A Will of Her Own

Chapter 1

"Damn!" spat Sir Everard.

Sir Everard Balfour, his swarthy face flushing an ugly dull red, his piggish eyes flashing with ill-concealed anger, threw down his fifth losing hand in a row and snarled in the general direction of his host. The irritated baronet snatched up his glass of port, drained it to the dregs and slammed it down with a crash. The delicate Italian crystal shattered into four distinct fragments on the baize-topped table, each slivered piece giving off silvery glints in the light from the branched candelabra overhead. So quickly did the portly baronet move that the smoke- filled air about the card table eddied upward, swirling about the dozens of candles, causing them to sputter and give off even more noxious fumes in the already uncomfortably dense atmosphere of the small room.

"Damme, Aragon, how do you continue to win, time after time?" Sir Everard whined sourly. A somber manservant shimmered into existence and began to silently clear away the broken glass fragments from the table, blotting at an almost invisible ruby stain with a snowy cloth.

Lord Andrew Aragon tossed his own cards down and gazed with a crooked grin at the disconsolate baronet, but said nothing to either of his guests. His lordship's brilliant azure eyes seemed almost black in the smoke-dimmed candlelight.

"It's that damned luck of the Aragons," said Charles Baron Renfrew, with a high-pitched inane giggle. "That old Spanish blood, ain't it, hey? The last time any Aragon failed at anything was the Armada, and even then Lord Andrew's ancestor was washed ashore and married into wealth the very next day."

"Nonsense, Charles," drawled Lord Andrew with a look of ill-concealed disdain towards Sir Everard. "It took at least a week for Don Francisco to marry, don't ye know."

Lord Andrew pushed back his chair and rose to his considerable height, his lanky body appearing even taller in the tight black pantaloons that had recently become the mode, a la that arbiter of fashion, Beau Brummel. His shirtfront was a profusion of snowy frills, with a high collar around which his neckcloth was bound. His tall Hessian boots had a mellow gold-tinted gleam in the firelight.

Lord Andrew sighed as he turned his back to his two guests and reached for a poker to encourage the dying fire. His lordship had regretted this private gathering for cards almost before it had begun. Sir Everard Balfour was not a pleasant person with whom to spend an evening at anything, much less something that involved any sort of gambling. Charles Baron Renfrew, while an acquaintance of Lord Andrew for some years, had a tendency to wear on the nerves of his friends after a while as well with his incessant laughter and ridiculous conversational tactics.

But the Prince had requested that Andrew entertain Sir Everard, and one did not say no to Prinny. After all, Prince George would be king one day -- if he didn't eat or drink himself to death before his mad father died. A very real possibility that, though it did seem to Lord Andrew at times that mad King George would live longer than his dissipated son and heir.

"And your blasted family has continued to get richer every reign, I'll warrant," grumbled Sir Everard, as he slurped expensive port from a fresh glass presented by Aragon's French manservant, Gaston.

Lord Andrew replaced the poker -- though the thought of using it to wipe the unpleasant expression from his guest's flat face was almost irresistible, and turned to face the others. He stretched his long arms across the green marble mantle. His lean face was saturnine, his azure eyes were fixed on some distant land. Reddish tints blazed from his chestnut hair as the fire sprang to renewed life.

"I take it you've had enough of cards for tonight, Sir Everard?" Lord Andrew said in a clear cool voice.

Sir Everard harrumphed. "I'm not out of cash yet, if that's what you mean to imply." The baronet puffed up like a discontented toad.

"Well, you may not be, Balfour, but that don't mean I ain't, damn it all," said Charles Renfrew with another piercing giggle. "And as my tradesmen and my thieving servants have emptied my pockets until the end of the quarter when my allowance arrives, I fear that I must stop for the evening."

"Your notes are always good with me, Charles," drawled Lord Andrew, with just the faintest possible emphasis on the 'your'. This obvious snub did not go unnoticed by Sir Everard. His stocky figure bristled up like a badger and his broad face suffused with choler as his sunken eyes glared at his elegant host.

But at the precise instant before an outburst seemed inevitable, Lord Andrew added with a short, curt nod, "And yours as well, of course, Sir Everard."

Sir Everard's toad-like figure deflated and an avaricious gleam showed for a moment in his colorless eye. A gambler, and not a very good one, Lord Andrew had heard that Balfour lived for nothing more than the next card game, the next toss of the dice, the next horse race or cockfight -- at all of which he invariably lost. But Balfour was apparently convinced, in the way of most gamblers, that one day his efforts would not be in vain and he would assume the vast fortune to which he aspired. A fortune that he had lost a dozen times over, it was said.

"Since the baron is determined to desert us, shall we have a bit of vingt-et- un?" Sir Everard suggested as he gathered the errant pasteboards into his sweaty hands.

Lord Andrew Aragon gave an inaudible sigh and promised himself to ignore Prinny's requests in the future. He could not be expected to always cater to his prince's desires. But he knew that he would. It was an Englishman's duty to defer to the wishes of his future king, after all. However much he disliked to do so.

"As you wish, Sir Everard," said his lordship, "but first, allow me to speed my parting guest. Charles, you are always welcome, you know. Do come again."

Sir Everard, his attention on the cards he was shuffling with the precision of an expert croupier, nodded absently as Charles Renfrew bid his farewells and departed.

Chapter 2

Lord Andrew stood on the balcony that ran outside his bedchamber on the first floor of his London townhouse. It was just after dawn and the sun was a low blazing ball that resembled the great dome of St. Paul's in size and color. Already the bustle of the coming day had begun, both without and within his house. Street vendors, their packs piled with fresh fruits and vegetables bought at Covent Gardens, or stacked with tarts baked that morning in bakeries or on their own hearths, hawked their wares in strident voices. Blushing chambermaids cast roving eyes at the stalwart forms of passing Hussars, as mud was swept and washed from steps for the coming day. Cawing blackbirds and sparrows flew to and from their nests in the towering trees of nearby Hyde Park. Below in the belly of the townhouse a low rumble echoed. Lord Andrew knew that fires were being coaxed into life and sleepy servants were wiping their eyes.

