Valentine

Chapter Eighteen

The girl in the center of the ring wore a scarlet blouse with billowing sleeves and a ruffled neck, leather britches, and Cossack boots. The gaily caparisoned horse beneath her caracoled, seeming to be prancing on the very tips of his iron-shod hooves, and the girl's balance didn't falter as she pirouetted on the bare back. Then she jumped, flipped in the air, and landed again on the horse, her two feet firmly planted.

Emily squeaked and seized Edward's hand. Clarissa gazed round-eyed, and Rosie leaned forward, her hands on her knees, as if she couldn't get close enough to see. Theo shook her head in admiration.

"How wonderful to do that," she said enviously. "What an amazingly exciting life it must be."

"To be a performer in Astley's amphitheater?" Sylvester asked, raising his eyebrows. "My dear girl, you can't see from here how shabby those costumes are. Just imagine living in a freezing caravan, with no privacy, racketing around from place to place half the year."

"Sheer bliss," Theo declared, her eyes on the ring, where a troupe of jugglers were performing with fire sticks.

"Oh, he's going to swallow it!" Clarissa exclaimed, turning pale as one of the performers tipped back his head and the blazing stick inched into his mouth.

"How does he do that?" Rosie demanded. "It must be a cheat."

"Oh, you have no magic in your soul," Clarissa told her, her hands gripped tightly in her lap.

"I only want to understand," her little sister protested in her customary refrain.

Sylvester leaned back slightly, his eyes resting on his wife's profile as she gazed raptly at the ring, where six horses now circled, their white plumes waving in the air. Each carried a standing rider, all dressed alike, but it was clear that three were male and three female. They began an elaborate dance, a kind of quadrille involving both horses and riders, the latter exchanging horses as if they were exchanging partners.

"Why bliss?" he asked softly.

Without taking her eyes off the ring, Theo said, "It's exciting. It's doing something… something risky that you must do perfectly if you're not to hurt yourself. It's a real life… not this… this…" She stopped, but Sylvester knew what she'd been about to say. London bored her, and she despised the inane social round, although she struggled to hide her tedium from her mother and sisters, who seemed to be enjoying themselves.

His gaze shifted from his wife's countenance to Edward Fairfax. Emily still clutched his hand. Edward had taken lodgings in Albermarle Street, although he spent all his time in Brook Street and went to his lodgings only to lay his head on his pillow. Sylvester was still uncertain whether he knew anything about Vimiera, but if he did, he clearly wasn't saying. And he hadn't hesitated to join the Belmont women in their support of Stoneridge.

He closed his eyes as his temples tightened. Theo had still said nothing openly about his humiliation of the other afternoon, and today her sisters and Edward were behaving just as always. Perhaps it was the distraction of the performance.

But perhaps, he thought, it was another way in which they were showing him their support. A kind of blind loyalty simply because he was now one of them. They were the most extraordinary family. But dear God, if only he could prove that their loyalty wasn't misplaced.

The familiar frustration washed through him. If he could just remember, or find someone who remembered, what had happened before the bayonet had slashed across his head. There had to be an explanation for that surrender. An explanation other than abject cowardice. He'd searched the records at Horseguards, forcing himself to meet the eye of men who passed him in the corridors, but the transcript of the court-martial yielded nothing that he didn't already know. It was time to start asking some questions.

Again Neil Gerard's face popped into his vision. Gerard had not yet put in an appearance in town, but it was very early in the Season. When he turned up, Sylvester would tackle him. If he cut him socially, then he would track him down in his lodgings. Somehow he would force the man to talk about Vimiera. Maybe now, now that Sylvester was distanced from the agony of his imprisonment and the immediacy of his shame, he might latch on to some infinitesimal fact or impression that would unlock his memory.

Unless he already knew the truth. Unless he knew everything there was to know: He'd yielded the colors, surrendered, condemned his own men. Perhaps the truth had been too terrible to remember.

