Simply Perfect

Joseph felt more than a little foolish. Help me, please. I love her so much it hurts. By the time he turned his curricle back into Hyde Park, Miss Martin had still said nothing in response. They were the last words that had been spoken between them. He felt the urge to spring his horses, to return her to Whitleaf’s house as soon as he possibly could, and to be very careful not to run into her again while she was still in London. He was unaccustomed to baring his soul to others, even to his closest friends—except perhaps Neville. She broke the silence once they had left the busy streets behind. “I have been wishing,” she said, “that Anne Butler were still on my staff. She was always exceptionally good with girls who were in any way different from the norm. But I have just realized that all girls are different from the norm. In other words, the norm does not exist except in the minds of those who like tidy statistics.” He did not know how to answer her. He did not know if she expected an answer. “I am not sure I can help you, Lord Attingsborough,” she said. “You will not take Lizzie, then?” he asked, his heart sinking with disappointment. “A blind child is uneducable?” “I am quite sure Lizzie is capable of a great deal,” she said. “And the challenge would certainly be interesting from my point of view. I am just not sure school would be best for her, though. She appears to b e very dependent.” “Is that not all the more reason for her to go to school?” he asked. And yet even as he argued the point his heart was breaking. How would Lizzie cope in a school setting, where she would have to fend for herself much of the time, where other girls might be unkind to her, where by the very nature of her handicap she would be excluded from all sorts of activities? And how could he bear to let her go? She was just a child. “She must be missing her mother terribly,” Miss Martin said. “Are you sure she should go away to school so soon after losing her? I take in abandoned children, Lord Attingsborough. They are often much damaged—perhaps always, in fact.” Abandoned. Lizzie? Is that what he would be doing to her if he sent her to school? He sighed and drew the curricle to a halt. This particular part of the park was quiet and secluded. “Shall we walk awhile?” he suggested. He left the curricle and horses in the care of his tiger, who did not even try to hide his delight, and he walked beside Miss Martin along a narrow footpath, which wound its way through a copse of trees. “Sonia was very young when I first employed her,” he told her. “So was I, of course. She was a dancer—very lovely, very much in demand, very ambitious. She expected a life of glamour and wealth. She expected to bask in the admiration of a series of titled, powerful, wealthy men. She was a courtesan by choice, not necessity. She did not love me; I did not love her. Our arrangement had nothing to do with love.” “No,” she said dryly, “I suppose it did not.” “I would not even have kept her longer than two or three months, I suppose,” he said. “I was intent upon sowing some wild oats. But then along came Lizzie.” “I daresay,” she said, “neither of you had even considered the possibility.” “The young,” he said, “are often very ignorant and very foolish, Miss Martin, especially upon sexual matters.” He looked down at her, supposing he was shocking her. This was not, after all, the sort of conversation with which he usually regaled the ears of ladies. But he felt he owed her an honest explanation. “Yes,” she agreed, “they are.” “Sonia did not particularly enjoy motherhood,” he said. “She hated having a blind child. At first she wanted to put her into an asylum. But I would not allow it. And if I was to insist that she be a mother, then I had to take on the responsibility of being a father—not difficult right from the first moment. Never difficult. And so we remained together until her death, Sonia and I. She found her life irksome though I gave her almost everything money could buy—and my loyalty too. I hired the Smarts, who took some of the burdens of being a parent off her shoulders when I could not be at the house and have been like kindly grandparents to Lizzie. Sonia did not have much idea how to entertain or educate or train a blind girl, though she was never actively cruel. Of course Lizzie was inconsolable when she died. And of course she misses her. I do myself.” “Lizzie needs a home more than a school,” Miss Martin said. “She has a home,” he said sharply. But he knew what she meant. “It is not enough, though, is it? After Sonia’s death I hired a companion for her. There have been three others since then. Miss Edwards is the latest. And this time I chose someone young and apparently sweet and eager to please. I thought her very youth would be good for Lizzie. But she is obviously not up to the task at all. Neither were the other three. Where can I find someone to be with my daughter at home and give her all she needs? The Smarts are too elderly to do it alone, and they are talking of retirement. Would one of your pupils do it, Miss Martin? It crossed my mind, I must confess, to offer the position to Miss Bains or Miss Wood if the employment for which they came here proved unsuitable.” They were about to step free of the copse of trees onto an open stretch of grass, where a number of people were strolling or sitting, enjoying the warm summer afternoon. They both stopped walking instead and stayed in the shade of an old oak tree, looking out into the bright sunshine. “I do not know if any very young person would be up to the task,” Miss Martin said. “And in London of all places. That child needs air and exercise, Lord Attingsborough. She needs the countryside. She needs a mother.” “Which is the one thing I can never give her,” he said, and he could see from the look in her eye that she understood that even his marriage could not provide Lizzie with a mother. His daughter was illegitimate and must forever be kept apart from—and secret from—any legitimate family he might have in future. Everything had been reasonably simple as long as Sonia was alive. He had known, of course, that his daughter was living a less than ideal existence, but her basic needs had always been provided and she had always had a home and security and affection from the Smarts—oh, and from Sonia too—and love in abundance from him. “Anxiety has become my constant companion since Sonia’s death, Miss Martin,” he said. “I suppose it was there before that, but it is only since that I have faced the fact that Lizzie is growing up. A handicapped child can be pampered and protected and held on one’s lap and within the circle of one’s arms when she is very young. But what is to become of her as an adult? Will I be able to find her a husband who will be kind to her? I can shower her with wealth, of course, but what of her inner being? What will there be to sustain her or give her any happiness? What will happen to her when I die?” Miss Martin set a hand on his arm, and he turned his head to look down at her, strangely comforted. Her intelligent gray eyes gazed steadily into his and without thinking he covered her hand with his own. “Let me get to know Lizzie better, Lord Attingsborough,” she said. “And let me think about the possibility of her attending my school. May I see her again?” He realized suddenly and in some embarrassment that his eyes had filled with tears. He blinked them away. “Tomorrow?” he said. “At the same time?” “If the weather is still fine, perhaps we can take her out,” she said, sliding her hand free of his arm. “Or are you reluctant to be seen with her?” “We could take her for a picnic,” he suggested, “to Richmond Park or Kew Gardens.” “I will leave that for you to decide,” she said. “Does anyone know about your daughter?” “Neville,” he said. “The Earl of Kilbourne. He has met her and sometimes looks in on her when I am away, as I was in Bath recently. But basically a gentleman takes care of such matters himself. It is not something he talks about with his peers.” “And does Miss Hunt know?” she asked. “Good Lord, no!” “And yet,” she said, “you are to marry her.” “That,” he said, “is a recent development, Miss Martin. My father has been ill and now fancies—perhaps correctly—that his heart has been affected. Before summoning me to Bath he had Lord Balderston, Miss Hunt’s father, as his guest, and the two of them concocted the marriage scheme. It makes sense. Miss Hunt and I are both single and of the same world. We have known each other for a few years and have always dealt well enough together. But until very recently I did not think actually of courting her. I was unable to think of courting anyone as long as Sonia lived. I believe in monogamous relationships even if the woman is but a mistress. Unfortunately, we grew apart over the years even though I believe we always remained fond of each other. Indeed, for the last two or three years of her life we did not even…Well, never mind.” He had discovered with some surprise that Sonia was unfaithful to him. And while he had felt unable to turn her out because of Lizzie, he had never again slept with her. Miss Martin was no simpering miss. “You have been celibate for more than two years, then?” she asked. He chuckled despite himself. “A lowering thing for a gentleman to admit, is it not?” he said. “Not at all,” she retorted. “I have been celibate far longer than that, Lord Attingsborough.” “Not all your life?” he asked, feeling somewhat as if he were in the middle of a bizarre dream. Was he really having this very improper conversation with Miss Claudia Martin of all people? “No,” she said softly after a short silence. “Not all my life.” Good Lord! And of course his mind immediately framed the question—who? And just as immediately came up with an answer. McLeith? Damn the man! If it was true, he deserved to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. At the very least! “Oh,” she said suddenly, her eyes focusing upon something out in the sunshine while she turned instantly into the prim, outraged schoolteacher. “Oh, just look at that!” And she strode out onto the wide expanse of grass and began to remonstrate with a working man who was at least three times her size because he had been beating a scrawny black and white dog, which was whining in fright and pain. Joseph did not immediately go after her. “You cowardly bully!” she said. It was interesting to hear that she did not yell, though her voice acquired power enough to be heard for some distance. “Stop that immediately.” “And ’o is going to stop me?” the man asked insolently as a few passersby paused to watch and listen. Joseph took one step forward as the man raised his stick and brought it down on the dog’s cringing back again—except that it stopped in midair, Miss Martin’s hand beneath it. “Your own conscience, it is to be hoped,” she said. “Animals must be loved and fed if they are to give loyal service. They are not to be beaten and starved by brutish louts.” There was a faint cheer from the bystanders. Joseph grinned. “ ’Ere,” the man said, “watch ’o you are calling brutish or I’ll give you good reason. And p’raps you want to love and feed the good-for-nothing ’ound if you are so ’igh and mighty about it. ’E’s useless to me.” “Ah,” Miss Martin said. “So now you would add abandonment to your oth er sins, would you?” He looked at her as if he would love nothing better than to plant her a facer—Joseph hurried closer—and then leered, displaying a fine mouthful of rotten teeth. “Yeh,” he said, stooping down suddenly to scoop the whimpering dog up in one hand and push him against her until her arms came beneath him to hold him. “Yeh, that’s exactly wot I’m doing. Make sure you love and feed ’im, ma’am. And don’t habandon ’im and add to your sins.” He grinned in appreciation of his own wit and he went striding off across the park to the mingled cheers of a few young blades and the murmured disapproval of other, more genteel bystanders. “Well,” Miss Martin said, turning toward Joseph, her hat slightly askew on her head, giving her a rakish air, “I seem to have acquired a dog. Whatever am I to do with him?” “Take him home and bathe and feed him?” Joseph grinned. “He is a border collie but a very poor specimen of his breed, poor thing.” He also smelled. “But I have no home to take him to,” she said while the dog looked up at her and whined. “And even if I were in Bath I could not have a dog at the school. Oh, dear me. Is he not adorable?” Joseph laughed aloud. The dog was anything but. “I will house him in my stables if you wish,” he said, “and look around for a permanent home for him.” “In a stable?” she said. “Oh, but he has been dreadfully mistreated. One only has to look into his eyes to know that—even if one had not witnessed that shocking display of brutality. He needs company and he needs love. I will have to take him to Susanna’s and hope that Peter will not toss both him and me out.” She laughed. Ah, yes, he thought, she was capable of passion right enough—even if only passion for justice toward the downtrodden. They walked side by side back along the path to his curricle, and he felt suddenly cheerful again. She was not the sort of woman who would abandon even a dog in need or delegate the giving of tender care to someone else. Surely she would help Lizzie too—though she was under no obligation to do so, of course. He took the dog from her arms and placed him in the hands of his astonished tiger while he helped her up onto the seat of his curricle again. Then he placed the dog in her lap and she cradled him safely with her skirt and her arms. “Part of your dream has come true, I believe, ma’am,” he said. She looked at him with uncomprehending eyes for a moment and then laughed. “Now all I need is the rustic cottage and the hollyhocks,” she said. He liked her laughter. It made him feel cheerful and hopeful. “He was not a weakling, that brute,” she said as Joseph took his place beside her and gathered the ribbons in his hands. “I will probably bear the welt of that stick across my palm for a good day or two. I would have screamed if I had been willing to give him the satisfaction.” “The devil!” Joseph exclaimed. “Did he hurt you? I ought to have blackened both his eyes.” “Oh, no, no,” she said. “Violence is no answer to violence. It just breeds more.” “Miss Martin,” he said, turning his head to grin at her yet again, “you are remarkable.” And really quite good-looking, he thought, with her cheeks flushed, her hat off-center, and her eyes glowing. She laughed again. “And sometimes,” she said, “an impulsive fool. Though, goodness, I have not been that for years and years. Doggie, what is your name? I suppose I will have to give you a new one.” Joseph continued to grin at his horses’ heads. He was really quite charmed by her. There was certainly a great deal more to her than just the prim, stern schoolteacher.

9

Claudia had scarcely a moment for reflection from the minute of her return from the visit to Lizzie Pickford until the time came to go on a picnic the following afternoon. She was busy for an hour or two bathing and grooming and feeding the collie, which was little more than a pup, reassuring him when he seemed frightened, and taking him out into the garden a few times to relieve himself. She left him with Edna and Flora while she and Susanna and Peter went to dine and spend the evening at Marshall House with Frances and Lucius, but he slept the night in her room—actually on her bed much of the time—and got her up early to go outside again. At least, she had discovered with some relief, he was house-trained. Susanna and Peter had been remarkably tolerant about the sudden invasion of their home by a scruffy dog, but they might have been less so of puddles on their carpets. And this was the very morning Edna and Flora were to leave the house on Grosvenor Square to take up their new appointments. Bidding them farewell and waving them on their way in Peter’s carriage, Edna tearful, Flora unusually quiet, was as emotionally wrenching as such occasions always were. This was Claudia’s least favorite part of her job. Then, just as she and Susanna were consoling themselves with a cup of tea, there was an unexpected visit from Frances, who came to tell them that she and Lucius had decided to leave for Barclay Court, their home in Somersetshire, the following morning so that she could get the rest she needed for the remainder of her confinement. “But you must come to visit us afterward,” she said. “Both of you must come for Easter—and Peter too, of course. We will entertain the three of you together.” “Why only three?” Susanna asked, her eyes dancing with mischief. “Why not four? Claudia is going out for a drive with Joseph, Marquess of Attingsborough, this afternoon, Frances, for the second day in a row. And they are both to be at Vauxhall Gardens this evening with Lauren and Kit’s party. And did you know that the reason we could not find her at the garden party the day before yesterday was that she was out on the river with him?” “Oh, famous!” Frances said, clapping her hands. “I have always thought the marquess a handsome and charming gentleman. I must confess I find it hard to understand his interest in Miss Hunt—a personal bias, I daresay. But Claudia, you simply must supplant her in his affections.” “But she cannot, Frances,” Susanna said, her eyes wide. “It is out of the question. He will be a duke one day, and you know how Claudia feels about dukes.” Both of them laughed merrily while Claudia raised her eyebrows and stroked her hand over the back of the dog, who was curled up beside her, his head in her lap. “I see you are having a great deal of enjoyment at my expense,” she said, desperately hoping she could keep herself from blushing. “I hate to ruin your pleasure, but there is absolutely no romantic motive whatsoever behind Lord Attingsborough’s taking me driving and boating. He is simply interested in the school and in education…for girls.” The explanation sounded ridiculously lame, but how could she tell the truth even to her closest friends? She would thereby divulge a secret that was not hers to tell. They looked at her with identical sober expressions before looking at each other. “In the school, Susanna,” Frances said. “In education, Frances,” Susanna said. “For girls.” “It makes all the sense in the world. Why did we not guess for ourselves?” They went off into peals of merry laughter. “But let us not forget about the Duke of McLeith,” Susanna said. “Another duke. He insists that he and Claudia were like brother and sister when they were growing up, but they are adults now. He is very personable, did you not think, Frances?” “And a widower,” Frances added. “And he was very eager to see Claudia again when Lucius and I were still at the garden party.” “If I were the two of you,” Claudia said, “I would not buy new gowns for my wedding just yet.” “Your cheeks are pink,” Frances said, getting to her feet. “We have embarrassed you, Claudia. But really, I do wish…Oh, well, never mind. I daresay you have no love to spare from that little dog at the moment. He is dreadfully thin, is he not?” She bent to tickle him beneath his chin. “You should have seen him yesterday,” Susanna said. “He was scruffy and dirty and looked rather like an abandoned sewer rat—or so Peter claimed. But we have all fallen in love with him.” The dog raised his eyes to Claudia without lifting his head and sighed deeply. “That is the trouble,” Claudia said. “Love is not always a comfortable or convenient thing. Whatever am I to do with him? Take him back to school with me? The girls would riot.” “Apparently Edna and Flora almost quarreled last evening while we were out,” Susanna said. “They both wanted to hold him at the same time and pet him and play with him.” Frances laughed. “I must be on my way,” she said. “I promised Lucius I would be home for luncheon.” And then there were all the hugs and good-byes to go through again, just as painful as the ones earlier. It might be a long time before either Claudia or Susanna saw Frances again. And she had all the dangers of a confinement to go through before then. Claudia felt quite in need of a rest by the time the morning came to an end. But she had to take the dog for a walk before leaving him in the care of the kitchen staff for the afternoon—a charge they undertook cheerfully. Indeed, the little collie would soon be fat if left for long to the tender ministrations of Susanna’s cook. But despite a certain weariness, most of it emotional, Claudia was looking forward to the picnic in Richmond Park or Kew Gardens with the Marquess of Attingsborough and his daughter. She knew she must keep reminding herself that in a sense it was just work—looking over a prospective pupil. And it was not an easy task she had been set. She liked Lizzie Pickford. She also felt desperately sorry for her. But that was an emotion to be quelled. Nothing could be gained from pity alone. The real question was, could she do anything for the child? Could her school offer anything of value to a blind girl? She was looking forward to the afternoon nevertheless, and not entirely because of Lizzie. Despite all the distractions of last evening and this morning, she had been unable to keep her mind entirely off that conversation she had had with the Marques of Attingsborough in Hyde Park. He had made some startling revelations. So had she. He had actually told her in so many words that he had been celibate for more than two years! And she had told him…Well, it was better not even to think about that. Maybe, if she was very fortunate indeed, he had forgotten.