He sighed again. He felt tired yet restless, ready for bed, yet anxious to be doing something. He knew himself to be discontented and filled with a malaise that he could not understand. His eyes burned from being closeted in an airless room all night. His nostrils ached from too much snuff and his throat was raw from wine and spirits. He rubbed the back of his neck with one long-fingered hand. A signet ring, with a single ruby, glinting on the last finger.

Why in the world does Prinny wish for me to cultivate that bounder Balfour? he wondered. That the man came originally from a rich and noble family, Andrew knew, but he had heard that the scoundrel had come near to gambling away the largest part of his fortune, as well as most of some large inheritance left to him. It could be, of course, that Prince George owed the man Balfour money -- Prinny was continually borrowing for his everlasting construction projects and thus was everlastingly in debt. That hideous monstrosity in Brighton -- some wag had said that it looked as if Saint Paul's Cathedral had gone to the seashore and pupped -- for example, was just one of the projects into which Prinny poured his gold, not to mention a series of well- upholstered aristocratic mistresses. What a shame that the prince had not been able to stomach his wife, but Princess Caroline would have tried a stronger man than Prince George was by far...

"Will milord sleep now?" asked Gaston from within the confines of the bedchamber. Andrew could hear the sound of a barely stifled yawn and his own disregard for his servant's ease struck him with a pang of dislike for himself. This dislike joined with his previous sense of malaise and he signed for the third time and shook his head.

"Go to bed, Gaston," said Lord Andrew absently over his shoulder. He leaned forward on the balustrade to better observe the display passing in the street below him. The thought struck him that it would be a simple matter to cast himself over the edge and fall to his death below. Then his innate sense of humor caught hold and he laughed at the ludicrous image of him tumbling the few feet to the hard street and breaking a leg. The sun cast gilded showers across the dusty street and picked out in high relief the figures that raced or strolled or trotted along it, as his lordship shook with silent laughter at his own fancies.

Gaston, who knew his master's moods well, laid the plain lawn nightshirt across the wide bed and turned to take him at his word.

"Gaston?" called Lord Andrew over his shoulder before the manservant had taken more than two steps.

"Milord?" said Gaston, turning with an inquiring look on his thin face.

Lord Andrew gave up his observation, turned and entered the bedroom, closing the French doors behind him to shut out the light and bustle without. He collapsed bonelessly in a broad armchair and flung one leg over its arm. He began to swing the leg in pendulum fashion.

Gaston waited, practicing the patience required of one in his position.

"I'm tired of the city, Gaston," said Lord Andrew at last, with a rueful laugh.

"Shall I make arrangements for a trip to Brussels, then, milord? Rome? Vienna?" offered Gaston, these being his master's favorite places of refuge when certain moods struck him. Once, indeed, it would have been Paris, but the atrocities going on there now in the name of liberty and brotherhood had marked that great city off his list. "No. I'm tired of cities, damme, and this one in particular. The everlasting calls, the endless soirees, the constant dancing attendance on the Prince and his toady of the week. And these vapid, brainless girls that are always being presented to me at balls and suppers. Could life be any worse?"

Gaston raised one sardonic eyebrow, his narrow face carefully expressionless. "Since I arrived in England as a child nineteen years ago without a sou, after watching most of my family and friends go to their rest in the lap of Madame la Guillotine, I would have to say 'yes', milord," he murmured in a mild and inoffensive tone, though there was a trace of grimness that infused his voice.

Lord Andrew looked at the thin face of the man who was once known as Gaston Yves Giles Clemence, Comte de Sacheverelle.

"My dear fellow, I do beg your pardon," said his lordship, his contrition evident in every line of his body. "I did not think. What a fool, what a bounder you must think me, I swear."

Gaston gave a shrug that spoke volumes. "It is the past, after all, and I have come to terms with it. And I am grateful for this position here with you, milord, where I can earn my keep in comfort instead of starving in some freezing garret, a fate that has befallen far too many of my compatriots. Of course," he pointed out, as if anxious above all for the utmost in clarity, "they would only freeze in the winter time, to be sure. But the starving would be a year around affair, I am certain of it."

Lord Andrew laughed, though it sounded somewhat strained even to his own ears, and rose energetically to his feet, his former malaise forgotten for the moment. "May I say how privileged I feel to have in you in my employ, Monsieur le Comte?" he said with an elegant bow, one hand over his heart. Then he held out his hand.

"Not near so privileged as I, to be here," replied Gaston with Gallic insouciance, though he was careful not to take the proffered hand. "Now, shall I begin arrangements for travel while milord sleeps?"

"No," said Andrew as he began unbuttoning his shirt with a meditative air, his eyes affixed upon the middle distance. "Do you go and get some sleep yourself, Gaston. We will discuss travel plans later."

Gaston turned to leave once more, then remembered one final thing and turned to remind his master. "Milord will remember that he promised to attend Lady Russell's supper party tonight?"

"Damn!" said Lord Andrew.

Chapter 3

"My dearest Patricia, you must allow your hair to be done, I vow, or you will never be ready in time, and I don't know what Sir Everard will say," muttered Leticia Warren around a mouthful of hairpins that threatened to impale her plump cheeks with every word. A silver-backed brush hung from one delicate, rounded hand, shining bright against her pale green silk skirts.

Patricia Mayfair looked up from the book that engrossed her to the exclusion of all else -- a most common affair with Miss Mayfair, as any of her friends would swear -- and gave a distracted smile in the general direction of her companion.

"My dear Leticia," Patricia replied with a cheerful, mocking grin, "as I have been invited to the beautiful Lady Christabel Russell's house, no one will notice whether I have hair or not, much less how it is arranged. So settle yourself, do, Letty, and let me finish this chapter, I pray you."

Leticia gave a sniff that spoke volumes, then waited with exaggerated patience, tapping one tiny slippered foot on the rosy Aubusson carpet. A cheerful fire burned in the grate, warming the high room, even though two windows were open to the fresh air. As fresh as one could expect, at least, in London, Leticia thought with another metaphorical sniff.

As if hearing this unspoken comment, Patricia said, without lifting her eyes from her book, "Letty, we've only got another week in London. Do try to enjoy it, won't you? Why, any other girl your age would be in raptures over the experience."