Theo took her eyes from the ring for a minute and glanced at her husband. A shiver ran through her as she saw his expression. His eyes were blank, his face drawn, that muscle twitching in his cheek. What was it?

She glanced at her sisters, intent on the scene in the ring. With the natural delicacy of Elinor Belmont's children, no one had mentioned the other afternoon. If Theo didn't bring it up, then they wouldn't. They would have discussed it among themselves and with Elinor, but it would go no further than that unless they were given permission.

But for some reason she couldn't bring herself to speculate about some obscure dishonor in Sylvester's past, not even with her sisters or her mother, from whom she rarely held secrets. Just as something had held her back from revealing the true conditions of the old earl's will. Her motives for keeping quiet about it confused her, but for whatever reason, she kept silent.

"I wish I could ride," she declared with sudden fierceness, and was instantly rewarded as Sylvester's eyes focused and he came back to the world of Astley's amphitheater.

"But you do," Clarissa pointed out. "You rode only this morning in Hyde Park."

"You call that riding?" her sister retorted scornfully. "A decorous trot along the tan under the eyes of every old cat in town?"

Sylvester raised his eyebrows and caught Edward's eye. The younger man gave him a sympathetic smile.

"Look at that man swallowing a sword now!" Rosie cried. "That has to be a cheat. It must fold up or something as he pushes it down."

"A magician's nightmare audience," Sylvester murmured.

Theo's deep chuckle answered him.

"She has an inquiring mind."

"So I've noticed."

The grand finale brought the performance to a rousing close. Sylvester could see that the unsophisticated treat had been a success. Emily and Clarissa had been delighted, Rosie fascinated if less than credulous, and Theo diverted for a few hours.

"Supper," he announced cheerfully, placing Theo's cloak over her shoulders. Her hair was braided around her head, and the slim white column of her bared neck was irresistible. He forgot where they were for a minute and bent and kissed her nape.

Startled, she looked over her shoulder, her eyes glowing with sensual response to the caress. He kissed the corner of her mouth and the tip of her nose.

"Where are we going for supper?" Rosie asked, clearly unimpressed by this delay in the proceedings and quite unaware that her sisters and Edward were tactfully looking in the opposite direction.

"I thought you might enjoy the Pantheon, Rosie," Sylvester said easily.

"Will they have scalloped oysters and ices?" the child inquired, removing her glasses to wipe the lenses on her skirt. "I most particularly enjoy scalloped oysters and pink ices."

"Then you shall have them," Sylvester assured her. "Let's get out of this crush."

He shepherded his small flock ahead of him through the rowdy departing audience, a crowd of townspeople, raucous costermongers, fleet-footed urchins. Astley's was an entertainment that appealed to anyone who could afford the penny entrance fee in the pits.

There was an autumnal nip to the evening air as they emerged into a crowd as noisy and shrill as the one inside. Fruit and flower sellers called their wares, competing with the bellows of pie sellers, and the jangle of an organ grinder with his scrawny monkey dancing frantically.

"I'm just going to look at that monkey." Rosie dived into the crowd in the direction of the organ grinder.

"Rosie!" Theo plunged after her, but Sylvester was quicker.

He grabbed the child's pelisse and hauled her back.

"This is not Lulworth," he said. "You do not run off like that on your own, do you hear, Rosie?"

"I merely wished to see what kind of monkey it was," she said with an injured air. "There are many different kinds of monkeys, you should know, Stoneridge. I have a book about them, and I wanted to identify it."

"It's a little black monkey," Edward said. "Now, come along. Emily's getting cold." He took Rosie's hand and marched off with her, Emily and Clarissa arm in arm beside him, toward the corner where the chaise and Sylvester's curricle waited with coachman, groom, and tiger.

Sylvester and Theo followed, pushing their way through the crowd that seemed suddenly to grow thicker. It wasn't so much that, Theo realized suddenly, as that they were being pressed on either side by three men in the leather aprons of workmen. Three very large men. She glanced up at Sylvester and saw that he was now behind her; the men had somehow separated them just as they drew ahead of the crowd.