They went to Richmond Park. They drove there in a closed carriage, Lizzie sitting close to Joseph’s side while Miss Martin sat facing them. Lizzie said nothing, but she clung to his hand and sometimes patted it or his knee with her free hand. He knew she was both excited and nervous. “Lizzie has never ventured far from home,” he explained to Miss Martin. “Her mother thought it best that she remain in familiar surroundings, where she feels safe.” Miss Martin nodded, her eyes upon his daughter. “We all do that most of our lives,” she said, “though our familiar surroundings usually consist of a broader compass than just a house and garden. It is good to feel safe. It is also good to step out into the unknown on occasion. How else can we grow and acquire knowledge and experience and wisdom? And the unknown is not always or even often unsafe.” He squeezed Lizzie’s hand and she pressed the side of her head against his arm. When they arrived at the park he led her inside. The footman who had accompanied the carriage spread a large blanket on the grass in the shade of an ancient oak tree and then fetched the picnic basket before returning to the carriage. “Shall we sit?” Joseph suggested. “Is anyone ready for tea yet? Or shall we wait until later?” Lizzie let go of his hand in order to drop to her knees and feel the blanket around her. She was still very quiet. And yet he knew that she would talk about this afternoon for days to come. He had never taken her for a picnic before. He had allowed Sonia to set the rules and had unconsciously concurred with them—his beloved blind child was to be protected at all costs. But why had he never given her a treat like this before? “Oh, let us wait until later,” Miss Martin said. “Should we not go for a walk first and get some exercise? It is such a lovely day and such a lovely park.” Joseph frowned at her. Lizzie turned a panicked face up to him and clutched the blanket with both hands. “But I do not know where we are,” she said. “I do not know where to go. Papa?” She lifted one hand and searched the air with it. “I am here,” he said, stooping down and taking her hand in his, while Miss Martin stood there, very straight and very still, her hands clasped at her waist. For an irrational moment he resented her. “A walk is probably a good idea. We might as well have had a picnic in the garden if we are not to make the most of all this space. We will go just a little way, sweetheart. I’ll draw your hand snugly through my arm like this, and you will be as safe as you can possibly be.” He raised her to her feet as he spoke. She was so small and thin, he thought. Surely she was small for her age. They moved slowly and haltingly forward, Lizzie’s arm tense within his. He could almost read Miss Martin’s thoughts as she moved beside them. How could this child possibly be ready for school? And indeed, how could she? He was wasting Miss Martin’s time. But then she spoke up, her voice firm but not ungentle. “Lizzie,” she said, “we are walking along a straight and lengthy avenue of smooth green grass with great old trees on either side. There are no obstacles to cause you harm. You can step forward with absolute confidence that you will not collide with anything or step into any holes, especially as your father has hold of your arm. If you were to take mine too, I daresay we could stride along at a spanking pace and maybe even break into a run. Shall we try it?” Joseph looked over his daughter’s head at her. He found himself smiling. She was very obviously a woman accustomed to managing girls. But Lizzie looked up, pale and frightened. “Mother said I was never to leave the house and garden and that I must never walk fast,” she said. “And Miss Edwards said…” But she paused in the middle of the sentence, and before Joseph could speak, she grinned—an expression he saw far too rarely on her face. It made her look downright mischievous. “But Miss Edwards is gone. Papa sent her away this morning and gave her money for six months.” “Your mother was a wise lady,” Miss Martin told her. “You should indeed remain at home unless you are accompanied by someone you trust. And you should always walk with caution when you are alone. But today you are with your papa, whom you trust more than anyone else you have known, I daresay, and you are certainly not alone. If you hold your papa’s arm and take mine too, we will be cautious for you and see that you come to no harm. I believe your papa trusts me.” “Certainly I do,” he said, still smiling at her over Lizzie’s head. “Shall we try it?” she asked. Lizzie reached out a hand, and Miss Martin drew it through her arm. And they walked sedately onward in a tight line until Joseph realized Miss Martin was increasing the pace. He grinned and increased it even more. Lizzie, clinging tight, chuckled suddenly and then shrieked with laughter. “We really are walking,” she cried. He felt the ache of unshed tears in his throat. “And so we are,” he said. “Perhaps we should run?” They did so for a very short distance before slowing to a walk again and then stopping altogether. They were all laughing by then, and Lizzie was panting too. He met Miss Martin’s eyes over the top of Lizzie’s head again. She was flushed and bright-eyed. Her slightly faded cotton dress was creased and the brim of her straw hat—the same one she had worn to the garden party—had blown out of shape. One errant lock of her hair hung loose about her shoulders. Her face was glistening with moisture. Suddenly she looked very pretty indeed. “Oh, listen!” Lizzie said suddenly, her head bent forward, her body very still. “Listen to the birds.” They all listened intently, and indeed, there must have been a vast choir of them hidden among the leaves and branches of the trees, all singing their hearts out. It was a lovely summer sound, so easily missed when there was so much else to occupy the eyes or the mind. Miss Martin was the first to move. She released Lizzie’s arm and stepped in front of her. “Lizzie,” she said, “lift your face to the sun. Here, let me fold back this wide brim on your bonnet so that you can feel the lovely heat on your cheeks and eyelids. Breathe it in as you listen to the birds.” “But Mother said—” Lizzie began. “And she was very wise,” Miss Martin told her, folding back the soft brim to expose his daughter’s pale, thin face and her blind eyes. “No lady exposes her complexion to the sun long enough to bronze or burn her skin. But it is actually good to do so for a few minutes at a time. The warmth of the sun on the face is very good for the spirits.” Ah, why had he never thought of that for himself? Thus permitted, Lizzie tipped back her head so that the light and heat were full on her face. Her lips parted after a few moments and she slid her hand free of Joseph’s arm and held up her hands to the sun, palms out. “Oh,” she said on a long sigh while Joseph felt that ache in his throat again. She stood like that for some time until with sudden fright she pawed at the air with one hand. “Papa?” “I am right here, sweetheart,” he said, but he did not reach for her as he would normally have done. “I am not going to leave you. Neither is Miss Martin.” “The sun does feel good,” she said, and, still holding up her hands, she turned to her right and then kept turning very slowly until she was facing almost in the direction from which she had started. The sun’s warm rays must have been her guide. She laughed with the sheer carefree happiness of any child. “Perhaps now,” Miss Martin said, “we should return to the blanket and have some tea. It is never good to overdo any exercise—and I am hungry.” They turned and linked arms again and set off in the direction from which they had come. But Lizzie was not the only one bubbling with exuberance. “Walking and running,” Joseph said. “They are tame stuff. I propose that we skip the rest of the way to the blanket.” “Skip?” Lizzie asked as Miss Martin raised her eyebrows. “You hop first on one foot and then on the other, all the while moving forward,” he said. “Like this.” And he skipped along like an overgrown schoolboy, drawing the others with him until Miss Martin laughed aloud and skipped too. After a few awkward moments Lizzie joined them and they skipped along the avenue, the three of them, laughing and whooping and altogether making an undignified spectacle of themselves. It was a good thing any other people in the park were either out of sight altogether or else were so far away that they missed the show. Some of his friends might be interested to see him now, Joseph thought—skipping along a park avenue with his blind daughter and a school headmistress. Doubtless Miss Martin’s pupils and teachers would be interested too. But Lizzie’s carefree delight was worth any loss of dignity. Miss Martin helped Lizzie off with her spencer when they reached the blanket and the shade, and suggested too that she take off her bonnet. She removed her own hat, as he did his, and set it on the grass. She smoothed her hands over her disordered hair, but it was a hopeless task. It would take a brush and a mirror to repair the damage. She looked utterly charming to him nevertheless. They ate their tea with healthy appetites, devouring freshly baked buns with cheese and currant cakes and a rosy apple each. They washed it all down with lemonade that was sadly warm but was at least wet and thirst-quenching. All the while they chattered on about nothing in particular until Lizzie fell silent and remained silent. She was curled up against Joseph’s side, and, looking down, he could see that she was fast asleep. He lowered her head to his lap and smoothed a hand over her slightly damp hair. “I think,” he said softly, “you have just given her one of the happiest days of her life, Miss Martin. Probably the happiest.” “I?” She touched her bosom. “What have I done?” “You have given her permission to be a child,” he said, “to run and skip and lift her face to the sun and shout and laugh.” She stared back at him but said nothing. “I have loved her,” he said, “from the moment I first set eyes on her ten minutes after her birth. I believe I have loved her even more than I would otherwise have done just because she is blind. I have always wanted to breathe and eat and sleep for her and would gladly have died for her if it could have made a difference. I have tried to hold her safe in my arms and my love. I have never—” Foolishly, he could not finish. He drew a deep breath instead and looked down at his child—who was so very nearly not a child any longer. That was the whole trouble. “I believe that being a parent is not always a comfortable thing,” Miss Martin said. “Love can be so terribly painful. I have experienced a little of what it must be like through a few of my charity girls. They have been so very disadvantaged and I desperately want the rest of their lives to be perfect for them. But there is only so much I can do. Lizzie will always be blind, Lord Attingsborough. But she can find joy in life if she wishes and if those who love her will allow it.” “Will you take her?” he asked, swallowing against what felt like a lump in his throat. “I do not know what else to do. Is school the right thing for her, though?” She did not reply immediately. She was obviously thinking carefully. “I do not know,” she said. “Give me a little more time.” “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you for not saying no out of hand. And thank you for not saying yes before you have considered the matter with care. I would rather her not go at all than for it to be the wrong thing. I will care for her somehow no matter what.” He looked back down at his daughter and continued to smooth his hand over her hair. It was ridiculously sentimental to think again that he would willingly die for her. The thing was, he could not. Neither could he live for her. It was a terrifying realization. And yet somehow he was comforted by Miss Martin’s presence—even though she was not sure she could offer Lizzie a place at her school. She had shown his daughter—and him!—that she could have fun and even twirl about in the heat of the sun without holding on to anyone. “I have often wondered,” he said without looking up, “what would have happened if Lizzie had not been blind. Sonia would have moved on to other admirers and it is altogether possible that I would have carried on with my own life much as before, while supporting the child I had sired but rarely saw—yet I would have believed I was doing my duty by her. I would perhaps have married Barbara and deprived myself of the pull of love to my first-born. But how impoverished my life would have been! Lizzie’s blindness is perhaps a curse to her, but it has been an abundant blessing to me. How strange! I had never realized that until today.” “Blindness need not be a curse to Lizzie either,” she said. “We all have our crosses to bear, Lord Attingsborough. It is how we bear those crosses that proves our mettle—or lack of it. You have borne yours and become a better person, and it has enriched your life. Lizzie must be allowed to carry her own burden and triumph over it—or not.” “Ah.” He sighed. “But it is that possibility of or not that breaks my heart.” She smiled at him as he looked up at her, and it struck him that in fact she was more than just pretty. In fact, she was probably not pretty at all—that was far too girlish and frivolous a term. “I do believe, Miss Martin,” he said without stopping to consider his words, “you must be the loveliest woman it has ever been my privilege to meet.” Foolish and quite untrue words—and yet the truest he had ever spoken. She stared back at him, her smile suddenly gone, until he lowered his gaze to Lizzie again. He hoped he had not hurt her, made her believe that he had merely been playing the gallant. But he could not think of a way of retrieving his words without hurting her more. The point was, he did not even know quite what he had meant by them himself. She was not lovely in any obvious sense. Not at all. And yet… Good Lord, he was not becoming infatuated with Miss Claudia Martin, was he? There could be nothing more disastrous. But of course he was not. She had been kind to Lizzie, that was all—and it was impossible not to love her a little as a result. He loved the Smarts for the same reason. “What happened to the dog?” he asked. “A home happened—temporarily, at least,” she said, “and loving care from all quarters. And your mention of him has given me an idea. May I bring him to visit Lizzie?” But Lizzie was stirring even as he raised his eyebrows, and he leaned over her and kissed her forehead. She smiled and reached up one hand to touch and pat his face. “Papa,” she said, sounding sleepy and contented. “It is time to go home, sweetheart,” he said. “Oh, so soon?” she asked, but she did not look unhappy. “Miss Martin will come and visit you again if you wish,” he said. “She will bring her little dog with her.” “A dog?” she said, instantly more alert. “There was one on the street one day a few years ago. Do you remember, Papa? He barked and I was frightened, but then his owner brought him close and I patted him and he panted all over me. But Mother said I might not have one of my own. My stories always have a dog in them.” “Do they? Then we must certainly have this one visit you,” he said. “Shall we invite Miss Martin to come too?” She laughed, and it seemed to him that there was some unaccustomed color in her cheeks. “Will you come, Miss Martin?” she asked. “And will you bring your dog? Please? I would like it of all things.” “Very well, then,” Miss Martin said. “He is a very affectionate little thing. He will probably lick your face all over.” Lizzie laughed with delight. But this afternoon was rapidly coming to an end, Joseph thought. They must not be late back. Both he and Miss Martin had the evening visit to Vauxhall to prepare for—and he had a dinner to attend first. He was sorry the outing was over. He was always sorry when his times with Lizzie were at an end. But today had been particularly pleasurable. They felt almost like a family. But the strange, unbidden thought brought a frown to his face. Lizzie would always be his beloved child, but she would never be part of his family. And as for Miss Martin, well… “Time to go,” he said, getting to his feet. 10

Lady Balderston had invited Joseph to dinner, and it was quickly obvious to him that there were no other guests, that he and the Balderstons and their daughter were to dine en famille. And if that fact were not statement enough of his new status as Miss Hunt’s almost betrothed, then Lady Balderston’s words not long after they sat down were. “It was extremely obliging of Viscountess Ravensberg to invite Portia to Alvesley Park for the Redfields’ anniversary celebrations this summer,” she remarked as servants removed the soup plates from the table and brought on the next course. Ah. It was to be a preeminently family gathering for the fortieth wedding anniversary of the earl and countess. Miss Hunt was already family, then? “I had not yet informed Lord Attingsborough of the invitation, Mama,” she said. “But yes, it is true. Lady Sutton was obliging enough to invite me to call upon Lady Ravensberg with her this afternoon, and while we were there she informed her cousin that I had no plans for the summer other than to go home with Mama and Papa. And so Lady Ravensberg invited me to go to Alvesley. It was all very gratifying.” “Indeed so,” Joseph said, smiling at both ladies. “I will be going there too.” “But of course,” Miss Hunt said. “I am well aware that I would not have been invited otherwise. There would have been no point, would there?” And there was no point in delaying his marriage proposal any longer, Joseph thought. It was obviously merely a formality anyway. The Balderstons and Miss Hunt herself clearly thought so. So did his sister—who nevertheless ought not to have taken matters into her own hands this afternoon. It was just that he would have liked a little time for courtship. Balderston was already attacking his roast duck and giving it his full attention. Joseph glanced at him, but now was not the time for plain speaking. He would make an appointment at some other time to speak formally with his future father-in-law. Then he would make an official offer to Miss Hunt, and all would be done. The course of the rest of his life—and hers—would be mapped out. There was very little time for courtship, then, but there was still some. For the rest of the dinner and the journey to Vauxhall, where they were to meet Lauren and Kit and their party, Joseph focused his attention upon his future bride, deliberately noting again how beautiful she was, how elegant, how refined, how perfect in every way. He was going to make himself fall in love with her as far as he could, he decided as his carriage proceeded on its way to Vauxhall. He had no desire to enter into a loveless marriage just because his father expected it of him and because circumstances demanded it of him. “You look particularly lovely tonight,” he said, touching the back of her hand and letting his fingers linger on the fine, smooth skin there. “Pink suits your coloring.” “Thank you,” she said, turning her head to smile at him. “I suppose you know,” he said, “that your father visited mine in Bath a couple of weeks or so ago.” “Yes, of course,” she said. “And you know the nature of that visit?” “Of course,” she sai d again. Her face was still turned to his. She was still smiling. “You are not in any way upset by it?” he asked her. “You do not feel perhaps that your hand is being forced?” “Of course not,” she said. “Or that you are being rushed?” “No.” He had wanted to be sure of that. It was all very well for him to accept that he needed a bride and that this woman was the best available candidate. But it took two to make a marriage. He would not have her pressured into marrying him if she would prefer not to. “I am delighted to hear it,” he said. He would not take the next logical step of asking her to marry him now—he had not yet spoken to her father, and he had the distinct impression that that might matter to her. But he supposed they were one step closer to being officially betrothed. She did indeed look lovely in pink, a color reflected in her cheeks and highlighted by her shining blond hair. He bent his head to kiss her. But she turned her face before his lips could meet hers so that they grazed her cheek instead. Then she drew a little farther to her side of the carriage. She was still smiling. “Have I offended you?” he asked after a few moments. Perhaps she thought kisses inappropriate before an official betrothal. “You have not offended me, Lord Attingsborough,” she said. “It was merely an unnecessary gesture.” “Unnecessary?” He raised his eyebrows and gazed at her perfect profile in the gathering dusk. The carriage rumbled onto the bridge over the Thames. They would be at Vauxhall soon. “I do not need to be wooed with such foolishness as kisses,” she said. “I am no silly girl.” No, indeed she was not, by Jove. “Kisses are foolish?” He was suddenly amused and bent his head closer to hers again, hoping to coax a smile of genuine amusement from her. Perhaps he had merely flustered her by attempting to kiss her. “Always,” she said. “Even,” he said, “between lovers? Between a husband and wife?” “I believe, Lord Attingsborough,” she said, “that members of polite society ought to be above such vulgarity. Kisses and romance are for the lower orders, who belong there just because they know nothing of wise and prudent alliances.” What the devil? Good Lord! He was amused no longer. And it struck him suddenly that in all the years of their acquaintance there had never been any moments of flirtation, any knowing glances, any forbidden touches, any stolen kisses—any of those little gestures between two people who were aware of each other sexually. He could not even remember a time when they had laughed together. There had never been the faintest hint of romance in their relationship. But all that was about to change, surely. Or was it? “You would not welcome my kisses, then?” he asked Miss Hunt. “Ever?” “I will certainly know my duty, Lord Attingsborough,” she said. Know her…? The carriage, he realized, was drawing to a halt. “Are you quite sure,” he asked her, “that you really wish for this marriage, Miss Hunt? Now is the time to say so if you do not. I will hold no grudge against you—and I will make sure no shadow of blame falls upon you when I fail to offer for you.” She turned her head to smile at him again. “We are perfect for each other,” she said. “We both know it. We are of the same world and understand its workings and its rules and expectations. We are both past the first blush of youth. If you believe that you must woo me, you are much mistaken.” Joseph felt as if scales had just dropped from his eyes. Could he have been acquainted with her so long and not suspected that she was frigid? But how could he have suspected it? He had never tried either to flirt with her or to court her—until now. And yet surely he must be mistaken. Surely it was her innocence and inexperience that spoke. Once they were married… John knocked on the door and then opened it and let down the steps. Joseph vaulted out though he felt somewhat as if his heart was lodged in his shoes. What sort of a marriage could he look forward to? One without any love or warmth at all? But he would not believe it. After all, he felt no deep affection for her now though he was prepared to work on his feelings. She would surely do the same. She had just said that she would know her duty. “Shall we go in?” he suggested, offering Miss Hunt his arm. “I wonder if the others have arrived yet.” She took his arm and smiled and nodded to another couple who were alighting from their carriage nearby. Why had he never noticed before this evening that her smile never made her eyes shine? Or was he just imagining things? That nonkiss appeared to have rattled him even if it had not discomposed her.