Leticia cast a glance out the open window, where the setting sun was casting its last benevolent glow upon the great capital city, and gave a slow sad shake of her head. Her dark brown hair was smoothed back into a tidy bun, with no tendrils allowed to escape from their careful bondage, and her bright brown eyes suffused for an instant with unshed tears. She pulled a dainty lace handkerchief from her sleeve and dabbed at one moist eye in an irritated and peremptory fashion.

"He's probably missing you as much as you're missing him, you know, my dear," said Patricia, her eyes still on her book." And he couldn't leave, not while the corn needs getting in, nor would you wish him to, so there now. Do dry your eyes, my dearest, do."

Leticia Warren wandered across the room and plumped down on the low settee that stood before the window. She cast a wondering glance towards Patricia, still reading. How does she always manage to know what I'm thinking, she wondered idly, and gave herself up to thoughts of the stalwart young gentleman farmer who would soon claim her for his bride.

Some moments passed in glorious silence, as each young lady was engrossed in that which pleased her most.

At last, Patricia shut her book with a satisfied nod. "There now, Letty, chapter all done. My head is at your complete and total disposal, to do with as you will."

Letty rose gracefully from the settee and pattered across the carpet to pounce on the proffered head. She spent some enjoyable moments running the horsehair bristles through the shining masses of dark auburn curls, twining them about each other, jabbing hairpins in place with a determination that would have graced a general.

"It is a fascinating book, I take it?" Letty asked as she maneuvered a particularly recalcitrant curl into proper position with the ease of long practice.

"Letty, you're as little interested in books as I am in having my hair done." Patricia laughed at her companion and friend." A good thing for your Thomas, no doubt, since you'll be a treasure for him about the house. Indeed, you'll be as useful as I would be a burden to a husband."

Letty smiled at the mention of her betrothed, dropping a hairpin onto the thick carpet as evidence of her delight. "Well, I do know a bit about running a house, and that will be of benefit for him," she simpered to herself and her friend in the silver-backed mirror. Then the expression on her pretty face changed to one of concern. "But I'm sure that you'll find a man who is reasonable about your books, truly, Patricia. Do not worry about it, my dearest."

Patricia laughed as she regarded her friend's intent look in the dressing table mirror. "Do not let it put you into a pother, Letty, my dear. As you know, I have all the money I'll ever need, and a husband is the last thing on my list of bits and bobs to acquire."

"But, Patricia," said Letty, stopping her ministrations in mid-stroke, "of course you must marry. Why, what about children?"

"Children! Why, what about them, Letty? Useless, puling, distracting things, and besides, they'd get in the way of my studies," said her friend, then relented at the expression this remark drew on the rosy face above hers in the mirror. "Now, Letty, don't frown at your old school chum so, pray. Why, look at what it does to your pretty brows, dragging them together like a witch's. Thomas will give me a sound thrashing for vexing you, you know, and more importantly, you'll get wrinkles."

Letty allowed herself to be cozened out of her frown. Then, finishing her hairdressing in record time, she stood back to admire her work." There, Patricia, I'd vow that you couldn't have received better from a professional hairdresser, be he French at that."

Patricia eyed herself in the wavy glass. She knew herself to be no beauty in the current fashion, which was all for slender elegance, golden curls, trailing draperies and pink cheeks. Still, the dark reddish tints in her thick hair brought out answering tints in her deep brown eyes, and her olive complexion looked well against her simple white Empire style dress, with its low cut neck, short puffy sleeves and long narrow skirt.

"Well, Letty, once again you've worked your miracle. I shan't make anyone run screaming in terror, at the least, though I would far rather be wearing my riding habit or some comfortable dressing gown. And perhaps I'll be lucky enough to have someone to talk to at a private dinner such as this, instead of these endless balls full of vapid young lords or bluff army men with ruddy faces and thick hands, all talking at the tops of their lungs about horses and shooting."

"Why, Patricia, you talk as though you haven't enjoyed our visit to London, either," reproved Letty as she tweaked an escaped curl back into line. "It was very kind of Sir Everard to invite us--"

"It would have been kind of Sir Everard if he had had nothing to gain from it, my dear Letty," snapped Patricia. She rose to her feet, her tall figure towering over the plump compact form of her companion. "As I have told you before, he offers me these occasional treats as a preliminary to asking for more money. It is a custom of his of which I am well acquainted, I assure you."

"Patricia, he is your guardian," said Letty in hushed tones, as if the aforementioned gentleman stood just outside the door. "He is due your respect and affection, if for no other reason."

"Letty, he has gambled away most of his fortune, as you very well know. His diseased and obscene love for gambling has come near to destroying his position in society, and we both know that it drove his poor dear wife to her deathbed. Then there was that horrible time with Ambrose...how can I feel anything but contempt for such a man, though I am linked to him through my dearest papa's will?"

Letty watched in dismay as Patricia turned away and marched across the room, to look out the open window down at the street below. She knew how much her friend despised Sir Everard's gambling, and knew that Patricia blamed him for introducing her older brother Ambrose to the lure of games of chance, leading to his subsequent death nearly ten years before. Ambrose Mayfair's body had been found floating in the Thames, battered beyond recognition, near one of the notorious gambling dens in Limehouse.

"Yes, my dear, it is unfortunate that your papa left Sir Everard as your guardian," Letty said soothingly, "but there again, that is another excellent reason for you to wed. When you have your own establishment--"

"Letty, would you have me trade one prison cell for another?" Patricia turned to face her friend, her dark eyes flashing in her sallow face. "What, am I to marry some titled fool, who'll keep a mistress and gamble away my fortune? At least Sir Everard is prevented from that folly by my papa's will. He can only draw a pension as my guardian and not touch the principle. No, Letty, thank you very much, but I will deal with the devil I know and not chance a worse one."

Letty pattered over to stand next to her taller friend. "There, my dear, I've vexed you. Please forgive me, won't you? And after all you've done for me, providing me with this lovely trip to London before my marriage to my dearest Tom."