She saw the realization of danger flash in his eyes the minute she understood it herself.

"Theo, go to the carriage," he ordered, his voice low and intense as he stepped sideways, his eyes assessing the three men. They wore caps low on their foreheads. A hobnailed boot swung, kicking him on the shin, and his breath whistled through his teeth. He was surrounded now, no room for maneuver, the indifferent crowd behind them as they left the immediate vicinity of the amphitheater.

Sylvester was unarmed. A man on a family outing in the company of women and children didn't carry weapons. His driving whip was with the curricle. One of the men raised his arm, a heavy oak cudgel in his fist, and Sylvester wanted to scream as the memory of the bayonet slicing down at his unprotected head filled him with a momentarily paralyzing terror. He flung up his arms to protect his head at the same moment that Theo kicked the cudgel wielder in the kidneys.

The man bellowed, spinning toward her, giving Sylvester breathing space. Theo kicked again, her leg a perfectly straight weapon, her aim wickedly accurate, slamming into his groin. He doubled over with a scream.

The other two were on Sylvester now, and a knife glinted. He drove his fist upward under the jaw of one of his assailants, a massive bear of a man who simply shook his head and prepared to renew the attack. As he did so, Theo went for him, two fingers jabbing for the eyes. Blinded, he fell back with a panicked cry and her leg flashed upward, her heel driving against his heart just below his ribs.

"Bastards," she said, dusting off her hands. "That was exciting, wasn't it?"

Sylvester had dealt as efficiently with the third assailant, who lay gasping in a fetal curl on the ground, the knife at some distance from his body. The earl, momentarily at a loss for words, turned to his wife. She was breathing rapidly; her eyes shone, her cheeks were flushed, her hair wisped from its braided coronet, and she looked perfectly ready to take on another half a dozen footpads.

Her hat lay on the ground and he picked it up, dusting it off against his thigh, handing it to her silently. She stuck it on her head and grinned at him.

"That'll teach them."

"Yes," he said, "I'm sure it will. Where the hell did you learn to fight like that?"

"Edward taught me. You knew I could do it."

"I knew you could wrestle," he said slowly. "I did not know you knew how to fight like a damned street Arab."

"I'm sorry if it vexes you," she said, a shade tartly. "But it seems to me you should be grateful. Those footpads meant business. If you ask me, they were after more than your purse and your watch."

"What on earth -" Edward's horrified tones came from behind her as he took in the scene. "We wondered where you were."

"Oh, just dealing with a minor matter," Sylvester said.

"Footpads," Theo said with another grin at Edward's expression. "You should have seen me, Edward. I remembered all those kicks you taught me, and that business with the fingers." She gestured to prove her point.

"Dear God," Edward muttered, glancing uneasily at the earl.

"I only showed her the technique, sir. I didn't train her in it or anything."

"My wife is clearly an apt pupil," Sylvester said with a sharp exhalation. "And the devil of it is that if she weren't, I'd probably be lying there with my throat cut – which rather inhibits my legitimate outrage."

"So I should hope," Theo declared indignantly. "What shall we do with them?"

"Leave them," Sylvester said, turning away. "Are the girls all right, Fairfax?"

"Yes, they're in the chaise," Edward replied. His expression was strained, his voice low. "I was so busy seeing them safely installed, I didn't see what was happening. Not that it would have made any difference. A cripple isn't good for anything but seeing to the comfort of women."

"Don't be a damned fool," Sylvester said roughly, but he touched his arm in a fleeting gesture of understanding. "Come along, let's get out of here." He indicated they should go ahead of him and then turned back to his assailants. One of them was struggling to his knees.

Sylvester planted a foot in his chest and sent him sprawling. "You will inform whoever employed you that he will discover I don't take kindly to unprovoked attacks. That is a most solemn promise." He lifted his foot again, and the man on the ground cowered, covering his head.