Peter had met the Duke of McLeith at White’s Club during the morning of the previous day and had invited him to dine on the evening of the Vauxhall visit so that Claudia would have an escort. Claudia was resigned to seeing him again. She was even curious about him. How much had he changed? How much was he the same old Charlie whom she had adored even before her feelings had turned romantic? She wore the dark blue evening gown that had seen service for a number of special evening events at the school. She had always liked it even though it had never made any pretense to high fashion—or even low fashion, for that matter, she thought with wry humor as Maria styled her hair. She pushed memories of the afternoon outing firmly from her mind. She would think tomorrow about the decision she was going to have to make concerning Lizzie’s schooling—and it was certainly not an easy one. And she would try not to think at all about those startling words Lord Attingsborough had spoken to her—I do believe, Miss Martin, you must be the loveliest woman it has ever been my privilege to meet. The extravagance of the words had been mildly distressing. He surely could not have meant them. And yet they were lovely words from a lovely afternoon that she knew she would remember for the rest of her life. Charlie proved to be an amiable dinner companion. He told them about his Scottish estate and his travels in the Highlands. He told them about his son. And he regaled Susanna and Peter with anecdotes from his childhood and Claudia’s, most of them amusing and all of them true. Later, he offered his arm to Claudia after they had descended from Peter’s carriage outside Vauxhall Gardens, and this time Claudia took it. For years past she had suppressed memories of her childhood with him along with everything that had happened later. Perhaps in future she would be able to separate the two in memory—her girlhood from her young womanhood—and let go some of the bitterness. And bitterness was really all that remained. The pain had gone away long ago. “Claudia,” he said, bending his head closer to hers as they followed Susanna and Peter into the Gardens, “this is all very pleasant indeed. I am happier than I can say to have met you again. And this time we really must not lose touch with each other.” Would they have loved each other for a whole lifetime, she wondered, if he had studied for the law and then married her as planned? Would they have remained close friends as well? It was impossible to know the answers, of course. So much would have been different than it was now. Everything would have been different. They would have been different. And who could say if that life would have been better or worse than the one she had lived instead? And then they stepped past the entrance and all else was forgotten. “Oh, Charlie, look!” she exclaimed in awe. The long, straight avenue that stretched ahead of them was lined with trees, and all were hung with colored lamps, which looked magical even now when it was not yet fully dark. The paths were crowded with other revelers, all brightly and elegantly clad for the occasion. “It is rather lovely, is it not?” he said, smiling at her. “I like to hear the old name on your lips, Claudia. I have been nothing but Charles since I was eighteen—when I am not simply McLeith, that is. Say it again.” He touched her hand on his arm and squeezed it. But Claudia was not to be distracted. Everyone about them seemed to be in high spirits, and she too smiled. And then they came to a horseshoe-shaped area that was paved and surrounded by columns and open boxes in tiers, all lit by lanterns on the outside, lamps within. Almost all were already occupied, the central one by an orchestra. Lady Ravensberg was waving to them from one of the lower boxes. “Peter, Susanna, Miss Martin,” she called as they drew closer. “Oh, and the Duke of McLeith is with you. Do come and join us. You are the last to arrive. Now our party is complete.” The party consisted of the viscount and viscountess, the Duke and Duchess of Portfrey, the Earl and Countess of Sutton, the Marquess of Attingsborough and Miss Hunt, the Earl and Countess of Kilbourne, and the four new arrivals. Claudia felt amusement again at finding herself in such illustrious company. But she was determined to enjoy the evening to the full. Soon she would be back at school, and it was unlikely that she would experience such an evening ever again. And what an experience it was! The company was mostly congenial. Though the Suttons virtually ignored Claudia, and Miss Hunt sat at the opposite side of the box and rarely looked her way, everyone else was more than polite. The very sweet and pretty Countess of Kilbourne and the elegant, dignified Duchess of Portfrey engaged her in conversation for some time as did Viscount Ravensberg and his wife. And of course there were Susanna and Peter and Charlie. But all did not depend upon conversation. There was supper to be eaten, most notably the thin slices of ham and the strawberries for which Vauxhall Gardens were famous. And there was wine to be drunk. There were other people to watch as they moved by along the main avenue and strolled around by the boxes, stopping to engage some of their occupants in conversation. There was the music to listen to. And there was the dancing. Although she had not danced in a long while, Claudia participated anyway. How could one possibly resist dancing in the open air with waving lanterns and the moon and stars above to light the ground on which they moved? She was partnered by Charlie, the Earl of Kilbourne, and the Duke of Portfrey. Eleanor would tease her quite mercilessly about all this when she heard of it. And if the music and dancing were not enough to fill her cup of pleasure to overflowing, there were the fireworks to look forward to later. While they waited for that display to begin, Lady Ravensberg suggested a walk, and everyone agreed that it would be just the thing. They all paired off to walk together—the Earl of Kilbourne with his cousin, Lady Sutton, on his arm, Viscount Ravensberg with the Countess of Kilbourne, Peter with the Duchess of Portfrey, the duke with Susanna, the Earl of Sutton with Lady Ravensberg. “Ah,” Charlie said, “I see that everyone is taking a different partner. Miss Hunt, may I have the pleasure?” She smiled and took his arm. The Marquess of Attingsborough was finishing a conversation with a couple of acquaintances who had stopped outside the box. “Go on ahead,” he said, waving everyone on their way. “Miss Martin and I will follow in a moment.” Claudia felt a little embarrassed. He really had no choice but to accompany her, did he? But really, if there had been one secret disappointment about the evening so far, it was that there had been no chance to converse or to dance with him. The afternoon picnic seemed as if it must have happened days ago. I do believe, Miss Martin, you must be the loveliest woman it has ever been my privilege to meet. He had spoken those very words to her a mere few hours ago. And of course, the more she tried to forget, the more she remembered. And then he was smiling at her and offering his arm. “I do apologize for the delay,” he said. “Shall we chase after the others? Or shall we stroll in more leisurely fashion while you tell me truthfully what you think of Vauxhall?” They made their way across the main avenue and down a shorter one until they reached another long, wide path, parallel to the first, that was breathtaking in its loveliness. Not only were there lamps hanging among the trees, but the series of stone arches across the path ahead was hung with them too. “Perhaps,” she said, “you expect me to look about with great good sense, Lord Attingsborough, and pronounce my disdain for such frivolous artificiality.” “But you are not going to do it?” He looked down at her with laughing eyes. “You cannot know how delighted I would be to know that you are not always ruled by good sense. This evening I have been chilled by good sense.” “Sometimes,” she said, “I prefer to forget I even have such encumbrances as critical faculties. Sometimes I prefer just to enjoy.” “And you are enjoying yourself this evening?” he asked her, guiding her around a largish group of merry revelers who were not looking where they were going. Their own group was some distance ahead, Claudia could see. “I am,” she said. “Oh, I really am. I only hope I can remember all this just as it is so that I can draw out the memories when I am alone in my quiet sitting room in Bath some winter evening.” He chuckled. “But first you must enjoy it to the last moment,” he said. “And then remember it.” “Oh, I will,” she assured him. “All is well with McLeith?” he asked her. “He came to dinner and made himself very agreeable,” she told him. “He recounted exploits and episodes of mischief in which we were embroiled as children, and I was reminded of how very much I liked him then.” “You were lovers later?” he asked quietly. She felt the heat in her cheeks as she remembered almost admitting as much to him in Hyde Park. How could she possibly have said what she had aloud to him—or to anyone? “Very briefly,” she said, “before he left home never to return. We were inconsolable at the knowledge that he had to go to Scotland, that it would be some time before we would see each other again and could be together for the rest of our lives. And so—” “Such things happen,” he said. “And all in all I believe passion—even misguided passion—is preferable to cold indifference. I believe you yourself said something similar to me once.” “Yes,” she said just before he drew her firmly to one side of the path to avoid a collision with another careless and noisy group. “This is undoubtedly a picturesque avenue,” he said, “and of course we must remain on it if we are to catch up with the others. But do you wish to catch up, Miss Martin, or shall we take one of the quieter paths? They are not as well lit, of course, but it is not a dark night.” “One of the quieter paths, please,” she said, and they turned onto one almost immediately and were soon swallowed up by darkness and the illusion of quiet. “Ah, this is better,” he said. “Yes.” They strolled onward, quiet themselves now that they had moved away from the crowds. Claudia breathed in the smell of greenery. And even above the distant strains of music and the muted sounds of voices and laughter, she could hear— “Oh, listen,” she said, drawing her hand free of his arm and grasping his sleeve. “A nightingale.” He listened too for several moments as they stood quite still. “And so it is,” he said. “It is not just my daughter who hears the birds, then.” “It is the darkness,” she said. “It makes one more aware of sound and smell and touch.” “Touch.” He laughed softly. “If you loved, Miss Martin, as you once did, or if at least you intended to marry a certain man, would you object to his touch? To his kiss? Would you call them unnecessary or foolish?” Claudia was very glad of the darkness then. Her cheeks, she was sure, were aflame. “Unnecessary?” she said. “Foolish? Surely neither. I would both want and expect touches—and kisses. Especially if I loved.” He looked about him, and Claudia, realizing that her hand was still on his sleeve, drew it free. “This very evening,” he said, “on the way here, I tried to kiss Miss Hunt—the only time I have ever taken such a liberty. She told me not to be foolish.” “Perhaps,” she said, smiling despite herself, “she felt embarrassed or frightened.” “She explained herself at greater length when I questioned her,” he told her. “She said that kisses are unnecessary and foolish between two people who are perfect for each other.” A slight breeze was causing the branches overhead to sway and admit faint bars of moonlight to play over his face. Claudia stared at him. Whatever had Miss Hunt meant? How could they be perfect for each other when she did not want his kisses? “Why are you going to marry her?” she asked. His eyes moved to hers and stayed there. But he did not answer. “Do you love her?” she asked. He smiled. “I think I had better say no more,” he said. “I have already said too much when the lady ought to be able to expect some discretion from me. What is it about you that invites confidences?” It was her turn not to answer. His eyes were still on hers. Even when the moonlight was not filtering through the trees, the darkness was really not very dark at all. “Would you be embarrassed or afraid,” he asked her, “if I tried to kiss you?” She would be both. She was quite sure she would. But it was a hypothetical question. “No,” she said so softly that she was not even sure sound came from her lips. She cleared her throat. “No.” It was a hypothetical question. But as he lifted one hand and touched his fingertips to her cheek while his palm came beneath her chin, sighing as he did so, Claudia realized that perhaps it was not. She closed her eyes and his lips touched hers. It was a terrible shock. His lips were warm and slightly parted. She could taste the wine he had drunk and smell his cologne. She could feel the warmth of his hand and of his breath. She could hear the nightingale singing and someone far away shriek with laughter. And all her insides reacted in such a way that afterward she marveled that she had remained on her feet. Her hands clenched into tight fists at her sides. It lasted for maybe twenty seconds—maybe not even as long. But her world was rocked to its very foundations. As he lifted his head and lowered his hand and took a step back, Claudia firmly repossessed herself of her equilibrium. “There, you see?” she said, her voice sounding unfortunately brisk and overcheerful. “I was neither embarrassed nor afraid. So there is nothing inherently embarrassing or fearful about you.” “I ought not to have done that,” he said. “I am so sor—” But Claudia’s hand shot up, seemingly of its own volition, and she watched herself place two fingers firmly across his lips—those lovely warm lips that had just kissed her own. “Don’t be,” she said, and her voice was a little less forceful now. It even shook slightly. “If you are sorry, then I will feel that I ought to be too, and I am not sorry at all. It is the first time I have been kissed in eighteen years and will probably be the last time for the rest of my life. I do not want to be sorry, and I do not want you to be sorry. Please.” He set his hand over hers and kissed her palm before lowering it to hold against the folds of his neckcloth. Even in the darkness she could see that his eyes were alight with laughter. “Ah, Miss Martin,” he said, “it has been almost three years even for me. What sadly deprived mortals we are.” She could not stop herself from smiling back at him. “In fact,” she said, “I would not mind at all if you were to do it again.” She felt oddly as if someone else were speaking through her lips while the real Claudia Martin looked on in shocked amazement. Had she really said what she had just said? “I would not mind either,” he said, and they gazed at each other for long moments before he released her hand and wrapped his arm about her shoulders while the other came about her waist. Claudia curled her own arms abo ut him for lack of anywhere else to put them. And she lifted her face to his. He was large and hard-bodied and very, very male. For one moment she really was frightened. Mortally so. Especially as he was no longer smiling. And then she forgot about fear and everything else too as she was engulfed in the sheer carnality of being slowly and very thoroughly kissed. Her body bloomed beneath his touch and she was no longer Claudia Martin, successful businesswoman, teacher, and headmistress. She was simply woman. She felt the breadth and hard muscles of his shoulders, and one of her hands twined into his thick, warm hair. With her breasts she felt the solid wall of his chest. Her thighs pressed against his. And between her thighs she felt a sharp throbbing that spiraled up inside her right into her throat. Not that she analyzed each sensation. She merely felt them. When he opened his mouth over hers, she opened hers too and angled her head and clutched his hair as his tongue came inside her mouth and stroked over every soft, moist surface. When he backed her against the trunk of a tree a mere foot or so behind her, she moved with him, and then she could lean against it while his hands roamed over her breasts and her hips and her buttocks. When he pressed against her and she could feel the hardness of his arousal, she parted her legs and rubbed against him, wanting nothing more than to feel him inside her, deep inside. Ah, deep. Yet not for one moment did she forget that it was with the Marquess of Attingsborough that she shared this hot embrace. And not for one moment was she deceived by any illusions. This was for now. Only for now. Sometimes now was enough. Sometimes it was everything. She knew she would never be sorry. She knew too that she would suffer heartache for a long time to come. It did not matter. Better to live and hurt than not to live at all. She felt his withdrawal as soon as he gentled the embrace, kissing her mouth softly and then her eyes and temples as he spread a hand over the back of her head and then brought her face against one of his shoulders, drawing her away from the tree trunk as he did so. And she felt both sorrow and relief. It was time for them to stop this. They were in an almost public place. She felt the tension of sexual incompletion gradually drain from her body as she wrapped her arms loosely about his waist. “We will agree, will we,” he said after a minute or so of silence, his mouth close to her ear, “not to be sorry for this? And not to allow it to cause discomfort between us when we meet again?” She did not answer immediately. Then she lifted her head, released her hold on him, and took a step back. As she did so she very consciously donned the persona of Miss Martin, schoolteacher, again, almost as if it were a garment stiffened from disuse. “Yes to the first,” she said. “I am not at all sure about the second. I have the feeling that in the cold light of day I am going to be very embarrassed indeed to come face-to-face with you after tonight.” Good heavens, now that she could see him in the semidarkness, it already seemed both incredible and very embarrassing indeed—or would seem. “Miss Martin,” he said, “I hope I have not…I cannot…” She clucked her tongue. She could not let him finish. How humiliated she would be if he said the words aloud. “Of course you cannot,” she said. “Neither can I. I have a life and a career and people dependent upon me. I do not expect you to turn up on Viscount Whitleaf’s doorstep tomorrow morning with a special license in your hand. And if you did, I would send you on your way faster than you had come there.” “With a flea in my ear?” he said, smiling at her. “With at least that.” And she smiled ruefully back at him. How very foolish love was, blossoming at an impossible time and with an impossible person. For she was, of course, in love. And it was, of course, quite, quite impossible. “I think, Lord Attingsborough,” she said, “that if I had known what I know now when I stepped inside the visitors’ parlor at school to see you standing there, I might have sent you away then with a flea in your ear. Though perhaps not. I have enjoyed the past two weeks more than I can say. And I have grown to like you.” It was true too. She really did like him. She held out a hand to him. He took it and shook it firmly. The barriers were being set up between them again, as they absolutely must. And then she jumped, her hand convulsing about his, as a loud crack broke the near silence. “Ah,” he said, looking up, “how appropriate! The fireworks.” “Oh!” she exclaimed as they both watched a streak of red arch above the trees and sink down out of sight again, roaring as it went. “I have so looked forward to them.” “Come,” he said, releasing her hand and offering her his arm. “Let’s go back into the open and watch them.” “Oh, yes,” she said. “Let’s.” And despite everything—despite the fact that something that had hardly started had also ended here tonight—she felt a deep welling of happiness. She had spoken correctly a minute or two ago. She would not have missed this short stay in London for all the enticements in the world. And she would not have missed knowing the Marquess of Attingsborough either. 11

Claudia was seated at the escritoire in the morning room, writing a reply to a letter from Eleanor Thompson, when the butler came to announce the arrival of visitors. The collie, who had been curled up beside her chair, sleeping, scrambled to his feet. “Her grace, the Duchess of Bewcastle, the Marchioness of Hallmere, and Lady Aidan Bedwyn are waiting below, ma’am,” he said. “Shall I show them up?” Gracious! Claudia raised her eyebrows. “Lord and Lady Whitleaf are upstairs in the nursery,” she said. “Should this message not be delivered to them?” “Her grace said it was you she has come particularly to see, ma’am,” the butler said. “Then show them up,” Claudia said, hastily cleaning her pen and pushing her papers into a neat pile. At least she would be able to tell the duchess that her sister was well. But why would they call upon her? Yet again she had not slept well. But this time it had been entirely her own fault. She had not really wanted to sleep. She had wanted to relive the evening at Vauxhall. She was still not sorry. The dog greeted the Duchess of Bewcastle and her sisters-in-law with fierce barks and a rush of attack. “Oh, dear,” Claudia said. “Will he bite my leg off?” the duchess asked, laughing and bending over to pat his head. “A border collie,” Lady Aidan said, bending also. “He is just greeting us, Christine. Look at his tail wagging. And good morning to you too, you sweet little thing.” “He was a mistreated dog I was forced to adopt a couple of days ago,” Claudia explained. “I believe all he needs is love—and plenty of food.” “And you are providing both, Miss Martin?” Lady Hallmere looked somewhat surprised. “Do you collect strays as Eve does? But you do collect stray pupils, do you not?” She held up one hand when Claudia would have made a cutting remark. “I have one of them as governess to my children,” she said. “Miss Wood seems to have captured their interest. It remains to be seen if she can continue to do so.” The ladies took the seats Claudia indicated. “I do thank you for bringing Miss Bains to town in person, Miss Martin,” Lady Aidan said. “She seems a very pleasant, cheerful young lady. Hannah, my youngest, is already very attached to her, even after just one day. Becky is being more cautious. She has lost two governesses to marriage and she adored them both. She is inclined to be resentful of someone new. However, Miss Bains told the girls about her first day at your school in Bath, when she hated everybody and everything and was quite determined never to settle there even though she had agreed to go—and very soon she had them both laughing and begging for more stories about school.” “Yes,” Claudia said, “that sounds like Flora. She likes to talk. She studied conscientiously, though, and will be a good teacher, I believe.” She patted the dog, who had come back to sit beside her chair. “I am sure she will,” Lady Aidan said. “My husband and I did talk about sending Becky away to school this year, but I really cannot bear the thought of parting with her. It is bad enough that Davy has to go to school. Bad for me, that is. He is having a grand time there, as Aidan said he would.” Claudia, inclined to dislike the woman merely because she was a Bedwyn by marriage, found that she could not do so after all. She even thought that she could detect the slight lilt of a Welsh accent in Lady Aidan’s voice. “I am so glad,” the Duchess of Bewcastle said, “that James is still far too young for school. He will go when the time comes, of course, even though Wulfric did not when he was a boy. It is an experience he has always regretted missing, and he is determined that none of his sons will remain at home. I just hope that my next child will be a girl, though as a dutiful wife I suppose I should hope for another boy first—the spare to go with the heir or some such nonsense. The next, by the way, should make his or her appearance within seven months or so.” She beamed happily at Claudia, who could not help but like the duchess also—and pity her for being married to the duke. Though she did not appear to be a woman whose spirit had been broken. “You and Frances both,” Claudia said. “The Countess of Edgecombe, that is.” “Really?” The duchess smiled warmly. “How delightful for her and the earl. I suppose she will stop traveling and singing for a while. The world will go into mourning. She has a beautiful, beautiful voice.” The door opened at that moment and Susanna came into the room. All three visitors stood to greet her and the dog rushed about her ankles. “I hope I have not taken you from your son,” the duchess said. “Not at all,” Susanna assured her. “Peter is with him, and the two of them were looking so pleased with each other that I deemed my presence quite redundant. Do sit down again.” “Miss Martin,” the duchess said as soon as she had seated herself once more, “I had a brilliant idea earlier this morning. I do occasionally have them, you know. Do not laugh, Eve. Eleanor has written to say that she will definitely bring ten of the girls from the school to spend part of the summer at Lindsey Hall. I daresay you know that already—she wrote to you before writing to me, did she not? She almost changed her mind when she knew that Wulfric and I will not be away for the whole summer after all. Wulfric turns tyrant when I am increasing and insists that I do as little traveling as possible, and he claims to have lost his appetite for traveling alone. Besides, the Earl and Countess of Redfield are celebrating an anniversary this summer and have invited us to a grand ball at Alvesley Park among other things. It would not be neighborly to be from home on such a grand occasion. However, there is plenty of room and to spare at Lindsey Hall for ten schoolgirls.” Lady Aidan laughed. “And does Wulfric agree with you, Christine?” she asked. “Of course,” the duchess said. “Wulfric always agrees with me, even when he needs a little persuasion first. I reminded him that we had twelve girls stay with us last summer for the marriage of Lord and Lady Whitleaf and he was not at all inconvenienced.” “And I was very happy to have them at my wedding,” Susanna said. “My brilliant idea,” the duchess said, returning her attention to Claudia, “was that you come too, Miss Martin. I daresay you intend to return to Bath soon, and if the prospect of spending the summer in a school without any children in it is your idea of bliss—as it very well may be—then so be it. But I would love to have you come to Lindsey Hall with Eleanor and the girls and enjoy the pleasures of the countryside for a few weeks. And if any further inducement is necessary, I would remind you that both Lady Whitleaf and Mrs. Butler will be at Alvesley Park. I know they are both particular friends of yours as well as former teachers at your school.” Claudia’s first reaction was one of stunned incredulity. Stay at Lindsey Hall, setting of one of her worst waking nightmares? With the Duke of Bewcastle in residence? Susanna’s eyes were brimming with merriment. It was obvious that she was having the same thought. “We will be going to Lindsey Hall too for a short while,” Lady Aidan said, “as will Freyja and Joshua. You will be able to see how Miss Bains and Miss Wood are settling to their new positions, Miss Martin. Though they will not begin work in earnest until after we have returned home to Oxfordshire and Freyja and Joshua to Cornwall, of course.” So it would not be just Lindsey Hall and the Duke of Bewcastle—it would be the former Lady Freyja Bedwyn too. The idea that she should go was so appalling to Claudia that she almost laughed aloud. And it was surely not her imagination that Lady Hallmere was looking at her with a slightly mocking gleam in her eye. “Please say you will come,” the duchess said. “It will please me enormously.” “Oh, do go, Claudia,” Susanna urged. But Claudia had had a sudden idea, and it was only because of it that she did not say an instant and very emphatic no. “I wonder,” she said. “Would you balk at the idea of eleven girls instead of ten, your grace?” Lady Hallmere raised her eyebrows. “Ten, eleven, twenty,” the duchess said cheerfully. “Let them all come. And bring the dog too. There will be plenty of space for him to run about. And I daresay the children will spoil him quite shamelessly.” “There is another girl,” Claudia said. “Mr. Hatchard, my man of business in town here, has mentioned her. He sometimes recommends charity cases to me if he believes I can do something to help the girl.” “I was once one of them,” Susanna said. “Have you met this girl, Claudia?” “Yes.” Claudia frowned, hating the lie but finding it necessary. “I am not at all sure she is suitable or that she wishes to attend my school. But…perhaps.” The duchess got to her feet. “You will both be very welcome,” she said. “But we must be on our way. This was intended to be a very brief visit, since it is not at all the fashionable hour to call upon anyone, is it? We will see you both at Mrs. Kingston’s ball this evening?” “We will be there,” Susanna said. “Thank you,” Claudia said. “I will come to Lindsey Hall, your grace, and help Eleanor care for the girls. I know she hopes to spend some time with her mother while she is there, and now that you intend to remain at home too she will wish to spend time with you as well.” “Oh, splendid!” the duchess said, looking genuinely pleased. “This is going to be a delightful summer.” A delightful summer indeed, Claudia thought wryly. What on earth had she just agreed to? Was this her summer for going back in time to confront past horrors and perhaps exorcise them from her memories? Peter had just stepped into the room to greet the visitors. He and Susanna went downstairs with them to see them on their way. Lady Hallmere remained behind for a few moments, held perhaps by a very direct look from Claudia. “Perhaps Edna Wood told you,” Claudia said, “or perhaps she did not, that I did not approve of her taking employment with you. It was her own choice to attend an interview and to accept the position, and I must respect her right to do so. But I do not like it, and I do not mind telling you so.” Lady Freyja Bedwyn had been a peculiar-looking girl, with her fair unruly hair, darker eyebrows, dark-toned skin, and rather prominent nose. She still had those features. But somehow they all added up to a striking handsomeness, which Claudia resented. It would have been more just if the girl had grown into an ugly woman. Lady Hallmere smiled. “You bear a long grudge, Miss Martin,” she said. “I have rarely admired anyone as much as I did you as you marched down the driveway of Lindsey Hall on foot, carrying your baggage. I have admired you ever since. Good morning.” And she was gone in pursuit of her sisters-in-law. Well! Claudia sat at the escritoire and scratched the dog’s ears. If the woman had intended to take the wind right out of her sails and tie her tongue in knots and mix her metaphors, she had been entirely successful. But she soon turned her mind back to the Duchess of Bewcastle’s invitation and her own bright idea. Did this mean she had made some sort of decision about Lizzie Pickford? She would have to discuss it with the Marquess of Attingsborough, of course. Oh, goodness, she really was going to find it embarrassing to come face-to-face with him again. But it must be done. This was business. Was he planning to attend the Kingston ball? She was going. Susanna and Peter had told her so at breakfast, and somehow she felt caught up in this madness that was the spring Season and swept along on its current. A very large part of her longed to be back at home in Bath, back in her own familiar world. And a very small part of her remembered that kiss last night and perversely longed to linger here just a little longer. She sighed and tried to return her attention to the letter she was writing to Eleanor. The dog curled up at her feet and went back to sleep.