"Taken you shamefully away from your dearest Tom, you mean." Laughed Patricia, her good humor restored by her friend's evident distress. "Letty, please forgive my horrible temper, and let us say no more about it. You are my oldest friend and it is the least I can do to provide you with a few things for your wedding, even if Master Tom did have to do without you for a month or two. He'll have you to himself all too soon, in my opinion, and then I'll be alone with my books and my gardens at Avington House."

"But we'll be just next door, you know, dearest," said Letty, smiling through her tears. "You can ride over every day and dine with us."

"Oh, Letty, you are a ninny," Patricia smiled. "Why, of course I'll ride over every day, and I'll soon be bouncing my young nieces and nevvies on my lap, I'll warrant. Now dry all your tears and help me finish getting ready for this supper party. Though why you weren't invited, I'll never know."

"Well, the card quite clearly said 'Sir Everard Balfour and Miss Patricia Mayfair', and I'm quite willing to stay and work on the embroidery for my wedding dress, so there. Now go along, do, and come back with stories of the haut ton that I can tell the milkmaids at Avington House upon our return."

Letty draped an embroidered silk shawl about Patricia's shoulders and shooed her out the door.

Outside the large bedchamber, a flight of mahogany steps led down to the entryway of Sir Everard's rented London residence. Sir Everard stood there already, his dun-colored waistcoat tight across his portly body, his watch fob littered with seals, and his spindly legs showing to ill advantage in the tight pantaloons recently made popular by the notorious Beau Brummel. Patricia noted with distaste that her guardian's stock was already stained with brandy in several spots, and that his series of chins cascaded down it like a waterfall.

"Well, Miss Mayfair, are you ready for Lady Christabel's supper party?" asked Sir Everard, casting his eyes over his ward's sturdy upright figure with disdain.

"I am, Sir Everard, and will doubtless have a delightful time, I thank you," said Patricia wryly as her footman Claude, whom she had brought with her from the country, handed her into the rented carriage. Patricia settled back against the cushions, careful not to let any part of her clothing touch her guardian. Brandy fumes rose in a miasma about him, and Patricia wished that she had brought the silly swans down fan that Letty had insisted she buy.

Well, she thought as the curricle rattled through the darkening streets, perhaps Letty would like it as a wedding gift, to use on her bride trip. It's a shame that I couldn't bring my book, so I could at least salvage some bit of pleasure from this night.

The curricle struck a pothole and Patricia sighed as she bounced inadvertently against Sir Everard's form. "Your pardon, sir," she said icily.

Sir Everard grunted in reply.

Perhaps Letty is right, Patricia thought to herself. Perhaps a husband would be marginally better than this.

But she was quite sure that a husband could only be worse.

Chapter 4

Lady Christabel Russell was standing at the open door of her townhouse, chatting with two of her supper guests, all the while wondering where Lord Andrew was.

"La, Sir Everard," trilled her ladyship, "how delightful to have a gentleman be on time for once, instead of so much out of the time, as is the current mode. These young dandies, you know, are notoriously late. It is quite the fashion with them."

Sir Everard Balfour made no reply as he eyed his hostess in lascivious delight.

Lady Christabel's clinging Empire-styled gown of peach silk accented the profusion of golden curls -- owing more to art than nature, though this made no matter to her gallant guest -- that were caught up in a carefully casual bundle at her nape. Her snowy complexion was overlaid with a faint dusting of powder, in which her French maid was wont to sprinkle gold dust, to accentuate the golden hair and the sparkling blue of the lady's eyes.

The sound of a carriage driving up to the front door of the Russell townhouse rattled the cobblestones of the street. The door to a dashing curricle flew open from within and Lord Andrew Aragon, his attire impeccable, his stock as high as fashion decreed, descended with an air. He cast a quick glance about him, then proceeded up the steps to Lady Christabel's open door.

A servant posted there for just this occurrence, flung open the front door even wider just as Lord Andrew reached it. His lordship stepped inside with crisp decision, already removing his beaver hat and offering it to the outstretched hand of the waiting servant.

"Lord Andrew," Lady Christabel purred as she floated languidly forward and clasped his lordship's proffered hand to her bosom." How delightful of you to come. I haven't seen you in, la, these many weeks. I am convinced that you have forgotten me," she finished with a trill of laughter that did little to hide her anger.

"Madame."

Andrew bowed and reclaimed his hand from its fragrant captor with some difficulty. He hoped Christabel was not going to be difficult. Their affair had been pleasant in the few short weeks that it had lasted, but he had quickly grown tired of her everlasting demands and violent temper. He prayed that she would be reasonable for a change and had not instead determined upon a scene. Knowing her ladyship, he did not dare to believe it.

Lady Christabel shot him a sharp look from under her long eyelashes, as if quite sure of what involved his mind. She offered him a tiny moue of a flirting smile, then turned to present him to her male guest.

"I believe you've met Sir Everard Balfour?" murmured her ladyship, in the dulcet tones that fooled Andrew not a whit.

Andrew gave a short surprised bow. What, Sir Everard here tonight? Was it not only Prinny, but Christabel as well, who wished to involve him with the impossible bounder?

"But I think you have not yet been introduced to his charming ward from the country," continued Lady Christabel smoothly, "Miss Patricia Mayfair?"

Andrew gave a brief bow to the tall slender young woman who stood slightly behind their hostess. Her simply dressed form was eclipsed by the glory that was Lady Christabel, but her face was pleasant enough, with deep brown eyes holding a promise of intelligence, a broad brow and a firm chin. A cloud of auburn hair was her best feature, the masses dressed in a style some months out of the current mode, he noted absently, his attention still on her ladyship.

"Miss Mayfair," said Lord Andrew as he bowed over the young lady's hand.

"I have heard of your family, my lord," said the plain young woman in a low but pleasant voice.

"Indeed?" asked Andrew, interested in spite of himself, as he gazed into surprisingly intelligent brown eyes. "In what respect, pray, Miss Mayfair?"

"Are you not a descendant of Don Francisco de Aragones, so prominent at the court of James the First?" asked Miss Mayfair, with a smile that Andrew noticed, with the strangest thrill of delight, quite lit up her unexceptional features.