"All right, guv, all right. We was only doin' what we'd been told."

"By whom?" The gray eyes were like the arctic wastelands as he stared down at the man, his foot still menacingly raised.

" 'E was all wrapped up, guv. 'Ad 'is face 'idden in a muffler. I swears it," the man babbled, burying his head. "In the Fisherman's Rest on Dock Street. 'E comes and says 'e wants a little job done. 'E 'ad an 'usky voice, raspy like. Brings us 'ere and points out yer 'onor to us and says get on wi' it. There'll be a guinea apiece. We was only doin' what we was told to do."

"Yes, I'm sure you were." Sylvester believed the man. Whoever was behind this wouldn't be foolish enough to reveal himself to his tools. But the Fisherman's Rest was a clue.

"We wasn't expectin' no woman from 'ell," one of the others muttered, groaning as pain stabbed in his kidneys.

"Something of a surprise for all of us," Sylvester agreed blandly. "Now, don't forget my message." Turning on his heel, he strolled to the waiting vehicles, where an argument seemed to be in full flood between Edward and Theo.

"You cannot possibly drive in an open carriage looking like that," Edward stated.

"Don't be absurd. Who's going to see?"

"Oh, Theo, come into the chaise with us and let Edward drive with Lord Stoneridge," Emily said, her head at the window of the chaise. "We want to know what's happened."

"Now, what's the matter?" Sylvester inquired somewhat wearily.

"Edward's being so silly," Theo said. "He says I shouldn't drive in the curricle, just because my gown's a bit torn."

"A bit!" Edward said, pointing at Theo's gown of pale-yellow muslin. "It's ripped all the way up to your waist."

"Well, how could I do a high kick without tearing it? I could have pulled it up to my waist first, I suppose, and regaled the entire neighborhood with the sight of my drawers."

"Theo!" protested Emily.

"Of course, they're very pretty drawers," Theo continued, ignoring the flapping ears of tiger and coachman. "They have lace frills and pink ribbon knots, and I believe -"

"That'll do!" Sylvester interrupted this devastating description before it drew an even larger crowd. He scooped her up and bundled her into the chaise. "You may satisfy your sisters' curiosity on the way back to Curzon Street, where you will change your dress."

His tone was scolding, but his eyes were alight with laughter, and something else. Something akin to admiration.

He instructed the coachman to return to Curzon Street and climbed into the curricle beside Edward.

"Was it footpads, sir?" Edward asked directly as the pair of chestnuts sprang forward and the tiger clambered hastily onto his perch at the rear.

"Up to a point," Sylvester said. "I'm sure they'd have happily robbed me of my last sou."

"But there was more to it, you believe?"

He nodded. "Another one of those 'accidents' that seem to be occurring with dismaying frequency."

"Who?"

"God alone knows. I'd rather hoped it was some disaffected tenant. But clearly it's not that simple. But don't say anything to Theo. I have enough of a problem second-guessing her as it is, without giving her a cause to get her teeth into."

Edward smiled. "She needs to be occupied."

Sylvester groaned. "Why can't she occupy herself like other young women? Emily and Clarissa enjoy doing the usual things. Shopping and exhibitions and balls and suchlike."

"Theo's not like them."

"No," Sylvester agreed glumly. "She's not like any woman I've ever met. If I don't watch her every minute, she'll be riding ventre a terre in the park at the fashionable hour, or attending a prizefight, or presenting herself at Manton's Gallery for some target practice. I can't think what her mother and grandfather were thinking when they encouraged her to be so damnably independent."

Edward bristled. "I believe they both understood they'd have had to break her spirit if she was to be molded in any conventional form," he said stiffly. "And she's a very special person."

Sylvester glanced sideways at the young man's rigid countenance. He smiled and said pacifically, "Yes, she is."

