Slightly Scandalous

"Prudence," his aunt said, her sweet smile belying the venomous glance she darted at her youngest daughter, "return to Miss Palmer in the nursery immediately."

"Oh, no," Joshua said, the Marquess of Hallmere to his fingertips, "Prue may stay for tea, Aunt."

The girl flapped her hands in excitement, and Lady Chastity took one of them in her own and drew her sister down beside her on a love seat.

"Absolutely," Eve agreed, seating herself close to them and beaming at both. "We came here to see Joshua's home and to meet the members of his family who live here. Prue is one of those."

"A splendid view indeed," Alleyne commented after strolling into the bay window. "I suppose the beach on this side of the valley is a private one, Joshua? Part of the estate? I envy you."

"I still want to paint the sea," Morgan said-she was standing beside Alleyne. "But I want to paint this valley too and the house and the park on the hillside. It is a good thing you are to be my brother-in-law, Joshua. I may have to visit you here several times and at different times of the year before my palette has been satisfied. Oh, Freyja, all this is to be yours too."

"I daresay this is sheep country, is it, Joshua?" Aidan asked. "Your farmland is above the valley? I look forward to viewing it with you and to chatting with your steward."

Freyja was ignoring the view beyond the window for the moment. She was very deliberately viewing the room, standing in the middle of it and turning slowly.

"It is a magnificent apartment," she said in her haughtiest voice. "I daresay I will wish to change some of the furnishings and draperies after we are married, Josh, but those are minor matters. I shall very much enjoy entertaining here. I daresay you enjoyed it in your day too, ma'am." She smiled graciously at the marchioness, who smiled sweetly back but was saved from having to reply by the arrival of the tea trays.

The Bedwyns, Freyja thought, had made their point.

Joshua was talking with his second cousin.

"It is a happy chance that you should be at Penhallow at just the time I have brought my betrothed and some of her family to see the home that will be hers after we wed," he said. "It must be nearly ten years since I saw you last, Calvin. You decided to take a vacation in Cornwall, did you?"

The Reverend Calvin Moore flushed. "I was invited here by Cousin Corinne," he said stiffly.

"Indeed?" Joshua raised his eyebrows and looked at his aunt with a smile. "You guessed that I would bring Freyja here soon, did you, Aunt, and thought to surprise me with a visit from my heir? That was extraordinarily kind of you. Feel free to stay for a week or longer, Calvin-as long as you wish, in fact. It will be pleasant to have my own family about me here as well as Freyja's."

Mr. Moore cleared his throat. "It is good of you to say so, Hallmere," he said.

They all sat down for tea after that and conversed pleasantly enough on a variety of different topics. It was all rather amusing, Freyja thought. The air fairly shouted the unspoken topic. A witness had stepped forward to accuse Joshua of a five-year-old murder. The Reverend Calvin Moore obviously knew about it already. So did the daughters, with the probable exception of Prue. And so, of course, did Joshua and all the Bedwyns. But not a word of the pending scandal was spoken aloud.

The marchioness had been taken by surprise, Freyja guessed-by the sudden arrival of her nephew, by the fact that he had brought her and other houseguests with him, and by his courteously masterful manner. She had hatched the plot, but it obviously had not yet come to full fruition.

And so there was an absurd sense of normality about the whole scene. Two families, about to be connected by marriage, took tea together and made themselves agreeable to one another. The marchioness fairly sparkled with joy.

"Mrs. Richardson will be ready to show you to your rooms," she said when they had finished tea. "You will all wish to rest before dinner, I am sure. How delightful it will be to have so many guests at my table. I have longed for this moment. Have I not, Constance?"

"Rest?" Freyja said, smiling faintly at the woman. "I think not, ma'am. I will change and freshen up and then I will be ready for a tour of the house. You will oblige me, Josh?"

"It would be my pleasure," he said. "Will everyone else join us? You too, Calvin? And Chass, you must accompany us, if you will. You were always more knowledgeable about the house than anyone else. And yes, Prue, my love, we will certainly not go without you. Shall we all meet in the hall in half an hour?"

The house was far larger than it had appeared to be during their approach to it. It was an elegant, square building. Most of the living apartments were in the front wing, facing toward the southeast and the magnificent views over gardens and valley and sea. The private apartments and bedchambers were in the east wing, the state apartments, the ballroom, and the long gallery in the west wing. The north wing, facing half up the valley and half back toward sloping gardens and hillside, consisted mostly of offices, with servants' quarters on the upper floors.

Joshua did most of the talking as he took them about, though Constance added a few comments of her own. But it was Chastity who made all the explanations once they arrived at the state apartments and the long gallery. She knew the history of every architectural detail, every work of art, every generation of the Moore family who had lived there, both in the old house before it had been pulled down and in the new, which was only four generations old. She spoke softly and clearly and concisely and with obvious warmth for her topic. Freyja found that she rather liked all three daughters. They all seemed surprisingly different from their mother.

Joshua, free of the responsibility of being guide in the state apartments, drew Freyja's hand through his arm and looked down at her with laughter in his eyes.

"The Bedwyns are indeed formidable when they go into action," he said. "You most of all, sweetheart. So you are going to refurnish my drawing room, are you? And enjoy entertaining there?"

"The draperies are the wrong color," she said. "And several of the chairs are in poor taste-they are far too ornate."

He chuckled. "I shall very much enjoy entertaining here," he said softly, quoting her exact words. "I daresay you enjoyed it in your day too, ma'am. If one could only have seen into her thoughts at that moment, Free."

"There has been no mention of any suspicion of murder," she said.

"Ah, but there will be." He grinned at her.

He was so very like her, she thought. He was enjoying himself. The foolish man-he might hang if convicted, but all he could do was grin at the exciting prospect of danger.

The rest of the day progressed very much as it had since their arrival. Joshua took the head of the table at dinner and seated Freyja at his right, Constance at his left. His aunt sat at the foot of the table. He nodded to her quite firmly when he deemed it time for the ladies to withdraw and leave the gentlemen to their port and their male conversation.

Chastity and Morgan, who appeared to have developed something of a friendly acquaintance, entertained themselves and everyone else at the pianoforte, Eve sat with Prue, whom Joshua had permitted to take dinner with everyone else-Freyja guessed that it had never happened before, and Freyja stood in the bay window looking out onto darkness until the gentlemen joined them.

Eve conversed with the marchioness and Constance. She did not have the chilly hauteur of the Bedwyns, but she did quite well enough in her own quiet, sweet way.

"It must be sad to lose so much more than just one's life's partner when he passes on," she said. "Being mistress of Penhallow must have been a wonderful part of your marriage, ma'am. I am sure Freyja will also find it so. What are your plans for the future? Or is it too soon for you to have decided with any certainty? You are still in mourning, I perceive."

The marchioness dabbed at her eyes. "My dear Hallmere-the late Hallmere-is all I can think of at present, Lady Aidan," she said. "I will welcome Lady Freyja here with open arms, of course. There is much I can teach her about the running of so large a household, though I daresay she has learned something at Lindsey Hall."

"The dower house in the valley is a pleasant-looking place," Eve said.

"How prettily your sister plays, Lady Freyja," the marchioness said, raising her voice. "And what beauty she possesses. I daresay she will be married before next summer. All the prettiest girls are snatched up young."

"If they choose to be snatched, ma'am," Freyja said. "I am not sure Morgan is one of their number."

"And you, Lady Constance," Eve continued, "what are your plans now that your mama's year of mourning is drawing to an end? A Season in London, perhaps? Provided Freyja and Joshua are married before the spring, Freyja will be able to sponsor you if your mama still does not feel up to it."

Yes, Freyja thought, smiling to herself, Eve was quite as formidable as any of them.

"It is time you went back to the nursery, Prudence," her mother said in the little-girl whine Freyja remembered so well from Bath.

"Come, Prue." Eve got to her feet and drew the girl to hers. "It is high time I went up and read a few stories to Becky and Davy before tucking them in for the night. Would you like to hear some stories too?"

Later, after the gentlemen had come to the drawing room and they had all taken tea and prolonged the conversation for a while, the marchioness suggested an early night, which she was sure they would all welcome after such a long journey.

"And I am quite weary myself, I must confess," she said, "from all the excitement of welcoming dear Joshua home, where he belongs, and his dear betrothed and her family too."

No one voiced any objection. It really had been a lengthy journey. But Joshua was not ready to retire yet, it seemed.

"Would you care for a breath of fresh air first, Freyja?" he asked.

"Oh, but Joshua, dear," his aunt said faintly, "Lady Freyja would need to take her maid with her."

Alleyne grinned and waggled his eyebrows at Freyja.

"She will be with her betrothed, ma'am," Aidan said, sounding wonderfully arrogant and starchy. "There will be no need of a chaperone."

"And even if there were . . ." Freyja said, arching her eyebrows and leaving the sentence uncompleted. "Yes, I would, Joshua, thank you."

It was a chilly night, as befitted early autumn, but it was lovely nonetheless. The sky, which had been so dark earlier while she stood in the bay window of the drawing room, was now star-studded, and the moon shed its light onto the land and gleamed in a wide, sparkling band across the sea and the lower part of the river.

There was a footpath leading along the hillside on a level with the house, bordered by bushes and flower beds on the inner, hill side, and by a waist-high stone wall half-covered with ivy and other plants on the other. Beyond the wall there was another flower border and then lawn sloping down to bushes and the road below. In the summertime, Freyja guessed, this must all be a blaze of color. Even now, and even at night, it was beautiful.

"What a foolish woman your aunt is," she said. "You intended never to come back here, did you not? You would have left her to live out her life in peace here and to rule the household as if it were her own. Yet she had to stir up trouble where there was none."

"And now Morgan is to visit us here frequently in order to paint, Alleyne is to come in order to enjoy my private beach, Aidan is interested in my farms, Eve is planning a come-out Season for my cousins, you are planning to remodel my home, and I am here," he said. "Yes, I suppose that if my aunt could go back and ignore Mrs. Lumbard's letter informing her of my presence in Bath, she would perhaps do so. But perhaps not. She always had to feel in complete control."

"Why did you intend never to come back here?" she asked.

She knew very little about him apart from the fact that he was an amusing, attractive companion. It was strange how one could have known a man in the most intimate way physically and yet not really know him at all as a person. She had not wanted to know him. She still did not. Yet it seemed inevitable now. She had made the impulsive, mad decision to accompany him here, and now she had been drawn inextricably into his life.

"I came here at the age of six," he said, "after my parents had died. I was not even told they were dead at first. I was told they had had to go away for a while. The theory was, I suppose, that I would gradually forget them and would never have to be told the searing truth. But my aunt told me the first time I got up to some mischief here. My parents would be very disappointed to know that they had such a bad little boy, she told me. It was a good thing they were dead and would never know."

"Ah, yes," Freyja said. "It is just the sort of thing the marchioness would say. I hope you told her to be damned."

"I did," he said, "in words far more colorful than that, I believe. But I knew in that moment what the truth meant to me. I had endured until then with all the patience I could muster. I had lived for the day when my mother and father would come for me and take me back home. There was the truly terrifying emptiness of knowing them gone forever. And there was the knowledge that my present life with my uncle and aunt and cousins was my permanent life."

"I hope," she said tartly, fighting pity for the boy he had been, "you were never abject."

He laughed. "Sweetheart," he said, "you are supposed to be in tears of pitying sentiment by now. No, I never was. I made up my mind that if my aunt was determined to think me bad, I would do all in my power to earn my reputation."

"Your uncle?" she said. "Your cousins? Did they share her low opinion of you?"

"My uncle had no choice," he said. "I was bad, Free. I could make your hair stand on end with an account of some of my escapades."

"I doubt it," she said. "I grew up with Bedwyns and Butlers. I was a Bedwyn myself. But in my family we were called high-spirited and mischievous before we were punished. Never bad."

"I rubbed along well enough with the girls," he said. "But they were much younger and therefore were never really my companions."

"I suppose," she said, "your aunt hated you because you were the next heir after her son."

"Undoubtedly." He chuckled.

"Oh," she said as they rounded a slight bend in the path and were suddenly buffeted by the wind. They also had a much wider view of the sea-and the village had come into sight on the opposite side of the river. "Magnificent!"

"It is, is it not?" he agreed.

Yet he had never wanted to come back here.

"What was Albert like?" she asked.

"The perfect son," he said. "He learned all there was to learn from my uncle and helped him with estate business whenever he was allowed. He adored his mother and was attentive to his sisters. He excelled at his studies in school and at university. He was an active member of the church and contributed to every charity that arose. He frequently intervened with his mother on my behalf."

"I would have hated him," Freyja said fervently.

He laughed softly. "Yes," he agreed, "I believe you would."

"And yet," she said, "you were always quarreling with him? You told us so at Lindsey Hall."

"Of course," he said. "Badness usually does not appreciate goodness, Free. I was very, very bad. And Albert was very, very good. He frequently lectured me on goodness, and I just as frequently told him what he could do with his lectures."

His voice was full of his usual careless laughter. It was a mask behind which he hid all the darker shadows of his life, Freyja realized. She had wondered before if the mask hid nothing at all or something. She knew the answer now, though she had not yet penetrated those shadows. She did not want to either. She wanted to be able to remember Josh as a light flirt who during one memorable night had become more to her. She did not want to feel any regrets, any pull of darker memories of a person who might have been worth knowing.

They had walked around another bend in the path. The hillside rose above them here in an almost sheer cliff, and they were again sheltered from the wind. They stopped walking, and Joshua leaned over to rest his elbows on the wall and gaze downward. The moonlight lit his profile. He was smiling.

"If you hated life so much here," she asked him, "why did you stay so long? You left here five years ago. You must already have been-what? Two or three and twenty?"

"Three," he said. "I left Penhallow when I was eighteen. I went to live in Lydmere." He nodded his head in the direction of the village. "I apprenticed myself to a carpenter and learned the trade. I was good at it too. I would have made a decent living from it. I was happy enough, and would have continued to be, I believe."

It was a strange thought that Lady Freyja Bedwyn would never have met Joshua Moore, carpenter, from the Cornish village of Lydmere and would have been unaware of his existence even if their paths had somehow crossed. They would have been from different worlds.

"But then Albert died and you became the heir to all this," she said, "and everything changed."

"Yes." He turned his head to look at her, a strangely mocking smile on his lips. "And then I became Hallmere and could aspire to the hand of a duke's daughter even if only in a fake betrothal. Life is strange, would you not agree?"

But he still had not explained why he had left.

Freyja remembered something then, something she had not particularly noticed at the time. He could no longer remember what he and Albert had quarreled about in the boat on the night Albert died, Joshua had told her family back at Lindsey Hall. How could he not remember? Considering how that night had turned out, surely every last detail must be etched on his memory.

But she would not ask. She really did not want to know-though that was becoming rather a thin argument even in the privacy of her own thoughts.

"Did you not come to Penhallow at all during the years when you were living in the village?" she asked.

"I came once every week on my half-day off from work," he said. "I came to see Prue."

"Poor girl," Freyja said. "Her mother is not at all fond of her, is she?"

"One need never use the word poor to describe Prue," he said. "We tend to view those with physical and mental abilities different from the norm as pitiful creatures with handicaps or disabilities. We talk about cripples and idiots. We view them from our own limited perspective. I once knew a blind person whose sense of wonder at the world put my own limited perceptions to shame. Prue is happy and bubbling over with love-both attributes that many of us allow to lapse with our childhoods. In what sense is she disabled? Or handicapped? Or poor?"

He spoke with an intensity that made him seem unfamiliar to her for a moment. He had been kind and patient with the girl all afternoon as well as during dinner, with no sense of martyrdom or boredom or condescension. Prue had not been the only one brimming over with love. Joshua had reminded her rather strongly of Eve, whom Aidan fondly described as a woman with a bleeding heart and a fondness for lame ducks. Their house was filled with servants whom no one else would employ for one reason or another, including a truly ferocious ex-convict of a housekeeper who would cheerfully die for Eve and whom Freyja admired enormously.

"Perhaps now you have returned," she said, "you will decide to stay-once this nonsense your aunt has been hatching has been cleared up, that is. You would have to have her move elsewhere, of course, but she cannot have been left destitute."

"She has not been," he said. "But she will continue to live here. I will not."

And yet if she were in his place, Freyja thought, she would have to have the satisfaction of ousting the marchioness from Penhallow, of stripping from her all that was not rightfully hers. Even if she did not choose to live here herself, she would not allow the other woman to do so instead. She would enjoy the satisfaction of wreaking some revenge.

But it was none of her business what Joshua did or did not do. He was none of her business.

"A quiet hillside on a starry night," he said, "with the moonlight dancing on the surface of the sea. And a gorgeous woman at my side. Whatever am I about, holding a polite conversation with her and simply admiring the view? I must be losing my touch-and would quickly lose my reputation too if anyone could see me at it." He straightened up from the wall and turned to grin at her.

"You may imagine, if you will," she said, "that my maid is standing a few feet off."

He chuckled softly. "But Aidan said you did not need a chaperone," he reminded her.

"Because Aidan trusted you," she said, "and because he thinks we are betrothed."

"And so we are," he said, "thanks to my aunt and thanks to Bewcastle-and thanks to your decision to accompany me here. Your hair is loose beneath that hood, is it not?"

She had pulled out the pins when she went to her room to fetch her cloak.

"What has that got to do with anything?" she asked haughtily. Now that he had mentioned it, the surroundings were rather conducive to romance-or to dalliance at least. But she had dallied quite enough with Joshua during the past few weeks. They were fortunate indeed that they had not been trapped into having to marry each other. She really ought not to invite any further indiscretions.

But he had closed the distance between them and raised his hands to lift back her hood. Her hair cascaded out about her shoulders and down her back. There was enough wind even in this shaded spot to lift it and waft it about her face.

"It is just, you see," he said, "that a red-blooded male itches to tangle his fingers in such hair, Free. Nothing personal, of course, but I am red-blooded." His fingers played with her hair and then twined themselves into it. "But then of course once he does that, then he cannot resist doing this." He drew her against him and tipped back her head so that she was gazing up into his moonlit face. His eyes, as she fully expected, were dancing with merriment.

"But the trouble is," she said, setting her hands on either side of his waist, "that the woman then feels an almost-irresistible urge to go at that red-blooded male with her fists."

He chuckled. "A good bout of fisticuffs might send us tumbling over the wall and rolling down the hill to get caught in the bushes down there," he said, "all arms and legs and other body parts tangled up together. It might be very interesting indeed. I think I'll take my chances." He lowered his head and rubbed his nose back and forth across hers.

"I cannot think of any reason in the world," she said, "why we should be doing this." Liar, liar.

"You see?" he said, licking at her lips and sending raw sensation sizzling into all the wrong parts of her body-wrong if she wished to walk away from this unscathed, that was. "We are a perfect foil for each other, sweetheart. I cannot think of any reason in the world why we should not be doing this."

"This is for courting couples," she said. "For betrothed couples. For married couples. We are none of those things."

"But we are a man and a woman," he said, dipping his head and speaking with his lips touching the pulse at the base of her throat. Her toes curled up convulsively inside her shoes and one of her hands clutched at his hair and then lost itself within the soft, silky mass of it. "Alone together on a moonlit night. And panting with desire for each other."

"I am not-"

His mouth stopped her protest. Not his lips, but his mouth, open, hot, moist, tempting, seeking, his tongue pressing against her lips and finding its way through into her mouth. She came against him with a low moan, a dull, aching pulse beating between her thighs and up inside her where he had once been.