"I am," said Andrew, surprised at her knowledge, and even more surprised at the unwarranted response within himself.

Not many young ladies of his acquaintance had an interest in history. He took a closer look at this paragon. Slender, taller than the voluptuous Lady Christabel, she did not appear to possess any of that lady's style, nor did she seem to notice or regret her lack in that respect. Andrew had seen other misses from the country, and the spectacle that they made when they tried to ape the belles of the ton. It was not a pleasant sight to one of his lordship's tastes or attitudes. But this young woman did not seem to be concerned with pretending to be what she was not.

Lady Christabel gave another of her signature laughs, though this one sounded a bit forced to Andrew.

"The lady is a bluestocking, my dearest Lord Andrew," said Lady Christabel, her beautiful face suffused with the first signs of anger. "One of these educated misses, with a book always in her hand. Why, when she first called on me with her guardian Sir Everard in tow, she displayed the most fascinating ink-stained fingers that I have seen since I visited those horrid bookbinders with you, on that boring trip we took together in the spring."

Lady Christabel had managed, Andrew noticed with some irritation, to both disparage the young lady's tastes and inform her and her guardian that he and Christabel had been intimate.

'A trip in the spring' was the current euphemism for an affair, of course, and Lord Andrew suddenly wished that he had never seen Lady Christabel.

But Miss Mayfair did not seem to notice or remark upon Lady Christabel's interruption. Instead, to Lord Andrew's amazement, this surprising young lady asked with interest, "Bookbinders, my lord? Not by any chance a family called Escaron who escaped from the Revolution in France? I have visited their establishment in Bath many times."

"Indeed, that is the very family," said Andrew, surprised at her knowledge yet again.

"I thought as much," said Miss Mayfair with a nod and a smile. "I know them well and have acquired many of my books there."

"La, how truly fascinating," said Lady Christabel with an ill-concealed yawn. "But let us go in to supper, pray. Lord Andr--" she began, her hand held out to be led to supper.

But Lord Andrew had already offered his arm to Miss Mayfair and the two of them, ignoring all manners, disappeared together into the supper room. If Miss Mayfair noticed that Lord Andrew was oddly familiar with the layout of Lady Christabel's house, she made no comment on it.

Save for a brief nod at introduction, Sir Everard had barely been able to acknowledged Lord Andrew's arrival. Now he saw that young lord disappear into the supper room with his ward Patricia on one arm, their chatter trailing in their wake.

"Delightful, delightful," muttered Sir Everard as he scratched his bulbous nose with one finger, a calculating look in his mud-colored eyes.

"La, sir, I do not know how you judge what is delightful, but I confess I see nothing so here," said Lady Christabel as she seized Sir Everard's arm.

Sir Everard looked a bit askance at the fierceness of the lady's grip, but accompanied her into the charming and intimate supper room.

Lady Christabel had initiated the custom of small supper parties that consisted of from two to a dozen couples. Her innovation was the rage of the season, on nights when there was no great ball to attend or performances at the opera or theatre. In all the great houses of London, hostesses would gather discerning members of Parliament and match them with witty ladies, or rakish young lords with simpering misses, and regale them with the most expensive delicacies and the finest of wines.

The supper table tonight was set for four and glowed with snowy linen and silver. It was placed in the center of Lady Christabel's elegant little morning room, pressed into service for the evening's affair. A fire screen with cutouts of butterflies and leaves was placed before a small fire, less for heat than for illumination, as the flames threw fascinating shadows across the striped silk wallpaper. In the center of the round table a sconce of wax candles shed a soft glow on the table.

Before the fire stood her other two guests, deep in what seemed to be a fascinating conversation. Lady Christabel could make out the words 'calf-bound' before she stopped listening. Since they were not discussing her, her interest was minimal.

Sir Everard gave the pair a look -- then turned his piercing gaze upon Lady Christabel with a knowing wink.

"It appears to me, my lady, that our plans may well be somewhat more than just possible," he murmured in a tone just barely audible to the woman on his arm.

Lady Christabel turned to her guest and gave him a slow smile. It was not a pretty smile. Indeed, it resembled more the snarl of some canny fox. One brilliant blue eye closed in a wink.

"I believe you may be right, Sir Everard," was the soft reply. "Our plans, as you call them, may gain us both our hearts' desires."

Chapter 5

"Gaston!"

The shout rang through the three-storied townhouse, echoing from the ground floor up to the garret.

In the kitchens of the huge residence, a massive woman bound up in a snowy apron, said approvingly, "'Ere now, 'is lordship's awake early today, Munsewer Gaston. I'd best get 'is breakfast tray laid, for he'll be sharp set this morning, to be sure."

Gaston, his narrow face suffused in good humor, set down his empty cup with a sigh of total and complete repletion. It was a remarkable thing, he often thought, how he had become so enamoured of that strange British concoction, dark sweet tea. But it was now his custom, of a morning, to partake of several cups. It would never replace wine, of course, or even coffee, but it had its charms.

"Yes, milord is awake early," Gaston said as he took the last bite of a hearty slice of bread spread thickly with butter and golden honey. His last few months in Paris during the dark time of the Terror, nineteen years in the past though they were, had left him with an appreciation of a full belly that he had never obtained in his previous fourteen years as the child of a rich nobleman.

Gaston was the supreme pleasure of Cook. Never was her simple soul so filled with joy as when she was stuffing endless and enormous meals into the scrawny Frenchman, never managing to fill him up but never ceasing to try, and always taking great delight in her efforts.

"'Ere now, there's no call for you to jump up like that, Munsewer, not when there's still a piece of bacon and another egg there on that very table as ever was. Just you gobble them down while I fix 'is lordship's tray. I won't be a minute, or even less. Beattie!" This last shout was for the hapless kitchen maid, who had the habit of disappearing at the most inopportune of moments. "'Ere you, Beattie! The master's toast will burn, you shiftless girl!"

Beattie raced into the vast kitchen, her rosy face even rosier this morning. Gaston surmised correctly that the milkman's boy had just delivered a fresh batch of cream and milk. The manservant watched in amusement as Beattie dashed to the toasting fork over the kitchen fireplace and removed four thick slices. She slathered butter thickly onto the golden squares, done to dark brown perfection.

