraction. Charity found herself fascinated by the notion that one's personality could be derived from the profile of one's skull. She followed along as Dr. Frankel mapped out the locations of various faculties: acquisitiveness (the tendency to amass and hoard riches, located at the lower temple), secretiveness (the capacity for cunning, seated near the top of the head), and ideality (the pursuit of perfection, which could be read from the width of the temples).
    "You don't really believe this claptrap, do you?" With nonchalant grace, Paul Fines took the seat beside her. "The bumps on a skull no more determine one's disposition and future than a gypsy's cards."
    Charity's hands balled in her lap. Why did he persist in interfering with her peace? Clearly he had no shortage of females to go bother—why was he pestering her?
    She kept her eyes forward, saying repressively, "You're interrupting the lecture, sir."
    "Didn't know you were a bluestocking."
    "There's a lot you don't know about me."
    "Each time we meet, I'm discovering that more." She made the mistake of glancing over; his slow smile made her heart flip-flop as haplessly as a fish washed ashore. "You surprise me at every turn, and never more so than at our last encounter."
    "I don't want to talk about it," she said.
    "But I do. If only to apologize."
    "Fine, you've apologized. Now will you leave me be?" she said curtly.