She fenced with his tongue and got her hands beneath his cloak and under his coat and waistcoat-why did men wear so many layers of clothing?-while his own fondled her breasts beneath her cloak and then moved behind her to cup her buttocks and pull her hard against him, half lifting her as he did so, rubbing her against him so that the ache inside her almost exploded to add to the starlight.

"You are not-?" he prompted her much later, lifting his mouth perhaps an inch away from hers.

"Panting with desire," she said, ignominiously breathless.

He laughed softly. "Heaven help me if you were, then," he said. "Why do you not want to marry me, Free? You cannot have Ravensberg, but I suppose sooner or later you must have someone. Why not me?"

"Must you have someone sooner or later?" she asked sharply, drawing back her head another inch.

"It is different for a man," he said.

"How so?"

"A man likes freedom and no commitment," he said. "He can enjoy dalliance and look for nothing beyond it. Women have nesting instincts. They want homes and fidelity and everlasting romance and babies."

He laughed suddenly and caught her right wrist in his, moving back far enough to look down at her hand.

"What, sweetheart?" he asked. "No fist? I thought that would provoke you if anything could. Ouch!"

Her left fist had caught him a solid blow on the jaw.

"Why do I not want to marry you?" she asked. "Perhaps it is because I feel some pity for your pretty face. If it were within my daily reach for the rest of a lifetime, it would soon be in sorry shape, like the faces of those brutes who are employed to box each other into oblivion for the amusement of gentlemen who choose to wager on blood sports."

He threw back his head and laughed, fingering his jaw and flexing it as he did so.

"We had better get back to the house," he said. "It is perfectly understood, then, is it, that I am footloose and restless and not nearly done with sowing my wild oats, if I ever will be, and that you would rather go through life as a spinster than marry someone who cannot engage your feelings as deeply as they were once engaged? We will never marry, Freyja. But we are attracted to each other, and we tend to erupt like a pair of volcanoes when opportunity presents itself. Shall we avoid such opportunities until we can put an end to them altogether? Or shall we not, but simply enjoy the moment for what it is worth? The moment being the next few days or weeks or whatever."

"You speak as if the next few days can be taken up with nothing but opportunities for dalliance," she said. "There is supposed to be a plot afoot, is there not, to have you accused and convicted of murder. A witness can be a dangerous thing."

"Lord, yes," he agreed. "Half a dozen witnesses could be even more deadly. I wonder if my aunt would be so wise-or so foolish."

"I wonder what really happened that night," she said. But she shook her head even as she was speaking and pulled her hood up over her head again before turning and striding back along the path in the direction of the house. "But I do not want to know."

He fell into step beside her. "Because you fear that I really did kill him?" he asked her.

Was that why she was so reluctant to hear the truth?

"I did threaten to kill him," he said.

"But you did not do it," she said firmly. "You told Aidan you did not when he asked at Lindsey Hall, and I believed you. I still believe you. Would you have killed him if he had lived long enough?"

He was a long time answering. They walked around the corner into the wind again, at their backs now.

"I really do not know," he said. "But I very much fear that perhaps I would not have."

There! That was all she wanted to hear on the subject, Freyja thought, lengthening her stride. She had already heard too much. Something horribly serious had happened that night-apart from the nasty fact that someone had died. And she did not want to know what it was.

I wonder if Hallmere has thought to mention to you that he has the most adorable little bastard son living in the village close to Penhallow with his mother.

The remembered words came back to Freyja in the marchioness's whining voice.

She was the girls' governess until the unfortunate incident forced my husband to dismiss her. They appear not to be suffering. I understand that Hallmere still supports them.

The sordid story had nothing to do with her, Freyja decided. He was not her betrothed and she felt no inclination whatsoever to stand in judgment on him. But she had a horrible suspicion that the quarrel in the boat that night had been about the governess and her child. Had Albert delivered one of his stuffy, self-righteous lectures on the topic? And had Joshua . . . Well, how had he reacted apart from threatening to kill his cousin? Exactly how and why had Albert died?

She did not want to know.

"I have shocked you, sweetheart," Joshua said. "Does this mean there will be no more dalliance between us? You have slain me."

"Is nothing serious to you?" she asked disdainfully.

But she knew the answer to that question now, of course, and really she wished she did not.

Yes, there were many things in his life that were serious to Joshua Moore, Marquess of Hallmere.

She should have said good-bye to him long ago, before she even began to suspect that he was not simply a laughing, carefree rogue too handsome for his own good.

He chuckled softly, found her hand beneath her cloak, and held it as they walked, lacing his fingers with hers.

CHAPTER XVII

Who is it?" Joshua asked, propping himself against the edge of his steward's desk and crossing his arms over his chest. It was early in the morning, but Saunders was already at work in his office.

"Hugh Garnett," Saunders said. "His land is on the other side of the valley-his mother was a baron's daughter. He is prospering by all accounts. He bought more land after taking over from his father a couple of years ago. He is not by any means a gentleman without influence."

"Oh, I know Hugh Garnett." Joshua frowned. "He is a nephew, on his father's side, of Mrs. Lumbard, the marchioness's particular friend. I am not overly surprised. But what would be in it for him, do you suppose, apart from the fact that he has reason to dislike me? He is not the sort of man to do something for nothing."

"He has been displaying some interest in Lady Chastity," Saunders said, "but without any encouragement from either the lady herself or the marchioness. Yet she did invite him to tea here with his aunt and cousin after the return from Bath. It would be a brilliant match for him, of course, especially if it came with her mother's full blessing."

"And more especially if I were not likely to spoil things by coming here to live now that I am betrothed and likely to marry at any time," Joshua said. "I daresay the Reverend Calvin Moore has been brought here as much to woo Constance as to bring moral support and comfort to the marchioness. She rules her world with as much ruthlessness as she ever did, does she not?"

He got to his feet and crossed to the window. It looked out onto the upward slope of the hill. But it was a pretty view nonetheless. The kitchen gardens and flower gardens were back there, as well as several hothouses. Behind them a footpath snaked its way upward past cultivated bushes to the hardy wildflowers closer to the plateau above.

He remembered then what Constance had told him and swung about to look at Jim Saunders. He was a gentleman of perhaps thirty years, perhaps less, who would inherit a very modest fortune and property on the death of his father, though there were a younger brother and several sisters to provide for. He was a pleasant-looking fellow and a hard worker. It was easy to understand why Constance, living in such isolation from men of her own class, would cast her eyes and her dreams on him. Did he return her regard? He was sitting behind his desk, looking down at a closed ledger, no readable expression on his face.

"You must understand, my lord," Saunders said, his voice carefully formal, "that I am relatively new here and have not yet formed firm opinions on everyone in the house and vicinity. I do not know the marchioness well and do not presume to guess her motives. Neither do I know you well. But I am sensible of the fact that I owe my loyalty to you and not to her ladyship."

It was a careful answer. It was not obsequious.

"So you are not sure if there is any truth to these charges you warned me were imminent," he said. "You are wondering if you are employed by a desperate murderer."

"I like to think not," his steward said.

"Thank you." Joshua looked more closely at him. "How did you know? Nothing has been said since my arrival. There has been no constable panting on my doorstep to arrest me. Who told you?"

Saunders straightened the ledger and brought its bottom edge even with the edge of his desk.

"Constance?"

Saunders began to open the book and then let it close again. "She suggested to me that you ought to be informed, my lord," he said.

"Ah," Joshua said softly. "Then I must thank her and thank you for complying with her wishes. It would seem that the plot is not quite cooked and that my arrival might have hindered its smooth progress. Why is it not cooked, I wonder, if there is a witness, a prosperous gentleman, willing to swear that he saw me murder my cousin?"

Saunders looked back at him but did not venture any suggestion.

"I believe," Joshua said, moving away from the window and grinning, "I am about to make the progress of this plot even less smooth, Saunders. I believe I am going to enjoy my day. Tomorrow you may give me a progress report on the new buildings and the repairs that were to be undertaken as soon as the harvest was in. I will want to see the home farm too and speak with my workers and their wives while I am here."

"Yes, my lord," his steward said, "I am at your command anytime you wish."

Joshua left the office wing of the house to see if any of the family or guests were up yet. But he must have been with Saunders longer than he had realized. Almost everyone was already assembled in the breakfast parlor.

"Good morning," he said, striding inside. "And a crisp, bright one it looks to be. Perhaps we could all drive or ride into Lydmere later? It is a pretty little fishing village with a harbor and beach below it. Ah, Freyja." He took her hand in his, raised it to his lips, and kept it there a little longer than was necessary while he smiled into her eyes.

He might as well amuse himself by annoying both her and his aunt, he thought. Freyja's eyebrows arched upward, Alleyne grinned, Calvin cleared his throat, and his aunt smiled sweetly.

But playing the ardent lover was easier than living the reality of a fake betrothal, he decided, as he helped himself to food from the sideboard and seated himself at the head of the table. Last night's embrace had been more frustrating than satisfying, especially since he now knew what it was like to take an embrace with Freyja to its completion. He was, he had realized last night, in grave danger of falling ever so slightly in love with Freyja Bedwyn. He was going to have to work diligently to keep their relationship to its familiar pattern. The last thing he wanted was to be seriously in love with anyone.

He joined in the general conversation until Eve and Aidan, the last to arrive, since they had been in the nursery with their children, had sat down and begun to eat.

"It has occurred to me," he said, "that my homecoming will be an occasion to be remarked upon in the neighborhood-and I daresay my arrival did not go unnoticed yesterday. When it is known that I have also brought home with me my future bride, the occasion will be seen as one to be celebrated indeed. A grand ball at Penhallow would be in order-perhaps one week hence? I will see to most of the arrangements myself, but I have not been here for five years and doubtless do not know everyone who lives in the neighborhood now. You will help me with the guest list, I trust, Aunt? And Constance and Chastity too?"

Constance, flushed and bright-eyed, nodded her acquiescence. Chastity smiled.

"What a perfectly delightful idea, Joshua," his aunt said, smiling sweetly, "even if I am still in mourning for your dear uncle. But you must remember that this is neither London nor Bath. There are very few families of any note living within ten miles of Penhallow. A small dinner and reception will be more in order. I will send out the invitations myself and make arrangements with the cook."

"About the dainties to be served at the ball, yes," he said, smiling at her. "Thank you, Aunt. I would appreciate that. I made many friends during my years in Lydmere. A number of them would enjoy kicking up their heels in the ballroom here, I daresay. And there are all my tenants, as well as the workers on my property. It will be like a village assembly more than a ton ball. It is to be hoped that your more genteel friends will not be offended by it, Aunt. I understand that Mrs. Lumbard has returned from Bath with her daughter. We will invite them. Perhaps her nephew will escort them-Hugh Garnett, is it?"

His aunt noticeably paled and stared at him with pinched lips. Chastity's fork clattered to her plate.

"He does escort his aunt about occasionally, I hear," Joshua said. "Indeed, I believe he escorted her here to tea quite recently?"

The Bedwyns were all watching and listening with avid interest, he noticed. Constance was staring at her plate, though she was not eating. Chastity's wide eyes were fixed upon Joshua's face. Calvin cleared his throat again.

"And so he did," his aunt said. "A pleasant young man. Edwina Lumbard dotes on him."

"And yet, Aunt," Joshua said, "I believe he must have upset you badly when he ripped open old wounds that were perhaps beginning to heal."

"Whatever do you mean, Joshua?" She set one hand over her heart while her shoulders sagged and her face looked haggard and pathetic.

"I believe," he said, "Garnett suggested to you, Aunt, that Albert's death five years ago was not accidental, but that he was, in fact, murdered. And I believe that he named me as the murderer."

"Oh, no, Joshua," Eve said, her hand too over her heart.

"Why, the devil!" Alleyne exclaimed.

"If this is correct," Aidan said, "it is a serious charge indeed, Joshua."

"Gracious heavens," Freyja said, raising her coffee cup to her lips with a perfectly steady hand. "Am I betrothed to a murderer? How very diverting!"

Chastity was looking deathly pale. So was Constance.

The Reverend Calvin Moore got to his feet, cleared his throat again, and raised his hands, as if he were about to speak a benediction.

"You are quite right, Hallmere," he said. "Such a suggestion has indeed been made. Mr. Garnett claims to have been a witness to the events of the night on which my cousin died. It was because of this that Cousin Corinne summoned me here. She felt the need of a man, and a relative, to advise her. But this is hardly the time or the place to discuss such a distressing matter."

"I cannot think of a better time or place," Joshua said, smiling at him. "Do sit down again, Calvin. We are all family or potential family here."

The marchioness was clutching her throat, her face suddenly gray. "Joshua, my dear," she said faintly. "I never for a moment believed a word Mr. Garnett said. I do not know why he would say such things. But I did indeed feel the need to consult with someone wiser than I, a man, someone in the family. And Cousin Calvin is a clergyman."

"I hope my unexpected arrival yesterday did not discompose you too severely, Calvin," Joshua said. "But I assure you that you are quite safe here with me. I was with Albert the night he drowned, but I did not kill him. When was I to be summoned home to defend myself against these charges, Aunt? Or did your letter to Lindsey Hall pass me while I was on my way here?"

"You must understand, Joshua," she said, "that I was dreadfully upset. I did not know what to do. I urged Cousin Calvin to come to advise me. I did not want to bring you here where you might be in danger."

"That was remarkably thoughtful of you," he said.

"Well." She dabbed at her lips with her napkin. "You are my nephew. You have always been like my son."

"Constance," he said, turning his eyes on her, "do you believe that I might have murdered your brother?"

She raised her eyes to his. "No," she said. "No, I do not, Joshua."

"Chass?" He looked at the girl, who was still staring at him with wide eyes in a pale face. "Do you believe it?"

She shook her head slowly. "No," she whispered.

"Calvin?" he asked his cousin, who had just resumed his seat.

Calvin cleared his throat-a habit with him, it seemed. "You were ever a mischievous boy, Hallmere," he said. "But you were never vicious, as far as I recall. I would believe this of you only if the evidence were to prove your guilt beyond any reasonable doubt."

"Fair enough," Joshua said. "Freyja?"

"The morning is slipping by while we talk such nonsense," she said, her nose in the air, her tone haughty. "I am eager for the ride into the village you have promised us."

"Oh, so am I, Joshua," Morgan said.

"And I daresay the children are champing at the bit in their eagerness to be taken outside," Aidan added. "I would be pleased to accompany you on a visit to Mr. Garnett later today, though, Joshua. I suppose you do intend to call on him?"

"Indeed," Joshua said. "Calvin, you had better come along too."

His aunt dabbed at her lips again. "Mr. Garnett is from home," she said.

"Indeed, ma'am?" Aidan said.

"I would have invited him here to speak with Cousin Calvin if he had not been," she said. "I am as eager as anyone to hear him admit that he was mistaken. But he has gone away for a few days."

"Indeed." Joshua regarded her with some amusement.

"At such a time?" Alleyne was all amazement. "When he should be going to a magistrate with his evidence? But what I cannot understand, I must confess, Joshua, is why he has waited for five years and why he has decided to come forward now."

"Garnett is from home, I daresay," Joshua said, "in order to think through his evidence with more care. He would be foolish to proceed too hastily, would he not, especially after waiting so long. Any trial would pit his word against mine, and I am, after all, the Marquess of Hallmere. It is to be hoped that he does not prove overzealous, though. He needs to remember that a fishing boat-I assume it was a fishing boat from which he witnessed this dastardly crime-would have been perfectly visible to me and, more to the point, to Albert. Why did he row away and offer no assistance? Was he afraid that I would murder him too?"

"You make light of the matter, Joshua," his aunt said in her plaintive whine. "But it may prove serious indeed. I could not bear to lose another son or a nephew who has always been as dear as a son to me. I might almost suggest that you leave now while you may, and disappear. At least you would be safe then."

"Ah, but I would hate myself if I were to take the coward's way out," Joshua said, grinning.

"And I would hate not to be mistress of Penhallow," Freyja said disdainfully as she got to her feet. "But this conversation grows more and more tedious. I am going riding, even if I must do so alone."

The Bedwyns all got to their feet too, and the others followed suit, except for the marchioness, who looked too ill and frail to move.

"Since Garnett is not to be confronted today, then," Joshua said, "we might as well enjoy the good weather. Shall we meet in the hall half an hour from now? The children and Prue too? Come, Aunt, you must not upset yourself further. I shall have a few harsh words for Garnett when I do see him for having so preyed upon your delicate sensibilities. Allow me to help you to your room." He offered her his arm and she had little choice but to take it.

"I hope you will talk to him, Joshua," she said, leaning heavily upon him. "I really cannot bear all this."

It was quickly apparent to Freyja that Joshua was very well liked both at Penhallow and in the village of Lydmere. The servants, she noticed at the house, had a habit of smiling brightly at him even whenever they served him or were in his line of vision. She could not help but make the comparison between them and the servants at Lindsey Hall, who would no more have dreamed of smiling at Wulfric than they would of breaking into song and dance in his presence.

In Lydmere the reaction was even more marked. He was recognized instantly as he rode along beside Freyja at the head of their party. Everywhere people were curtsying or bowing or tugging at their forelocks. That was not so remarkable in itself since he was the Marquess of Hallmere, but, in addition, every face was wreathed in smiles, and some of the bolder villagers even called out greetings. Predictably-oh, utterly so, she thought, half in exasperation, half in a grudging admiration-Joshua was down off his horse at the first opportunity and tossing the reins to Alleyne before shaking hands and clasping shoulders and even kissing a few withered female cheeks.

His face was alight with merriment and affection.

It was the moment at which Freyja realized fully what grave peril she was in. Every minute was revealing more and more of his humanity to her. This morning at breakfast he had been bold and forthright, a hint of ruthlessness behind his courtesy and his smile. She might have been able to resist that man. Now he was full of warmth and laughter and concern for the friendship of people Freyja did not normally consider worthy of notice-it was a strangely shameful realization. This man was altogether harder to resist. He was so very different from any other man of her class and acquaintance.

Of course, she might have been forewarned and have avoided all this. He had gone rushing to the rescue of a servant girl who had been frightened by a squirrel, had he not?

But he did not neglect the relatives and guests he had brought to the village for an outing. They stabled their horses at the village inn and went inside for tea or ale and muffins. They sat in the public taproom, and he proceeded to point out various details of the view from the window and to describe other attractions they might find of interest. Eve and Aidan did not stay long. They took the children back outside and down onto the beach Joshua had indicated-not as wide as the private beach of Penhallow on the other side of the river, but just as picturesque in its own way with its several jetties and numerous boats bobbing on the sea or stranded on the sand, the water being at half-tide. Chastity took Prue with them. Calvin invited Constance to stroll along the front street with him, and after a while Morgan and Alleyne went to explore the narrow, sloping streets and to look in the few shops the village offered.

Joshua introduced Freyja to Isaac Perrie, the innkeeper-a novel experience for her. He was a bald-headed, gap-toothed, florid-faced giant of a man.

"A fine lady you have found for yourself, lad," he said, pumping Joshua's hand, which looked lost in his huge paw. "And right glad we all will be in Lydmere here when you marry her and come home to Penhallow to stay."

He settled in for a chat, standing wide-legged before them, wiping his hands on his large apron. Freyja could not decide whether to feel amused or outraged but decided upon the former. Life with Joshua was never dull.

"And Hugh Garnett," Joshua was saying when she brought her attention back to the conversation. "He is doing well, I hear."

The innkeeper tutted and tossed his glance ceilingward. "Aye, well enough," he said. "On ill-gotten gains, no doubt. But live and let live is my motto, lad, as you well know."

"He seems not quite prepared to let me live, though," Joshua said with a chuckle. "In fact, he has been to my aunt recently claiming to have seen me kill my cousin five years ago."