As Beattie was at her work and Gaston was finishing the last morsels of a truly heroic breakfast, Cook was loading a heavy silver tray with marmalade, eggs, ham, a fat round teapot, cream and sugar. The toast, in its own silver rack, went on last and Gaston gazed at the offering with an appreciative nod.

"Madame Cook, a masterpiece, as is usual," he said, tossing the burly cook a smile and a kiss to his fingertips. That worthy woman, her apple cheeks gleaming in delight, giggled like a girl and dropped a curtsey, then turned to her stove with a mutter about luncheon.

Gaston seized the heavy tray and departed for his master's bedroom, up a long and difficult flight of back stairs that led from the nether regions of the house to the formal rooms. As he tramped with care up the steep stairwell, he mused on his former life as the son of a count. It had never occurred to him then that he would one day take such pleasure in a meal at a kitchen table and a full belly. Many of his former friends would have scoffed at the concept, or laughed outright at the way in which he had lowered himself. But unlike these former friends of his, Gaston at least still had his head attached with the greatest of security to his shoulders -- something that unfortunately could not be said about far too large a number of his countrymen.

After discreetly scratching at Lord Andrew's door, Gaston elbowed his way into the room with the massive tray across his arms. He was already mentally packing his master's belongings in his mind, and was wondering whether to pack the heaviest multi-caped greatcoat or wait first to be informed as to how far north they might go and how long they would stay.

"Ah, there you are, Gaston," called his master gaily from amidst the tumbled pillows of his great bed.

Well, thought Gaston to himself with a secret smile as he pushed the door to gently with his foot, milord is more cheerful today. He must have decided upon our route. Bon.

But, to the Frenchman's surprise, travel was the farthest thing from Lord Andrew's mind.

"Gaston, my dear fellow, you will not countenance it, I vow. I have met the most fascinating young lady in all the world."

"Indeed, milord?" said Gaston noncommittally as he positioned the tray across Lord Andrew's knees.

Andrew seized a knife and began enthusiastically slathering even more butter on a piece of toast that was already dripping with it. "Well you may say 'indeed', Gaston, in that infuriating Frenchie way of yours, but she is quite the most remarkable, delightful and charming..." The rest of the remark was unintelligible as Lord Andrew stuffed half a fried egg into his mouth and munched with obvious pleasure.

Apparently, Gaston thought with a smile, thoughts of this fascinating and remarkable young lady do not interfere with milord's appetite. Bon, since to interfere with such an important thing as one's appetite is a sure sign of the fragility of the response. This reaction upon the appetite, he had decided long ago, was the best and truest test of a man's feelings after a series of his own love affairs had all ended in disaster.

"And this paragon's name, milord?" Gaston asked when the second half of the egg had followed the first, along with half a cup of steaming sweet tea.

"Miss Mayfair, Gaston," said Lord Andrew in dulcet tones, dropping his fork with a clatter upon the tray, as if the name alone had struck his fingers nerveless. "Miss Patricia Mayfair. Do not you think that Patricia is a most romantic name?"

"Indeed, milord, it is a name of the most pleasant," replied the manservant as he drew wide the heavy brocade curtains to let in the watery morning light. "But as to romantic, are not the names 'Henriette' or 'Germaine' more so to the ear? Though I confess, I prefer the names of my own land to those of your great country, and of a surety, the name 'Patrice' has a pleasingly French sound."

Lord Andrew finished his first cup of tea and, waving a piece of toast with a bite taken out of it in an admonitory fashion at Gaston's face, proceeded to belabour his point.

"Patricia, Gaston. See how it flows from the tongue, how it glides like jelly down the throat. Patricia. Patricia. Quite the most beautiful and charming name I have ever heard, I swear."

Gaston realized that there was no arguing with his master in this mood. Indeed, he did not believe he had ever seen his master in such a mood as this. This young woman must indeed be merveilleuse. "And where did milord come across such a marvel? Surely not at Lady Christabel's house?"

A shadow fell across Lord Andrew's handsome face at the mention of that notorious lady's name. "Damme, Gaston, what was I thinking of, when I accepted Christabel's offer of, er, that is, when I became entangled with her? What was I about, man?"

Gaston shrugged. "It is never a good idea to disappoint the ladies, milord, when they have decided to honour one with their charms. But tell me more of this amazing young woman," he prodded, anxious to get his master's mind off the perplexing and desirable Lady Christabel. He had not heard good things of her in her servants' hall, where he had spent sometime awaiting his master. The lady's husband ignored her, and the gossip was that her three children were sired by different lovers. This of course, in a hautton driven by gossip, prompted others to refer to the lady's offspring as they had, some years before, to those of Lady Melbourne -- calling the poor children The Miscellany. Gaston had been delighted that his master's good sense had prevented more than a few months' dalliance in the bosom, so to speak, of Lady Christabel.

"Well, Gaston, she is tall. And dark. And her eyes are, er, well...I believe they may be brown. Or perhaps grey."

Gaston waited, but Lord Andrew seemed struck dumb, the forgotten piece of toast growing cold in one hand.

"And, er, she is auburn-haired. But, Gaston, she knows the history of my family and reads, Gaston, and writes poetry and history and she is interested in astronomy and knows the Escarons in Bath and, oh, Gaston, I fear I may never forget her."

Gaston, forgetting himself instead, went so far as to sit down on the side of Lord Andrew's bed. "But why in all the world should you forget her, milord?" he asked, his brow knitted in concern. It had been a long time since he had seen his young master so enthralled.

"Well," Andrew began, a sad note discernable in his hitherto jubilant tones, "we talked all evening. Indeed, I fear we were quite rude to Lady Christabel and that bounder Sir Everard."

"Sir Everard was at the supper as well, I take it?"