Edward visibly relaxed. "Do you intend to discover who's behind these attacks, sir?"

"If I'm to stay healthy – not to mention alive – for much longer, I think I'd better." Sylvester passed a brougham with barely an inch to spare.

"If I can be of service," Edward suggested tentatively. "I know a one-armed -"

"Oh, for God's sake, you young fool, a one-armed man can ride, shoot, drive, fence, fish, and make love as well as a man with two arms," Sylvester declared. "If I need your help, I'll call upon you, fair enough."

The impatient tone was much more reassuring than sympathy or an anxious disclaimer. "Fair enough, sir."

They reached Curzon Street before the chaise and were drinking claret in companionable silence when the girls arrived.

"Is that the ninety-six?" Theo said, lifting the decanter, inhaling the bouquet. "Some bottles in that delivery were corked."

"This one's fine," Sylvester said. "Go and change your dress. We're all famished."

"I'm also very thirsty," Theo responded with a twinkling smile, filling a glass. "All that exercise, you understand."

She was radiating mischief and energy. Sylvester had rarely seen her like this, and he realized with a shock that she was happy, and in the few weeks since he'd known her, he hadn't often seen her truly happy. At least not outside the bedchamber.

And she was happy because that encounter had exhilarated her, had enabled her to do something she was good at, something that pleased and satisfied her and made her feel useful.

She was never going to settle for the life of a society matron. Maybe motherhood would use up some of her surplus energies. Thinking of their passion-filled nights, he couldn't imagine it would be long acoming.

"Take it with you," he said. "You may have ten minutes to change."

"You wouldn't go without me?"

"I wouldn't put it to the test."

"What! After I saved your life?"

"Don't exaggerate. Nine minutes."

There was a distinct glimmer of laughter in the gray eyes, a complicit quiver to his mouth, and Theo felt the warmth of her own response leaping to meet him. These moments of private understanding in public places had been rare occurrences since their arrival in London, and she'd missed them.

Smiling to herself, she went upstairs to change.

The Pantheon on Oxford Street was big and busy, a ballroom and concert hall, with a supper room frequented not by the haut ton but by respectable, wealthy burghers and their ladies. Sylvester had judged that Rosie would feel more comfortable in its relative informality than in the fashionable Piazza, where disagreeable matrons and haughty young bucks would regard such a family party with disdain.

The Countess of Stoneridge also seemed more at home in the Pantheon than at Almack's, he noticed ruefully, as she kept the table in gales of laughter with a series of wickedly accurate comments on their fellow diners.

It was Theo who noticed Clarissa's abstraction first. "What are you looking at, Clarry?" She twisted in her chair to gaze over her shoulder.

"Don't stare, Theo," Clarissa exclaimed, blushing.

"But who…? Oh," she said with complete comprehension. "I see."

"Oh, do turn around, Theo," Clarissa said.

"He is very beautiful," Theo said. "Take a look, Emily. A veritable parfit gentil knight."

Emily turned around and, like her sister, had no difficulty identifying the cause of Clarissa's abstraction. "Oh, yes," she said.

"Who? What?" Rosie demanded, standing up to peer myopically around the supper room. "I don't see a knight. Is he in armor?"

"No, you goose. It's an expression. Sit down." Theo jerked her skirt, pulling her back into her seat. "How do we find out who he is, I wonder?"

"What are you talking about?" Sylvester asked, just as Edward turned from his own examination and chuckled merrily.

"Clarissa's found her knight," Theo said. "Don't blush, love." She patted her sister's hand. "Shall I go and introduce myself?"

"No!" exclaimed both Emily and Clarissa.

"Then Stoneridge shall introduce himself and invite him to come and take a glass of wine with us," Theo said firmly. "Do you see him, Stoneridge? That beautiful young man with the long fair hair, sitting with the elderly woman by the window. An elderly woman, that's a good sign, Clarry. It can't be his lover; it must be his mother."

"Theo!"