"No!" Mr. Perrie stopped wiping his hands for a moment. "Is he daft?"

"He is from home," Joshua said, "and so I cannot pay him a social call yet. I daresay he has been wise enough to go to round up a few other witnesses. Any wagers on who they will be?"

"I am not daft enough to make any wager," the man said. "There would be no one to bet against me. Leave the matter in my hands, lad. You take your lady out to see the sights. An honor and a privilege to make your acquaintance, ma'am."

The fresh sea breeze caught at Freyja's hat as they stepped out of the inn, and she raised an arm to hold it in place.

"What was that all about?" she asked.

"Hugh Garnett," he explained, "attempted to set up a smuggling business here a number of years ago. There was nothing in that to get excited about-smuggling is big business all along the south coast of England. But his underlings were an imported gang of thugs, and they attempted to rule the trade with an iron fist. They were persuaded of their mistake and took themselves off to other parts."

"I take it," she said, "that you were one of the people who did the persuading. And that Isaac Perrie was another?"

He chuckled and took her elbow.

"There is someone I want you to meet," he said.

He took her to a pretty whitewashed cottage close to the harbor and knocked on the door. It was the home of Richard Allwright, the elderly carpenter who had trained and employed Joshua. He and his wife invited them in and insisted upon their drinking another cup of tea before Mrs. Allwright proudly displayed a small, beautifully carved wooden table that Joshua had made under her husband's tutelage and given her when he finished his apprenticeship.

"It is one of my treasures," she told Freyja.

"You had real talent, Josh," Freyja said, running her hand over the smooth surface of the wood and trying to picture him as he must have been in those days.

"Have, ma'am, not had," Mr. Allwright assured her. "Carpentry is a talent that does not die even when it is not practiced. And so now, lad, you are going to waste your time being a marquess instead of earning an honest living, are you?" But he laughed heartily and dug Joshua in the ribs with his elbow. "It is good to see you home. I never could understand why you felt you had to leave. You will like it here, ma'am."

"I believe I will," Freyja said, feeling, strangely, that she spoke the truth. Or that it would be the truth if she had any intention of staying. She had not expected to like Cornwall, but there was something about this particular part of it that grabbed at her heart.

"There is someone I want you to meet," Joshua said after they had left the carpenter's house.

"Again?" Freyja said.

He looked at her and grinned.

"This is not quite your idea of an exciting morning, I suppose," he said.

He was like a boy, exuberant with happiness. She tipped her head to one side and regarded him through eyes narrowed against the glare of the sun.

"Josh," she said, "why did you leave here?"

Some of the light went out of his eyes as they stood outside the door facing each other.

"Albert was dead and I was the heir," he said. "My aunt and uncle were devastated by grief and inclined to blame me, though murder was never mentioned. I blamed myself. I rowed beside him until he was within his depth, but I did not watch him all the way to shore. He got leg cramps and went under, I suppose. I could not stay here after that."

It did not sound sufficient reason to her. Surely his uncle would have wanted him to stay, to learn his future responsibilities. But it was none of her business.

"Whom did you want me to meet this time?" she asked.

He brightened, offered his arm, and climbed a steep hill with her until they reached another picturesque cottage with rosebushes climbing all over the front wall and a view down over the rooftops to the harbor. He knocked on the door.

The woman who opened it was young and personable. Her eyes lit up as soon as they looked on Joshua.

"Joshua!" she exclaimed, reaching out two slim hands to him. "Is it really you? Oh, it is. What a wonderful surprise."

Freyja guessed in some shock as Joshua presented her to Anne Jewell that this must be the governess who had borne his child. She was introduced as Miss Anne Jewell, yet she had a child, a little boy about five years old, who was blond and blue-eyed, with all the potential of being a lady-killer when he grew up. His mother had him make his bow to the Marquess of Hallmere and Lady Freyja Bedwyn before he ducked out of sight behind her skirts.

They did not go inside even though they were invited to do so. They all stood on the threshold for a few minutes, talking. Freyja fought outrage. It was true that she was not really betrothed to Joshua. Nevertheless, it showed poor taste on his part to bring her here.

"Now what have I done, sweetheart?" he asked as they made their way back down the hill in the direction of the harbor. She had not responded to any of his conversational overtures.

"Done?" she said in her frostiest, most quelling tones.

"You were not jealous, were you?" he asked, chuckling. "She is not nearly as gorgeous as you, Free."

She was truly angry then and wrenched her arm free of his.

"You might show more loyalty," she said. "She does, after all, mean more to you than I do. As she ought."

He stood still on the pavement and looked quizzically at her.

"Uh-oh," he said. "I perceive my aunt's malice at play here. And you fell for it, Free? Do you not know me better? She always did believe I was Anne Jewell's seducer and father of her son. I let her believe it. I have never cared for her good opinion."

Freyja felt horribly mortified then. For of course she had heard it from the marchioness and had not thought of questioning the essential truth of the accusation. How very foolish of her.

"You are not the boy's father?" she asked. "But he looks like you."

"And also like his mother," he said. "Did you notice that she has fair hair and blue eyes?"

"Do you support her and the child?" she asked. "That is what your aunt told me."

"Not entirely any longer." He smiled at her. "She takes in one or two pupils now, Free, and refuses to take any more from me than she absolutely needs, but the time was when she was not at all well accepted here. These people are kind but not always as tolerant as they might be. They are humans, not saints. She was destitute and had no family to go to."

Freyja drew in a slow breath and turned to walk on, her hands clasped behind her back. But he was beginning to look something like a saint, and she did not like it one bit. If she was to have any chance against him, she had to have something to despise.

"Let me guess," she said, wondering why the truth had not whacked her over the head long before now. "Albert?"

"Yes, Albert," he said. "And it was not with Anne's consent. She has altogether better taste than that."

They had reached the bottom of the hill and turned to stroll along the street that ran parallel to the beach. Becky and Davy were cavorting along the sands with a few other children while Eve and Aidan looked on. They all seemed to be shrieking and making merry. Prue was sitting up on the side of one of the beached fishing boats, swinging her legs and looking excited and happy while Chastity talked with an older woman and a young man hovered close to Prue as if to catch her should she fall. Constance and the Reverend Calvin Moore were at the far end of the street.

"Why did you not simply tell your uncle?" Freyja asked. "Ought he not to have known?"

"What would Bewcastle do," he asked her, "if he discovered that one of your brothers had impregnated your governess or Morgan's?"

"He would thrash the offender within an inch of his life," she said with conviction.

He laughed softly. "Ah, yes," he said, "I believe Bewcastle would. I also believe none of your brothers would put him in such a position. I cannot know how my uncle would have reacted, but I can guess. He would have gone to my aunt, and she would not only have dismissed the governess, but would also have driven her out of the neighborhood. Anne would have found herself destitute and with child and a vagrant to boot. She would have ended up in prison somewhere. Her son would have been fortunate to survive."

"And so you allowed the blame to be put upon you," she said.

"I have broad shoulders," he said, shrugging.

And probably very little money for the past five years-until he inherited the title, she thought. And yet through most of those years he had supported a child who was not his own.

"I find you rather stupid," she said scornfully. "Remarkably stupid, in fact. I am enormously relieved that we will never be married."

And she stuck her nose in the air and went striding off toward Eve and Aidan, trying to convince herself that she had just spoken the truest words she had ever uttered.

She hated him.

She really did.

How dare he be so foolishly noble!

How ridiculous all this was.

She wished fervently that she had not so impulsively decided to come here with him. She wished she were back at Lindsey Hall. She wished she had never gone to Bath. She wished she had never met the Marquess of Hallmere.

No, she did not.

"Sweetheart." He was coming along beside her, she realized. "You are doubly gorgeous when your temper is up. No, make that triply gorgeous."

She almost shamed herself by laughing. She lofted her nose into the air instead.

CHAPTER XVIII

Constance and Chastity sat down with Joshua during the afternoon and helped him draw up a list of guests to invite to the ball. Despite the splendor of the ballroom at Penhallow, he could not remember its ever being used. As his aunt had pointed out at breakfast, there were not enough families close by of sufficiently high social status to merit an invitation.

"We will invite everyone," he explained. "I suppose the inhabitants have not changed a great deal in five years, but you must help me make sure I have forgotten no one."

"A real ball," Chastity said, her eyes shining, "in the splendid Penhallow ballroom. I am so glad you did not allow Mama to talk you out of it, Joshua." She flushed, apparently at her own disloyalty. "And I am glad you did not allow her to force you into marrying Constance."

Constance flushed pink too.

"Perhaps," he said, his eyes twinkling, "Constance likes Cousin Calvin better." He had been right in his guess this morning, of course. His aunt was doing her best to promote a match between them.

"Oh, no, Joshua," Constance said gravely.

"Constance likes Mr. Saunders better," Chastity said.

"And you, Chass?" he asked. "Do you like Hugh Garnett?"

He had meant it as a teasing question, one over which they would all laugh. But she stared at him with stricken eyes, her face paling.

"I would not give my consent anyway," he told her hastily. "I am your guardian, remember?"

She smiled, her lips as pale as her face.

"You are Prue's guardian as well," she said. "Will you allow her to be cooped up in the nursery for the rest of her life, Joshua? Or sent to an asylum?"

"An asylum?" he said, frowning. "That has not been mentioned again, has it?"

When it had first became obvious that Prue was not as other children were, her mother had wanted her sent to an asylum for the insane. Fortunately it was one of the few matters over which Joshua's uncle had asserted his will, and Prue had stayed. Chastity had devoted most of her girlhood to being a companion to her sister. Joshua had helped, as had Constance to a lesser degree.

"If you come here to live and we have to remove to the dower house, Mama says she will have no choice but to send her away," Chastity said. "Her nerves would not be able to bear having Prue within her sight every day."

Joshua sighed. He had appointed a good and competent steward to look after his estate and had considered his duty to his new position done. But he was Chastity's guardian and Prue's too. Perhaps after all it was neglectful of him to have stayed away-and to be planning to leave again as soon as this business with Garnett had been cleared up. It was an admission he did not want to make.

"Prue will have a home at Penhallow as long as I am alive and marquess here," he said. "And the whole of the house will be hers to use as well as the nursery. Is Miss Palmer good for her?"

"Mama calls her an improper governess," Chastity said, "because she does not even try teaching Prue most of the things governesses usually teach. But she has taught Prue all sorts of things nevertheless, and she takes her outdoors, where Prue loves to be. Prue can tend the sorriest-looking plants and make them grow into a lovely garden. She is not insane, Joshua. She is just . . . different."

"You are preaching to the converted," he said, smiling at her. "You and she were with Mrs. Turner and Ben Turner down at the harbor this morning?"

"Mrs. Turner adores Prue," Chastity said. She hesitated. "And I believe Ben does too. Mama would have an apoplexy."

Joshua drew a slow breath. Devil take it, it looked as if he was going to have to stay awhile. His aunt was the mother of these girls, of course, and therefore their rightful guardian even if not their legal one. But he could see nothing but unhappiness all around him. Here were two young ladies-both in their twenties-who had not yet been given any chance of a life of their own. And Prue was now grown up-she was eighteen. They could no longer continue to think of her as a child, though he gathered that his aunt preferred not to think of her at all. She seemed incapable of thinking of anyone's happiness but her own.

He wished then that he had not come back after all.

Would the problems vanish, then, if he were not here to see them?

Could he so selfishly ignore his responsibilities?

"I'll speak with Miss Palmer," he said. "And we will talk another time of what is best for Prue. But now, to our list. We have ten names on it so far. I believe we need a few more if we are to outnumber the members of the orchestra."

Constance laughed.

"An orchestra?" Chastity asked, her eyes shining again. "Really, Joshua? How magical this ball is going to be."

Some time later Joshua made his way up the steep path behind the house, the sun warm on his body, though he knew it would feel cooler when he reached the top and was no longer sheltered from the wind. For the first time in seven months he really felt like the Marquess of Hallmere. He felt weighted down by responsibility. The really alarming thing, though, was that it did not feel like an oppressive weight. His cousins needed him here even if everything else could be managed by a steward, and he was fond of them. Now he had the power to do something positive to make their lives happier-and the power not to do so. He could go away and leave them to his aunt's care, or he could stay and assert his guardianship.

Strangely, he had spared scarcely a thought all afternoon for the murder charge that still hung over his head. It was difficult to take it seriously.

The path brought him up out of the valley, and, as expected, a gust of wind assaulted him. He looked back down toward the house and gardens, to the river and the bridge below them, to the village just visible beyond the headland on the other side of the valley. And he turned to look at the land swelling slightly to his left, rough with stone outcroppings and coarse grass and gorse bushes and wildflowers. The sheep of the home farm were dotted about the land, grazing. To his right the land sloped downward and leveled off into a neat patchwork of fields separated by stone walls and a few hedges. The main road came up out of the valley not far away and snaked its way between the fields and stretched ahead as far as the eye could see, on its way to Land's End.

His land. His farms. And the farms of his tenants.

A totally unexpected love for it all hit him like a low blow to the stomach. Good Lord, had he taken leave of his senses?

He shook his head and turned left to stride in the direction of the cliffs. The Bedwyns were an energetic lot, as he had discovered at Lindsey Hall. The ride into Lydmere during the morning and the romp on the beach had not been enough for them. They had come up here at his direction to see the view. He had promised to join them as soon as he had finished drawing up the guest list for the ball.

Soon he could see them in the distance. The children and Prue were dashing about, a safe distance from the cliff top. It looked as if they were chasing sheep-a favorite childhood pastime of his own. But the sheep-sensible creatures-showed no signs of real panic but merely bobbed off a safe distance just before they could be caught, and then returned to the serious business of grazing. Eve was sitting on a flat rock, her arms clasped about her knees while Aidan sprawled on the ground beside her. Morgan and Alleyne were strolling along the headland some distance away. There was no sign of Freyja.

Prue spotted him first and came lumbering toward him in her characteristic ungainly manner, her elbows clamped to her sides, her hands flapping in the air. She was laughing and excited, and he opened his arms and braced himself as she hurtled into them and took her usual death grip on his neck.

"Josh!" she cried. "Josh, Josh, Josh. I am having such fun. I like Becky and I like Davy. I love Eve and I love you and-"

He released himself gently from her hold, set an arm about her shoulders, and hugged her to his side.

"You love everyone, Prue," he said. "You should save your breath and just tell me that you love everyone. Are you chasing sheep?"

"Ye-e-es." She laughed. "Eve said we could if we did not hurt them. Davy does not want to hurt them. Becky does not want to hurt them. I do not want to hurt them. I love sheep." She beamed up at him.

"Where is Freyja?" he asked.

"Looking at the sea," she said. "She likes it. She likes me. She let me hold her hand and pull her up the path."

Freyja had done that? he thought in some astonishment.

"I held her hand because she is lonely," Prue said. "I made her feel a bit better. You will make her all better, Josh."

Freyja lonely? Now that was a strange notion, but very possibly deadly accurate. Prue sometimes had unexpectedly sharp perceptions, which were quite unhampered by expectations that had been processed through thought and intellect. It was a novel thought, though. Freyja lonely?

"Joshua," Eve said as he came up to them, "this is all quite breathtakingly lovely. I am so glad we came here instead of going to the Lake District. After you are married to Freyja, we are going to be angling for invitations all the time. Are we not, Aidan?" Her eyes were dancing with laughter.

Aidan reached up with a blade of grass and tickled her behind the ear with it. She laughed out loud as she batted it away.

"I am going to have to teach you some manners, my lady," Aidan said, poker-faced.

Joshua felt a curious lurching sensation low in his abdomen. He tended to think of marriage as an outlet for passion, the sort of sexual passion one might find elsewhere without having to make a lifetime commitment. But here was an aspect of marriage that was altogether more enticing-strangely so, perhaps, when there was no overt sign of the passion that he guessed must flare when the two of them were alone and private together. They were relaxing together, laughing together-Aidan was laughing despite the deliberately severe expression-and teasing each other.

"Might I say," Aidan said as Prue skipped off to join the children in their play, "that your handling of that ridiculous situation at breakfast this morning quite won my admiration, Joshua? Bringing the whole thing out into the open as you did was clearly the very best thing to do."

"I learned early," Joshua said, "not to play my aunt's games her way."

"But what if that man-Garnett, is it?-should bring along more witnesses?" Eve asked. "Today is all so lovely and so peaceful that I keep having to remind myself that someone is trying to frame you for murder."

"I have no worries about it." Joshua smiled. "It is just a nuisance of a matter that needs to be cleared up once and for all. Where is Freyja?"

"She found a hollow back there to sit in," Aidan said, indicating the cliffs behind him with his thumb. "I do believe she is awestruck."

Joshua knew just the place she must have found. It was like a scoop of land hollowed out with a giant cup, its floor grassy, its three sides a mixture of rock and firm earth. On the fourth side the cliffs fell away beyond a grassy lip almost sheer to the beach and sea beneath. It was a place that was sheltered from most winds unless they were coming directly from the south.

She was sitting in the middle of the hollow, her legs stretched out before her, her arms braced on the grass behind her taking her weight. She had changed out of the smart riding habit and hat she had worn this morning. Now she was wearing a muslin dress and a warm-looking cloak. Her hair, predictably, was loose down her back.

"This was my childhood fortress," he said, standing on the rim of the hollow above her, "and my ship's mast and my eagle's aerie and my haven for all sorts of dreams."

She lifted her face to the sun as he came down to stand and then sit beside her.

"I have never been fond of the sea," she said. "It has always seemed too vast to me, too mysterious, too . . . powerful. One could never control the sea, could one?"

"And you like to feel in control of everything?" he asked her.

"I am a woman," she said. "Women have very little control over anything in their lives. We are not even persons by right, but the property of some man. We have to fight for every bit of control we can wield over our own destinies. I have four powerful brothers. I have had to fight harder than most. But I could not fight the sea."

"Neither could I, if it is any comfort," he said. "The sea is there to remind us all how little and how powerless we really are. That is not necessarily a bad thing. We do dreadful things with the power we do have. But you sounded when you first spoke as if perhaps you have forgiven the sea."

"It is exalting too," she said. "All that freedom and energy. I feel as if I am gazing into eternity. The beach below is private, is it not? It belongs to Penhallow."

"It does," he said. "I'll take you there one day. It is wide and golden when the tide is out and nonexistent when the tide is in. It can be dangerous. The tide comes in fast at the end and one can be cut off from the valley if one is not careful to be back there in time."

"And if one is not?" she asked. "One drowns?"

"Or one climbs the cliff," he said. "I used to do it sometimes just for the thrill of it, even when the tide was out. It looks sheer, but of course there are numerous foot- and handholds. It's dangerous, though. One slip and I would have been dashed to pieces on my way down and you would never have met me."

"I would have climbed too if I had lived here with you," she said, her teeth bared, the reckless light of a challenge in her eyes. "And I would have raced you to the top."

He chuckled. "We will never know, will we?" he said.

She pointed ahead, out into the sea. "What is that island?" she asked him. "Is it inhabited?"

"It was a smuggling haunt a long time ago," he said. "But no longer, as far as I know. It is wild and deserted."

"Have you ever been there?" she asked.

"I used to row over there once in a while," he told her. "Sometimes with friends, more often alone. I liked the solitude, the chance to think and dream without interruption."

"It must be difficult to get to," she said. "The water looks choppy about it, and there are steep cliffs rising straight from the sea."

"There are a few harbors," he said. "Are you afraid of the sea?"

"I am not afraid of anything," she said, lifting her chin into the air in that characteristically arrogant gesture of hers.