"Aye, damme, and that's part of the problem." Andrew nodded, then looked at the piece of toast in his hand as if it were some strange piece of ancient art, then set it carefully back in its rack. "Balfour is her guardian, the blackguard, and his actions have given her a disgust of gambling; quite rightly, Gaston, quite rightly, and I will not listen to argument on this point, mind you." He held up an admonishing finger. Since Gaston had offered no argument of any sort, it seemed to be an unnecessary reminder. Lord Andrew went on. "It soured her on all forms of gambling, of any kind. Why, she said in the midst of one of our discussions last night that she would never be able to love a man who was weak enough to gamble away his money on any games of chance. Oh, Gaston, what am I to do? I verily believe that I have fallen in love, at first glance. What a henwit, what a ninnyhammer, what a fleawit fool I am."

Gaston shook his head. "If that is the only problem, milord, then it is simply arranged. If you have decided that you must have this paragon, then give up gambling and tell her so. Then, when you are wed, you may do as you wish, of course."

Gaston then spent the next half-hour submitting to various epithets from his master, the kindest of which was 'unbelievably duplicitous Frenchman'. As Gaston was French, he failed to detect the insult implied in that phrase, but he weathered the storm with no more than a shrug until it died away at last to subdued mutterings and a cross expression.

"I could hardly expect you to understand the purity of my regard," harrumphed Lord Andrew at long last.

"Am I to understand, milord, that your travel plans have been disarrayed?" Gaston had stood beside the bed for the entire time of the tirade, a serene look on his face.

Lord Andrew pushed the tray away and held out one hand. "Forgive me, Gaston. I have taken out my worries on you, when I should have been trying to decide what to do. I must marry this lady."

Gaston's normally imperturbable expression changed to one of utter shock. "Marry, milord? A woman you have met but once, and she so narrow minded to be against a simple game of chance or two? Surely it would be of more sense to sample her charms first and then--"

"Oh, don't you dare to vex me with more of your Frenchie suggestions, Gaston, not on this morning of all mornings," warned Lord Andrew, his former ebullient mood vanished once more in an instant. "She is the purest and most delightful of women, and I will not entertain any of your filthy proposals to make her my mistress. She will bear my name and my children, do you hear?"

Gaston, amused until now at the unending accolades, was shocked anew." Milord, do not you rush things more than a little? Have you asked the lady for her hand, after only one meeting? What would you have me say, milord, at such madness?"

Lord Andrew fell back against the pillows and only a quick reaction by Gaston kept the dregs of his breakfast from joining him amongst the snowy linens. "Of course I haven't asked her, you ninnyhammer! I only just met her last night! Give me some credit for a little sense."

Gaston forbear to mention that the discussion thus far this morning had done little to show any modicum of sense on his master's part. But he was French and had been in love himself, or thought so, upon numerous occasions.

"First, you must make plans to meet the lady again," said Gaston, placing his intelligent mind upon the matter. "Then you must contrive to show her how much you regret your gambling past, and how you look forward to a future without its grasp upon your time."

"What are you babbling about, man?" asked Lord Andrew, a note of hope creeping into his voice.

Gaston turned to place the breakfast tray on the tall highboy that stood just inside the doorway, then walked back to face his master. His lordship, still sprawled on his bed in his nightshirt, looked up in ill-concealed distress.

"I am babbling, milord, about how you can claim this femme extraordinaire for your own," said Gaston calmly.

Lord Andrew sat up, threw his legs over the side of the bed and leaped to his feet. "You have a plan, Gaston?"

Gaston, tapping his rather prominent nose with one finger, nodded.

***

But other plans were being laid at that very instant.

In the elegant townhouse of Lord Stanton Russell, his lady wife was having breakfast with a friend. Her dishabille was calculated to the last ruffle, her hair in such stunning disarray that one could hardly countenance that it had taken her abigail more than an hour that morning to perfect its effect of cascading windblown curls.

Her guest, however, could not claim such elegance. Sir Everard Balfour sat across from her at the tiny round table littered with plates of nibbled dainties and half-drunk cups of chocolate. The baronet's squat figure and swarthy face looking more toadish than ever in contrast with her ladyship's stylish form.

"Tell me once more, Sir Everard, exactly how far in debt you are?" asked Lady Christabel sweetly, pouring more chocolate into her tiny cup.

Sir Everard stared at Lady Christabel, his mouth falling open in amazement. "Upon my word, madame, you are astonishing pert. One might go so far as to ask your interest in the matter of my finances, or even to inquire as to the state of your own indebtedness."

Lady Christabel shrugged, lifting one almost bare shoulder in an artful fashion calculated to exhibit the top of a creamy breast, then not deigning to cover it from her guest's gaze. "You know of my interest in your plans, Sir Everard, and of my support for them. Lord Andrew insulted me," she said, her voice gone flat and envious. "I do not take kindly to insults, sir."

"I make no doubt of it, my lady. But returning to the matter at hand, I have heard it said that your own debts are not small. This is true, I take it?"

Lady Christabel gave a slow lazy grin, looking for all the world like some great cat full of cream. "They do not rival your own, Sir Everard, if that is what you're suggesting. But I would not say no to a bit of extra, you know. My tastes are...varied, and can be rather expensive at times. So tell me. What are your plans?"

Sir Everard sat forward, his eyes locked on the hint of breast that showed through the diaphanous gown in which Lady Christabel was draped. He enjoyed sparring with this delicious woman, although he knew full well that he couldn't trust her.

But then, she couldn't trust him either.

Chapter 6

"Tshst!" sneezed Leticia.

"My dear Letty, do say you are not sickening for the grippe," said Patricia, as she looked at her companion with some concern.

"Tom would never forgive me if I returned you to him in anything but the very best and rosiest of health."

Letty shook her head, setting the small curls that escaped from either side of her bonnet to bouncing. "Not in the least, my dearest Pat, but these books are so dusty, I wonder you are able to breathe at all sometimes!"

The tiny bookstore was indeed dusty, Patricia thought as she looked down at her grimy gloves in dismay. But such treasures! Her newly acquired hoard was worth a bit of dust and a few sneezes. But she knew she must think of her companion for a time now.

"Well, Letty, as you have been so kind as to trail around after me all morning, I shall now visit any shops you might wish, and be bored to distraction with the best will in the world."

The two young ladies picked their way carefully out of the book shop to the street, where their rented curricle waited. Claude jumped down and held out his hands for the bulky package of books that Patricia handed him, then stowed them carefully under his seat.