When Joseph arrived at the Kingston ball later that evening, the first set was already in progress. He had been delayed by Lizzie’s request for one more story and then just one more before she went to sleep. Her need for him was greater now that Miss Edwards was gone. He stood in the ballroom doorway, looking about him for familiar faces after greeting his hostess. He could see Elizabeth, the Duchess of Portfrey, off to one side, not dancing. He would have joined her, but she was in conversation with Miss Martin. In a craven moment quite unlike him, he pretended not to see them even though Elizabeth had smiled and half raised a hand. He strolled in the opposite direction instead to join Neville, who was watching Lily dance with Portfrey, her father. “You are scowling, Joe,” Neville said, raising his quizzing glass to his eye. “Am I?” Joseph offered him an exaggerated smile. “You are still scowling,” Neville said. “I know you, remember? You were not supposed to dance the opening set with Miss Hunt, by any chance, were you?” “Good Lord, no,” Joseph said. “I would not have been late if I were. I have been with Lizzie. I looked in at Wilma’s this afternoon, almost at the end of her weekly tea. All the other guests were leaving—and so I was fair game for one of her lectures.” “I suppose,” Neville said, “she thinks you ought to have secured the opening set with Miss Hunt. I have always been glad, Joe, that Wilma is your sister and Gwen mine and not the other way around.” “Thank you,” Joseph said dryly. “It was not just that, though. It was my behavior last evening.” “Last evening? At Vauxhall?” Neville raised his eyebrows. “It seems I neglected Miss Hunt in order to show a misguided kindness to the dowdy schoolteacher,” Joseph said. “Dowdy? Miss Martin?” Neville turned to look toward her. “Oh, I would not say so, Joe. She has a certain understated elegance even if she is not in the first stare of fashion or the first blush of youth. And she is dashed intelligent and well informed. Lily likes her. So does Elizabeth. And so do I. Miss Hunt said much the same as Wilma last evening, though, in Lily’s hearing. A trifle insulting to Lauren, who had invited Miss Martin to join the party, Lily thought—and so did I. But I ought not to be saying so to you, I suppose.” Joseph frowned. He had just spotted Miss Hunt. She was dancing with Fitzharris. She was wearing gold net over white silk, and the underdress draped her perfect form to give the look of a Greek goddess. The gown was cut low at the bosom to show off her main assets. Her blond curls were threaded with gold. “She is going to be at Alvesley,” he said. “Wilma wangled an invitation from La uren in Miss Hunt’s hearing, and Lauren, I suppose, had no choice at all. You know how Wilma goes about getting her own way.” “At Alvesley?” Neville said. “I suppose Lauren would have invited her anyway after your betrothal, though. That is imminent, I suppose?” “I daresay,” Joseph agreed. Neville looked at him sharply. “The funny thing was,” Joseph said, “that Wilma’s lecture included the detail that while I was entertaining Miss Martin, McLeith was charming Miss Hunt. Wilma was warning me that I might lose her if I am not careful. Apparently they looked very pleased with each other.” “Ha,” Neville said. “About to be jilted, are you, Joe? Do you want me to see if I can hasten the process?” Joseph raised his eyebrows. “Whyever would you think I might want any such thing?” he asked. Neville shrugged. “Perhaps I just know you too well, Joe,” he said. “Lady Balderston is waving this way, and I do not suppose it is at me.” “The dance is ending,” Joseph said. “I had better go and join her and ask Miss Hunt for the next set. And what the devil do you mean by saying you know me too well?” “Let me just say,” Neville said, “that I don’t think Uncle Webster does. Or Wilma. They both think you ought to marry Miss Hunt. Lily thinks just the opposite. I usually trust Lily’s instincts. Ah, the dance has ended. Off you go, then.” Nev might have kept his—and Lily’s—opinion to himself, Joseph thought irritably as he crossed the floor. It was too late not to offer for Miss Hunt even if he so desired. He proceeded to dance with her, trying not to be distracted by Miss Martin, who stood in the line of ladies just two places down the set, smiling across at McLeith, her partner. He had the feeling, though, that she was trying just as hard not to look at him. And yet again, as he had been doing at frequent intervals throughout the day, he looked back upon last evening with some incredulity and wondered if it could possibly have happened. Not only had he kissed the woman, but he had wanted her with a lust that had almost overpowered all caution and common sense. It was a good thing they had been in an almost public place or there was no knowing where their embrace might have led. He danced with Miss Holland next, as he often did at balls this spring because she was so frequently a wallflower, and her mother was too indolent to ensure that she had partners. And then, after introducing her to a blushing Falweth, who could never summon up the courage to choose his own partners, he stood with a group of male acquaintances, chatting genially and watching another vigorous country dance. As the music drew to a close, he agreed to step into the card room to play a hand or two with a few of his companions. But it struck him that he could not see Miss Martin dancing. She had not danced the first set either. He would hate to see her be a wallflower, though she was not, of course, a young girl in search of a husband. She was sitting on a love seat close to the door, he could see when he looked around, in conversation with McLeith. He was smiling and animated, she paying him close attention. Perhaps, Joseph thought, she was happy after all that she had met her old lover again. Perhaps their long-aborted romance was in the process of being rekindled. And then she glanced up and looked directly at Joseph in such a way that he realized she had known he was standing there. She looked away hastily. This was ridiculous, he thought. They were like a couple of pubescent children who had sneaked a kiss behind the stable one day and were consumed with embarrassment about it forever after. They were adults, he and Miss Martin. What they had done last evening had been by mutual consent, and they had both agreed not to be sorry. And when all was said and done, all that had happened was a kiss. A rather hot kiss, it was true, but even so… “You go on without me,” he told the other men. “There is someone I need to talk to.” And before he could think of an excuse to stay away from her, he strode across the room toward the love seat. “McLeith? Miss Martin?” he said, nodding genially to them both. “How do you do? Miss Martin, are you free for the next set? Will you dance it with me?” And then he remembered something. “It is a waltz.”

A waltz! Claudia had never danced it though she had watched the steps performed any number of times and had once or twice—well, perhaps more than twice—waltzed about her private sitting room with an imaginary partner. Now she was being asked to waltz at a ton ball? With the Marquess of Attingsborough? “I will,” she said. “Thank you.” She nodded at Charlie, with whom she had been sitting and conversing for the past half hour after dancing with him earlier. The marquess was holding out a hand for hers, and she set her own in it and got to her feet. She could instantly smell his cologne and was just as instantly engulfed in embarrassment again. Just last evening… She squared her shoulders and unconsciously pressed her lips into a tight line as he led her out onto the dance floor. “I hope I do not make an utter cake of myself,” she said briskly as he turned to face her. “I have never waltzed before.” “Never?” She looked up into his eyes just as they filled with laughter. “I know how to perform the steps,” she assured him, feeling heat in her cheeks, “but I have never actually waltzed.” He said nothing and his expression did not change. She laughed out loud suddenly and he tipped his head slightly to one side and looked at her more closely, though what his thoughts might be she could not fathom. “You may be sorry you asked me,” she said. “As you remarked when you agreed to allow me to escort you to London,” he said. “I am still not sorry about that.” “This is different,” she said as more couples gathered around them. “I shall try not to disgrace you. Gallantry forbids you to back out now, does it not?” “I suppose,” he said, “I could be overcome by a sudden fit of the vapors or something even more irrefutable, like a heart seizure. But I will not. I confess to a curiosity to see how you acquit yourself during your first waltz.” She laughed again—and then stopped abruptly as he set one hand behind her waist and took her right hand in the other. She raised her free hand to his shoulder. Oh, my! Memories of the night before came flooding in, bringing with them more heat to her cheeks. She determinedly thought of something different. “I need to talk with you.” “Do I owe you an apology?” They spoke simultaneously. She realized what he had said. “Absolutely not.” “Do you?” They spoke together again and then silently smiled at each other. Any conversation would have to wait. The music was beginning. There was a minute or so of desperate fright as her mind blanked to the steps she had never danced with a partner. But he was a good leader, she realized when her mind was capable of rational thought again. She knew that he was using the most basic of steps, and by some miracle she was following along without making any ghastly errors. She was also, she realized, counting in her head, though she suspected that her lips might have been moving. She stilled them. “I do believe,” he said, “you are doomed to oblivion, Miss Martin. You will not make a cake of yourself and no one will notice us.” He gave her a mournful look, and she smiled back at him. “And anyone who does will soon expire of boredom,” she said. “We are the least noteworthy couple on the floor.” “Now that,” he said, “sounds like a challenge to my male pride.” And he tightened his hold on her waist slightly and swung her into a sweeping twirl as they turned one corner of the room. Claudia only just stopped herself from shrieking. She laughed instead. “Oh,” she cried, “that was wonderful. Do let’s try it again. Or is that tempting fate? However did I keep my slippers from beneath your feet?” “Ahem,” he said, clearing his throat. “I believe it had something to do with my skill, ma’am.” And he twirled her again. She laughed once more at the exhilaration of the dance and at the wonderful novelty of actually joking with a man. She liked him exceedingly. She looked into his eyes to share her pleasure. And then somehow there was more. More than exhilaration, more than pleasure. There was… Ah, there were no words. It was a moment upon which she would live and dream for the rest of her life. She was quite sure of that. The music played on, the dancers twirled, she and the Marquess of Attingsborough among them, and the world was a wonderful place to be. “Oh,” she said when the music finally slowed, a sure sign that it was about to stop altogether, “is it over already?” Her first waltz. And doubtless her last. “Your first waltz is about to become history, alas,” he said, echoing her thoughts. And then she remembered that she needed to speak to him, that apart from a little light banter at the beginning of the waltz they had danced in silence. “Oh,” she said, “I need to talk with you, Lord Attingsborough. Perhaps sometime tomorrow?” “Even before the waltz began,” he said, “I was eyeing those open French windows with some wistfulness. Now it has become a downright longing. There is a balcony beyond them. And, more important, there is cool air. Shall we stroll out there if you have not promised the next set?” “I have not,” she said, looking toward the open doors and the lamplit darkness beyond. Perhaps after last evening it would not be wise… But he was offering his arm, and she took it. He steered her through the crowds until they stepped out onto the balcony. Tonight would be different. Tonight they had business to discuss. 12

It was indeed cool outside—deliciously so, in fact. But they were not the only ones who had taken advantage of the open doors in order to escape from the heat of the ballroom for a while. There were several people out on the balcony. “There are lamps lit in the garden,” Joseph said. “Shall we go down t here and stroll?” “Very well,” she said, using her schoolmistress voice—he wondered if she realized she had two quite distinct voices. “Lord Attingsborough—” But she stopped talking as he set a hand over hers on his arm, and turned her head to look at him. He had to speak first. Last night needed to be mentioned between them. “Were you as embarrassed as I earlier this evening?” he asked her. “Oh, more so,” she said with her usual forthright honesty. “But you are not now?” “No,” she said, “though perhaps it is as well you can no longer see the color of my cheeks.” They were down in the garden, which was not brilliantly lit. He turned them onto a path that wound to the left. “Good.” He chuckled and patted her hand. “Neither am I. I remember with pleasure and am not at all sorry, though I would make abject apologies if I thought they were necessary.” “They are not,” she assured him. He wondered, not for the first time, if she was essentially a lonely woman. But it was perhaps just male arrogance that made him think she might be. She had certainly proved that a woman could lead a full and productive life without a man. But then loneliness was not confined to women, was it? For all the family and friends and friendly acquaintances with whom he was almost constantly surrounded and the busy activities that filled his days, he was basically a lonely man. Despite Lizzie, whom he loved more than life, he was lonely. The admission surprised him. He was lonely for a woman who could touch and fill his heart. But it was unlikely he would ever find her now. He was almost certain that Portia Hunt would never fill the role. “Shall we sit?” he suggested when they came to a small lily pond with a rustic wooden seat overlooking it from beneath the overhanging branches of a willow tree. They sat down side by side. “It is blessedly cool out here,” she said. “And quiet.” “Yes.” “Lord Attingsborough,” she said, resuming her brisk tone, “Miss Thompson, the teacher you saw the morning we left Bath, the older of the two, is taking ten of our charity girls to Lindsey Hall for part of the summer. She is the Duchess of Bewcastle’s sister, you know.” “Ah,” he said, the image of Bewcastle entertaining ten schoolgirls at his table dancing across his mind. “The duchess has invited me to join them,” she said. He felt instant amusement, remembering what she had told him about her experiences as a governess there. He turned his head to grin at her. Her face was faintly visible in the beam of a lamp hanging in the tree. “To Lindsey Hall?” he said. “With Bewcastle in residence? Are you going?” “I have said yes,” she told him, staring at the water as if it had somehow offended her. “Lady Hallmere is going to be there too.” He chuckled softly. “I said yes because I had an idea,” she said. “I thought perhaps it would be a good thing for me to take Lizzie there with me.” He sobered instantly. He felt a sudden chill. He had been hoping fervently that she would consider school a possibility for his daughter. He had also been hoping, he realized now, that she would not. The real chance that he might have to part with Lizzie for months at a time smote him. “It might be a good trial,” she said. “She needs air and exercise and…fun. She will surely get some of all three at Lindsey Hall. She will meet Eleanor Thompson and ten of the girls from the school. She will be with me daily. It will give us all a chance to discover whether schooling will be of any benefit to her and whether Eleanor and I can offer her enough to make the experience—and the fees—worthwhile. And yet it will all be done in the relaxed atmosphere of a holiday.” He could not fault any of her reasoning. It sounded like an eminently sensible suggestion. But his stomach clenched with something that felt like panic. “Lindsey Hall is a large place,” he said. “And the park is large. She would be intolerably bewildered.” “My school is large, Lord Attingsborough,” Miss Martin said. But that would be different. Would it not? He leaned forward on the seat, rested his elbows on his knees, his hands hanging loose between them. He lowered his head and closed his eyes. There was a lengthy silence between them while the sounds of music and voices and laughter coming from the ballroom wafted on the air. She was the one who spoke first. “You conceived the idea of sending Lizzie to school,” she said, “not because it would solve the problem of who was to take care of her and not because you wished to be rid of her—though I believe those are what you fear are your motives. You need not fear any such thing. I have seen how you love her. No child has ever been more loved.” She was using her other voice—her pure woman’s voice. “Then why do I feel I am betraying her?” he asked. “Because she is blind,” she said. “And because she is illegitimate. And you wish to protect her from the consequences of both by smothering her with your love.” “Smothering,” he said, a dull ache in his heart. “Is that what I do to her? Is that what I have always done?” He knew she was right. “She has as much right to live as anyone else,” she said. “She has as much right to make her own decisions, to explore her world, to dream of her future, and to work to bring those dreams true. I am not at all sure school is the right thing for her, Lord Attingsborough. But it may very well be the best thing under the circumstances.” The circumstances being that Sonia was dead and he was about to marry Portia Hunt and there would be very little place for his daughter in his life. “What if she does not want to go?” he asked. “Then her wishes must be respected and some other option found,” she said. “This is my condition, you see—if, that is, you approve my plan. Lizzie must agree to it too. And if at the end of the summer I decide to offer her a place at my school, then Lizzie must be the one to accept or reject it. That is always my condition. I have told you that before.” He rubbed his hands over his face and sat up. “You must think me a very sorry creature, Miss Martin,” he said. “No,” she said. “Merely a concerned and loving father.” “I do not always feel like one,” he said. “I have seriously considered taking her to America with me and setting up a new life there. I could be with her all the time. We would both be happy.” She did not reply, and he felt foolish. He had thought of taking Lizzie to America, it was true, but he had always known that he would not actually do it—that he could not. He would be Duke of Anburey one day, and many lives would be dependent upon him and many duties incumbent on him. The notion of freedom of choice was often an illusion. And then a thought struck him and he was surprised it had not occurred to him sooner. “But I will be close by,” he said, lifting his head and turning to look at her. “I am going to be at Alvesley Park for the Earl and Countess of Redfield’s anniversary. Alvesley is only a few miles from Lindsey Hall. Did you know that?” “Yes, I did,” she said. “I also knew of the party because Susanna and Peter are going there. I had not realized you were to be there too, though.” “I will be able to see Lizzie,” he said. “I will be able to spend time with her.” “Yes, if you wish,” she said, looking steadily back at him. “If I wish?” “Your family and friends may wonder at your interest in a mere charity girl from my school,” she said. “A charity girl?” He frowned. “I will pay double your fee, Miss Martin, if Lizzie is willing to go to your school and is likely to be happy there.” “I told the duchess that the girl I may take with me is a charity case recommended by Mr. Hatchard,” she said. “I take it you do not wish the truth to be known?” He stared at her in some anger before turning his head away and closing his eyes. His mother and father, Wilma, Kit’s family, Bewcastle’s family—all would be offended if they discovered that his daughter was at Lindsey Hall while he was at nearby Alvesley. Not to mention Portia Hunt. Gentlemen just did not expose their illegitimate offspring to their very legitimate families and acquaintances. “And so I must behave as if I am ashamed of the most precious person in my life?” he asked. It was, of course, a rhetorical question. She did not answer it. “I will see her there and spend time with her, regardless,” he added. “Yes, it is agreed, then, Miss Martin. Lizzie will go to Lindsey Hall—if she will say yes, of course, and you and she and Miss Thompson will decide among you whether she will then go on to school in Bath.” “You are not, you know,” she said, “agreeing to her execution, Lord Attingsborough.” He turned his head to look at her again and laughed softly but without humor. “You must understand,” he said, “that my heart is breaking.” Too late he heard the sentimental hyperbole of his words and wondered if they could possibly be true. “I do,” she said. “Now, I must meet Lizzie again. I must have a talk with her and see if I can persuade her to come to Lindsey Hall to spend a few weeks of the summer with some other girls and me. I do not know for certain how she will answer, but I believe there is more to your daughter than you have been willing to recognize, Lord Attingsborough. You have been blinded by love.” “A nice irony, that,” he said. “Tomorrow, then? In the afternoon? At the same time as usual?” “Very well,” she said. “And I will, if I may, bring the dog with me. He is a friendly little thing, and she may like him.” She was still sitting as before. With her face half in light, half in shadow she looked very appealing. It was hard to remember his first impression of her when she had stepped inside the visitors’ parlor at her school, looking stern and humorless. “Thank you,” he said. He reached out and covered her hands with one of his own. “You are very generous.” “And perhaps very foolish,” she said. “How on earth can I offer any sort of an education to someone who cannot see? I have never thought of myself as a wonder worker.” He had no answer for her. But he curled his fingers about one of her hands and raised it to his lips. “Even for what you have done and are prepared to do I thank you,” he said. “You have looked upon my daughter not just as an illegitimate child who has the additional disadvantage of being blind, but as a person worthy of a meaningful life. You have persuaded her to run and laugh and shout with glee just like any other child. Now you are prepared to give her a summer of fun that has surely always been beyond her wildest dreams—or mine.” “I believe,” she said, “that if I were a Papist I would be eligible for sainthood, Lord Attingsborough.” He loved her dry humor and chuckled softly. “I believe the music has stopped,” he said, pausing for a moment to listen. “And it was the supper dance. May I escort you to the supper room and fill a plate for you?” She took her time about answering. Her hand was still in his on his lap, he realized. “We waltzed together,” she said, “and then left the ballroom together. Perhaps we would create the wrong impression if we sat at supper together too. Perhaps you ought to go and sit with Miss Hunt, Lord Attingsborough. I will remain here for a while. I am not hungry.” To the devil with Miss Hunt, he almost said aloud. But he stopped himself in time. She had done absolutely nothing to deserve such open disrespect, and indeed it could be said that he had neglected her somewhat this evening. He had danced with her only once. “You are afraid,” he said, “that people will think I am dallying with you?” She turned her face, and he could see that she looked suddenly amused. “I very much doubt anyone would think that,” she said. “But they might very well think that I am angling for you.” “You belittle yourself,” he said. “Have you looked at yourself in a glass lately?” she asked him. “And have you?” She smiled slowly. “You are gallant,” she said, “and kind. I am not angling for you, you may be relieved to know.” He raised her hand to his lips again and then, instead of releasing it, he laced their fingers together and rested their hands on the seat between them. She made no comment and did not try to snatch her hand away. “If you are not hungry,” he said, “I will sit here with you until the dancing starts again. It is pleasant here.” “Yes,” she said. And they sat there for a long time just as they were, without speaking. Almost everyone else must have gone for supper, including the orchestra. Apart from a few stray voices coming from the direction of the balcony, they might have been all alone. The lamplight beamed across the small pond, outlining a few lily pads. A slight breeze caused the fronds of the willow tree to sway before them. The air was cool—and then perhaps a little more than just cool. He felt her shiver. He released her hand and removed his evening coat—not an easy thing to do when it had been made fashionably form-fitting. He set it about her shoulders and kept his hand there, to hold it in place. With his other hand he took hers again. Neither of them spoke a word. She made no objection to his arm about her shoulders or her hand in his. Beneath his touch she was neither stiff nor yielding. He relaxed. The extraordinary notion occurred to him—not for the first time—that perhaps he was falling ever so slightly in love with Miss Claudia Martin. But it was an absurd idea. He liked her. He respected her. He was grateful to her. There was even a touch of tenderness mingled in with the gratitude because she had shown so much kindness to Lizzie without demonstrating any moral outrage toward him for having begotten an illegitimate child. He was comfortable with her. Those feelings did not equate with love. But there had been last evening. If she had turned her head, perhaps he would have kissed her again. He was glad she did not—perhaps. At last he could hear the orchestra tuning their instruments. And once again he thought about Miss Hunt, to whom he was honor-bound to make a marriage offer. “The dancing will be resuming soon,” he said. “Yes,” she said, and she got to her feet a moment before he did. He struggled back into his coat. His valet would probably weep if he could see how his shirt wrinkled beneath it. He offered his arm and she took it before they walked in the direction of the ballroom. He stopped after they had climbed the steps to the balcony. “I will come for you tomorrow, then?” he asked her. “At the same time?” “Yes,” she said, lifting her eyes to his. He could see them clearly in the light spilling from the ballroom. Wide and intelligent as always, they also looked something else now. Something he could not quite identify. They looked very deep, as if he could fall into them if he chose. He nodded to her and indicated with one hand that she should precede him into the ballroom. He hung back for a moment or two after she had stepped inside. He hoped no one had noticed how long they had been together. He would not willingly sully her reputation. Or willingly humiliate Miss Hunt.