"Liar," he said. "You are afraid."

"Nonsense!" she said while he kept a wary eye on her hands. But she kept them propped behind her. "Take me there. One day-tomorrow. Just you and me. Just the two of us."

He had not been on water in any small craft since that night. He had not even realized until this moment that he was reluctant to go back out. He gazed down at the sea where he and Albert had sat and argued until Albert had dived overboard and then refused to get back in. He turned his head and gazed at the point beyond the river where Albert had been standing chest-deep in water when he, Joshua, had deemed him safe and gone off around the next headland to clear his head and decide what his next move must be.

He closed his eyes, wishing that the memories would go away. All of them.

"I believe," Freyja said, "that you are the one who is afraid, Josh."

He turned his head to grin at her.

"Tomorrow?" he said. "Just the two of us? Are you willing to face such danger? And I am not referring to the boat ride."

She turned and looked at him, her eyebrows arched. She stared at him for long moments before answering, and he felt a distinct tightening in his groin.

"I am willing," she said at last. "But I do wish, Josh, that I could still see you now as I saw you when we were in Bath-as just a charming, shallow rake."

He grinned at her.

"But I am exactly those things, sweetheart," he said. "I just happen to have had an interesting childhood and to have got myself hopelessly entangled in a pile of nonsense before I left here. It has caught up to me now, it seems, and must be dealt with once and for all. But this is a minor hiccup in my frivolous life."

"I wish I could believe you," she said, sitting up and hugging her knees.

And he wished Prue had not suggested to him that Freyja was lonely. He wanted to think of her as strong and independent and contemptuous of all lesser mortals. Yet she had lost the man she had grown up to marry, and she had lost the man she had loved passionately. No, he had not really wanted to get to know Freyja Bedwyn any more than she had wanted to know him.

Their light flirtation in Bath had been so very enjoyable.

He grinned at her, and she continued to look haughtily back at him. But the usual light, flirtatious antagonism was no longer there between them. Something subtle had changed. He thought desperately of a way to lighten the atmosphere. But she foiled him by lifting one hand and setting her fingertips feather-light against his cheek. For a moment he had the absurd feeling that there was not enough air in the hollow to be drawn into his lungs. He lifted his hand to take hers, and turned his head to kiss her palm.

"Are you sure you do not want me to invite anyone else to join us on this island excursion?" he asked her.

"I am sure," she said. "No one else."

Lord! He was fit to explode. Much more of this and he would dive off the cliff to cool himself in the sea-except that the tide was out.

The devil of it was, Joshua thought as she leaned forward and set her lips against his, that he could no longer remember why their betrothal was fake, why they were going to have to end it sooner or later. There was a reason, was there not? Something about his not being ready to settle down? Something about her loving someone else?

But his thought processes were made sluggish by the fact that they were embracing. Somehow he was lying on his back and she was half lying on top of him. They were kissing each other, not with wild passion, or even with lusty hunger, but with soft, almost lazy kisses that seemed far more dangerous to Joshua. He was holding her face cupped in both hands. Her hands were in his hair, her fingertips lightly stroking his head. Both of them had their eyes open.

Lord!

A passionate Freyja was a keg of powder exploding. A tender Freyja was far more deadly.

"Mmm," he said against her lips. "My memories of this hollow will forever be changed."

How long they would have continued to exchange soft kisses he did not know. Someone was clearing his throat above them.

"Lovely view, Morg, would you not agree?" Alleyne asked. "Though I would advise you to look outward rather than downward. You may get vertigo."

"I would advise you to find another lookout point," Joshua said as Freyja sat up and Morgan laughed. "This one is taken."

"Tut, tut," Alleyne said. "Such a gracious host. We are not wanted, Morg. But Davy has caught a sheep, I see, and is attempting to ride it. I had better go to the rescue."

"Of Davy or the sheep?" Morgan asked.

They disappeared.

"That excursion is going to be very dangerous, you know," Joshua said, lacing his fingers behind his head while Freyja pushed her hair back from her face and tucked it behind her ears before clasping her knees again.

"I know," she said.

"But you are not afraid?"

"No," she said. "Are you?"

"Mortally." He chuckled, though he was deadly serious. "I may not be able to keep my hands off you, sweetheart."

The sun came out behind her head as she turned it to look down at him, and converted the untamed waves of her hair to a golden halo all about her face. She looked strangely and suddenly beautiful to him.

"Perhaps I will not be able to keep mine off you," she said, looking steadily down at him.

The hollow felt airless again.

"It should be an interesting day," he said.

"Yes."

God help them, he thought, now what were they getting themselves into? Deep waters, no doubt, in more ways than one.

There had to be a reason why they were not going to marry. They had both been so adamant about it.

What the devil was the reason? He might be able to save himself if he could remember it.

"When I say my prayers tonight," he said, "I will offer one up for no rain."

He grinned at her.

CHAPTER XIX

F reyja prayed for rain or-better yet-snow. Then she caught herself playing coward and petitioned the divine weather-maker for cloudless sunshine and midsummer temperatures instead.

Some time very early-it was not even light-she tossed back the bedcovers, crossed her room to the window, and looked out. There was not a cloud in the sky-which did not mean, of course, that it was going to be a lovely day. Often a bright start gave way to clouds and rain later. And a sunny day at this time of year often came with arctic temperatures. But the window was open, she realized, and she was not even shivering.

Whatever had possessed her? She was afraid of the sea. She was mortally afraid of being cast adrift on its surface in a small fishing boat. But she had demanded to be taken across to that alarmingly distant island. It was not that prospect that had disturbed her sleep, though. After all, she was Freyja Bedwyn, and it was in her nature to confront her fears head-on whenever a challenge presented itself.

Take me there. One day-tomorrow. Just you and me. Just the two of us.

Where had the words come from? Why not an excursion for all of them? It would surely be possible to hire more than one boat. There was safety in numbers.

Just you and me. Just the two of us.

She was in far deeper with Josh than she cared to admit. She had realized that during the night when she had caught herself during one wakeful spell trying to convince herself that she was not over Kit. But she was. She was beginning to use her old passion for him as a shield behind which to hide. Kit was happy with Lauren and she with him, and there was no longer any pang of grief or anger in the realization. That part of her life was over and done with.

But if she was over Kit, what was there to stop her from loving Josh?

She dared not love him. Even though he was not nearly as shallow a person as she had taken him for when they were in Bath, he nevertheless was not a man it would be wise to fall in love with. He did not intend making his home at Penhallow or anywhere else. He was eager to get back to his life of shiftless wandering. His frivolous life, as he had described it yesterday.

And yet yesterday she had not been sure she believed him. . . .

Tomorrow-today-she was going to go over to the island with him. Just the two of them. And there could be no pretense of innocence.

Are you willing to face such danger? And I am not referring to the boat ride.

I am willing.

I may not be able to keep my hands off you, sweetheart.

Perhaps I will not be able to keep mine off you.

Freyja shivered after all in the predawn air and went back to bed, but she did little more than doze and wake until she could decently get up and venture from her room.

Early as she was, Joshua had already gone out to the home farm with his steward. Aidan and Alleyne had gone with him. Freyja remembered then that she had promised to spend the morning writing invitations to the ball with Morgan, Constance, and Chastity.

The guest list was a long one, she discovered, when she joined the others in the morning room after breakfast. She wondered if anyone within a five-mile radius of Penhallow had been omitted and realized how typical it was of Joshua to be so egalitarian despite his elevated rank. She tried to imagine Wulfric hosting such a ball and found herself smiling at the absurdity of the thought.

"Can you imagine Wulf with such a guest list, Morgan?" she asked as the four of them settled to their task.

"Or us attending such a ball?" Morgan said. "Wulfric is our brother the duke," she explained to the other two ladies. "He is extremely high in the instep."

"Joshua does not see this ball as an elegant social event for those of elevated rank," Constance said. "He sees it as a neighborhood celebration of his return home and his betrothal. And all these people were his friends-servants, laborers, villagers. He wishes to share his happiness and his good fortune with them. Will such a ball offend you?"

"I do believe," Morgan said, leaning forward across the table, "I am going to enjoy it immensely."

"If it will make Josh happy," Freyja said, "then it will make me happy too."

Gracious heavens, she sounded like a woman meekly in love.

Was she?

Constance looked up from the blank card she had drawn in front of her, her quill pen poised above the ink bottle. "I really believed when we were in Bath, you know, Freyja," she said, "and you helped Joshua foil Mama's plan to talk him into marrying me, that you would soon find some discreet way to put an end to your betrothal. I did not understand that it was real, even if the actual announcement was rushed forward. I am so glad it is. You are perfect for Joshua. You are bold and bright enough to challenge him. You will tame him without crushing his spirit, yet you will not allow him to subdue you-he would despise you or soon grow bored with you if you did."

Freyja was startled but had no chance to respond.

"Freyja!" Morgan exclaimed. "Was there more to your sudden betrothal in Bath than you told us? How provoking of you to keep it a secret from me. I thought we had no secrets. I shall have it all out of you later-be warned. But I do agree with Constance that Joshua is really quite perfect for you. I hope I will find someone as perfect for myself, though I am sure that will not happen in the foolish atmosphere of a London Season."

"But how wonderful it would be to experience one," Chastity said wistfully. "All those balls and routs and concerts. And people. I do envy you, Morgan."

They settled to writing for a while, having divided the list into four equal parts. It was altogether probable, Freyja thought, that many of the recipients of these invitations would not even be able to read them. Doubtless word would spread fast enough, though, and everyone would understand the meaning of the cards even without being able to decipher the writing on them.

She found that she really was looking forward to the ball. It was going to be amusing if nothing else. Life really was amusing with Joshua. Certainly it was never predictable.

She broke the silence after fifteen minutes or so, during which there had been nothing to hear but the scratching of four pens.

"Constance," she asked, "do you remember anything about the night your brother died?"

It was strangely easy to forget the reason why they had all come to Penhallow. Only when she saw the marchioness, silent and pale and pathetic-and darting venomous glances at Freyja when no one else was looking-did she remember that they were all waiting for the next development in a bizarre, possibly dangerous game.

"Nothing," Constance said. "It was stormy and got worse as the night went on. I did not even know Albert had not come home until the next morning."

"But you did know he had gone out?" Freyja asked.

"He went to Lydmere," Constance said. "He said he was going to talk to Joshua."

"About what?" Freyja asked.

"I-I do not know," Constance said, dipping her pen into the ink bottle again but not proceeding to write with it. "About Miss Jewell, I believe. She was Chastity's governess and had been turned off because . . . Well, it does not matter. Joshua had found a cottage in the village for her and Mama was upset about it. Albert agreed to go and talk to him."

"The governess was with child?" Morgan asked, wide-eyed. "And your mama and your brother thought Joshua was responsible? I cannot believe it of him."

"Joshua was not the father," Chastity said fiercely. "No one knows who the father was. Miss Jewell would never say."

In the rather tense silence that followed, Constance bent to her task again, and after a moment Morgan followed suit. Chastity was unable to write, Freyja noticed with narrowed gaze. Her hand was shaking. Perhaps she was fearing that her two guests were drawing the conclusion that if the father was not Josh, it must be her brother.

"Do you remember anything of that night?" Freyja asked.

Chastity shook her head. "Nothing," she said firmly. "But you must not think ill of Joshua, Freyja. I know he did nothing improper with Miss Jewell-he came to the house each week to visit Prue, not her. I know-I was always either with Miss Jewell myself whenever he was here or else with him and Prue. And I know he did not kill Albert or do anything to cause his death. It was an accident, that is all."

Freyja continued to watch her for a while before resuming her own task-she had four more invitations to write-and giving the girl a chance to recover enough to pick up her own pen.

She wondered if either sister had loved the brother. Certainly neither of them was prepared to suspect foul play in his death, though both had known that he went to the village that night to confront Joshua over the nasty situation concerning the governess. Chastity at least realized that it was her brother who had fathered the child.

Miss Anne Jewell was a sad figure, Freyja thought-somewhat accepted in the village now, though not really one of the villagers. A woman with an illegitimate child, with only a very little of the work with which she had once hoped to make a living, forced to accept at least partial support from a man who was in no way responsible for her. What the woman needed was independence and occupation and a restoration of all her pride. What she needed . . .

Miss Anne Jewell was none of her concern, she told herself firmly.

The task was finally completed and Constance gathered the folded invitations into a neat pile and took them away to be delivered. Chastity excused herself to go up to the nursery to see Prue.

"Freyja," Morgan said when they were alone together, "there is much here that is still unspoken and unresolved, is there not? As well as a murder charge still looming over Joshua's head. How very challenging and exciting it all is."

A typical Bedwyn reaction, Freyja thought.

"I almost envy you," Morgan said.

"Almost?" Freyja raised her eyebrows.

"Well, I love Joshua dearly," Morgan said, "and he is by far the most handsome man I have ever seen-including Alleyne. But I love him as a brother-in-law. I am going to have to find my own challenge and my own excitement-if there are any still out there somewhere."

It was on the tip of Freyja's tongue to tell her sister that her betrothal was not a real thing at all, but she did not say it. There were a few matters to resolve first, not least of which was the planned boat ride over to the island sometime today.

I may not be able to keep my hands off you, sweetheart.

Perhaps I will not be able to keep mine off you.

Her heart beat faster at the remembered words.

"You will find someone who is perfect for you one of these days," she said. "Everyone does."

Everyone except me.

The only perfect men she seemed to meet, Freyja thought ruefully, were unavailable for a permanent relationship.

Freyja had been able to swim for as far back as she could remember. She could jump into lakes from banks, from overhanging tree branches, from the sides of boats. She could swim on the surface or underwater, in a crawl or a backstroke or a simple float. She could hold her own in a fierce water fight. She could sail along in a small, leaky boat, lying, sitting, or standing. It had never occurred to her to be afraid of water.

Until, that was, she had seen the sea for the first time at the age of ten or so.

She had never been sure quite what it was about it that was so terrifying. Its vastness, perhaps. But she had never had to admit her terror, even to herself, until now. She had never before had any opportunity either to swim in or to sail upon the sea.

She was sitting on a narrow wooden seat in a narrow wooden boat, surrounded on all sides by water so close that she could trail her hand in it if she wished-she did not wish. She was very aware that only the thin planking of the boat beneath her feet separated her from unknown depths.

She was so ashamed and so contemptuous of her own terror that she lifted her chin at an arrogant angle as if to say that all this was a crashing bore and clasped her hands loosely in her lap rather than cling for dear life to the sides.

"Nervous?" Joshua asked with a grin.

He was hatless. He was rowing through water that undulated in the breeze and was choppy enough to show the occasional crest of white foam on the waves. He was, of course, looking quite irresistibly gorgeous. The wind was ruffling his blond hair and making it gleam. She tried to concentrate on his good looks, or, better yet, on his wicked, teasing grin. He knew she was terrified.

"Ha! Of a little water?" She tried not to notice that the island looked farther away now than when they had started or that the mainland seemed miles away.

"I was not talking about the water." He depressed one eyelid in that slow wink of his.

"Nonsense!" She pressed her lips together and he laughed.

He had explained at the luncheon table that he had promised her he would hire a boat and take her rowing for the afternoon. But before anyone could speak up with the suggestion that they make a party of it, he had added that the boat he had borrowed was very small, only big enough for two, and he was very sorry but he was a newly engaged man and needed some time alone with his betrothed.

He had smiled engagingly about the table and looked both roguish and charming. No one had uttered a single word of protest, not even Aidan, who might at that moment have chosen to act the part of elder brother since Wulf was not there to give his opinion on such a blatant indiscretion. But of course, she thought, they all believed she was betrothed to Josh. Perhaps they would not have been concerned even if they had known that the island was their destination.

Everyone else had proceeded to make plans of their own. The marchioness was to go visiting and informed Constance that she would accompany her-with the Reverend Calvin Moore. Chastity was to take everyone else down onto the beach. Morgan was going to take canvas and paints with her. Eve had made it clear that no one was even to think of going swimming.

Freyja turned her head and was surprised to find that it would still move on her neck. She could see them all there now on the sand, tiny figures looking enviably safe, some of them running, a few walking more sedately. Three of them, on the edge of the water, were waving. Prue and the children? Freyja lifted one hand and waved back.

She was suffocatingly aware that there were two blankets folded in the bottom of the boat. She had noticed them as soon as Josh and the fisherman whose boat this was had handed her in. She had stepped on them, in fact. If she were to ask what their purpose was, he would tell her that they were there to be wrapped about them if the wind should feel too chilly, but his eyes would laugh at her as he said it.

She did not ask.

"If you wish, sweetheart," Joshua said, "we can turn back right now."

She regarded him haughtily. "I am not afraid," she told him. "Not of anything. Are you?"

But he merely smiled his slow smile at her.

She noticed how the muscles of his arms and thighs flexed as he rowed. If the boat should tip over, she thought, she would simply swim. So would he. He would not let her drown. And she would not let him drown. She felt herself relaxing as she always did when she had once confronted any fear that threatened to daunt her.

At the same time her breath quickened and the blood hummed through her veins. What would happen on the island? Would she let it happen? Cause it to happen? Prevent its happening? Or would the question not even arise? Would they simply enjoy an hour of walking about and admiring the views and then return to the safety of the mainland?

For a while she thought they were not going to be able to land at all. The cliffs seemed too high, the shore too rocky, the sea too rough. But Joshua rowed around to a narrow, sandy beach in a small inlet, and he jumped out and pulled the boat up out of the water. He leaned over the side and slung the blankets over one shoulder.

Well, that answered one question at least, she thought, watching him.

"We may want to sit down for a while," he said, grinning at her. "Unless you plan to sit here all afternoon."

She ignored his outstretched hand and climbed rather inelegantly over the side to the sand. He hauled the boat even higher before leading the way up over sand and loose pebbles and rough rocks to the land above. She scrambled after him.

The island was larger than she had thought. It stretched ahead in undulating dunes and depressions, a mixture of green, coarse grass, yellow sand, bare rocks, yellow gorse, and pink thrift. Seagulls were screaming overhead and from their perches on rocks and dunes. The air was crisp and salty. The sea was visible all around.

Joshua took her hand in his as they stood on a small promontory drinking in the elemental beauty of it all.

"It is strange," he said. "I had forgotten that there is much I loved about Cornwall."

"In such a place," she said, lifting her face to the breeze, "it is easy to believe in God and eternity without the interference of any religion."

"You had better not let the Reverend Calvin Moore hear you say that," he said. But there was a warmth in his voice, a tenderness that caught at her breathing again and alarmed her.

"Did I give you permission to hold my hand?" she asked.

He chuckled softly and raised their clasped hands to bring the back of hers against his lips.

"Too late for that, sweetheart," he said. "You invited me here, remember? Just the two of us? There is another cove on the eastern side. It will be more sheltered from the wind than the rest of the island. Shall we go and sit there for a while?"

"Of course," she said, her knees feeling decidedly wobbly. What were they doing? After this business with Garnett was cleared up and presumably once the ball was over, they were to leave Penhallow and go their separate ways. They would never see each other again. Was she quite sure she wanted this memory? But she realized even as she asked herself the question that really she had no choice now. Whatever happened-or did not happen-this afternoon would be forever seared on her memory.

Would she find Josh as difficult-or as easy-to get over as she had found Kit? She had never lain with Kit.

She stood gazing out at the endless expanse of blue-and-green water as he spread one blanket over the coarse grass above the little cove of a beach to which he had led her. It was indeed more sheltered here. One could almost imagine that it was summer again-a cool summer's day. He set down the other blanket, still folded. Presumably they would cover themselves with it if they were chilly.