Theo ignored her sister's protest. "Go over and introduce yourself, Stoneridge, and invite him and his mother to join us. Pretend you know them, that you've met them somewhere before. And then you can just laugh and say you made a mistake, but invite them anyway."

"I will do no such thing," Sylvester declared. "You managing hussy."

"Then / will go." Theo pushed back her chair. "How can you expect anything to happen in this world if you don't make it so?"

Before anyone could stop her, she was weaving her way among the tables, a smile of greeting on her face.

"Oh, how could she?" Clarissa murmured, cooling her burning cheeks with her water glass.

Edward and Emily were convulsed with laughter, as if sharing an old joke. Sylvester felt as if he'd strayed into someone else's life and no one was behaving in a manner he understood. It was a familiar sensation in Belmont company. He took a resigned sip of wine and waited to be enlightened.

Rosie scraped the last morsel of pink ice from her bowl. "Theo never minds talking to strangers," she informed him, as if the confidence would enable him to make sense of the hilarity. Even Clarissa was half laughing, despite her blushes. "She's not in the least shy."

No, "shy" was not an adjective he'd ever have applied to his wife. He watched her. She was talking to the people at the window table, her head bent confidentially toward them. Then she turned, and her eyes flew across the room, brimful of laughter. She raised one hand and made a circle of her finger and thumb in a gesture of accomplishment, and then came back to the table.

"Well, it is his mother, and his name's Jonathan Lacey. And they're going to call in Curzon Street," she announced, resuming her seat. "They seem very respectable, not at all like mushrooms, and he has liquid eyes, Clarry. Huge, and the color of the tawniest port. Utterly beautiful. And you should see his hands. So long and slender."

Sylvester caught himself looking at his own hands. They weren't exactly short and fat, but he knew for a fact that he did not have liquid eyes.

"I'm sure he's an artist of some kind," Theo was continuing, sipping her wine. "Anyway, I could tell his mother liked the idea of calling upon the Countess of Stoneridge, so I'm sure we'll see them in a day or so."

"What did you say, Theo?" Edward asked, wiping his eyes with his napkin.

"Oh, I said I thought we'd met before, then realized my mistake, apologized, and introduced myself. The rest was easy."

"Would someone explain what the devil is going on here?" Sylvester inquired. "I realize I am singularly obtuse, but -"

"Oh, that's because you're not a Belmont," Theo said blithely.

There was a second's awkward silence; then Edward said, "Well, neither am I, but I have the advantage of you, sir. I've known this motley crew since I was in short coats."

"Then you do indeed have the advantage," Sylvester said evenly, pushing back his chair. "It's time Rosie was at home."

"But it's true," Theo said, refusing to allow the evening to end on this fractured note. "You are not a Belmont, so of course you don't understand our jokes. That doesn't mean you can't, if you wish to."

"And you are now a Gilbraith, madam wife," he stated.

"Maybe so," Theo declared. Now they'd started on this road, she couldn't see a way to get off it. She continued with her usual bluntness. "But your mother and sister lack a sense of humor, so I can hardly try to understand their jokes."

"That's out of order, Theo!" Edward exclaimed, unable to help himself.

"No," Theo said. "No, it's not." Her eyes were on her husband. "It's the truth. Isn't it, Stoneridge?"

"Unfortunately," he said quietly. "But we'll continue this discussion when it won't embarrass anyone else."

Only Theo and Sylvester understood what had happened. The others were puzzled and uncomfortable, but nothing further was said beyond the merest commonplace until the three Belmonts, escorted by Edward, were ensconced in the Stoneridge town carriage en route to Lady Belmont's house.

Sylvester handed Theo into a hackney and climbed in after her. She huddled into her cloak, wishing it hadn't happened. Everything had been going so well. She'd been telling the truth as she saw it, but it hadn't come out right. She'd sounded bitter and angry. And it was all because he'd reminded her she was a Gilbraith. The old sense of entrapment had washed over her in an acid tide that all the sweet reasoning she'd done with herself in the last weeks couldn't deflect.