Lily Wyatt, Countess of Kilbourne, sat next to Lauren Butler, Viscountess Ravensberg, at supper, and the two of them engaged in a private conversation while the group with which they sat conversed more loudly with one another. “Neville told me earlier,” Lily said, “that you have invited Miss Hunt to Alvesley for the anniversary celebrations.” Lauren pulled a face. “Wilma brought her visiting,” she said, “and dropped hints so broad that even a person with no brain could not have failed to understand. And so I invited her. But it hardly signifies, does it? By then she and Joseph will surely be betrothed. It is no secret, is it, why Uncle Webster summoned him to Bath.” “You do not like her either?” Lily asked. “Oh, I do not,” Lauren admitted, “though I would be hard put to it to explain why. She is too—” “Perfect?” Lily suggested, understanding that Lauren had not overheard Miss Hunt questioning her taste in inviting a mere schoolteacher to share the box at Vauxhall with her betters. “Wilma has been scolding Joseph for allowing her to walk with the Duke of McLeith last evening while he played the gallant to Miss Martin. She is afraid that they fancy each other.” “Miss Hunt and the duke?” Lauren said, her eyes widening with incredulity. “Surely not. He seems an amiable man.” “A comment that says volumes,” Lily said. “But I cannot help but share your feelings, Lauren. Miss Hunt reminds me of Wilma but worse. At least Wilma dotes on her boys. I cannot imagine Miss Hunt doting upon anyone, can you? I thought perhaps you and I could—” But a light had come into Lauren’s eyes and she interrupted. “Lily,” she said, “you are not plotting to play matchmaker—and matchbreaker, are you? Can I play too?” “You could invite the duke to Alvesley as well,” Lily said. “To a family celebration?” Lauren raised her eyebrows. “Would it not seem odd?” “Use your ingenuity,” Lily suggested. “Oh, dear, do I have any?” Lauren laughed. But then she brightened. “Christine told me earlier today that Miss Martin is going to Lindsey Hall for part of the summer—Christine’s sister is taking some girls from the school there for a holiday. The Duke of McLeith and Miss Martin grew up in the same house like brother and sister and have just found each other again after years and years of separation. He in particular is very delighted about it, and I daresay she is too. Perhaps I could suggest that he might like to be close to her for a few weeks of the summer before he returns to Scotland and she goes back to Bath.” “Brilliant,” Lily said. “Oh, do it, Lauren, and then we will see what can be accomplished.” “This is fiendish,” Lauren said. “And do you know what Susanna believes? She thinks Joseph might be a little sweet on Miss Martin. He has taken her driving several times and has spent time with her at several entertainments, including last evening at Vauxhall. They were waltzing together earlier. Where is he now, do you know? And where is she?” “It is the most unlikely romance imaginable,” Lily said. But her eyes gleamed. “But oh, goodness, Lauren, she just might be perfect for him. No one else ever has been. Miss Hunt certainly is not.” “Wilma would turn purple in the face,” Lauren added. They grinned at each other, and Neville, Earl of Kilbourne, who was just out of earshot, pursed his lips and looked innocent. 13

Claudia and Susanna had just returned from a visit to Hookham’s library the following morning when the Duke of McLeith called at the house. He was admitted to the morning room, where Claudia was sitting alone, leafing through the book she had just borrowed. Susanna had gone up to the nursery to see Harry. “Claudia,” he said, advancing across the room after the butler had announced him and the collie had rushed across the room to bark at him and then wag his tail. “Your dog?” “I believe it is more a case of my being his person,” she said as he tickled him behind one ear. “Until I can find a good home for him, I am his.” “Do you remember Horace?” he asked. Horace! He was a spaniel she had adored as a child. He had followed her everywhere, like a floppy-eared shadow. She smiled as they both took a seat. “Viscount and Viscountess Ravensberg spoke with me last evening before I left the ball,” he said. “They invited me to spend a few weeks at Alvesley Park before returning to Scotland. Apparently there is to be a large gathering there for the Earl and Countess of Redfield’s anniversary. I must confess I was surprised—I did not think I had a sufficient acquaintance with them to merit such a distinction. However, the viscountess explained that you were going to be staying at Lindsey Hall nearby and that I might be glad of a few weeks in which to enjoy your company again after so long.” He paused and looked inquiringly at Claudia. She clasped her hands in her lap and looked back at him without comment. Susanna and all her friends seemed charmed by the story he had told—which was quite true, though it was not by any means the whole truth. She had once loved him with all the ardor of her young heart. But though the days of their courtship had been innocent and decorous, their parting had been neither. She had given her virginity to Charlie out on a deserted hilltop behind her father’s house. He had sworn that he would come back for her at the earliest opportunity to make her his bride. He had sworn too, holding her tightly to him while they had both wept, that he would love her forever, that no man had ever loved as he loved. She had said much the same in return, of course. “So,” he said, “what do you think? Shall I accept? We have had so little chance to talk since we met again, yet there is so much to say. There is so much reminiscing still to do and so much getting to know each other again. I believe I like the new Claudia every bit as much as I liked the old. But we had happy times together, did we not? No real brother and sister could have been more contented with each other’s company.” She had carried anger inside her for such a long time that she sometimes thought it was gone, over with, forgotten. But some long-ago feelings ran so deep that they became part of one’s very being. “We were not brother and sister, Charlie,” she said briskly, “and we certainly did not think of ourselves as such for the year or two before you went away. We were in love.” She kept her eyes on him as the dog settled across her feet and sighed with contentment. “We were very young,” he said, his smile fading. “There is a perception among the not-so-young,” she said, “that the young are incapable of loving, that their feelings are of no significance.” “Young people lack the wisdom that age brings,” he said. “It was almost inevitable that we develop romantic feelings for each other, Claudia. We would have grown out of them. I had almost forgotten.” She felt a deep rage—not for herself as she was now, but for the girl she had been. That girl had suffered inconsolably for years. “We can laugh about it now,” he said. He smiled. She did not. “I am not laughing,” she said. “Why did you forget, Charlie? Because I meant so little to you? Because remembering was too uncomfortable for you? Because you felt guilty about that last letter you wrote me?” I am a duke now, Claudia. You must understand that that makes a great deal of difference. …I am a duke… “And have you forgotten also that we were actually lovers on one occasion?” she asked him. A dull flush crept up his neck and into his cheeks. She willed herself not to flush too. But she would not look away from his eyes. “That was unwise,” he said, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck as if his neckcloth had suddenly become too tight. “It was unwise of your father to give us so much freedom. It was unwise of you when I was going away and there might have been consequences. And it was unwise of me—” “Because,” she suggested when he hesitated, “there might have been consequences and they might have caused complications to your new life—as your final letter made very clear?” I must not be seen to associate too closely with people who are beneath my notice. I am a duke now… “I had not realized, Claudia,” he said with a sigh, “that you were bitter. I am sorry.” “I left bitterness behind a long time ago,” she said, not sure that was strictly true. “But I cannot allow you to continue treating me with hearty delight as your long-lost sister, Charlie, without forcing you to remember what you have so conveniently forgotten.” “It was not easy,” he said, sitting back in his chair and dropping his eyes from hers. “But I was just a boy, and suddenly I was faced with duties and responsibilities and a whole life and world I had never even dreamed of.” She said nothing. She knew he spoke the truth, and yet… And yet all that did not excuse the cruelty of his final rejection. And how could she tell herself that she had let go of the hurt and bitterness when she had hated, hated, hated all men with the title of duke since then? “Sometimes,” he said, “I have wondered if it was all worth the sacrifices I was forced to make. My dream of a career in the law. You.” Again she said nothing. “I behaved badly,” he admitted at last, getting abruptly to his feet and crossing the room to look out the window. “Do you think I did not realize that? And do you think I did not suffer?” She did understand. She had always understood the inner turmoil he must have lived through. But some things, if not beyond forgiveness, were at least beyond bland excusing. She had destroyed that last letter, along with all the others that had preceded it, a long time ago. But she believed she could still recite it from memory if she chose to do so. “If it is any consolation to you, Claudia,” he said, “I did not have a happy marriage. Mona was a shrew. I spent as much time from home as I could.” “The Duchess of McLeith is not here to speak up for herself,” she said. “Ah,” he said, turning to look at her again, “I see you are determined to quarrel with me, Claudia.” “Not quarrel, Charlie,” she said, “merely have some truth spoken between us. How can we go on if we allow ourselves distorted memories of the past?” “We can go on, then?” he asked her. “Will you forgive me for the past, Claudia? Put it down to youth and foolishness and the pressures of a life for which I had had no preparation?” It was not much of an apology. Even as he made it he also made an excuse for himself. Was youth less accountable than age? But there had been many years of close friendship and a few of love and one afternoon of intense passion. And a year of yearning love letters before the final one that had broken her heart and shattered her world and her very being. Perhaps it was foolish to base her whole opinion of him now on that one letter. Perhaps it was time to forgive. “Very well,” she said after a few moments of silence, and he came toward her to take one of her hands in his and squeeze it. “I made the biggest mistake of my life when—” he began. “But never mind. What shall I do about this invitation?” “What do you wish to do?” she asked. “I wish to accept,” he told her. “I like the Ravensbergs and their family and friends. And I want to spend more time with you. Let me come, Claudia. Let me be your brother again. No, not brother. Let me be your friend again. We were always friends, were we not? Even at the end?” To which ending did he refer? “I lay awake much of last night,” he said, “wondering what I ought to do and realizing how my life was impoverished the day I left your father’s home and you. And then I knew that I could not accept the invitation unless you said I might.” She had lain awake much of the night too, but she did not believe she had once thought of Charlie. She had thought of two people sitting beneath a willow tree beside a lily pond at night, his coat warm from his body heat about her shoulders, his arm holding it in place, her hand in his, not saying a word to each other for almost half an hour. It was a memory every bit as intense as that of their kiss in Vauxhall Gardens. Perhaps more so. The latter had been about lust. The former had not. She did not care to think of what it had been about. “Go to Alvesley, then,” she said, drawing her hand free of his. “Perhaps we can create new memories for the future while we are there—kinder memories.” She felt a lump form in her throat when he smiled at her—an eager smile that reminded her of the boy he had once been. She had never even dreamed that that boy could be cruel. Was she doing the right thing, though? Was it wise to trust him again? But it was mere friendship he asked for. It might be good to be his friend again, finally to put the past behind her. “Thank you,” he said. “I will not keep you any longer, Claudia. I will go back to my rooms and send an acceptance note to Lady Ravensberg.” After he had left, Claudia looked at the library book again. She did not open it, though. She smoothed her hand over the leather cover until the dog jumped up beside her and set his head in her lap. “Well, Horace,” she said aloud, patting his head, “I feel as if I am riding a gigantic rocking horse of emotions. It is not a comfortable feeling at all for someone my age. Indeed, if Lizzie Pickford will not come to Lindsey Hall with me, I believe I may well go straight home to Bath after all and to the devil with Charlie—if you will pardon the shocking language. And the Marquess of Attingsborough. But what on earth am I to do about you?” He raised his eyes to hers without moving his head, and sighed deeply while thumping his tail on the sofa. “Exactly!” she agreed. “You males all think yourselves irresistible.”