Afterward.

She drew a slow breath. It was not too late. He would not force her.

The last time it had been easy. There had been no decision to make. She had been in the throes of an urgent, blind passion occasioned by the pain of the christening party and something he had said to anger her-she could no longer remember what. Today there was too much time for thought.

But one thought pulsed with the beat of her blood. She wanted him. She wanted the memory to take with her into the future. She could no longer think of protecting herself from the sort of pain she had known before with Kit. It was already too late.

She had no wisdom at all, it seemed, in her choice of men to love.

She sat down on the blanket, drew up her knees, and clasped her arms about them, all without looking at him. He came down beside her, sprawled on his side, his head propped on one hand.

"So, sweetheart," he said softly, "why are we here?"

She shrugged her shoulders and kept them hunched. "To see the island?" she said. "To spend some time together?"

"For what end?" he asked her. "Because we are betrothed?"

"But we are not," she said.

"No." He was silent for a while. "Why are we here, Free?"

He was going to make her spell it out, was he? Well, that was fair enough. She had asked to be brought here. She had asked that they come alone. Was she now to act like a wilting violet and expect the man to take charge of the situation? She turned her head to look at him. His eyes were smiling back at her but without either the mockery or the wicked laughter she had expected to see there.

"To make love," she said.

They gazed at each other while the air fairly crackled between them.

"Ah, yes," he said, his voice low. "To make love. We will do it properly, will we, sweetheart, without frenzy, without any haste at all? So that we will both have happy memories of our brief weeks together?"

He sat up and pulled off his Hessian boots and his stockings. He shrugged out of his coat and unbuttoned his waistcoat. Freyja lifted her arms and drew the pins out of her hair. By the time she shook it free, he was pulling his shirt off over his head.

She had hardly had a chance to look at him in the gamekeeper's hut at Alvesley. But his beauty, she discovered now, was not confined to his face. His shoulders, his chest, his arms-all were strongly muscled, beautifully proportioned male perfection. She set one hand on his back and spread her fingers. He was warm and inviting.

"I have wanted this," she admitted, "ever since the last time."

"Can you not do better than that?" he asked her, turning to her, smiling. "I have wanted this since before the last time. I believe it all started in a certain inn room when you were barefoot and wild-haired and furious." He moved his head closer until his lips brushed hers. "You must be by far the most desirable woman I have ever known, Freyja Bedwyn." His tongue stroked lightly back and forth across her lips, causing her to sizzle with sensation from her lips down to her toes.

He unclothed her with hands that were clearly very expert indeed at the task. Then he removed the rest of his own garments while his eyes devoured her and hers devoured him. She lay back on the blanket when they were both naked.

She was afraid then that if she touched him, if she initiated anything, she would spoil it all by being in too much of a hurry, as she had been last time. She wanted to discover if there could be any tenderness to lovemaking as well as soaring passion. She wanted to be able to remember him with tenderness. She wanted to remember him as he looked now, gazing down at her with controlled desire. She spread her hands to the sides, palms down.

"Make love to me," she said.

"Oh, I intend to, sweetheart," he said, bending over her.

His hands went to work on her. He was as expert at making love with his hands, she soon realized, as he had been at unclothing her with them. He knew just where to touch her and how, sometimes with such light fingertips that she felt sensation more than his touch. And he knew how to use his mouth too, kissing her pulse points, suckling her breasts, breathing warmly against her navel and flicking it lightly with his tongue, feathering kisses along her inner thighs, sucking one of her big toes before raising his head and grinning at her.

He took her feet in his hands, massaged them in ways that sent desire coursing through her with a faster beat, and then turned them and moved them upward in such a way that her knees fell open before he set her feet back down on the blanket. He came to kneel between her thighs, lifting her legs over his own. And then he slid one hand down between them.

She was wet and hot-his hand felt cool in contrast.

He knew just how to touch her there too. His fingers moved lightly, knowingly, and he watched what he did while she watched his face-beautiful, heavy-lidded, absorbed in what he was doing. And then he touched her somewhere with his thumb, rubbing it very lightly. She arched upward, crying out, all her carefully preserved control gone, and exploded into shuddering, utterly pleasurable release.

He laughed softly as he lifted her higher into his lap, opened her with his thumbs, and plunged hard into her. She inhaled slowly. There was no pain at all this time, only incredible pleasure as he pressed against walls still throbbing and sensitive from her recent release. She moved her hands to cup his knees.

"I think it is time I made love to you too," she said, gazing at him through half-closed eyelids. "You feel very good, Josh."

"I do indeed." There was laughter in his eyes, but they were passion-heavy too.

Slowly she clenched inner muscles about him and his nostrils flared.

"Almost," he said, "you tempt me to surrender. Almost."

He withdrew to the brink of her and thrust hard inward again and withdrew and thrust again while she parried with pulsing inner muscles and rocking hips. She bared her teeth, feeling the rise of desire once more, and willed herself to match him stroke for stroke for as long as it lasted. She willed it to last forever.

This time it was he who watched her face while she watched what they did together, her eyes observing what her body felt with such sweet, almost painful intensity. It was all almost unbearably erotic.

"Sweetheart," he said at last, his voice husky and breathless, "a gentleman cannot go riding off into the sunset and leave his lady behind. If I concede defeat, will you let go and allow me to follow you?"

She looked up into his eyes, lost her rhythm, her slender hold on control, and was suddenly defenseless against the firm pounding of his body into her sweet pain. She cried out again and shuddered about him.

He was still deep inside her, she realized a few moments later, and still large and rock-hard. She opened her eyes and he smiled into them. He brought his hands to the blanket on either side of her shoulders and shifted his position without withdrawing from her. He came down flat on top of her, covering her from shoulders to toes, his weight bearing her into the ground. He found her mouth with his and kissed her, not deeply, not passionately as she expected, but with infinite tenderness.

And then he set his head beside hers, his face buried in her hair, and moved in her again with long, deep strokes, covering her so that she felt strangely cherished, strangely loved. Sexually sated as she was, it was an extraordinary sensation, emotional more than physical-and yet she was very much in the body too. When he went still, he was tense for a moment and then relaxed all his weight onto her with a deep sigh. She could feel the hot flow of his release deep inside. She wrapped her arms about him, feeling both giver and gifted.

His breathing was labored against her ear. They were both hot and slick with perspiration. Seagulls were crying overhead. There was the eternal, elemental flow and suck of the sea against the sand. There were the smells of salt and sand and ocean. There were sunlight and sun heat and the welcome coolness of the breeze.

The earth slowed beneath them.

Ah, yes, the memory of this would always remain with her. And she would not allow future pain to sully it. She would not.

He reached for the spare blanket as he rolled off her, and she turned onto her side facing away from him as he spread it over them and then slid an arm beneath her neck and curled in behind her.

She gazed at the rocky cliff that formed one side of the cove and at the dark green water beneath it. A white gull was perched on top of a rock, gazing out to sea, opening its beak to cry out. She felt warm, languorous, very aware of every sensation impressing itself upon her memory.

Judging from his breathing, Joshua slept for a while. She was glad. She did not want to talk. Not yet. She did not want to listen to his light teasing or to hear him tell her that they were in a scrape again.

She did not want either to laugh or to fear. She simply wanted to be in this endlessly present moment. And when she must move on into the future-well, then. She would never forget. She would never allow herself to deny that for one glorious afternoon she had been not just in love. She had also loved. Loved with her body and loved with her heart.

Fool, Fool, fool, a faint inner voice tried to tell her. But she drifted off to sleep rather than listen to the voice warn her that she would live to regret this day and this falling over a precipice into love itself.

CHAPTER XX

Remind me, sweetheart," Joshua said, his eyes squinting against the glare of sunlight on the water, "why it is we are not going to marry."

She was sitting across from him in the boat, her narrowed gaze on the shoreline, her expression uncommunicative. Since making love for a second time and dressing and returning to the boat, they had exchanged scarcely a word.

She transferred her gaze to his face.

"Don't you dare feel obliged to act the gentleman and offer for me," she said, sounding genuinely angry. "What happened was my fault. It was not done to trap you into marriage."

"Fault?" He grinned at her. "Yours again? I am beginning to feel like a puppet on a string."

"Which is exactly how I felt at the beginning of our acquaintance," she said. "Now we are even."

"Marriage with me would be a trap, would it?" he asked her.

"Of course it would," she said impatiently. "We have been aware of it and wary of it from the start. It would be a horrible mistake for both of us."

He was no longer sure why. She could not mourn her lost love forever, could she? But then he would hate to be married to a woman who felt even leftover traces of such a mourning.

"Why has this afternoon happened, then?" he asked her. "We do not have the excuse of having been swept away by passion, do we? This was planned quite deliberately yesterday-by both of us."

She did not answer him immediately. She stared out over the sea again.

"I am Lady Freyja Bedwyn," she said. "I am the daughter and sister of a duke. Though I have always been known as bold and unconventional and occasionally even rebellious, I am expected to behave in all essential ways with the strictest propriety-both in public and in private. Gentlemen have no such restrictions on their private behavior. All my brothers have had mistresses or casual amours. Wulf has had the same mistress for years without any breath of scandal touching his name. I choose not to marry-not yet, at least, and not unless I meet someone for whom I would willingly sacrifice my freedom. But I am five and twenty and I have all a woman's needs."

"You have used me, then, sweetheart," he asked her, "as a . . . casual amour?"

"Don't be absurd," she said, looking at him again with cold disdain. "You can be remarkably tedious at times, Josh. Change places with me. I want to row."

He grinned at her. "We are not on a lake," he said. "Rowing on the sea takes far more strength and skill. Besides, you would have to get up from your place and maneuver around me in order to get here. I daresay the boat would rock abominably."

"If you fall overboard," she said, "I will stop the boat and rescue you."

One had to admire the woman. All the way across to the island earlier he had been aware of her terror though she had given no outward sign of it. Yet now she was willing to move around in the boat, somehow shift places with him, and then row them back to the harbor? He could almost smell fear in her arrogant, nonchalant stance.

"That is reassuring, at least," he said, securing the oars and getting to his feet, holding to the sides as he did so. The boat rocked from side to side. "I will do the same for you, Free, though I seem to recall that you can swim like a fish. I only just beat you in our race at Lindsey Hall."

He thought she was going to change her mind when she did not immediately move, but as he approached her she stood up-straight, without clinging to the sides. She held herself upright and balanced as the boat swayed and as he squeezed past her and sat down where she had been sitting. He watched appreciatively as she moved along the boat, keeping perfect balance, before turning and sitting and taking the oars in her hands. Her chin was up, as he had expected, and she was viewing the world along the length of her nose.

She had accused him of wearing a mask, of hiding either his real self or nothing at all behind it. She was no different. Behind the cool, haughty, bold front she displayed to the world was a woman who had been hurt, a woman who was lonely-yes, Prue had been quite right about that-a woman who was perhaps afraid to love again.

He might have guessed that she would row the boat like an expert. She did not expend energy by digging the oars deep and trying to displace the whole ocean with every stroke. They were soon moving along at a steady clip.

So she had not changed her mind about marrying, had she? It was a shame really, as he was beginning to change his mind about marrying her. Actually, the thought of saying good-bye to her-probably quite soon now-was one his mind shied away from. His life was going to seem very empty indeed without Freyja in it. And now to top everything off he was going to have the memories of this afternoon to live with.

For all her boldness and passion, she was really still a sexual innocent. She probably did not recognize the difference between having sex and making love. They had been making love this afternoon-or at least, he had been even though he had been careful not to utter one word of love.

She had wanted him only for the experience, for the satisfying of her feminine sexual hunger.

It was a humbling thought.

He chuckled.

"I should be wielding a whip in my right hand," he said, laying his arms along the sides of the boat. "This scene would look far more impressive from the harbor if I were."

There were indeed several villagers standing still on the front road or down on the sand among the boats, all watching in curiosity as the Marquess of Hallmere's betrothed rowed him to shore.

Joshua jumped out when they were in shallow water, risking his valet's wrath when he saw his Hessian boots. He dragged the boat up onto dry sand and lifted Freyja out even as Ben Turner came running to haul the boat higher. Someone up on the road whistled shrilly, and there was a burst of good-natured laughter.

"Ah, Ben," Joshua said, "just the man I want to talk to."

Ben looked warily at him and reached into the boat to take out the blankets.

"I understand," Joshua said, "that your mother has been kind to Lady Prudence. She is at your cottage door, I see. Shall we go up?"

He took Freyja by the elbow and indicated one of the cottages on the front road above the harbor. Mrs. Turner was standing in the doorway, her arms crossed over her bosom. She watched them approach before bobbing a curtsy. Ben trailed along behind.

"If he was making you row that boat, my lady," she said, chuckling, "I would give him his marching orders if I was you. Or lay down the law as it is going to be for the rest of your life."

"But she insisted," Joshua protested. "How was a gentleman to say no?"

Freyja, he realized, found this all very strange-this way he had of fraternizing with ordinary folk and their way of being at ease with him. But he had been one of them just five years ago. She stood silently beside him.

"I have heard of all your kindnesses to Lady Prudence," he said to Mrs. Turner.

He had had a lengthy talk with Miss Palmer during the morning while Prue was out walking with Eve and the children. Prue was very much confined to the nursery at the house. Miss Palmer took her out as much as she could. More often than not they walked into the village or took the gig if it was available. Prue had developed a deep attachment to the Turners, who treated her with warm affection. Indeed, Mrs. Turner often suggested that Miss Palmer leave her there for an hour or two and have some time to herself-she often called upon Miss Jewell, she had explained.

Mrs. Turner looked instantly wary.

"She is a sweet child," she said, "and not an imbecile, even though her mother seems to believe she is, begging your pardon, my lord. I know she is Lady Prudence, and therefore I ought not to encourage her to set foot over my doorstep, but someone has to love her, and Miss Palmer is not always enough."

"I am not here to scold you," Joshua said, clasping his hands behind his back.

"I would think not," she said. "She loves this house. She has her own apron behind the door, and the first thing she does is reach for it and put it on. She sweeps the floors and shakes the mats and washes the dishes and pegs out washing and makes me and Ben tea and is learning how to cook. She even does some mending when she sits down. She brings sunshine into this house."

Joshua looked at Ben, who flushed and dipped his head and worried at a stone buried in the road with the toe of his boot.

"She does that," he said. "And she is not a little girl no longer neither." He looked up into Joshua's face with something like defiance in his own. "She is a woman grown."

Miss Palmer had voiced a concern over the number of times Prue declared that she loved Ben Turner. She said it of everyone, of course, and meant it of everyone. But there was a way she had of saying it with regard to Ben, Miss Palmer had said, that she could not quite explain in words.

"You love her, do you, Ben?" Joshua asked quietly.

Ben's flush deepened, but he did not look away. "It is not my place to love Prue-Lady Prudence," he said. "You need not worry about me, my lord. I will not forget my place."

His title was spoken with slight emphasis and some bitterness, Joshua noticed. He sighed.

"No, I did not expect you would, Ben," he said. "I wanted to thank you for befriending her. I do love her, you see."

"I have never left her and Ben alone together," Mrs. Turner said. "Nor ever would. I know better than that, though I know Ben wouldn't never forget himself."

Joshua smiled at them both, nodded genially, and offered Freyja his arm. They walked back in the direction of the inn, where they had stabled their horses.

"Strangely," he said, "I had never considered the problem of Prue's growing up. Because she will always be a child in many ways, I suppose I had expected that she would remain a child in every way."

"It is a mistake often made of women in general," she said, "the assumption that they do not have needs to match those of men. Prue is not a child, is she? She is a woman. And Ben Turner has seen that. Probably she has seen that he has seen, and the attraction of the cottage is more him than his mother. What will the marchioness do if she discovers the truth?"

"She will try sending Prue to an asylum," he said, "where she will be locked up and chained and beaten and put on public display and treated like an animal."

She looked sharply at him. "Even she could not be so cruel," she said.

"She would have done it when Prue was a child," he said, "if my uncle for once in his life had not exerted himself. She is talking of doing it now if she is forced by my return to remove to the dower house with her daughters."

Freyja inhaled audibly. "If I do not take my fists to that woman's face before I leave here," she said, "I will be a candidate for sainthood-and I believe that would be a dreadful fate. What are you going to do about it? You are Prue's guardian, are you not?"

"Until I am convicted of murder, yes," he said. "What ought I to do, Freyja? Encourage her to marry a fisherman?"

He smiled at the look on her face. Such a prospect must be beyond the wildest imaginings of any member of the proud Bedwyn family. Except that he had learned since going to Lindsey Hall that Aidan had married the daughter of a Welsh coal miner and that Rannulf had married the daughter of an obscure country parson and granddaughter of a London actress. Yet Eve and Judith were as well accepted by the rest of the family as if they had been duchesses.

"Perhaps," she said, "Prue is capable of making her own choices in life. Josh, she held my hand yesterday afternoon when we were climbing up the hill behind the house. It was not because she needed my help but because she believed I needed hers."

"You froze me in my tracks when I once made that mistake," he said. "Though we were about to go down rather than up, I remember."

"I know," she said. "But I was touched. I know what you meant when you told me she is full of love and brimming over with it. And so innocent that one fears for her. Perhaps we ought not to fear for such people but for ourselves whose experience has taught us not to trust one another or life itself."

He looked at her in some astonishment. Her voice had lost all its customary hauteur. It was almost shaking with emotion. All because Prue, thinking her lonely, had taken her hand?

"I should talk to her, then?" he asked. "Will you come with me?"

She looked more herself then. "Eve would be a far better choice," she said. "But, yes, I will come. Josh, whatever am I doing here at Penhallow? Why am I not still in Bath, promenading in the Pump Room every morning and taking tea in the Assembly Rooms?"

"I believe, sweetheart," he said, "you perceived a rogue and could not resist brightening up your life for a spell by taking on the challenge of trying to keep pace with him. Besides, it is better for you to be here with me than expiring of boredom there, is it not?"

"A rogue," she said as they turned into the cobbled stableyard of the inn and an ostler hastened to lead out their horses. "Is that what you are, Josh? Life was so simple when I had no doubt about the answer."

He turned his head and winked at her.

The following morning was cloudy, windy, and altogether rather dreary. Joshua had gone out early again with his steward and Aidan. The marchioness had asked Constance to run an errand for her in the village and at the last moment had suggested that the Reverend Calvin Moore accompany her. Alleyne, perhaps seeing the tight look on Constance's face, had asked Chastity if she would like to go too, and the four of them had departed together, the marchioness's dagger glances piercing Alleyne's back.

She was a tedious enemy, Freyja concluded. Very different from Freyja herself or any of the Bedwyns for that matter, she did not simply burst out with open hostility and fight fairly. She had set something in motion, and she was prepared to wait for it to come to fruition. In the meanwhile, she acted the gracious, wilting hostess to everyone. Her gentle smile seemed to have been painted on her face.

Freyja had found refuge in the morning room. She was writing a letter to her solicitor while Morgan, beside her at the table, wrote to Judith.

"This waiting around for something to happen is very strange, is it not?" Morgan said abruptly after a while. "I expected fireworks as soon as we arrived at Penhallow. I expected excitement and danger and flashing swords and smoking pistols for the first day or two and then the satisfaction of victory."

"Are you disappointed?" Freyja smiled at her.

"Disappointed? No." Morgan frowned. "But a little uneasy, I must confess. The marchioness really does hate Joshua, does she not? And all of us too even though she persists in informing us how delighted she is to have us all here. Why does she hate him so much that she is prepared to put his life in danger?"