"You shouldn't have reminded me," she said in the darkness of the hackney.

"That you're a Gilbraith? It's the truth."

"Yes, just as it's the truth that you own everything that ever belonged to a Belmont!" Oh, why couldn't she bite her tongue?

Sylvester said nothing, merely rested his head against the cracked leather squabs.

"I can't help it," she said, twisting her gloved fingers into a knot, not sure whether she was apologizing or explaining. "I try to forget it, Stoneridge. And then it comes back to me and I become all twisted and angry again. And I want to hurt you as you've hurt me."

"Have I really hurt you, Theo?" he asked softly. The hackney slowed at a crossroads, and a gas jet outside flickered over his face, showing her the harsh set of his mouth, the strain around his eyes. "Be honest," he said. "How have I hurt you?"

He watched through narrowed eyes as light and shadow played over the gamine features. Theo shook her head in inarticulate confusion and gazed fixedly out the window.

When the hackney drew up at Belmont House, Theo still had said nothing. Sylvester handed her down and escorted her into the house.

"I trust you spent a pleasant evening, my lord… Lady Theo." Foster bowed, taking his lordship's gloves and curly brimmed beaver.

"Very pleasant, thank you," Sylvester said.

"And Lady Rosie enjoyed herself?"

"I believe so."

"She consumed enough pink ices for an army," Theo said with an easy smile. Concealing her true emotions from the staff was never difficult, although she found it impossible with her family.

"Good night, Foster." She ran up the stairs.

"Cognac in the library, please, Foster." Sylvester turned aside.

The butler nodded to himself. More fireworks, it seemed.

Sylvester was staring into the fire when Foster brought in the decanter of cognac. "Thank you," he said absently. "Just leave it on the table. I'll help myself."

He poured a glass and sipped in morose reflection. Someone was trying to kill him, and he couldn't concentrate on that when Theo's tense little face kept obtruding into his thoughts. Her unhappiness tore at him.

With sudden determination he opened a drawer in the desk and took out a pistol. He checked that it was primed, then dropped it into the deep pocket of his coat.

He went into the hall. "Foster… my hat and my cane… Thank you." He ran a hand down the cane, touched the little knob in the handle that released the sword blade. It responded with oiled efficiency.

The butler tried not to stare at the sword stick, but he could also see the unmistakable bulge in his lordship's coat. The night streets were not particularly safe, it was true, but these precautions seemed rather extreme for a late-evening stroll to St. James's or some such gentlemanly destination.

Drawing on his gloves, the Earl of Stoneridge left the house. He was going to the Fisherman's Rest on Dock Street.

Theo was standing at her bedroom window as he went down the front steps. She'd expected him to come up to her… to drive away her confusion and dismay with his body as he drew from her the deep, ecstatic responses that made her forget all but shared passion. Instead he was going out. Had he finally wearied of her storms?

The thought stunned her. She saw life without Sylvester, and what she saw was a wasteland.

How had he hurt her?

Suddenly she turned back to the room. "My cloak, Dora. I'm going out."

Her abigail blinked in astonishment. She'd just hung the cloak in the armoire. "But it's eleven o'clock, my lady."

"So?" Theo said impatiently, drawing on her gloves. "Quickly." If she delayed much longer, Stoneridge would have disappeared from the street, and she'd never catch him up.

She wrapped the velvet cloak around her, drawing the hood over her hair as she ran down the stairs.

"Did his lordship say where he was going, Foster?"

"No, Lady Theo." The butler shot the last bolt on the front door.

"Well, I have to find him," she said. "Unlock the door quickly. He can't be far away."

Foster hesitated for a fraction. But the earl had only just left, and Lady Theo couldn't come to any harm on Curzon Street. He unbolted the door again, and she ran past him and down the steps, turning to the right, as Sylvester had done.