Some cousins of Lady Balderston’s had arrived in town from Derbyshire, and Joseph had been invited to dine with the family and accompany them to the opera later. He still had not made an appointment to speak with Balderston, but he would. Perhaps tonight. His procrastination was becoming something of an embarrassment to him. And perhaps this evening he would try again to woo Portia Hunt. There must be a softer side to her than she had shown on the way to Vauxhall, and he must find it. He knew that ladies on the whole found him both charming and attractive even though he rarely used that fact to flirt or dally. Rarely being the key word. He was uncomfortable about his dealings with Miss Martin. And yet they had not felt like either flirtation or dalliance. He hated to think what they had felt like. And so he was in something of a grim mood all morning while sparring at Gentleman Jackson’s boxing saloon. By the time he arrived at Whitleaf’s house on Grosvenor Square in the afternoon, he was determined to be all business. He was taking Miss Martin to see Lizzie, to make her a proposition for the summer, to allow her to decide for herself. His own involvement need be only ve ry minimal. She was dressed simply as usual in the dress she had worn to the picnic, though it had been ironed since then. She wore the same straw hat too. She was holding the dog in her arms as she came downstairs at the butler’s summons. She looked like someone he must have known all his life. She looked like a little piece of home—whatever the devil his mind meant by presenting him with that odd idea. “We are both ready,” she said briskly. “Are you sure you wish to take the dog driving, Claudia?” Whitleaf asked her. “You are quite welcome to leave him here with us.” “He can do with the airing,” she said. “But thank you, Peter. You are remarkably kind considering the fact that you had little choice but to take him in or boot me out.” She laughed. “Go and enjoy yourself, then,” Susanna told her, though it was at him she looked, Joseph saw, a speculative look in her eyes. For the first time it struck him that, not knowing the true nature of Miss Martin’s drives with him, she and Whitleaf must wonder what the devil he was up to—especially as they probably knew that he was to all intents and purposes a betrothed man. He had put Miss Martin in an awkward position, he realized. They proceeded on their way in his curricle though the weather was not quite as warm as it had been recently. There were a few clouds to take the edge off the heat when they covered the sun. “Where did you tell Susanna you were going this afternoon?” he asked. “For a drive in the park,” she said. “And the other times?” “For a drive in the park.” She concentrated her attention on the dog. “And what has she had to say about all these drives?” he asked. He turned his head in time to see her flush before lowering her head. “Oh, nothing,” she said. “Why should she say anything?” They must think he was dallying with her while courting Miss Hunt. And the devil of it was that they were not far off the mark. He grimaced inwardly. This must all be very distressing for her. They lapsed into silence. But silence today must be avoided at all costs, he decided after a few moments, and it seemed that she agreed. All the rest of the way to Lizzie’s they talked cheerfully about books they had both read. But it was not stilted, awkward talk, as he might have expected. It was lively and intelligent. He could have wished that the journey were longer. Lizzie was in the upstairs parlor waiting for him. She hugged him with both arms wound about his neck, as she usually did, and then cocked her head to one side. “You have someone with you, Papa,” she said. “Is it Miss Martin?” “It is,” he said, and watched her face brighten. “And not just me,” Miss Martin said. “I have brought someone else to meet you, Lizzie. At least, he is almost a someone. I have brought Horace.” Horace? Joseph shot her an amused glance, but her attention was all focused upon his daughter. “You brought your dog!” Lizzie cried just as the collie decided to bark. “He wants to be friends,” Miss Martin explained as Lizzie recoiled. “He absolutely will not hurt you. I have a firm hold on him anyway. Here, let me take your hand.” She did so and brought it to the dog’s head and smoothed it down over his back. The dog turned his head and licked her wrist. Lizzie snatched back her hand but then shrieked with laughter. “He licked me!” she cried. “Let me feel him again.” “He is a border collie,” Miss Martin explained as she took Lizzie’s hand again and guided it to the dog’s head. “One of the most intelligent of dogs. Collies are often used to guard sheep, to stop them from wandering, to round them up when they do, to lead them back to the fold when they have been out in the fields or in the hills grazing. Of course Horace is not much more than a puppy and has not been fully trained yet.” Joseph went to open the parlor window and stood there, watching his daughter fall in love. Soon she was seated on the sofa with the dog beside her, panting with delight as she explored him with sensitive, gentle hands and laughing as he licked first one of her hands and then her face. “Oh, Papa,” she cried, “look at me. And look at Horace.” “I am looking, sweetheart,” he said. He watched Miss Martin too as she sat beside his child, on the other side of the dog, petting him with her and telling Lizzie the story of how she had acquired him, embellishing it considerably so that it seemed much more comical than it had been in reality. It seemed to Joseph that she was entirely engrossed in her conversation with his daughter, that she had forgotten his presence. It was very easy to see how she had become a successful teacher and why he had sensed a happy atmosphere at her school. “I remember your telling me,” Miss Martin said, “that all the stories you make up have a dog in them. Would you like to tell me one of those stories and have me write it down for you?” “Now?” Lizzie asked, laughing as she drew back her head from another enthusiastic licking. “Why not?” Miss Martin said. “Perhaps your papa will find paper and pen and ink for me.” She looked at him with raised eyebrows, and he left the room without further ado. When he came back, they were both sitting on the floor, the dog between them on his back, having his stomach rubbed. Both Lizzie and Miss Martin were chuckling, their heads close together. Something stirred deep inside Joseph. And then Miss Martin sat at a small table writing while Lizzie told a lurid tale of witches and wizards practicing their evil arts deep in a forest where an unfortunate little girl got lost one day. As trees closed about her to imprison her and tree roots thrust upward to trip her and grew tentacles to wrap about her ankles to bring her down, and as thunder crashed overhead and other dire catastrophes loomed, her only hope of escape was her own intrepid heart and a stray dog that appeared suddenly and attacked everything except the thunder and finally, bleeding and exhausted, led the girl to the edge of the wood, from where she could hear her mother singing in her garden full of sweet-smelling flowers. It seemed the thunderstorm had not spread beyond the forest. “There,” Miss Martin said, setting her pen down. “I have it all. Shall I read it back to you?” She proceeded to do so. Lizzie clapped her hands and laughed when she had finished. “That is my story exactly,” she said. “Did you hear it, Papa?” “I did,” he said. “You will be able to read it to me,” she said. “And so I will,” he agreed. “But not at bedtime, Lizzie. Perhaps you could sleep afterward, but I am sure I would not. I am still shaking in my boots. I thought they would both perish.” “Oh, Papa!” she said. “The main characters in stories always live happily ever after. You know that.” His eyes met Miss Martin’s. Yes, in stories, perhaps. Real life was often different. “Perhaps, Lizzie,” he said, “we could take Miss Martin out to the garden and you can name all the flowers for her. The dog can come too.” She jumped to her feet and reached out an arm to him. “Come with me to fetch my bonnet,” she said. He took one step toward her and then stopped. “Be my clever girl and go and fetch it without me,” he said. “Can you do it?” “Of course I can.” Her face lit up. “Count to fifty, Papa, and I will be back. Not too fast, though, silly,” she added, laughing with glee as he began rattling off numbers. “One…two…three,” he began again more slowly as she left the room. After a moment the dog scrambled to his feet and went after her. “She really is capable of a great deal, is she not?” he said. “I have been remiss. I ought to have arranged something for her much sooner than this. It is just that she has been a very young child, and love and protection seemed enough.” “Don’t blame yourself,” Miss Martin said. “Love is worth more than any one other gift you could give her. And it is not too late. Eleven is a good age for her to discover that she has wings.” “With which to fly away from me?” he said with a rueful smile. “Yes,” she agreed, “and with which to fly back to you again.” “Freedom,” he said. “Is it possible for her?” “Only she can decide that,” she said. But he could hear Lizzie’s returning footsteps on the stairs. “…forty…forty-one…forty-two…” he said loudly. “Here I am!” she shrieked from outside the door, and then she appeared in the doorway, flushed and excited, eyelids fluttering while the dog rushed past her. “And here is my bonnet.” She waved it from one hand. “Oh, bravo, Lizzie,” Miss Martin said. Love tightened in Joseph’s chest almost like pain. They spent an hour in the garden before Mrs. Smart brought out the tea tray. Lizzie engaged in one of her favorite games, bending over flowers and feeling them and smelling them before identifying them. Sometimes she clasped her hands behind her and played the game from the sense of smell alone. Miss Martin tried it too, her eyes closed, but she made as many errors as correct identifications and Lizzie laughed with glee. She also listened attentively as Miss Martin gave her a lesson in botany, pointing out parts and qualities of each plant while Lizzie felt to see what she was talking about. Joseph sat watching. He almost never had the leisure simply to observe his daughter. Usually when he visited he was the whole focus of her world. Today she had Miss Martin and the dog, and while she frequently called to him to be sure that he had noticed something, she was clearly reveling in their company. Is this what family life might have been like, he wondered, if he had been free to marry as a younger man—when he met and fell in love with Barbara? Would he have delighted in his wife and children as he was delighting in Miss Martin and Lizzie? Would there have been this contentment, this happiness? Their heads were touching as they bent over a pansy. Miss Martin set one arm loosely about Lizzie’s waist, and Lizzie set her arm about Miss Martin’s shoulders. The dog woofed around them before racing off to chase a butterfly. Goo d Lord, Joseph thought suddenly. Dash it all, this line of thought just would not do. This was exactly what he had resolved not to do this afternoon. He would have his family life. The wife and mother would not be either Barbara or Miss Martin, and none of the children would be Lizzie. But he would have it. He would begin wooing Portia Hunt in full earnest this evening. He would call upon Balderston tomorrow and then make her a formal offer. Surely she would relax more once they were officially betrothed. Surely she must want some affection, some warmth, some family closeness, out of her marriage too. Of course she must. The tea tray arrived to interrupt his thoughts, and the ladies came to sit down. Miss Martin poured the tea. “Lizzie,” she said after handing about the cups and the pastries, “I would like to see you get more fresh air during the summer. You enjoyed the afternoon in Richmond Park, did you not? I would like to see you walk and run and skip again and find more flowers and plants than you yet know. I would like you to come into the country with me for a few weeks.” Lizzie, who was sitting beside Joseph, felt for him with the hand that was not holding her plate. He took it in a firm grasp. “I do not want to go to school, Papa,” she said. “This is not school,” Miss Martin explained. “One of my teachers, Miss Thompson, is going to take ten of the girls from the school to Lindsey Hall in Hampshire for a few weeks. It is a large mansion in the country with a huge park around it. They are going there for a holiday, and I am going too. Some of my girls, you see, do not have parents or homes and so must stay with us during holiday times. We try to give them a good time with lots of activities and lots of fun. I thought you might like to come with me.” “Are you going too, Papa?” Lizzie asked. “I will be going for a while to a house nearby,” he said. “I will be able to come and see you.” “And who will take me?” Lizzie asked. “I will,” Miss Martin said. He looked closely at Lizzie. All the faint color the hour outdoors had brought into her cheeks had faded. “I am afraid,” she whispered. He squeezed her hand more tightly. “You do not have to go,” he said. “You do not have to go anywhere. I will find someone else to come and live here and be your companion, someone you will like, someone who will be kind to you.” Perhaps Miss Martin would disagree with him. Perhaps she would think that he should insist that his daughter find her wings, that he should push her out of the nest, so to speak. But she said nothing. And actually she had said just the opposite, had she not? She had told him that Lizzie must decide for herself. “Those girls would hate me,” Lizzie said. “Why would they?” Miss Martin asked. “Because I have a home and a papa,” Lizzie said. “I do not believe they will hate you,” Miss Martin said. “I would not say anything about having a papa,” Lizzie said, brightening. “I would pretend to be just like them.” Which was exactly the way Miss Martin had described her to the Duchess of Bewcastle—as a charity girl brought to her attention by her man of business. And he was not going to speak up in protest? Was he really ashamed of her, then? Or was he just bowing to what society expected of any gentleman? “Would they do things with me?” the child asked, turning her face in Miss Martin’s direction. “Would they think me a nuisance?” Yet again Joseph admired Miss Martin’s honesty. She did not rush immediately into a denial. “We will have to find out,” she said. “They will certainly be polite. They learn good manners at my school. But it will be up to you to make friends.” “But I have never had friends,” Lizzie said. “Then this will be your chance to make some,” Miss Martin told her. “And I would come back here after a few weeks?” Lizzie asked. “If you chose,” Miss Martin said. Lizzie sat very still, no longer touching Joseph. Her hands fidgeting in her lap showed her agitation. So did the fact that she rocked back and forth as she sometimes did when she was deeply troubled. Her eyelids fluttered and her eyes wandered beneath them. Her lips moved silently. Joseph resisted the urge to gather her up in his arms. “But I am so afraid,” she whispered again. “Then you will remain here,” he said firmly. “I will start looking immediately for a new companion.” “I did not mean I would not go, Papa,” she said, “only that I am afraid.” She continued to rock and fidget while Miss Martin said nothing and Joseph felt resentful of her—quite unjustifiably, of course. “I have learned all about courage from some of the stories you have told me, Papa,” Lizzie said at last. “You can only show courage when you are afraid. If you are not afraid, there is no need of courage.” “And you have always wanted to do something courageous, Lizzie?” Miss Martin asked. “Like Amanda in your story, when she might have escaped from the forest earlier if she had not stopped to rescue the dog from the rabbit snare?” “But it is not just for fighting witches and evil, is it?” Lizzie said. “It is also for stepping into the unknown,” Claudia said, “when it would be easier to cling to what is familiar and safe.” “I think, then,” Lizzie said after another short silence, “I will be courageous. Will you be proud of me if I am, Papa?” “I am always proud of you, sweetheart,” he said. “But yes, I would be especially proud if you were to be brave enough to go. And I would be very happy if it turned out that you enjoyed yourself as I daresay you would.” “Then I will go,” she said decisively, and abruptly stopped rocking. “I will go, Miss Martin.” Then she turned sharply to paw at Joseph’s arm and scrambled onto his lap to hug him tightly and hide against him. His arms closed about her and he tipped back his head and closed his eyes. He swallowed, feeling absurdly close to tears. When he opened his eyes, he could see that Miss Martin was watching them steadily, looking like a disciplined teacher again—or like his very dear friend. Without thinking he stretched one arm across the table between them and, after looking at his hand for a moment, she set her own in it. Ah, sometimes life was bitterly ironic. He felt again as if he had found a family where there could be none—just when he was honor-bound to offer for a woman who wanted never to be kissed. His hand closed about Miss Martin’s and squeezed tightly. 14

Late one afternoon two weeks later Claudia was dressed in her old faithful blue evening gown and was styling her hair herself, having declined the Duchess of Bewcastle’s kind offer of the services of a maid. She was feeling unaccountably depressed when she had every reason to feel just the opposite. She was being treated as a favored guest at Lindsey Hall rather than as a teacher in charge of a largish group of charity schoolgirls. And within half an hour she would be on her way with the Bedwyn family to a celebratory dinner and social evening at Alvesley Park. She would see Susanna there. She would also see Anne, who had arrived from Wales with Sydnam and their children just yesterday. The journey from London a few days ago had proceeded un-eventfully, though Lizzie had been tearful for a while after leaving the house and her father and had clung to Claudia the whole way. But Susanna and Peter, with whom they had traveled, had been kind to her, the dog had snuggled up beside her, and she had been more than thrilled when the carriages had stopped and Harry’s nurse had brought him forward to his mother and Lizzie had been allowed to touch his little hand and smooth her hand over his downy head. It had been good to see Eleanor Thompson again and the girls she had brought to Lindsey Hall, and they had all seemed genuinely glad to see her. They had greeted Lizzie with caution and curiosity, but on the very first evening Agnes Ryde, the most dominant of the girls and sixteen years old, had decided to take the new girl under her wing, and Molly Wiggins, the youngest and most timid, had chosen Lizzie as her particular friend and taken her firmly by the hand. She had promptly offered to brush Lizzie’s hair and had borne her off to the room they were to share, while Agnes took her other arm. It had been good to see Flora and Edna again, and to discover that both seemed quite blissfully happy with their new lot in life and eager to show off a little for their former schoolmates. The duchess had been amiable. So had Lord and Lady Aidan Bedwyn, the Earl and Countess of Rosthorn—the countess was the younger of two Bedwyn sisters—and the Marquess of Hallmere. The Duke of Bewcastle had been polite. He had even engaged Claudia in conversation for all of ten minutes at dinner one evening, and she had not been able to fault his manners. And Lady Hallmere had actually come striding across the lawn from the stables one morning dressed in her riding habit and had bidden Claudia a good morning before talking briefly with Molly and Lizzie, who were laboriously making daisy chains. The dog meanwhile had been chasing his tail and any flying creature that was in-cautious enough to venture into his space. Lady Hallmere acted like a queen condescending to the lowliest of her subjects, Claudia had thought unkindly until she had chastised herself for unfairness. The woman could easily have ignored them altogether. And her words in London had chastened Claudia somewhat—you bear a long grudge, Miss Martin. Charlie had ridden over from Alvesley each day, and once they had gone for a long walk about the lake and talked without stopping. It had felt quite like old times—well, perhaps not quite. He had been a hero in those long-ago days, an idol, someone incapable of doing anything wrong or remotely ignoble. Now she had no illusions about him. He was a man, like all others, with human weaknesses. But it felt undeniably good to be with him again, to talk with him. She was not sure she could ever really trust him again, but then she was not b eing called to trust. Just to enjoy a resumption of their friendship. And then had come the invitation to go to Alvesley with everyone else except Eleanor, who had volunteered to remain behind with the girls, something that was hardly a sacrifice, she had insisted to both Claudia and her sister, since she found most social entertainments a colossal bore. And of course, Claudia thought as she set down her brush and got to her feet and picked up her paisley shawl, it was that invitation and the reason behind it that was responsible for the dip in her mood. It was indeed to be a celebratory dinner even though it was a whole week before the planned anniversary party for the Earl and Countess of Redfield. This celebration was for a new betrothal. Miss Hunt’s to the Marquess of Attingsborough. And it was a massive case of self-deception to tell herself that it was an unaccountable depression that she felt. She was going to Alvesley, then, to celebrate his betrothal. She might easily have avoided going, she supposed, but she had decided that it would be cowardly to stay away. And it had never been her nature to avoid reality. Besides, she was genuinely looking forward to seeing Anne and Susanna. An hour or so later, when she arrived at Alvesley with the Lindsey Hall party, she was immediately engulfed in a great bustle of greetings. But within moments she found herself caught up in the arms of a laughing Anne. And suddenly she was very glad indeed that she had come. “Claudia!” Anne cried. “Oh, how good it is to see you. You are looking very well indeed and have been taking London by storm, if Susanna is to be believed.” Claudia laughed. “Somewhat of an exaggeration,” she said. “Anne, you look wonderful. You look as if you are bursting with good health. But your face is not sun-bronzed, is it?” “It is the sea air,” Anne explained. “Sydnam would have it that it is also the Welsh air.” He was standing beside her, and Claudia offered him her hand, remembering to give her left as he had no right arm. He smiled as he shook it—his rather charming, lopsided smile, as burns to the right side of his face had damaged the nerves there. “Claudia,” he said, “it is good to see you again.” Anne linked an arm through his and looked at Claudia with shining eyes. “We have wonderful news,” she said, “and have been telling everyone who is willing to listen.” She looked up at her husband and laughed. “Or rather I have been telling everyone. Sydnam is far too modest. He is to have three of his paintings hung at the Royal Academy in the autumn. Have you ever heard anything more exciting?” There was a shriek from nearby and the Countess of Rosthorn dashed up to Sydnam Butler and hugged him tightly. “Syd!” she cried. “Is it true? Oh, I am so happy I could weep. And look, that is just what I am doing. Silly me. I knew you could do it. I just knew. Gervase, do come and hear this, and please bring a handkerchief with you.” Mr. Butler had been a talented artist before losing his right arm and eye during the Peninsular Wars. After that he had devoted himself to becoming a good steward, having persuaded the Duke of Bewcastle into giving him a post at his estate in Wales. But soon after his marriage to Anne two years ago, Sydnam had started to paint again, under her encouragement, using his left hand and his mouth. Claudia took Anne’s arm and squeezed it. “I am so happy for both of you, Anne,” she said. “How is my boy David? And Megan?” David Jewell was Anne’s son, born nine years before she met Mr. Butler. When Anne had taught at the school in Bath, David had lived there too. After they left, Claudia had missed him almost as much as she had missed Anne. But she scarcely heard Anne’s reply. She had spotted the Marquess of Attingsborough, who was speaking with the Duchess of Bewcastle and Lady Hallmere. He looked tall and imposing and handsome. He was also smiling and looking very happy. He looked like a stranger, Claudia thought. And yet, even as she thought it, his eyes met hers across the crowded hallway and he looked again like the man who had become strangely dear to her during the course of a couple of weeks in London. He was making his way toward her, she could see a moment later. She turned away from Anne to meet him. “Miss Martin,” he said, offering his hand. “Lord Attingsborough.” She set her hand in his. “How is Lizzie?” He had lowered his voice. “She is doing remarkably well,” Claudia told him. “She has made friends and daisy chains. And Horace has shown no loyalty whatsoever—he has abandoned me to become her shadow. The duke’s head groom is making a collar and leash for him so that Lizzie can hold it and be led about. I believe the dog knows that she needs protection and will learn to be invaluable to her after some training.” “Daisy chains?” He raised his eyebrows. “They are well within her capabilities,” she said. “She can find and identify daisies in the grass, and making the chains is really quite easy. She has been going about bedecked with garlands and coronets.” He smiled. “And friends?” “Agnes Ryde, the most fierce of my pupils, has become her self-appointed guardian,” Claudia told him, “and Molly Wiggins and Doris Chalmers are vying for the position of best friend. I believe the contest was won early, though, since Molly had the idea first and shares a room with Lizzie. They have become virtually inseparable.” He beamed at her. But before either of them could say more Miss Hunt, looking lovely in pink, appeared at his side and took his arm. She smiled at him after favoring Claudia with a distant nod. “You must come and speak with the Duke and Duchess of Bewcastle,” she said. “They are over there, talking with Mama and Papa.” He bowed to Claudia and turned away with his betrothed. Claudia firmly shook off the depression that had been hovering over her all day. It was really quite demeaning—not to mention silly—to be coveting someone else’s man. Susanna, smiling brightly in welcome, was coming toward her from one side and Charlie, smiling just as warmly, was approaching from the other. She had every reason in the world to be cheerful. And truly she was.