"She blames him for her son's death," Freyja said. "She thought him guilty in the sordid business over the governess, and then when her son went to confront him, he died. In a sense, perhaps, one can hardly blame her for wondering if the accident really was an accident."

"I suppose," Morgan said, "it was the son who seduced the governess."

"Yes," Freyja said.

"I do not believe I would have liked him," Morgan said. "Indeed, I am quite certain I would have detested him quite as much as I do his mother. How horrid of him to have allowed Joshua to shoulder the blame-and to find a home for that poor lady. But what worries me, Freyja, is that witness. How provoking that he is not at home and so cannot be confronted. Alone he is surely no threat at all, but what if he can persuade several other men to corroborate his story? Does Joshua understand the danger he is in? Is he doing anything about it?"

"He is indeed," a voice said from the doorway, and they both turned to see Joshua himself standing there. He was still dressed for riding. His face was ruddy from the outdoors, his eyes dancing with laughter.

He liked living on the edge of danger, Freyja thought.

Independent of thought, her body was instantly aware of him, of his virile grace and beauty. She had wanted yesterday to happen so that she would have happy memories to cling to. She had been a fool. How would she live without that? How would she live without him?

"What, then?" Morgan asked.

"Why spoil the fun by telling?" he said, laughing as he came into the room. "Garnett is still from home, but I have hopes that he will return in time for the ball. Indeed, I am depending upon his having heard of it and upon his having a proper sense of drama. I have sent him an invitation."

"I know," Morgan said. "I wrote it. But why?"

But he would only laugh again. "Let me say only," he said, "that if Garnett comes, the ball will be an occasion after the Bedwyns' own heart."

Morgan's eyes shone. "Oh, you do have something planned," she said. "Well done."

He reached out a hand and squeezed her shoulder while turning his attention to Freyja.

"I am going down to the river walk with Prue," he said. "Will you come, Freyja?"

"I have to finish this letter to Judith," Morgan said when Freyja looked at her, "and then I must write to Aunt Rochester. I have not done so in ages, but she is to sponsor my come-out in the spring, perish the thought."

Freyja changed into a wool dress and a warm pelisse. She even, after looking out the window to note that the weather had not changed, drew on a bonnet that would cover her ears. Prue too was dressed warmly, in sunshine yellow from head to toe. She was beaming and clearly excited at the prospect of an outing with Josh and Freyja.

They scrambled down over the sloping lawn to the valley without using the more gradual slope of the winding driveway past the dower house. Prue was laughing aloud as she hurtled down the last few feet into Joshua's waiting arms. Freyja glared at him when he would have offered similar assistance to her, and he grinned and turned away.

They walked along the private path that ran beside the river to the beach. They did not go all the way to the beach, though. They stopped frequently to peer into the water, watching the slow currents eddying past stones and small sandbars, seeing the occasional tadpole dart by. Joshua picked up a stone and hurled it in a high arc to hit the opposite bank, some distance away, and Prue laughed and clapped her hands with delight. Freyja, not to be outdone, picked up a flat stone and threw it in such a way that it skimmed the surface of the water, bouncing four times before it sank out of sight. Prue jumped up and down in her excitement.

"I want to do that," she said, and Freyja spent the next ten minutes or so showing her how to select a suitable pebble and how to throw it sideways with just the right flick of the wrist. Prue never did get it right, but she derived a great deal of merriment from trying and collapsed down onto a large rock with uncontrollable mirth when Joshua could not do it either.

Freyja, with a sharp, narrow-eyed look at his abjectly meek face, was convinced that he could make his stones bounce ten times if he so chose.

She could not understand the almost painful love she felt for Prue. She was usually embarrassed by what she had always thought of as handicaps. If she had known about Prue in advance, she would have been horrified and would have shied away from her. Even so, she had kept her wary distance for a few days, content to let Eve and Joshua and Chastity converse with the girl.

But there was no guile in her and no stupidity or dullness or negativity. She was a sunny-natured child who simply did not possess whatever it was in most of the rest of mortality that enabled them to move away from the innocent exuberance and loving trust of childhood to a darker place they labeled maturity. Although Prue's sometimes ungainly movements and round, childish face were an outward sign that she was not as other young women were, she nevertheless was a rather pretty young lady.

She was the same age as Morgan.

Joshua looked down at her with a smile of warm affection until she had stopped rocking with laughter.

"Do you like going to the village, Prue?" he asked.

"Ye-es," she said. "I love it."

"What is your favorite part of it?" he asked her. "Your favorite place?"

Prue gazed with bright eyes across the river in the direction of Lydmere.

"The cottage," she said.

"Mrs. Turner's?"

"Yes."

"Why do you like it?" He went down on his haunches before her, selected a few pebbles, and rolled them in one hand.

"I can do things," Prue said. "I can help. It is a dear place."

"But small," Joshua said. "You would not like to live there, would you?"

Prue thought with furrowed brow and then smiled again. "Yes, I would," she said. "I know how to do things."

"You love Mrs. Turner?" Joshua asked.

"Yes." Her smile widened. "And Ben. I love Ben."

"Do you?" He turned and flung one of the stones. He obviously forgot that bouncing them was a skill he could not master-it bounced five times. Prue laughed excitedly and pointed. "Why do you love him, Prue? Is he kind to you?"

"Ye-es," Prue said. "He likes me making his tea, and he ate my cake, not Mrs. Turner's. Ben loves me."

"I love you, Prue," Joshua said. "Freyja loves you."

"Yes." She looked up at Freyja and beamed. "Josh made you better, Freyja. I saw you in the boat. You went to the island."

Oh, dear. Freyja smiled back and avoided Joshua's eyes.

Prue looked back to Joshua. "Ben kissed me," she said.

His face visibly blanched. "Kissed you?"

Prue laughed with delight. "On my birthday," she said. "I was eighteen. Mrs. Turner gave me my apron and she kissed me. And Ben poured my tea-we all laughed-and he kissed me. Here," she added, poking one forefinger at her cheek close to her mouth. "I said, 'I love you, Ben,' and he said, 'I love you, Prue.' " She laughed with delight.

"Prue," Freyja asked, taking the girl by the hand and drawing her to her feet so that they could stroll onward, "do you love Ben in a special way? As Eve loves Aidan?"

"As you love Josh?" Prue laughed. "Ye-es."

Joshua fell into step beside them on Prue's other side.

"Ben has nice hands," Prue said. "They are big. He works with them. He wouldn't hurt me with them, though."

"Of course he would not," Joshua said, drawing her arm through his and patting her hand. "No one will ever hurt you, Prue. Do you know what marriage is? Do you know what married people do together?"

"Ye-es," Prue said. "They look after each other. And they kiss each other. And have babies."

Joshua darted a startled look across her at Freyja.

"Miss Palmer told me," Prue said, "and Chastity. Chastity took me to see Miss Jewell and she told me. Miss Jewell has David. I love David."

"Her son?" Joshua said. "He is a handsome little boy."

"Miss Jewell said there are bad kisses and I must not let anyone give them to me ever again," Prue said. "Ben would not give me bad kisses. Ben loves me. I love Ben."

The women in her life-all except her mother who was most qualified to do it-had been educating Prue in the dangers of her own sexuality, Freyja thought. They clearly had realized that in some ways at least the girl was no longer a child.

"If you lived at the cottage all the time," Joshua said, "you would not have all of Penhallow for your home, Prue. You would sleep there and live there, and the work you do there now would have to be done every day. Lady Prudence Moore should live in a big house, should she not, with servants to look after her and grand clothes to wear all the time?"

"I would like to live in the cottage, Josh," she said. "I would like to live with Mrs. Turner. I would like to live with Ben best of all. I love Ben. He kissed me and it was not a bad kiss. He would not give me bad kisses. He would not hurt me with his hands."

He raised her hand to his lips and held it there for a few moments.

"No, he would not, my sweetest love," he said. "I knew Ben when he was a lad. He would not hurt you or any other woman. And if he ever kisses you again, it will be with good kisses. If he touches you, it will be with gentle hands."

Freyja was startled to notice that his eyes were bright with tears.

"Shall I talk with Ben and Mrs. Turner, then?" he asked Prue. "Would you really choose to live with them if you could?"

She stopped walking, snatched her arm away from Joshua, clasped her hands to her bosom, and regarded first him and then Freyja with wide, excited eyes.

"Miss Palmer said Mama would say no," she said, "and you would say no. Mrs. Turner said Mama would say no and you would say no. I asked and she said that. Ben cried and went out."

"But you are a woman, Prue," Joshua said gently. "Sometimes when you are a woman you get to decide things for yourself. But Mrs. Turner and Ben have to decide too. I will talk to them."

Prue smiled sunnily and then laughed and spun around in a circle before offering one of her hands to Joshua and the other to Freyja. They went walking off down the river path-actually it was more skip than walk-swinging their arms like three exuberant children.

Freyja felt raw with love for Joshua. If she had even suspected him capable of such gentleness and concern for one of life's lesser mortals-according to the general consensus-she would have fled Sydney Gardens that morning in Bath and left that serving girl to her fate. She would have ignored him in the Pump Room. She would-

No, she would not.

She would perhaps have set about wooing him with every ounce of skill and determination she could muster for the task. She would not have engaged in mere light flirtation with him instead and given him the eternal impression that she wanted no more from him. It was too late now. If she were to try to woo him now, he would feel trapped, obliged to offer for her, obliged to pretend to be happy with her.

And so she could do nothing but skip down the river path with him and Prue, aching with love for him.

CHAPTER XXI

The servants at Penhallow, both indoors and out, had worked extremely hard to prepare for the grand ball. They had grumbled-but only in Joshua's hearing so that he would grin at them and wheedle them and laugh when they occasionally addressed him as "lad." Behind his back they did not waste their time on complaints but threw themselves with great enthusiasm into the preparations for such a novel event.

The state apartments had not been used within the memory of even the oldest servant. They were there for show. The occasional traveler who was bold enough to knock on the door was taken there by the housekeeper and allowed to gaze upon all the treasures while she recited their history. Although they had always been kept clean, there had never seemed to be the necessity of banishing every last speck of dust and making every surface gleam.

It was a huge task to make all ready in time-and all for the likes of themselves, the cook remarked when she came to peep in on the ballroom when the great chandeliers were down and the hundreds of candles were being replaced. It seemed strangest of all to the servants that they were all invited, as well as all their family members and friends from the village and the surrounding farms. Even those who would need to be on duty in one capacity or another were not too long-faced. The butler, at Joshua's request, had organized the servants into shifts, so that those who worked the start of the evening would be able to feast and dance at the end, and vice versa for those who must work last.

The head gardener had scoured the park for late-blooming flowers and had agreed to sacrifice almost all the contents of his carefully nurtured hothouses for the occasion. The flower arrangements were undertaken by the ladies of the house. Chastity supervised, her cheeks flushed, her eyes bright with the pleasure of such a grand occasion. Prue was allowed to help. Constance and Eve were both competent, but Morgan was the one with the best eye for design. She made a number of suggestions to Chastity, all of which they discussed with much arm gesturing and great good nature. Freyja was content to watch, flower arranging never having been her forte. The marchioness was absent, having declared that flowers made her sneeze and gave her a headache.

The orchestra arrived late in the afternoon and were borne off to their rooms in the back wing of the house after setting up their instruments and tuning them.

Dinner was set for two hours earlier than usual since the guests would be arriving by seven and the ladies preferred to change into their evening finery after eating. This was no London ball, starting late and continuing until dawn. The majority of the guests were ordinary working folk, who would not have the luxury of being able to lie abed until the middle of the next afternoon. And many of them had some distance to travel, either by foot or by gig, though the head groom, at Joshua's direction, had made arrangements to send out every carriage and other vehicle to fetch the more elderly and the more distant folk.

There was to be a receiving line at the entrance of the ballroom, consisting of Joshua and Freyja, the marchioness, Constance, Chastity, and Prue.

Joshua, dressed in dark brown evening coat with dull gold knee breeches, gold-embroidered waistcoat, and white linen and stockings with lace at his neck and cuffs, looked about him with satisfaction from the doorway of the ballroom. He had always thought it a shame that the state rooms were never used. He breathed in the scent of the flowers, noticed how the newly polished floor gleamed under the light of the chandeliers, and looked up at them and beyond them to the ceiling with its richly painted scenes from mythology.

He felt a thrill of exhilaration. This was all his and tonight he would give pleasure to all his people and demonstrate to them that a new age had dawned in their relationship with Penhallow and the Marquess of Hallmere. No longer would there be an impenetrable distance between them and their wealthy, titled, privileged neighbor and overlord. Tonight would begin a new era for those who were dependent upon him, those over whom, like it or not, he had some power-power to give away.

Tonight he would begin his new life. It would have horrified him even just a week ago to imagine that he might be bound by Penhallow, which had been an unhappy prison house to him during his growing years, by his title, which he had never wanted, and by his responsibilities, which he had tried to fulfill through the appointment of a competent steward but which he had now discovered extended well beyond what any steward could do. But he was bound, and extraordinarily, it was the bonds of love more than duty that would keep him here at Penhallow.

But it was no happily-ever-after that he faced tonight. There was much to be settled before he could even begin to think in terms of happiness, much less happily-ever-after, which was a nonsensical idea anyway. Hugh Garnett had returned home, he had heard. There was no knowing for sure if he would come to the ball, but Joshua would wager on it. Then there was his aunt. And Freyja . . .

He heard sounds behind him and turned to see her approaching with Morgan and Eve-Aidan and Alleyne were coming along behind them, both in black-and-white evening clothes. Freyja was shimmering in a pale green gown embroidered all over with gold thread. It was a low-bosomed gown with loosely flowing skirt and scalloped hem and sleeves. Her hair, elaborately piled and coiled, was threaded with gold. Her long gloves and slippers were also gold-colored.

He caught his breath. When had he started to think of her as beautiful? She was not, was she? But to him she was lovelier than any woman he had ever set eyes upon. He smiled, took her gloved hand in his, bowed over it, and raised it to his lips.

"You look beautiful, my charmer," he said.

Her dark eyebrows arched arrogantly upward.

"So do you, Josh," she said.

He grinned at her and turned to greet the others. His aunt and cousins were approaching too with Calvin. His aunt, in black silk with nodding hair plumes, was smiling about her as if this had been all her idea. Indeed, she had been in a good mood all day even though she had avoided the ballroom while the flowers were being moved about and arranged. Constance, looking prettier than she had in Bath, wore pale blue and looked composed. Chastity, in pink, was sparkling with excitement. Prue, in pale yellow, was almost beside herself.

Almost immediately the guests began to arrive, and soon there was a veritable flood of them, a curious mix of elegantly dressed members of the upper classes and villagers and small farmers and laborers in their Sunday best, looking awkward and pleased with themselves and flustered as they made their bows and curtsies to the marchioness, who greeted them with stiff condescension, and more relaxed as they smiled at Joshua. He shook hands with everyone and had a word for all.

Anne Jewell came, he was pleased to see-Joshua had called upon her personally to urge her to accept her invitation. She entered the ballroom with Miss Palmer and fixed her eyes on the floor as she curtsied to the marchioness. Ben Turner came with his mother. The Allwrights came. Isaac Perrie came with his wife and two daughters. Jim Saunders came. So did Sir Rees Newton, the local magistrate, with Lady Newton and their son.

By the time the new arrivals had slowed to the merest trickle and Joshua announced his intention of getting the dancing started, there was no one he could think of who had not come-with the exception of Hugh Garnett. It would be sadly disappointing if he failed to put in any appearance at all. But in the meantime there was a ball to be enjoyed.

He led off the opening set with Freyja. It was a sprightly country dance, as were most of the dances planned for the evening. Everyone would know the steps and would feel no self-consciousness about performing them. There was self-consciousness at first, of course, and Joshua had to leave his place in the line, Freyja on his arm, to circle the edge of the dance floor and coax couples to join the revelries. He laughed and teased as he did so, and soon the line stretched the length of the room. Joshua, taking his place again and winking at Freyja, nodded to the leader of the orchestra, and the music began.

After that everyone seemed abandoned to merriment. If those of high rank felt any discomfort in rubbing shoulders with the lower classes, they showed no sign of it. Aidan, Joshua noticed, danced the second set with Anne Jewell, Alleyne with one of the Perrie girls, whose cheeks were such a rosy red that they looked as if they might burst into flame at any moment. Joshua danced with Constance, who had been led into the opening set by Calvin.

"Are you enjoying yourself?" he asked.

"Of course." She smiled.

"I thought," he said, "that Saunders would surely claim this set with you." Jim Saunders had not danced at all.

"Mama would not like it," she said.

"Would she not?" He had meant to have a good talk with Constance but had not found the time for it yet. "But would you like it?"

She stared mutely at him.

"And would Saunders like it?" he asked.

A frown creased her brow for a moment. "We cannot always do what we want," she said.

"Why not?" He smiled at her.

"Oh, Joshua," she said in a rush, "I wish I could be like you. I wish-"

But the music began and they were obliged to give their attention to the complicated figures of the dance.

It was at the end of the second set that Hugh Garnett strolled into the ballroom, five other men with him, none of whom now lived in the neighborhood. Joshua was talking with Mrs. Turner and Prue at the time and was detained by Prue's excited account of dancing with Ben. But his aunt stepped up to the door and received the new guests with gracious smiles and much nodding of her plumes. She slipped one arm through Garnett's and turned to look about the ballroom with a smile. She beckoned to someone across the room, and Joshua turned his head to see Chastity crossing the floor toward them, a smile still on her face but all the light gone out inside her. Garnett bowed and said something before extending his arm. Chastity set hers along it, and he led her onto the floor, where couples were already gathering for the next set.

The other five men dispersed about the ballroom and were soon lost among the crowds.

Ah, Joshua thought, this was better. He went to claim Morgan, his next partner.

Freyja danced the second set with Sir Rees Newton and the third with Isaac Perrie, the village innkeeper, of all people. She could hardly believe that he would ask and that she would say yes. Gracious heavens, Wulf, if he were here, would have frozen the man with one glance from his silver eyes for even daring to raise his eyes to Lady Freyja Bedwyn. But she discovered that she was enjoying herself enormously. This, she felt, was somehow right. This was how life ought to be. She felt a pang of regret for these people that soon Joshua would be gone-if he could ward off the threat that still loomed-and life would return to its dreary norm under the marchioness's rule. She felt a pang of regret for him. And for herself.

But she would not think any dreary thoughts tonight. She was going to enjoy herself.

"It is good to see Garnett back from his travels," Mr. Perrie said, nodding his head down the line of dancers.

"Hugh Garnett?" Freyja looked at him, startled. "He is here?"

"In person." The innkeeper smiled his gap-toothed smile. "Third from the end."

Hugh Garnett, Freyja saw in one quick glance, was a dark-haired, youngish man and handsome in an oily sort of way. He was dancing with Chastity.

"Don't you worry none, lass," Mr. Perrie said. "Your lad is safe from harm."

Lass? Freyja might well have laughed aloud at the absurdity of it had she not suddenly felt rather alarmed-and strangely exhilarated. At last! Something was going to happen.

That something happened after the set had ended.

When all the dancers moved off the floor, Hugh Garnett did not. And in the lull that succeeded the music and the pounding of the dancers' feet on the floor, he raised his voice and spoke across the room.

"Sir Rees Newton," he said, and waited a moment while everyone's attention swung his way and conversations subsided into a surprised silence, "I wonder if you realize, sir, that this ballroom tonight harbors a murderer and a usurper?"