Joseph really was feeling reasonably happy. His marriage offer had, of course, been favorably received by both Balderston and Portia herself. Lady Balderston had been ecstatic. The wedding was to be celebrated in the autumn in London. That had been decided by Lady Balderston and Portia between them. It was a pity, they had both agreed, that it could not take place at a more fashionable time of the year when all the ton would be in town, but it was far too long to wait until next spring, especially given the indifferent health of the Duke of Anburey. The talk ever since—whenever Joseph was within hearing distance, anyway—had been all of guest lists and bride clothes and wedding trips. It all gave him renewed hope that his marriage would be a good one after all. Of course, all the bustle of wedding plans and then the removal to Alvesley had made it impossible for him to spend any private time with his betrothed, but that situation would surely be rectified after this evening’s celebrations were over. And it was undeniably good to see almost all his family gathered for the occasion, including his mother and father, who had come from Bath. Lord and Lady Balderston were there too, though they were to leave tomorrow, before the anniversary celebrations began in earnest. As good manners dictated, Portia did not remain at his side after dinner, when everyone gathered in the drawing room. She sat sipping her tea with Neville and Lily and McLeith. Nev had beckoned her over, somewhat to Joseph’s surprise. He knew that neither he nor Lily really liked her yet. Perhaps they were making an effort to get to know her better. Only one thing threatened to lower his spirits—well, perhaps two if he included the presence of Miss Martin, of whom he had grown far too fond while they were both in London. He was missing Lizzie dreadfully. She was tantalizingly close there at Lindsey Hall, making friends and daisy chains and shadowed by a border collie. He wanted to be there, tucking her into bed, reading her a story. Yet society decreed that a man’s illegitimate offspring be kept not only away from his family but also a secret from them. “You are wool-gathering, Joseph,” his cousin Gwen, the widowed Lady Muir, said as she came to sit beside him. “What gives society its power, Gwen?” he asked. “An interesting question,” she said, smiling at him. “Society is made up of individuals—and yet it does have a collective entity all its own, does it not? What gives it its power? I don’t know. History, perhaps? Habit? A combination of the two? Or the collective fear that if we relax any of its stringent rules we will be overrun by the dreaded lower classes? The specter of what happened in France still looms large, I suppose. It is all absurd, though. That is why I stay away from society as much as I can. Do you have a particular problem with it?” He almost confided in her. What would she say if he told her about Lizzie, as he had told her brother long ago? He was almost convinced that she would be neither shocked nor unsympathetic. But he could not do it. She was his cousin and his friend—but she was also a lady. He countered her question with one of his own. “Do you ever wish,” he asked, “that you could move away to the farthest corner of the world and start a new life, where no one knows you and there are no expectations of you?” “Oh, yes, of course,” she said, “but I seriously doubt there is such a corner.” She touched his hand and lowered her voice. “Are you regretting this, Joseph? Did Uncle Webster force you into it?” “My engagement?” He laughed lightly. “No, of course not. Portia will make an admirable duchess.” “And an admirable wife too?” She looked closely at him. “I do want to see you happy, Joseph. You have always been my favorite cousin, I must confess . My favorite male cousin, at least, since I cannot claim to have loved you more than I do Lauren. But then Lauren and I grew up more as sisters than cousins.” As if summoned by the mention of her name, Lauren joined them at that moment, bringing Miss Martin with her. “Gwen,” she said after a few minutes, “come to the supper room with me for a minute, will you? There is something upon which I need your opinion.” Neville and Lily were leaving the room via the French windows, Joseph could see. They were taking Portia and McLeith with them, presumably for a stroll outside. And so they were virtually alone together again, he and Miss Martin. She was wearing a dark blue gown that he had seen more than once in London. Her hair was dressed as severely as it ever had been. Once again she looked unmistakably a schoolteacher, remarkably plainly turned out in contrast with all the other ladies. But he could no longer see her with the old eyes. He could see only the firmness of character, the kindness, the intelligence, the…yes, the passion for life that had endeared her to him. “Are you happy to be back with some of your pupils?” he asked her. “I am,” she said. “It is with them I belong.” “I want to see them,” he said. “I want to see Lizzie.” “And she wants to see you,” she told him. “She knows you are here, not far away from her. At the same time, she is convinced that the girls will no longer like her if they know she has a father, and such a wealthy one. She has told me that if you come she will pretend not to know you. She thinks it would be a funny game.” And of course it would suit his purposes admirably. But he felt grim at the very thought that for different reasons they must hide their relationship from others. Miss Martin touched his hand, just as Gwen had done a few minutes ago. “She is really quite happy,” she told him. “She thinks of these weeks as a marvelous adventure, though she told me last night that she still does not want to go to school. She wants to go home.” He felt strangely comforted by the thought—strange when it would be far more convenient for him if she went away. “She may change her mind,” she said. “Is she educable, then?” he asked her. “I think she may be,” she said, “and Eleanor Thompson agrees with me. It would take some ingenuity, of course, to fit her into our routine with tasks that are both meaningful and possible for her, but we have never shunned a doable challenge.” “What personal satisfaction do you draw from your life?” he asked, leaning a little closer to her. And then he wished fervently that he had not asked such an impulsive and impertinent question. “There are many persons in my life, Lord Attingsborough,” she said, “whom I can love in both an abstract, emotional sense and in practical ways. Not everyone can say as much.” It was not a good enough answer. “But does there not have to be one special someone?” he asked her. “Like Lizzie for you?” she asked. It was not what he had meant. Even Lizzie was not enough. Oh, she was, she was—but…But not for that deep core of himself that craved a mate, an equal, a sexual partner. He completely forgot for the moment that he already had such a person in his life. He had a betrothed. “Yes,” he said. “But it is not what you meant, is it?” she asked him, searching his eyes with her own. “We are not all fated to find that special someone, Lord Attingsborough. Or if we are, sometimes we are fated also to lose that person. And what do we do when it happens? Sit around moping and feeling tragic for the rest of our lives? Or find other people to love, other people to benefit from the love that wells constantly from within ourselves if we do not deliberately stop the flow?” He sat back in his chair, his eyes still on her. Ah, but he did indeed have that special someone in his life. But only on the periphery of it—and always to remain there. She had come too late. Though there would never have been the right time, would there? Miss Martin was not of his world—and he was not of hers. “I choose to love others,” she said. “I love all my girls, even those who are least lovable. And, believe me, there are plenty of those.” She smiled. But she had admitted to what he had always suspected, always sensed in her. She was an essentially lonely woman. As he was essentially lonely—on the very evening when a large company of relatives and friends had gathered to celebrate his betrothal and he had persuaded himself that he was happy. He was going to have to make this up to Portia. He was going to have to love her with all the deliberate power of his will. “I must try to emulate you, Miss Martin,” he said. “It is perhaps enough,” she said, “that you love Lizzie.” Ah, she knew, then. Or she knew, at least, that he did not love Portia as he ought. “But is it enough that I will not acknowledge her publicly?” he asked. She tipped her head slightly to one side and thought—a characteristic reaction of hers when other persons might have rushed into a glib answer. “I know you feel guilty about that,” she said, “and perhaps with good reason. But not for the reason you always fear. You are not ashamed of her. I have seen you with her and I can assure you of that. But you are trapped between two worlds—the one you have inherited and to which you are firmly committed by the fact that you are the heir to a dukedom, and the one you made for yourself when you created Lizzie with your mistress. Both worlds are important to you—the one because you are impelled by duty, the other because you are enmeshed in love. And both are worlds that will pull at you forever.” “Forever.” He smiled ruefully at her. “Yes,” she said. “Duty and love. But especially love.” He was about to reach out for her hand, forgetting his surroundings again, when Portfrey and Elizabeth joined them. Elizabeth wanted to know about the little blind girl she had heard Miss Martin had brought to Lindsey Hall. Miss Martin told her about Lizzie. “How very brave and admirable of you, Miss Martin,” Elizabeth said. “I would love to meet her and all your other charity girls too. May I? Or would it appear to be an intrusion, as if I thought them merely an amusing curiosity? Lyndon and I have extended the school at home so that all local children are eligible to attend, but I have toyed with the idea of making it also a boarding school to accommodate children from farther distances.” “I think,” Miss Martin said, “the girls would be delighted to meet you.” “I have just persuaded Miss Martin to let me come on the same errand,” Joseph said. “I met two of her former pupils when I escorted them and her to London several weeks ago, and now they are at Lindsey Hall too, one as governess to the Hallmere children, the other as governess to Aidan Bedwyn’s children.” “Ah,” Elizabeth said, “then we will go together, Joseph. Will tomorrow afternoon suit you, Miss Martin, weather permitting?” And so it was arranged—as simply as that. Tomorrow he would see Lizzie. And Miss Martin again. Lily and Neville were coming inside, he noticed. Portia and McLeith remained outside. When she came back in, Joseph thought, he was going to have to spend the rest of the evening with her, perhaps in private conversation if it could be arranged. He was going to love her, by Jove, even if he could never fall in love with her. He owed her that much. Miss Martin got to her feet, bade him good night, and went to join the Butlers and the Whitleafs. Soon she was glowing with animation. 15

Some of the older girls had gone out for a walk. One of the younger ones was playing quietly and ploddingly on the spinet in the schoolroom at Lindsey Hall. Another read silently to herself, curled up on the window seat. A third was embroidering a large daisy across the corner of a cotton handkerchief. Molly was reading aloud from Robinson Crusoe, and Becky, Lady Aidan’s elder daughter, was listening with rapt attention. Claudia was teaching Lizzie to knit, having cast on twenty stitches and knitted up a few rows to get her started. The collie lay at their feet, his head on his paws, his eyes turned upward. Claudia looked up when the door opened. It was Eleanor, who had been enjoying a prolonged breakfast with the duchess. “Miss Martin,” she said, “the Duke of McLeith has ridden over from Alvesley again and wishes to see you. I will stay with the girls while you are gone. Oh, Lizzie is learning to knit, is she? Let me see if I can help. And I do apologize, Molly. I have interrupted your reading. Please continue.” Her eyes twinkled at Claudia. They had had a long talk after Charlie’s last visit. Eleanor was convinced that his interest was more than just fraternal. Claudia found him in the morning room downstairs, in conversation with the Duke of Bewcastle and Lord Aidan. Both withdrew soon after her arrival. She sat. Charlie did not. He crossed the room to the window instead and stood looking out. His clasped hands tapped against his back. “Ever since you forced me to remember,” he said, “the flood-gates of memory have opened, Claudia. Not just remembered events, which are relatively easy to forget, but remembered feelings, which never can be. They can only be suppressed. In the last week I have done nothing but remember how wretchedly unhappy I was after I left you, and how totally unable I was to come back to face you when I felt obliged to marry someone else. I really had no choice, you know. I had to marry—” “Someone from your own world,” she said, interrupting him. “Someone who would not shame or embarrass you with the inferiority of her birth and manners.” He turned his head to look at her. “That was not it,” he said. “I never thought those things about you, Claudia.” “Did you not?” she said. “Was it someone impersonating your handwriting who wrote that final letter to me, then?” “I did not write those things,” he protested. “You were sorry to be so plain with me,” she said, “but really you ought not to have been taken to live with Papa and me in the first place since there was always the possibility that you would inherit a dukedom one day. You ought to have been given a home and upbringing more suited to your station. The fact that you had lived with us all those years had put you in an awkward position with your peers. I must understand why you felt it necessary to break off all connection with me. You were a duke now. You must not be seen to associate too closely with people who were beneath your notice. You were to marry Lady Mona Chesterton, who was everything a duchess and your wife ought to be.” “Claudia!” He looked pale and aghast. “I did not write those things.” “Then I wonder who did,” she said. “Losing someone one loves is one of the worst things that can happen to anyone, Charlie. But to be rejected because one is inferior, because one is despised, because one simply is not good enough…It took me years to gain back my self-respect, my self-confidence. And to put the pieces of my heart back together. Do you wonder that I was less than delighted to see you again in London a few weeks ago?” “Claudia!” He passed a hand through his thinning hair. “My God! I must have been so upset that I was out of my mind.” She did not believe it for a moment. Becoming a duke had gone to his head. It had made him conceited and arrogant and any number of other nasty things she would never have suspected him capable of. He sat down on a chair close to the window and stared at her. “Forgive me,” he said. “Lord, Claudia, forgive me. I was even more of an ass than I remember. But you did recover. You did magnificently well, in fact.” “Did I?” she said. “You proved,” he said, “that you were the strong person I always knew you were. And I have paid my dues to whatever power decreed that I be snatched from my familiar life—twice, once when I was five and once when I was eighteen—and plunged into a completely alien one. There is no longer any reason, though, why either of us cannot return to where we were when I was eighteen and you were seventeen. Is there?” What exactly did he mean? Return to what? “I have a life,” she said, “that involves responsibility to others. I have my school. And you have duties to others that only you can perform. You have your son.” “There is no obstacle,” he said, “that cannot be overcome. We have been apart for eighteen years, Claudia—half my life. Are we going to remain apart for the rest of our lives too just because you have a school and I have a son—who, by the way, is almost grown up? Or will you marry me at last?” She very much feared afterward that her jaw had dropped. If only she had seen this coming, she thought—if only she had believed Eleanor—she might have prepared herself. Instead she stared stupidly and mutely at him. He came across the room to her and bent over her to take both her hands in his. “Remember how we were together, Claudia,” he said. “Remember how we loved each other with the sort of all-consuming passion the very young are not afraid of. Remember how we made love up on that hill—surely the only time in my life I have really made love. It has been a long, weary time, but it is not too late for us. Marry me, my love, and I will make up for that letter and for the eighteen years of emptiness in your life.” “My life has not been empty, Charlie,” she told him. Though it had been—in some ways at least. He looked into her eyes. “Tell me you did not love me,” he said. “Tell me you do not love me.” “I did,” she said, closing her eyes. “You know I did.” “And you do.” She felt dreadfully upset, remembering that long-ago love, its physical consummation, and the anguish of the yearlong separation and then its cruel, abrupt ending. It was not possible to go back, to forget that even as boy he had been capable of destroying the one person he had professed to love more than life. Besides, it was too late for him. He was the wrong man. “Charlie,” she said, “we have both changed in eighteen years. We are different people.” “Yes,” he agreed. “I have less hair and you are a woman rather than a girl. But at heart, Claudia? Are we not the same as we ever were, the same as we always will be? You have never married even though you had plenty of would-be suitors even before I left home. That tells me something. And I have admitted to you that I was never happy with Mona, though I was rarely unfaithful to her.” Rarely? Oh, Charlie! “I cannot marry you,” she said, leaning a little toward him. “If we had married then, Charlie, we would have grown together and I daresay I would have loved you all my life. But we did not marry then.” “And love dies?” he asked her. “Did you ever love me truly, then?” She felt a spurt of anger. Had he truly loved her? “Some forms of love die,” she said. “If they are not fed, they die. I have gradually been coming to like you again since we met in London—as the friend you were through our childhood.” His jaw was hard-set as she remembered its being whenever he was angry or upset. “I have spoken too soon,” he said. “I must confess that the violence of my feelings has surprised even me. I will give you time to catch up with me. Don’t say an outright no today. You already have, but let us agree to forget that you spoke the words. Give me time to woo you—and to make you forget what I once wrote to you.” He released her hands after squeezing them. “Goodness, Charlie,” she said, “look at me. I am a thirty-five-year-old spinster schoolteacher.” He smiled slowly. “You are Claudia Martin,” he said, “that bold, vital girl I loved, now masquerading as a spinster schoolteacher. What a lark, you would have said then if you could have looked ahead.” If she could have looked ahead, she would have been consumed with horror. “It is no masquerade,” she said. “I beg to disagree,” he told her. “I had better go now—I am expected back at Alvesley for luncheon. But I will come again if I may.” But after he had gone she stared at her hands in her lap. How very strange life could be. For years and years now her school had been her whole world, all thoughts of love and romance and marriage long suppressed. Yet she had made the seemingly harmless decision to accompany Flora and Edna to London so that she could talk to Mr. Hatchard in person and her whole world—her whole universe—had changed. She wondered in some trepidation how she was going to be able to recapture the relative contentment and tranquillity of her life when she returned to Bath. There was a tap on the door and it opened to reveal Eleanor. “Ah, you are still here,” she said, coming inside. “I have just seen the duke riding away. Louise is still playing the spinet, but the others have gone outside—except Molly and Lizzie. Becky has taken them to the nursery to meet her little sister, Hannah, and her new governess as well as numerous cousins, all of whom are very young. Lizzie is doing very well, Claudia, even if you did find her crying to herself in her bed this morning.” “This is all very bewildering but very exciting for her,” Claudia said. “Poor girl,” Eleanor said. “One wonders what her life has been like until now. Did Mr. Hatchard say?” “No,” Claudia said. “The Duke of McLeith did not stay long this morning,” Eleanor said. “He asked me to marry him,” Claudia told her. “No!” Eleanor looked at her, arrested. “And…?” “I said no, of course,” Claudia said. “Of course?” Eleanor sat down in the nearest chair. “Are you quite sure, Claudia? Is it because of the school? I have never mentioned this to you because it seemed inappropriate, but I have often thought how I would not mind if it were mine. And I do believe I would be able to run it in a manner worthy of you. I mentioned it to Christine at one time and she thought it a wonderful idea and even said she would sponsor me with a loan or an outright gift if I would accept one—and if the time ever came. And Wulfric, who was reading a book at the time, looked up and said it would certainly be a gift. So if your refusal had anything to do with misgivings about—” “Oh, Eleanor,” Claudia said, laughing, “it did not, though I suppose it might have if I had wanted to say yes.” “But you did not?” Eleanor asked. “He is so very amiable, and he seems inordinately fond of you. And he must have pots of money, if one wants to be mercenary about such matters. Of course he is a duke, which puts him at a horrid disadvantage, poor man.” “I loved him once,” Claudia admitted, “but no longer. And I am comfortable and really quite happy with my life as it is. The time when I might have thought of marriage is long past. I prefer to keep my independence even if my fortune is minuscule.” “As I do,” Eleanor said. “I loved once too—quite passionately. But he was killed in Spain during the wars and I have never been tempted to find someone to replace him in my affections. I would rather be alone. If you should ever change your mind, though, know that concerns for the school need not stand in your way.” She laughed, and Claudia smiled. “I will remember that,” she said, “if I should ever fall violently in love with someone else. Thank you, Eleanor.”

The morning clouds had moved off by noon. As a result several other people decided to ride with Joseph and Elizabeth from Alvesley to Lindsey Hall—Lily and Portfrey and Portia and three of Kit’s cousins. Lily tried to persuade McLeith to come too, but he had been over during the morning. A large number of people were out of doors at Lindsey Hall, Joseph could see as they rode up the driveway, including surely all the children—and the visiting schoolgirls. His eyes searched their number eagerly even before he was close enough to distinguish individuals. He left his horse at the stables, as did all the others, and walked across the lawn with Portia, Lily, and Elizabeth while the others made their way toward the house. The schoolgirls were dancing about a makeshift maypole, to the accompaniment of vocal mu sic by one of their number and a great deal of laughter and confusion. Joseph could see no sign of Lizzie until he realized with a start that she was one of the dancers. Indeed, it was she who was causing the confusion—and the laughter. She was clinging to one of the ribbons with both hands, and she was dancing about the maypole with vigorous, ungainly steps while Miss Martin moved behind her, her hands on Lizzie’s waist. She was laughing too. She was also bonnetless and disheveled and flushed. Lizzie was shrieking with louder laughter than anyone else. “How very charming,” Elizabeth said without any apparent irony. “Is that the blind girl I have heard about?” Portia asked of no one in particular. “She is spoiling the dance for the others. And she is making a spectacle of herself, poor girl.” Lily was simply laughing. She clapped her hands in time to the music. And then several of the girls noticed the new arrivals and the dance came to an end as they all stopped and stared and then bobbed curtsies. Lizzie clutched Miss Martin’s skirt. “Maypole dancing in July?” Lily cried. “But why not? What a grand idea.” “It was Agnes’s idea,” Miss Martin explained, “instead of the ball game we were going to play. It was her way of including Lizzie Pickford, who has joined us for the summer holiday.” Her eyes met Joseph’s briefly. “Lizzie has been able to hold on to the ribbon,” she continued, “and dance in a circle with everyone else without colliding with anyone or getting lost.” “She ought to be taught the proper steps, then,” Portia said, “so that she may look more graceful.” “I thought she was doing remarkably well,” Elizabeth said. “So did I,” Joseph said. Lizzie cocked her head and her face lit up, and he almost wished that she would cry out his name and reach out her arms to him and put an end to this distasteful charade. But then she smiled and raised her face to Miss Martin, a look of gleeful mischief there. Miss Martin set an arm about her shoulders. “Do carry on,” Elizabeth said. “We did not mean to disturb you.” Some of the younger children, Joseph could see—not the schoolgirls—were tackling Hallmere on the grass and shrieking with delight. Lady Hallmere was egging them on. The dog, tethered to a tree close to the maypole, was sitting and placidly watching, his tail thumping on the grass. The duchess was hurrying toward them from a distant cluster of infants. “I believe we are all out of breath,” Miss Martin said. “It is time for something less strenuous.” “Ball?” one of the older girls suggested. Miss Martin groaned, but the lady Joseph recognized as Miss Thompson, the teacher who had appeared outside the school in Bath, had come up with the duchess. “I will supervise a game for anyone who wants to play,” she said. “Horace has a new collar and leash,” Lizzie announced loudly. “I hold on and he takes me about and I don’t run into things or fall down.” “How very clever, dear,” Elizabeth said kindly. “Perhaps you could show us.” “That child,” Portia said sotto voce to Joseph, “ought to learn to speak when she is spoken to. Blindness is surely no excuse for bad manners.” “But perhaps childish exuberance is,” he said, watching as Lizzie turned and groped with one hand until Miss Martin untied the dog and set the loop of the leather leash in her hand. It took all his willpower not to rush forward to help. “I will come walking with you if you wish, Lizzie,” a girl about her own age said, taking her free hand. Lizzie looked in his general direction. “Would you like to come too…sir?” she asked. “Well, really!” Portia exclaimed. “What impudence.” “I would be delighted,” he said. “Miss…Pickford, is it?” “Yes.” She laughed with glee. “And Miss Martin must go too,” Lily suggested. “The rest of us will remain here and be lazy,” the duchess said. “And then we will go into the house for tea. How delighted I am to see you all.” The dog moved off at a trot and Lizzie and the other girl shrieked with laughter again as they set off in his wake. But he seemed to understand the charge with which he had been entrusted and slowed to a walk as he made his way toward the driveway and then crossed it, making a wide loop about the large stone fountain that stood before the main doors. He also steered well clear of all the trees, leading them toward the other side of the house. “I hope, Miss Martin,” Joseph said, clasping his hands at his back, “you are not too attached to that dog. I cannot see Lizzie being willing to part with him at the end of the summer. He is looking remarkably healthy. Has his weight doubled, or is that just my imagination?” “Your imagination, thank goodness,” she said. “But his ribs are no longer visible, and his coat has acquired a sheen.” “And Lizzie,” he said. “Can that possibly be her, walking hand in hand with another girl, being drawn along by a dog? And dancing earlier about a maypole?” “And knitting this morning,” she said, “though I believe she dropped more stitches than she worked.” “How can I ever thank you?” he asked, looking down at her. “Or I you?” She smiled back at him. “You have challenged me. Sometimes one becomes blinded by routine—ah, pun unintentional.” They were making their way, he could see, toward a largish lake. He lengthened his stride, but Miss Martin caught his arm. “Let us see what happens,” she said. “I think it very unlikely that Horace will march straight into the water, and if he does, Molly certainly will not.” But the dog stopped well short of the bank, and the girls stopped too. The child called Molly then led Lizzie forward, and they both went down on their knees and touched their hands to the water, Lizzie tentatively at first. Joseph moved up beside them and squatted down next to his daughter. “There are some stones along the bank,” he said, picking one up. “If you toss them into the water, the farther out the better, you can hear them plop. Listen!” And he demonstrated while Molly looked at him with fright and Lizzie turned her head and inhaled in such a way that he knew she was breathing in his familiar scent. But she smiled when she heard the stone plop into the water and reached for his hand. “Help me to find a stone,” she said. He squeezed her hand and she squeezed back, but from the mischievous smile on her face he knew she was enjoying the game of secrecy. For the next few minutes she hurled the stones he helped her find. The other girl overcame her fright and threw some too. They both laughed whenever a stone fell with a particularly loud plop into the lake. But finally Lizzie had had enough. “Shall we go back to the others, Molly?” she asked. “Perhaps you want to join in the ball game. I don’t mind. I’ll sit and listen.” “No, I’ll watch it with you,” Molly said. “I can never catch a ball.” “Miss Martin,” Lizzie said, “will you and P—and this gentleman stay here while we go? I want to show you that we can do it on our own. Do you think we can, sir?” “I shall be vastly impressed if you can,” he said. “Off you go, then. Miss Martin and I will watch.” And away they went, the dog in the lead. “Is she sprouting wings so quickly?” he asked ruefully when they were out of earshot. “I believe she is,” Miss Martin said. “I hope she does not grow overbold too soon. I do not expect it, though. She knows she needs Molly or Agnes or one of the other girls—and Horace, of course. This summer will be a very good experience for her.” “Let’s sit for a little while, shall we?” he suggested, and they sat side by side on the bank of the lake. She drew up her knees and wrapped her arms about them. He picked up one more stone and bounced it across the water. “Oh,” she said, “I used to be able to do that when I was a girl. I still remember the memorable occasion when I made a stone bounce six times. But I had no witness, alas, and no one ever believed me.” He chuckled. “Your pupils are fortunate indeed to have you for a headmistress,” he said. “Ah, but you must remember that this is a holiday,” she told him. “I am rather different during term time. I am a stern task-mistress, Lord Attingsborough. I have to be.” He remembered how all the senior girls had fallen silent as soon as she stepped out onto the pavement just before she left Bath with him. “Discipline can be achieved without humor or feeling,” he said, “or with both. You achieve it with. I am quite sure of that.” She hugged her knees and did not answer. “Do you ever wish for a different life?” he asked her. “I could have had one,” she said. “Just this morning I had a marriage offer.” McLeith! He had ridden over here this morning to call on her. “McLeith?” he said. “And could have? You said no, then?” “I did,” she said. He was damnably glad. “You cannot forgive him?” he asked. “Forgiveness is not a straightforward thing,” she said. “Some things can be forgiven but never quite forgotten. I have forgiven him, but nothing can ever be the same between us. I can be his friend perhaps, but I can never be more than that. I could never trust that he would not do something similar again.” “But you do not still love him?” he asked. “No.” “Love does not last forever, then?” “He asked me the same thing this morning,” she said. “No, it does not—not love that has been betrayed. One realizes that one has loved a mirage, someone who never really existed. Not that love dies immediately or soon, even then. But it does die and cannot be revived.” “I never thought I would stop loving Barbara,” he told her. “But I did. I look upon her fondly whenever I see her, but I doubt I could love her again even if we were both free.” She was looking directly at him, and he turned his head to look back. “It is a consolation,” she said, “to know that love dies eventually. Not a very strong consolation at first, it is true, but some comfort nevertheless.” “Is it?” he asked softly. He did not know if she was talking about them. But the air suddenly seemed charged between them. “No,” she sa id, her voice almost a whisper. “Not at all really. What absurdities we sometimes speak. Future indifference is no consolation for present pain.” And when he leaned toward her and set his lips to hers, she did not draw away. Her lips trembled against his and then pressed back against them and parted as his tongue pushed between them and into the warm cavity of her mouth. “Claudia,” he said a few moments later, closing his eyes and touching his forehead to hers. “No!” she said, withdrawing and getting to her feet. She stood looking out over the lake. “I am so sorry,” he said. And he was too—sorry for what he had done to her and for the disrespect he had shown Portia, to whom he was betrothed. Sorry for his lack of control. “I wonder if it is a pattern doomed to repeat itself every eighteen years or so of my life,” she said. “A duke and a duke-in-waiting choosing a bride for her suitability for the position and leaving me behind to grieve.” Oh, dash it all! He drew a slow breath. “And what have I said?” she asked him. “What have I just admitted? It does not matter, though, does it? You must have guessed. How pathetic I must seem.” “Good God!” he cried, getting to his feet too and standing a short distance behind her. “Do you think I kissed you because I pity you? I kissed you because I—” “No!” She swung around, holding up one hand, palm out. “Don’t say it. Please don’t say it even if you mean it. Either way, I could not bear to hear it spoken aloud.” “Claudia…” he said softly. “Miss Martin to you, Lord Attingsborough,” she said, lifting her chin and looking very much the schoolmistress again despite her disheveled appearance. “We will forget what happened here and what happened at Vauxhall and at the Kingston ball. We will forget.” “Will we?” he said. “I am so sorry to have upset you like this. It was inexcusable of me.” “I am not blaming you,” she said. “I am quite old enough to know better. I will never even be able to convince myself that I fell prey to the lures of a practiced rake, though that is what I expected you to be when I first set eyes on you. Instead you are a gentleman whom I like and admire. That has been the whole problem, I suppose. And I am prattling. Let us return or everyone—Miss Hunt in particular—will be wondering what I am up to.” And yet, he thought as they made their way back to the far lawn, not touching and not talking, they could be no more than a few minutes behind the girls. Minutes that had done infinite damage to both their lives. No longer could he even pretend that he did not love her. No longer could she pretend that she did not love him. And no longer would they be able to trust themselves to be alone together. He felt his loss like a hard fist to the stomach. 16

After their return from Lindsey Hall, Joseph and Portia sat together in the formal flower garden to the east of the house. He was feeling mortally depressed. For one thing he had spent very little time with Lizzie, and the deception, though it had seemed to amuse her, had been distasteful to him. For another thing, he and Claudia Martin must now stay away from each other. No longer could he enjoy even her friendship. And for a third thing he had been able to discover no warmth, no compassion, no generosity, no spark of passion, beneath the beautiful, dignified, perfect appearance Portia presented to the world. And he had tried. “I am pleased that you enjoy riding,” he had told her on the way back to Alvesley. “It is one of my favorite activities. It will be something we can do together.” “Oh,” she had replied, “I will not expect you to be hanging about me all day when we are married, just as I will not be hanging about you. We will both have our duties and our pleasures to keep us busy.” “And those pleasures cannot be found in each other’s company?” he had asked her. “When necessary,” she had said. “We will entertain a great deal, of course, especially when you become the Duke of Anburey.” He had persisted. “But private pleasures? Walking together, dining together, even just sitting and reading or conversing together? Will there not be time for them too? Will we not make time for them?” He had not added the idea of making love as another private pleasure in which they might choose to indulge after they married. “I imagine,” she had said, “that you will be a busy man. I am sure I will be busy with all the duties of being the Marchioness of Attingsborough and later the Duchess of Anburey. I will not expect you to feel obliged to amuse me.” He had not pursued that line of conversation. He had tried, now, here in the garden, to get her to relax and enjoy with him the beauty that surrounded them. “Listen!” he had said just a few minutes ago, holding up one hand. “Have you ever thought about how much we miss in life from being endlessly busy? Listen, Portia.” There was a stream at the bottom of the flower garden with a rustic wooden bridge crossing it and wooded hills beyond. And, sure enough, the birds in the trees here were as busy with their summer chorus as those in Richmond Park had been. He could also hear the gurgle of the stream. And he could feel the warmth of the summer air. He could smell the flowers and the water. She had maintained a polite silence for a few moments. “It is by being busy, though,” she had said then, “that we prove ourselves worthy of our humanity. Idleness is to be avoided, even despised. It reduces us to the level of the bestial world.” “Like Lizzie Pickford’s dog sitting beside the maypole waiting to take her safely wherever she wished to go?” he had asked with a smile. It had been a mistake to mention that particular animal. “That child,” she had said, “ought not to have been rewarded for being so forward when she was in company with her betters. Blindness is no excuse. It was very good of you to go walking with her to the lake, and the Duchess of Bewcastle made a point of commending your kindness and good nature, but she must surely have wondered if you had not shown some lack of discrimination.” “Discrimination?” “Her own son, the Marquess of Lindsey, was outdoors with her,” she had pointed out to him, “as were the children of the Marquess of Hallmere and the Earl of Rosthorn and Lord Aidan Bedwyn. Perhaps it would have been more appropriate to turn your attention to one of them.” “None of them asked me to go walking with them,” he had said. “And none of them was blind.” And none of them was his own child. “The Duchess of Bewcastle is a very amiable lady,” she had said. “I cannot help wondering, though, if the duke does not regret condescending to marry her. She was once a teacher in a village school. Her father was once a teacher. Her sister teaches at Miss Martin’s school in Bath. And now she has all those charity girls staying at Lindsey Hall and speaks of them as if they give her as much pleasure as the children of the duke’s own family. They ought not to be there. For their own good they ought not.” “For their own good?” “They need to learn their proper station in life,” she had said. “They must learn the distinctions between themselves and their betters. They must learn that they do not belong in places like Lindsey Hall. It is really quite cruel to them to allow them to spend a holiday here.” “They ought to remain at the school, then,” he had said, “kept busy with mending and darning and fed bread and water?” “It is not what I mean at all,” she had told him. “You must surely agree with me that those girls ought not even to be at a school with other, paying pupils. Those others are only the daughters of merchants and lawyers and physicians, I daresay, but even so they are middle class, not lower, and there is a definite distinction.” “You would not want to see your own daughter go there, then?” he had asked. She had turned her head to look at him and laughed. She had looked genuinely amused. “Our own daughters,” she had said, “will be educated at home, as I am sure you would expect.” “By a governess who may have been educated at Miss Martin’s school or one like it?” “Of course,” she had said. “By a servant.” And so now, a mere few moments later, in another silence, Joseph felt his spirits slide all the way down to the soles of the riding boots he was still wearing. There was no hope, no ray of light, ahead. He ought to have insisted upon a decent period of courtship before committing himself to offering for her. He ought… But there was no point in such thoughts. The reality was that he was betrothed to Portia Hunt. He was as firmly bound to her as if the nuptials had already been solemnized. The sound of feminine voices in merry conversation with one another came from the terrace behind them, and soon Lauren and Gwen and Lily and Anne Butler stepped into the garden. “Ah, your peace is being invaded,” Lauren called when she saw them. “We are going to climb to the top of the hill and admire the view. Have you been up there?” “We have just been relaxing here,” Joseph said with a smile. “We are going to sit up there and make plans,” Lily said. “Plans?” Portia asked. “For a picnic the day before the anniversary celebrations,” Lily explained. “Elizabeth and I have been telling everyone about the delightful scene that met our eyes when we arrived at Lindsey Hall earlier, children everywhere, all enjoying themselves enormously.” “And it struck my mother-in-law and me,” Lauren said, “that there are lots of children here too and yet all the official celebrations virtually exclude them. And so we decided on the spot to organize a children’s picnic for the day before the ball.” “How delightful,” Portia murmured. “But now we have to plan it,” Mrs. Butler said. “And because I was once a teacher, I am expected to be an expert.” “Lauren and Lady Redfield are going to invite all the children from Lindsey Hall too,” Gwen said. “And some of the other children from the neighborhood. There will be an army.” “Miss Martin’s girls too?” Jos eph asked. He had been wondering how he could arrange to see Lizzie again. “But of course not,” Portia said, sounding shocked. “But of course,” Lily said simultaneously. “They were a delight, were they not, Joseph, all dancing about the maypole? And that little blind girl was quite undaunted by her affliction.” “Lizzie?” “Yes, Lizzie Pickford,” she said. “Lauren is going to invite them all.” “Alvesley may never be the same,” Lauren said with a laugh. “Not to mention us.” Joseph, smiling back at her, could remember a time when Lauren had been every bit as straitlaced and apparently lacking in humor as Portia. Love and her marriage to Kit had transformed her into the warmhearted woman she was now. Was there a glimmering of hope for him after all? He must persevere with Portia. He must find a way to her heart. He must. The alternative was too dreadful to contemplate. “Do you want to come up with us?” Gwen suggested, looking at Portia. “The sun is rather too hot,” Portia said. “We will return to the house.” The ladies proceeded on their way across the bridge and onto the path that would take them up the rather steep slope. Even Gwen was undaunted, despite a rather heavy limp, the permanent aftereffect of a riding accident that had happened during her marriage, before Muir died. “It is to be hoped,” Portia said as they rose to their feet and he offered her his arm, “that they plan the picnic very carefully indeed, though it is kind of Lady Ravensberg and Lady Redfield to think of it. There is nothing worse than children being allowed to run wild.” “Nothing worse for the adults in charge of them, perhaps,” he said, chuckling. “Nothing more blissful for the children themselves.” Would Lizzie come? he wondered. And would Claudia Martin come?

For four days Claudia did not set eyes upon the Marquess of Attingsborough. For herself she was very glad indeed. She must forget him—it was as stark and as simple as that—and the best way to do that was never to set eyes on him again. But Lizzie grieved. Oh, outwardly she seemed to be thriving. She was looking less pale and thin than she had. She had friends willing to take her about and read to her. She had music to listen to since some of the girls liked to take a turn at the spinet and several liked to sing. Claudia tried telling her stories from history and then asking her questions later. The not unsurprising discovery was that Lizzie had a sharp memory. She was certainly not uneducable. She dictated two more of her own stories, one to Claudia and one to Eleanor, and never tired of having them read back to her. She liked to knit, though her inability to see a dropped stitch or to pick it up if someone else pointed it out was a problem yet to be solved. She had the dog as a constant companion and increasingly as a guide. Indeed, she was becoming bolder every day, taking short walks with just the dog while Claudia or Molly or Agnes trailed along behind in case they were needed and sometimes went ahead to lead Horace in the desired direction. She was even something of a favorite with the duchess and her other guests, who often made a point of speaking with her and sometimes included her in their activities when the other girls were engaged in a game in which she was unable to participate. Lord Aidan Bedwyn took her riding with him one day while his older children rode their own mounts and his young daughter rode with her mother. But despite it all Lizzie grieved. Claudia found her one afternoon when the other girls had gone out with Eleanor on a lengthy nature hike, curled up on her bed in her room. Her cheeks were wet with tears. “Lizzie?” Claudia said, seating herself beside the bed. “Are you sad at being left behind? Shall we do something together?” “Why does he not come back?” Lizzie wailed. “Is it something I did? Is it because I called him sir instead of Papa? Is it because I asked him to wait at the lake with you so that I could show him I was able to find my way back to the house with just Horace and Molly?” Claudia smoothed a hand over Lizzie’s hot, untidy hair. “It is nothing you did,” she said. “Your papa is busy at Alvesley. I know he is missing you as much as you miss him.” “He is going to send me to your school,” Lizzie said. “I know he is. He is going to marry Miss Hunt—he told me so when I was still at home. Is she the lady who said I was a clumsy dancer? Papa is going to send me to school.” “And you do not want to go?” Claudia asked. “Even though Molly and Agnes and the other girls will be there, and Miss Thompson and I?” “I want to be home with Papa,” Lizzie told her. “And I want you and Horace to come as you did before, only more often. Every day. And I want Papa to stay the night every night. I want…I want to be home.” Claudia continued smoothing a hand over her hair. She said nothing though her heart ached for a child who wanted only what ought to be every child’s right. After a few minutes Lizzie was asleep. But the very next day Claudia was able to seek her out with altogether more cheerful news. She had just heard it herself from Susanna and Anne, who had come over from Alvesley with Lady Ravensberg. And Lizzie, Claudia had decided, would be the first of the girls to hear. She was standing by the fountain with Molly despite the fact that it was a chilly, windy day that threatened rain. They were trailing their hands in the water and sometimes stretching out their arms to feel the spray. They were giggling. “You girls will all be going to Alvesley Park tomorrow,” Claudia said as she came up to them. “You have been invited with all the children to a picnic.” “To a picnic,” Molly said, her eyes as wide as saucers, the fountain and the water forgotten. “All of us, miss?” “All of you,” Claudia said, smiling. “Will that not be a wonderful treat?” “Do the others know?” Molly asked, her voice just a little lower than a shriek. “You are the first to be told,” Claudia said. “I am going to tell them,” Molly cried, and she went dashing off to find the other girls, leaving Lizzie behind. Lizzie’s face was turned up and seemed lit from within. “I am to go too?” she asked. “To Alvesley? Where Papa is?” “You are indeed,” Claudia told her. “Oh,” Lizzie said softly. And she stooped down and felt for Horace, who was sitting quietly beside her, and took the leash in her hand. “Will he be glad to see me?” “I expect he is counting the hours,” Claudia said. “Take me to my room, Horace,” Lizzie said. “Oh, Miss Martin, how many hours is it?” Horace, of course, was not that good a guide, though he might learn in time. He was always careful to see that Lizzie ran against no obstacle, but he had no particular sense of direction despite Lizzie’s great faith in him. Claudia led the way indoors and upstairs, and Horace trotted after her, bringing Lizzie along behind. But it always pleased the girl to think she was becoming independent. She could not get to sleep that night. Claudia had to sit beside her bed and read one of her stories aloud and pat her hand while Horace curled up against her. Claudia doubted she would sleep either. She had decided reluctantly that she must go with the girls to Alvesley—it was too much to expect Eleanor to take the responsibility entirely on her own shoulders. But she really, really did not want to go. She had been concentrating very hard on making plans for the coming school year and upon renewing her acquaintance with Charlie, who still rode over to Lindsey Hall every day. But now she was going to have to see the Marquess of Attingsborough once more. It was pointless to hope that he would stay away from the children’s picnic. She knew he must be pining for Lizzie as much as she was for him. Was it just her imagination that heartbreak was worse the second time around? Probably, she admitted. At the age of seventeen she had wanted to die. This time she wanted to live—she wanted her life back as it had been until the afternoon she had stepped all unwittingly into the visitors’ parlor at school to discover the Marquess of Attingsborough standing there. And she would get that life back. She would live and prosper and be happy again. She would. It would just take some time, that was all. But having to see him again was not going to help.