Freyja, looking sharply across the ballroom to where Joshua stood beside Mr. and Mrs. Allwright, instantly recognized in him the man who had burst into her inn room on the road to Bath and the man who had stood in the Pump Room the morning after the Sydney Gardens incident, waiting for her to finish stalking toward him. He looked alert, ready for danger, very much alive-and enjoying himself.

"I beg your pardon," Sir Rees said, all amazement. "Are you addressing me, Garnett?"

"I am amazed he had the temerity to return to Cornwall," Garnett said. "Joshua Moore murdered his cousin five years ago by rowing him out to sea in a small fishing boat and pushing him overboard and holding him under with his oar. He murdered for profit and has reaped all the rewards. You see him tonight as Marquess of Hallmere and in possession of all that has come with it. I am here to denounce him, sir. I was a witness to the killing."

No one, it seemed to Freyja, had moved a muscle except for Chastity, who had sunk onto a chair beside Morgan, and the marchioness, who was half tottering out onto the floor, one hand clutched to her throat.

Sir Rees sounded more irritated than outraged when he spoke.

"This is a serious allegation indeed, Garnett," he said. "But it is hardly the time or the place-"

Another voice interrupted him.

"I was with Hugh Garnett at the time," a squat, rough-looking man said, stepping out of the crowd, "and can corroborate his evidence."

"So was I and so can I," said another thin, bald man, stepping forward from the crowd close to the orchestra dais.

"And me, sir."

"And me, sir."

"Me too."

Five of them. And Hugh Garnett himself. Freyja's knees felt weak. She felt suddenly nauseous.

"Mr. Garnett." The marchioness clutched his arm with one hand, her other hand still to her throat. "When you came to me once before with these charges, I told you I would never believe them. Not of my dear Joshua, who was like a son to me, even though the victim was my own son. Not unless you could offer me proof that even I could not ignore. But I still cannot believe it of Joshua. Tell me there is some mistake. Tell me I am dreaming. Tell me this is some joke."

Freyja's hands closed into fists at her sides.

Sir Rees had also stepped forward. He looked deeply troubled, as well he might. This was not what he had expected of an evening of celebration. But before he could speak again, Isaac Perrie spoke up.

"Don't trouble yourself, my lady," he said affably. "They are lying rogues, all of them. I was standing in the doorway of my taproom that night, I was, because it was getting stormy and I knew the lads had taken a boat out. I watched it coming back. Young Josh-him that is now marquess-was rowing and your son was swimming beside him. They was close to shore, and I saw your son get to his feet while young Josh rowed off again. I was vexed with him for going back out when the sea was rough, but he was always a sure lad with the oars. I did not worry."

"I saw it too," another voice said. "I came to stand beside you, Isaac, if you recall. Young Josh's cousin was wading in, safe and sound and dripping wet."

"I saw them from the front road," another voice said. "It happened just like Isaac said."

"I was down by our boat with my dad," Ben Turner said. "I saw them too."

"I saw them from the house window," Mrs. Turner said.

Freyja unfurled her fan and fanned her face slowly with it. Her eyes met Morgan's across the room, and they exchanged half-smiles. It was obvious what was happening. At least a dozen other people had witnessed the event from the village exactly as Joshua had told it at the time. And as if that were not sufficient, a few of the servants at Penhallow had been strolling on the private beach the other side of the river and had seen it too, and a couple of the farm laborers had been walking on the cliff top above Penhallow and had seen.

For a stormy night, the area had been literally crawling with people, all with remarkably good vision, assuming there had been no moonlight during the storm.

Freyja met Joshua's eyes, and he depressed one eyelid slowly.

The marchioness and Mr. Hugh Garnett had not, it seemed, taken into account the fact that Penhallow and its environs were filled with Joshua's friends, people who knew him and loved and trusted him and were willing to perjure themselves on his behalf.

"They are lying, Newton, all of them," Hugh Garnett said, still holding his ground, though his face had turned somewhat more purple in hue. The marchioness was swaying on her feet, but no one was rushing toward her. "They are willing to defend a murderer because he has put a fancy ball on for them tonight. He is not the rightful marquess here. He should have hanged long ago. The Reverend Calvin Moore is the rightful marquess."

"You!" Isaac Perrie pointed a large, blunt finger in the direction of the squat, ruffianly individual. "I thought you were told six years ago to take yourself off from here with these fellow rogues of yours. You were told we did not need your bullying, smuggling ways around here. You were warned that if you showed your miserable hides here ever again you would be dragged off to the magistrate and left to your fate-a hanging or transportation most like. Yet you sneaked back one year after that to sail out on the sea with Hugh Garnett here, your former boss, did you, to witness a murder and not lift a finger to help the dying man or to apprehend his dastardly killer? A likely story indeed."

There was a gust of laughter and a smattering of cheers at his words and then rumblings of something uglier.

Sir Rees Newton raised both hands and everyone fell silent.

"I do not know what is at the bottom of all this," he said, "but it all sounds like a piece of malicious nonsense to me. You should be ashamed of yourself, Garnett. And if I discover one trace of your five fellow witnesses within my jurisdiction tomorrow, they are all going to be spending tomorrow night in my jail awaiting my pleasure-or my displeasure. As for all you witnesses for the defense, you might want to say an extra prayer for the salvation of your souls in church next Sunday. Lady Hallmere, ma'am, I apologize for the pain this foolishness has caused you. And, my lord." He bowed stiffly in Joshua's direction. "I have always believed your account of what happened that night, and I daresay I always will. You were known as a truthful, reliable boy and I saw no reason to doubt you. I would suggest that you give the word for the ball to resume if you feel the night has not been ruined."

"Not at all," Joshua said, as Hugh Garnett stalked out and his five accomplices slinked after him. "Indeed, I believe it is time for supper in the state dining room, though there will not be seats for everyone in there. Perhaps everyone would fill a plate and find a seat somewhere, and Lady Freyja Bedwyn and I will come around and speak with you all. This ball is partly in celebration of our betrothal, after all."

But just before everyone could rush gratefully into sound and movement, the Reverend Calvin Moore cleared his throat and spoke up unexpectedly, using his pulpit voice, though it shook with indignation.

"This has been a dastardly show of spite," he said, "occasioned, I do not doubt, by some trouble over smuggling in the past in which Joshua took the side of law and peace. I will have it known that I came here to deal as best I could with the understandable distress this looming crisis had caused my cousin, the marchioness. I did not come because I coveted the title myself. I did not and I do not. I am a man of the cloth and perfectly happy with my lot in life."

There was another smattering of applause, but most people by now were eager for their supper and the chance to astonish one another by repeating every word they had just heard as if they hoped to discover someone who had slept through it all.

Freyja raised her eyebrows as Joshua approached her, his eyes alight with laughter.

"You see, sweetheart?" he said. "Sometimes it is better to keep one's mouth shut and allow one's opponent to ram his foot in his own mouth."

"As I did in the Pump Room?" she said.

He reached out with both hands and circled her wrists with a thumb and forefinger.

"Now, you cannot expect a gentleman to agree with that," he said. "But if the shoe fits . . ."

"This, I suppose," she said, "is what Mr. Perrie meant that morning when he told you to leave everything to him."

He smiled at her.

"You see," he said, "my aunt and Hugh Garnett are not even worthy foes. It was all somewhat anticlimactic, was it not?"

"It will feed gossip hereabouts for the next fifty years," she said. "It will descend into folklore for generations to come."

He chuckled.

He had asked none of them to do it, not even Perrie. They had done it for him anyway, in an act of blind faith. Because they had known him and had known Albert, they had not doubted him for one moment. And there was not a one of them who had ever believed that he was the father of Anne Jewell's son, even though he had never denied it and even though it had taken some of them a while to accept her in the village. They had believed in him.

It was hard to believe that he had left such friends behind him and had wanted never to come back.

He spent suppertime circulating among the guests with Freyja, as promised. The only thing that weighed heavily on his heart was the one deception he had perpetrated against everyone. He had even just repeated it-tonight, he had told his friends, was a celebration of his betrothal. But they were not betrothed. Not unless he could persuade her to change her mind about him.

Yet that seemed hardly fair.

Chastity touched his arm just as the people crowded into the dining room were beginning to spill back into the ballroom. She looked ghastly pale. She looked as if she were holding herself upright by sheer willpower.

"Joshua," she said, "will you come to the library? I have asked Mama and Constance and Cousin Calvin and Sir Rees Newton to come too. And Miss Jewell. Freyja, will you come too, please?"

But Joshua grasped her hand and squeezed tightly. "No, Chass!" he said. "No! Don't do this. It is not necessary."

"Yes." She looked dully into his eyes as she withdrew her hand and turned away. "It is."

He closed his eyes briefly and admitted to himself with a deep inward sigh that she was probably right. There was no stopping her now anyway.

"Are we about to find out," Freyja asked quietly, "what did happen that night?"

"Let us go and see, shall we?" he asked, offering her his arm.

CHAPTER XXII

No one told the truth in the ballroom earlier," Chastity said. She had invited them all to be seated and all of them complied except Joshua, who stood close to the window, his back to it, and Chastity herself, who clung to the end of the desk as if for support. "No one."

"I realized that, Lady Chastity," Sir Rees Newton said. "I beg you not to distress yourself. Hugh Garnett can be a nasty piece of work when he sets his mind to mischief, and the men who spoke up with him are a pack of unsavory rascals. Do not think I was unaware of their smuggling antics years ago even though I said nothing at the time. As for those who spoke up for Lord Hallmere, well, they perjured themselves as surely as I am sitting here, but they know him and trust his word and had clearly decided that there are several kinds of truth. I am quite prepared to pretend I did nothing but dance and feast and enjoy the company of my neighbors here this evening."

"Perhaps that is the trouble," the marchioness said, her voice bitter. For once her mask of gentle sweetness was down. "Everyone has always loved Joshua. Everyone has always believed every word he spoke. No one-not even my husband-would press for a further investigation into what happened that night. Albert went to confront Joshua over his blatant immorality and corruption of our servants, and Albert died. Joshua was the last to see him alive. Is that not suspicious enough to put doubt into anyone's mind?"

"I know everyone was lying," Chastity said, raising her voice and speaking very distinctly even though her eyes were directed at the floor, "because there was no one out that night, either on water or on land, to witness what happened-no one except Joshua and Albert. And me."

Good Lord! Joshua fixed his startled attention on her, as did everyone else. What was this?

"I saw what happened," Chastity said. "Only me."

"And me too, Chastity," Anne Jewell said quietly. "I was with you."

What the devil?

Chastity frowned at her but did not contradict her.

"I walked to the village," Chastity said. "I knew Albert was going to talk to Joshua, and I followed. I went to Miss Jewell's house first, and then the two of us went to Joshua's. But we discovered that they had taken a boat out. We went down onto the harbor to wait for them to return. Clouds had already covered the sky and the wind was getting up. There was no one else about. I had a gun with me."

"What?"

The marchioness fell back in her chair, but no one paid her any attention and so she appeared to decide against swooning.

"We were sheltering from the wind beside one of the boats when we saw Joshua coming back," Chastity said. "He was rowing. At first we thought that Albert was not with him, but then we could see him swimming beside the boat. When they were close to shore, Joshua rowed away again and Albert waded toward the harbor."

"Thank you, Chass," Joshua said firmly, taking a step forward. "That is all that needs to be said. It confirms what I have said all along. Shall we-"

Freyja had got up from her chair and come close enough to set a hand on his sleeve.

"We need to know what happened to Albert, then," Calvin said, "if indeed he came safely to shore at that point."

"I confronted him," Chastity said. "With the gun. I pointed it at him and would not let him out of the water. I told him he could stay there and freeze until he had promised to go to Papa and confess and until he had promised to leave Penhallow and never return."

"Oh, Chass," Constance said. She gazed at Anne Jewell, a look of pain on her face. "It was Albert who fathered your son, was it not? I suppose I have always known it. I just did not want to know it, though I never believed it was Joshua."

"Wicked girl!" the marchioness exclaimed, glaring at Chastity. "I will never believe it. Never! And if this-this whore says it is so, she is a liar. And so is Joshua. But even if it were so, would you threaten your own brother, your own flesh and blood, with death or banishment merely because he had taken his pleasure with a woman who was asking for it, always making sheep's eyes at him and tempting him away from the nursery to see something in the schoolroom. Oh, yes, miss. Do not think I did not notice."

"There was no bullet hole in the body," Sir Rees said. "Your brother drowned, Lady Chastity."

"He laughed at me," she said. "He said he did not need to come ashore, that he intended to swim some more because it was such a lovely night. He waded back into the water and swam away." She covered her face with both hands. "If anyone killed him, I did."

Constance leaped to her feet and hurried across the room to draw her sister into her arms. Chastity sagged against her for a moment, but then she pushed her gently away.

"It was not just because of Miss Jewell," she said, "though that was bad enough. But Miss Jewell fell prey to Albert only because she deliberately drew him away from the nursery to the schoolroom."

"Ha!" the marchioness said, describing a large arc with one arm.

"Chastity," Anne Jewell warned. "Please, my dear."

"Chass," Joshua said. "Leave it there. Enough has been said now. Leave it."

"I was glad when I found out he was dead," Chastity said. "I was glad. God help me, I am still glad. Prue was thirteen years old. Thirteen! And his own sister. But he thought that because she had a child's mind and a child's willingness to please and to do whatever she was told, he could get away with doing anything he wished with her. I am . . . I am almost sorry that he did not give me good cause to shoot him."

The marchioness shrieked and fell back in her chair, and this time Constance took notice of her and hurried toward her to take one of her hands in both her own. Chastity sagged against the desk. Calvin cleared his throat.

"I am sorry too, Chastity," Freyja said. "I honor you."

"For what my word is worth," Anne Jewell said, "I corroborate everything Lady Chastity has said."

Sir Rees Newton rose to his feet. "I have heard enough," he said. "I thank you for inviting me here, Lady Chastity, to hear these dreadful family secrets. I did not doubt Lord Hallmere's story, but your account of what happened has banished any shred of doubt that may have lingered. You are not responsible for your brother's death. As a magistrate I absolve you of all blame. As for the pain surrounding the whole tragedy and its revelation tonight to those who did not know before, well, that is none of my concern. I will leave you all and return to my good wife in the ballroom."

He bowed and left the room without further ado.

"That girl, that Prudence," the marchioness said, pushing Constance aside and sitting forward in her chair, "is to be taken from this house and locked up in an asylum where she belongs. This would never have happened if she had not been constantly flaunting herself before Albert-not that I believe he showed her anything more than a filial affection. He was always a loving boy. I never want to set eyes upon Prudence again. She is to be gone by morning. Cousin Calvin, you will see to it, if you please. You are a clergyman. You must know a suitable place where she can be taken."

"If Prue goes, Mama," Chastity said, "I go too."

"Enough now," Joshua said, stepping forward into the middle of the room and speaking with firm authority. "There has been mischief enough here in the past few weeks. I had hoped that the truth might never come out, but perhaps there is something in the old adage that the truth will out no matter what. Perhaps it needed to come out. But it must and will be remembered that Prue is the most innocent of innocent victims in all this. She will remain in this house-in my house-for as long as she wishes, Aunt, and she will always be welcome here even after she has left."

"Prudence is my daughter," his aunt cried.

"And my ward," Joshua reminded her. "But we will not wrangle over her as if she were an inanimate object. Prue is a woman, and she has a mind and a will of her own. She is capable of choosing her own future, her own course in life, and in fact she has already chosen. She is going to wed Ben Turner."

The marchioness stared mutely at him and then got to her feet to confront him, her face pale and distorted with anger.

"You would wed Lady Prudence Moore to an uncouth fisherman?" she asked him.

"I will be making the announcement as soon as we have returned to the ballroom, Aunt," he said. "Come with me and smile and look glad. Tomorrow we may discuss all that needs discussing. Tonight we have guests to entertain, and we are neglecting them."

But his aunt had looked beyond his shoulder and her eyes had narrowed to slits and her lips had thinned.

"You!" she said, stepping past Joshua to stand toe to toe with Freyja. "This is all your fault! If you had not used your high-and-mighty wiles to seduce Joshua in Bath and snatch him from under Constance's very nose, he would have been betrothed to her by now and we would have been the close, happy family we have always been. And now you have come to invade Penhallow itself and to lord it over all of us with your proud, contemptuous family."

Freyja raised her eyebrows and regarded the marchioness with cold, silent disdain.

Joshua watched, appalled, as his aunt raised one hand and slapped her palm hard across Freyja's cheek. He reached out ineffectually with one hand, but he was too late.

Freyja had drawn back her right arm and punched his aunt in the nose. She went down like a bundle of old rags.

Calvin cleared his throat. The other ladies looked on as if waiting politely for the next scene of the drama. Joshua noticed that one of his aunt's hair plumes had snapped in two.

"I was beginning to be very much afraid," Freyja said, "that she would never give me provocation enough to permit me to do that. I am very glad she did."

By midnight the ball had ended and everyone had returned home, all assuring Joshua as they left that they had never enjoyed a grander evening. The drama with Hugh Garnett in the middle of the ball, Freyja guessed, had only enhanced their delight.

So had the announcement of the betrothal of Prue and Ben, and the bubbling happiness of both for the rest of the evening had brought even Freyja to the edge of tears a couple of times. She had blinked them away quite firmly each time. Lady Freyja Bedwyn was certainly not given to shedding sentimental tears.

Incredibly, the marchioness had returned to the ballroom with the rest of her family. Her nose had been rather red for a while-as had one of Freyja's cheeks-and her two remaining hair plumes had had to be rearranged, but she had pulled herself together and smiled her usual sweet martyr's smile.

Constance had danced the final three sets of the evening, Freyja had noticed with interest, with Joshua's steward, James Saunders, who had not danced at all until then. Constance, usually quiet and dignified and self-contained, suddenly made no secret of the glow of love in her eyes and her cheeks. She really had looked very pretty indeed. After the first five minutes or so, Mr. Saunders was returning look for look.

"It was a wonderful evening, Joshua," Eve said when a few of them were alone in the empty ballroom. The marchioness and the Reverend Calvin Moore had withdrawn. Chastity and Miss Palmer had taken Prue off to bed. Constance had disappeared somewhere with Mr. Saunders. "We have attended similar such assemblies at the village inn at home, have we not, Aidan? But tonight has made me realize that we must invite everyone to our own home, perhaps for a summer garden party or a Christmas party or-"

Aidan laughed and set an arm about her waist. "Or both, my love," he said. "Did you know you were to have so many supporters here tonight, Joshua?"

"Let me just say that I was not surprised," Joshua said with a grin.

"It was priceless," Alleyne added. "I just wish it had come to fisticuffs, though. I would have liked nothing better than to lay out that grinning Garnett fellow. But I suppose it would not have been quite the thing with so many ladies present, would it?"

"I at least got to plant the marchioness a facer," Freyja said. "I was never so pleased in my life as I was when she slapped my face."

"You see?" Morgan threw her hands in the air. "I miss all the fun. You do not tell me anything, Freyja. Whatever happened?"

"It is a long story," Freyja said, "and not mine to tell."

"You all came here to give me your support when it seemed I was to be charged with murder," Joshua said. "I believe you have earned the right to know the truth. I know I can count upon your discretion."

He gave them a brief, bare account of what had been revealed earlier in the library.

"Oh, Prue," Eve said, closing her eyes when Joshua had finished and setting her arm about Aidan's waist. "My sweet, innocent Prue. But she had Chastity and Miss Jewell and Joshua as her champions, and now she is to have that steady, very nice young man, Ben Turner. She will be happy, I believe. I am ready for bed."

Aidan kissed the top of her head.

Freyja gazed at them rather wistfully. She had never seen any public display of affection between them before now.

"I am not," she said. "I need air and exercise and the wind in my face. Take me down onto the beach, Josh?"

Alleyne grinned at her and waggled his eyebrows, but no one voiced any comment or-more to the point-any protest. They all went off to bed while Freyja changed hastily into a woolen dress and a warm, hooded cloak, and sturdy shoes. It was a chilly night-she knew that much even though it was a light night too. They would have no need of any lantern to light their way down into the valley and along the river path. Joshua had changed out of his evening finery too, she noticed when she met him in the hall.

There was a depressing feeling of anticlimax needing to be blown away in the wind. The danger to Joshua was over-after what really had been a wonderfully satisfying scene in the ballroom. All the uncertainties about that night of Albert's death had been put to rest. It was over. There was nothing left to be done.

Nothing to keep them at Penhallow.

Nothing to keep them together.

"Will you stay for Prue's wedding?" she asked.

"Yes," he told her.

"A whole month while the banns are read?" she said. "You will endure all that time here, Josh, because you love her?"

"Yes," he said.

He was not at all the sort of person she had thought him. The realization had annoyed her just a few days ago. Now she was glad he was not, and she was glad she had been given an opportunity to discover the sort of person he really was.

"And what then?" she asked. "Everything here will go on as it always has, and you will . . . what? Wander? Enjoy life again?"

"I have a feeling," he said, "that Constance's marriage will not be long delayed. Her eyes were finally opened to a number of things tonight, I believe. Certainly she was making an almost public acknowledgment of her feelings for Jim Saunders before the evening was over, and he looked as if he was very willing to be persuaded to marry so far above him."

"The match would have your approval, then?" she asked. She wondered what Wulf would have to say if she suddenly embarked upon a romance with one of his stewards.

"It would," he said. "But my approval is supremely unimportant, is it not? Constance is of age and not my ward. And, like Prue, she has a mind of her own and is quite capable of deciding what will give her greatest happiness in life. I cannot think dynastically, Freyja. I was not raised that way."

"You will stay for that wedding too, then?" They were approaching the end of the valley, and the steep hillside no longer protected them from the fresh west wind, which sent their cloaks billowing out to the side.

"Yes," he said. "I would like to settle them in the dower house, but I will need to work out a few details first."

"And so poor Chastity will be left at Penhallow alone with her mother," Freyja said. "But at least she will have her sisters close."

"My aunt can no longer live at Penhallow," he said, turning his head and looking down at her. "Penhallow is going to be my home."

"Oh." She looked at him in some surprise. But she could think of nothing else to say. She was feeling a little hurt for some reason she could not yet quite fathom.

"She will have to live at the dower house herself if no other solution presents itself," he said. "But I am going to do all in my power to find her somewhere else to live. And I daresay she will not want to be in such close proximity to me."

"Chastity?" she said.

He sighed. "My ward," he said. "But not my prisoner. I cannot decide what she will do, can I? Perhaps she will choose to go wherever my aunt goes. Perhaps she will go to live with Constance-or remain here. I shall give her the chance of a Season in London if she wants it, though I am not sure how I would go about it. I am the Marquess of Hallmere, though, am I not? A man of importance and influence." He grinned at her.

They rounded the headland, and the wide flat sands of the beach stretched before them, the towering cliffs to one side, the sea to the other. It was half out or half in-Freyja did not know which. She could hear the rush of the water and see the moonlight sparkling across its surface. It was chillier here, the air damper and saltier. She lifted her face and drew in great lungfuls of it.

He was going to stay, then. He was going to take on his responsibilities as head of his family. He was going to settle down. Without her.

"Perhaps I will see you in London next spring, then," she said. "Morgan will be making her come-out."

"I want the first waltz at the first ball," he said. "We have waltzed together only once, Free, and even that was interrupted by the necessity of chasing after the master of ceremonies to announce our betrothal."

They set off across the beach, the wind in their faces.

"The first waltz is reserved, then," she said.

They walked in silence for a while. They were not touching. She had her hands inside her cloak. He had his clasped behind him.

"The tide is on the way in," he said. "But we have plenty of time before we get cut off from the valley."

"Did he commit suicide, do you think?" she asked.

"Albert?" He was silent for a few moments. "He must have realized he was in deep trouble. He also knew that his mother could see no wrong in him and that his father was weak. He did not seem like the sort of man who would take his own life anyway. But who knows? Chass had given him an ultimatum. So had I. I had told him that if he was still within ten miles of Penhallow by nightfall of the next day I would kill him with my bare hands. I don't suppose I would have done it, but I would have pounded him within an inch of his life. He knew it too. My guess is that he was overcome by the cold or by cramps. He was a nasty, villainous creature, Freyja-I always suspected that he was in on that attempted smuggling ring too. But enough on that topic. It is over and done with."

He stopped walking and stood looking out to sea. Freyja stood beside him, feeling all the vast wonder of the universe and the exhilaration of the fact that she was part of it.

"Freyja," he said, "what are you doing for the rest of your life?"

Oh, no! She was alerted by his tone and by the fact that he had called her Freyja rather than Free or sweetheart.

"Whatever it is," she said, lifting her chin, "it will be done without you, Josh. I am not one of your loose ends that must be tied up neatly before you can settle peacefully here. It was never a part of our bargain that you feel obligated to offer for me in earnest."

"What if it is not obligation that I feel?" he asked.

But her throat suddenly felt raw and painful and she realized in some horror that if she allowed him to speak one more word she might make an utter idiot of herself by starting to bawl. How dared he! She did not need this. She turned sharply about and eyed the cliffs. The moonlight was full upon them. They did not look quite so sheer from below.

"I am going up," she said.

He sighed. "Very well, then," he said. "It is probably wise to start back anyway. The tide is coming in fast."

"I am going up there." She pointed to the top of the cliffs, and she felt the familiar weakness of the knees and shortness of breath that had assailed her throughout a life of forcing herself to do dangerous things, preferably those that most terrified her. She had climbed trees when she was a girl only because she had been afraid of heights.

Joshua chuckled. "I will come back in the morning, sweetheart," he said, "and sweep up your remains. No, I won't be able to do that, will I? They will have been washed away by the tide. What the devil are you doing?"

She was striding straight toward the cliffs.

"I am going up the cliffs," she said.

"Why?" He caught up to her. "We are not even close to being cut off by the tide."

"Why?" she said haughtily. "What a stupid question, Josh. Because they are there, of course."

She pushed her cloak behind her back, found her first foothold and handhold, and raised herself clear of the beach. She looked back over her shoulder.

"I'll race you to the top," she said.

CHAPTER XXIII

What he ought to have done, Joshua thought, was to have plucked her off the cliff face and borne her back to the house by the valley route, by force if necessary. It would have been necessary, of course. He would have had to tuck her under one arm or toss her over one shoulder and parry her blows as best he could without retaliating in kind and close his ears to her curses. But at least she would still have been a live body by the time he had set her down safely inside Penhallow.

It would have been the responsible thing to do, and he had drawn responsibility about him like a mantle during the past week or so. He had become a new person, a mature adult, a sober marquess with duty as his guiding light. He had been preparing to fade into stodgy respectability and premature middle age.

But what was he doing instead of hauling Freyja safely back home?

He was climbing the cliffs with her, that was what.

In the middle of the night, with a stiff wind blowing.

And with her hampered by a woman's garments.

He was also doing a good deal of laughing. The utter absurdity of it all! And the undeniable rush of exhilaration at the danger of it all!

Not that it was quite as dangerous as it looked-especially from above. Steep as the cliffs were, they provided any number of perfectly steady holds for feet and hands. Of course, there was no going back down once they had started. For one thing, going down a cliff face was infinitely more difficult than going up. For another, the tide was already in at the river mouth, and there would be no way of reaching the valley except by swimming.

He was not engaging in a race. He was keeping as close to her as he could, and slightly below her, almost as if he believed he could catch her if she should happen to slip and hurtle past him. But perhaps he could offer some assistance if she got stuck. Not that he offered out loud. He did not want anger to distract her. When she stopped, sometimes for a whole minute at a time, he stayed quietly where he was.

He knew that as soon as they reached the top they were going to collapse, their legs turned to jelly and quite useless for many minutes. They were also going to lie flat on the blessedly flat land, clinging to it as if expecting to slide off into space at any moment. And they were going to vow, as he had vowed every time he had done this as a boy, that never again would they be so foolhardy.

The last few yards were the most difficult, where solid stone became intermingled with earth and grass and loose pebbles and the dangers of finding a false foothold and sliding uncontrollably became very real. He remembered clinging motionless for maybe half an hour a body length from the top the first time he made the climb, unable for all that time to persuade himself to move a muscle while telling himself that he must before he disgraced himself by losing control of his bladder.

Freyja did not make the mistake of clinging too long and so becoming paralyzed. He had been trying to decide what to do if she did. He climbed after her over the lip of the very hollow where they had sat a few days ago and lay facedown on the grass, panting, beside her.

She was the first-after perhaps five minutes-to start laughing.

He joined her.

They lay side by side, clinging to the world as if they expected the force of gravity to expend itself at any moment, and shook and snorted with laughter.

"I believe I won," she said-a pronouncement of enormous wit that sent them off into renewed convulsions.

"I suppose," he said, "you are afraid of heights?"

"Always have been," she admitted.

They laughed so hard they wheezed for breath.

He turned onto his side to look at her, and she turned onto hers to look at him.

"You are not finding the night cold, are you?" he asked.

"Cold?" She raised her eyebrows. "Cold?"

They met in the middle of the space between them and were soon having tolerable success at trying to occupy the exact same space. Their arms were about each other, their mouths wide on each other's, kissing with the urgency of two madcaps who knew very well that they had just challenged death itself and won.

They came together soon afterward in a tangle of clothes and arms and legs, heat and wetness and enticing urgency at their shared core. They made love with vigor and passion and joy.

"My sweetest heart," he murmured, and other inanities of a like kind, whenever his mouth was free for speech.

"My love. Oh, my dearest love," she murmured back to him.

They exploded into completion together-perhaps all of three minutes after they had begun. As if now, their climb over, they were running a race. Which, appropriately enough, they finished in a dead heat.

They were panting again then, and she was laughing again into his shoulder as he wrapped one arm about her from beneath and both their cloaks about them from above.

"What was this?" he asked, his mouth against her ear. "Has my hearing turned suddenly defective? My love? My dearest love? Passion and lust run wild, sweetheart?"

Her laughter subsided, but she said nothing.

"Speechless?" he suggested.

"Don't spoil it, Josh," she said.

"What will spoil things for me," he said, "is to see you leave here in a few days' time, Free, and to smile cheerfully as if I were happy to see you go off to plan our wedding. And then to wait for your letter officially ending our betrothal. And then to waltz with you next spring, having lived all winter for just that one half hour. And then to spend the rest of my life without you."

He heard her drawing a slow, deep breath.

"There is no need-" she began.

"Dammit!" He cut her off before she could launch into the expected speech. "Let there be some truth between us at least, Freyja. I have had enough of lies and evasions and secrets to last me a lifetime. If all this has been nothing but a lark to you, then so be it. Say so honestly and I will let you go without another word-unless, that is, you have been got with child. But if you are letting me go because you think you ought to honor the temporary clause in our bargain and because you think I am being annoyingly noble in my offer to make our betrothal real, then stuff it, sweetheart. Just stuff it! Give me honesty now. Do you love me?"

Her voice sounded reassuringly normal-it was cold and haughty.

"Well, of course I love you," she said.

"Of course." He was back to laughter then. He held her tightly and could not seem to stop laughing for a while. "Are we going to allow a little bargain to ruin the rest of our lives, then?"

"Whenever we would quarrel," she said, "and we would quarrel, Josh, each of us would wonder if the other had felt coerced into marrying."

"What poppycock!" he said. "Do you not trust me to say the truth to you, Freyja? I say that I love you, that I adore you, that I can imagine no greater happiness than to spend the rest of my life loving you and laughing and quarreling and even fighting with you. I trust you to say what is true to me. You have said that you love me-that of course you love me. Does that include the wish to marry me, to live here with me all your life, to have babies with me and fun with me? To share the sorrows of life with me? And all its joys?"

"Of course it includes that wish," she said. "But, Josh, I am terrified."

"Why?" he asked. Her face was pressed hard against his shoulder.

"I have never done too well with love and betrothals and marriage prospects," she said. "If I give in to happiness now, it may all evaporate before my very eyes."

"Sweetheart, sweetheart," he said. "What happened the other day when you were afraid of the sea?"

"I was not-"

"What happened?"

There was a short silence.

"I persuaded you to take me over to the island," she said.

"And?"

"And I insisted on rowing part of the way back."

"Even though you had to switch places in the boat with me," he said. "What did you do tonight when you were terrified of the height of the cliffs?"

"Climbed them," she said.

"And now," he said, "you are terrified to love me. What are you going to do about it?"

She drew her head back from his shoulder and glared at him.

"Love you anyway," she said. "Don't ask the next question, Josh, if you admire the shape of your nose. You remind me of everything I hated about all my governesses, asking their questions, and trying to extract the correct answers out of me by slow degrees and with infinite patience. You are going to ask me what I plan to do about my terror of a real betrothal with you and a real marriage with you."

He gazed back into her eyes and said nothing.

"We are betrothed," she said firmly. "There-that is what I am going to do. We are really betrothed. But if you should die before our marriage, Josh, I shall pursue you through all of heaven and hell after my own death and throttle you. Do you hear me?"

"Yes, sweetheart," he said meekly, and grinned at her. "I want to hear myself say this, Free. And I want to hear your answer."

He sat up, checked his distance from the edge, and ar-ranged himself in a picturesque kneeling posture. He took one of her hands in his and smiled his most charming smile at her.

"Lady Freyja Bedwyn," he said, "will you do me the great honor of accepting my hand in marriage? On the understanding that it is to be purely a love match on both sides?"

"You look remarkably silly," she said.

"I know, sweetheart," he said, making a kissing gesture with his lips. "But I want you to be able to boast about this to our grandchildren one day-that their grandpapa went down on bended knee and begged you to marry him."

"They will never believe it," she said, "when they look at the old lady I will have grown into and then look at the handsome old gentleman you will have become." She sat up and sighed. "But I will remember this moment all my life, and I daresay it will bring tears to my eyes when I know no one is looking. Yes, I will, my love. I will marry you-but only on the understanding that it is to be a mutual love match."

She sat and he knelt, and they grinned at each other like a couple of self-satisfied fools while her hair blew wild about her face and he was very aware of the long, almost sheer drop less than a yard behind his heels.

"I keep expecting to feel the weight of the shackle close about my leg," he said, "but it is simply not happening. I am a betrothed man and have never felt so free. Free with Free! Shall we go back to the house and wake everyone up with the news?"

"It would not be news to them, though, would it?" she said.

"Lord, no," he said, grinning at her. "We have to celebrate somehow, though sweetheart. Any suggestions?"

"Oh, Josh," she said, opening her arms, "do stop talking nonsense and come here."

"Brilliant idea," he said.

Joshua had gone out on business by the time Freyja asked for him the next morning. She was bubbling with unaccustomed excitement, but though she was surrounded by family and friends, there was no one to confide in. What would she say?

I am in love?

I am betrothed?

I am going to be married?

To Joshua?

Apart from the fact that they would look at her as if she had finally taken leave of her senses, it was all very lowering. She was not a person given to an exuberant outpouring of sentimental drivel.

She went for a walk instead-all the way to the village. This was something she needed to do anyway-and it had to be done alone. No one must know about it. Even the thought that someone might find out gave her the shivers.

"Good morning," she said when Anne Jewell opened the door of her cottage to her knock. "No!" She held up a staying hand when the woman gestured as if to ask her to step inside. "I'll not come in or disturb you longer than I need."

"But-" Anne Jewell began.

"No, thank you." Freyja kept her hand raised. "Correct me if I am wrong, but I do not believe you are entirely happy living here in this village, are you?"

The woman's welcoming smile faded somewhat.

"Everyone has been most kind," she said, "especially Joshua-Lord Hallmere. But you must not fear. I will not continue to accept his support. I am in hope of acquiring some new pupils soon."

Freyja clucked her tongue. "Do you think I care about a little support payment?" she asked. "I have looked at you and seen an intelligent woman who has never complained about her lot even though it was brought on by noble self-sacrifice and injustice-and a woman whose pride has not been broken. Is it your wish to teach?"

Miss Jewell looked wary.

"It was always my wish," she said. "My family was never wealthy, though I was fortunate enough to be educated. I always wanted to teach."

"There is a position for you if you wish for it," Freyja said, "at a girls' school in Bath. It is a quite respectable establishment and pays a salary that will support both you and your son in some comfort. You will be allowed to take him with you, by the way. My solicitor reported to me a week or so ago that there is need of another teacher-of geography, I believe."

Anne Jewell stared at her.

"I have some influence at the school," Freyja explained.

Anne Jewell licked her lips. "I would like it of all things," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. "Do they know that David was born out of wedlock?"

"Yes," Freyja said. "It will not be held against you provided you give good service as a teacher."

"I will." She set one hand flat against her throat and closed her eyes tightly. "Oh, dear God, I will. At a school! In Bath! How will I ever be able to thank you, Lady Freyja?"

"In just this way," Freyja said firmly. "It is the solicitor, Mr. Hatchard, who has found this position for you and checked your references. You know of no one else, only him. He is the one who answered your letter of inquiry and then wrote to offer you the position. My name is never to be mentioned to anyone, do you understand me? Especially not within the walls of Miss Martin's school. And least of all to Miss Martin herself."

Miss Jewell was regarding her with wide eyes.

"Of course," she said. "Yes, of course."

"Mr. Hatchard will write to you within the next week or two, then, with a formal offer and details and coach tickets for you and your son," Freyja said. "Good day to you, Miss Jewell."

It was at that moment that the half-closed house door opened and the child stepped out-with Joshua right behind him.

"I am ready, Mama," the child cried excitedly. "Look! Clean hands." He displayed them for her inspection, first the palms and then the backs.

Freyja was wishing fervently that she possessed the ability to make herself invisible. Dash it all, had Josh heard anything? But he looked at her in cheerful surprise.

"Ah, Freyja," he said, "are you here too? I came to fetch David. I thought to arrange an excursion for the children today."

"I came to bid Miss Jewell farewell," Freyja explained, "since I will be going back to Lindsey Hall soon. To start planning the wedding." Ignominiously she felt herself blush-and then glared at him with flared nostrils when he half depressed one eyelid.

Memories of the night before rushed upon her.

They walked back to the house together, David riding proudly and happily upon the horse as Joshua led it.

"If I had known you were going to see Anne," Joshua said, "I would have waited for you, Free. We could have ridden together."

"Yes, well," she said carelessly, "it was just one of a dozen such errands I must run before I leave."

"Sweetheart," he said softly, "you are a fraud."

She turned her head sharply to look into his laughing eyes.

"But you need not fear," he said. "Your secret is safe with me."

"Secret?" She frowned.

"What connection is Miss Martin to you?" he asked.

"Josh," she said coldly, "I could kill you for being at that house this morning. I suppose you had your ear pressed to the keyhole."

"No need, sweetheart," he said. "You are the one who refused to step inside and forced Anne to stand out there with the door half open. If you had come inside, you would have seen me. I was making no attempt to hide."

"She was my governess," she said crossly. "I mistreated her, she was dismissed for being unable to control me, and then she had the effrontery to refuse to allow Wulf to find her other employment. The silly woman opened a school in Bath and was like to starve when I heard about it. What was I to do?" She glared at him.