"Where to now, miss?" he asked with a cheerful grin and a tip of his battered beaver hat -- a cast-off of their local vicar, Letty knew as she allowed him to assist her into the chaise. "I've heard tell that there are some very nice bookstores-- "

"No bookstores, Claude." Patricia laughed as she followed Letty into the open carriage and settled her skirts about her. "Miss Leticia has put up with my addiction all morning, so she deserves a treat before we proceed to the dressmakers. A cup of chocolate would be the very thing, do you not agree?"

"Indeed, miss. Shall we return to that place you went to last week?"

"That will do nicely, Claude. But wait," said Patricia, "let us go the long way round and have a drive through the park. That will help to clear the dust of the bookstore from us, though I doubt not that the streets will be quite as dusty."

Claude clambered into the seat and picked up his long whip. Making a clicking noise with his tongue, he tapped his near grey mare with the tip of the whip, and the curricle pulled away into the admittedly somewhat dusty cobbled street. Claude was proud of his proficiency in finding his way about the great town of London. Though he had spent most of his short life in the country, he had been brought with Miss Patricia each time she visited the huge city, and he knew she felt safer with her own servant driving her rather than being in the hands of some hired man.

"My dearest Pat," said Letty as they rode through the street," you have not told me of your dinner at Lady Christabel's last night. Did you enjoy yourself?"

Patricia took so long to answer that Letty turned to her in dismay.

"Oh, dear, did Sir Everard misbehave, my dearest? Say he did not embarrass you, I pray."

Patricia looked at her companion and gave a shake of her auburn head. "Not in the least, Letty. In fact, I might go so far as to say that SirEverard was on his best behaviour...if I had had time to notice how he behaved, that is."

"Notice?"

"Yes," replied Patricia, her eyes sparkling as she took in her companion's rapt expression. "And don't go getting all in a pother, Letty, imagining things as you do. No, I was not swept off my feet by some dashing soldier or rake of a marquis. But I did meet a rather charming gentleman who seemed to love books as much as I do myself."

"Oh, Patricia!" exclaimed Letty, her pretty face alight. "Do tell me everything at once, I command. And how dare you not mention it until now. For shame, Pat, to treat your oldest friend so!"

"Well," laughed Patricia, "you know how you do go on about such things, Letty. But he was a pleasant sort of a person, at that."

Letty waited, but her friend seemed lost in a reverie.

"Yes, pleasant and..." Letty prompted at last.

"Yes." Patricia gave herself a shake and went on, "He is a scion of the old Spanish family of Aragones that dates back to the Elizabethan era, you know."

"Oh, Pat, I'm not interested in his forebears, you ninny! What's he like?"

"Well, my darling Letty, he seemed to be a gentleman of the first water, if you must know," Patricia said with a smile at her friend's insistence. "We discussed books and history -- all very boring stuff to you, my dear, but quite captivating to my humble self -- and I fear we rather ignored our hostess and my guardian. Indeed, the gentleman did say that he would enjoy continuing our discussion at some later date."

"Good, he's interested. Go on," nodded Letty.

"Good God, Letty, we enjoyed a conversation of mutually interesting subjects, that was all. Don't marry me off to him yet. Besides, I don't think he was serious about continuing our discussion. Why would he be? And, we're returning to Avington House soon anyway, and I doubtless will never see him again, so there."

"I'm only saying, Pat my dearest poppin, that this is a most propitious beginning to a friendship, that is all," protested Letty with a gay laugh. "But what is this fascinating gentleman's name, pray?"

"Lord Andrew Aragon."

Patricia awaited her friend's response with some concern, for instead of proclaiming the gentleman's perfect suitability for a matrimonial engagement in ringing tones, as Patricia expected, Letty was unaccountably struck dumb. At last the silence had gone on too long and Patricia was forced to ask, "What is it, my dear? Have you heard some hideous thing against this gentleman? Pray tell me if you have, for I do not intend to spend another thought upon him if my darling Letty disapproves."

Letty looked about her as she composed her thoughts. The lush greenness of Hyde Park rose about them, the air fresh with the scent of flowers and growing things -- a pleasant relief from the stench of other parts of London.

"Letty, I warn you..." began Patricia.

Letty relented, "Well, it is only gossip, Pat my dear, and may not be true in the least, you know, but..."

"Yes, but?" prodded Patricia.

"Well, I have heard that Lord Andrew Aragon, er, uh, that is...I have heard that he gambles a bit, you see, my dearest."

Letty looked at her friend. Patricia's expression was unreadable, but the kind heart of her closest friend was wounded at having to relay such unpalatable information. Letty knew how much Patricia had adored her only brother Ambrose, and how she had suffered when that charming but weak young man had become caught up in his lust for gambling. He had rapidly lost his sizeable fortune in a matter of a few short months, shortly after he reached legal age and gained access to it. Poor Ambrose Mayfair's lifeless body, battered almost beyond recognition, had been found in the Thames near a notorious gambling hell, his pockets stuffed with sodden papers promising payment of debts. Letty had often shuddered to think what would have happened to Patricia if her own fortune had not been inaccessible to her poor weak brother and his unscrupulous associates.

"Patricia, it's not as if..." Letty's comment trailed away.

Patricia shook herself and turned to smile at her companion, a rather weak smile, but a smile for all that. "Do not think on it, my dear, I pray you. If the gentleman in question is indeed that most horrid of creatures, a gambler, then I shall have no more to do with him. I am well aware, I assure you, of my duty and my inclinations in the matter."

"But, Pat dearest, there are surely gamblers who merely dabble in the sport, or--"

"Dabble! Well, dabble you may call it, Letty, but no man who participates in so despicable a pastime will ever be my friend. Now, let us speak no more of it. We have but a few more days in London, after all, and if you're to have your trousseau all finished, and I'm to take back to Avington House all the books I require, then we have some intensive shopping to do yet. So let us go and drink our chocolate and get on with it, shall we?"

"My dearest, I had no wish to cause you pain--" began her companion, but Patricia broke into her apology.

"Letty, the subject will not come up again, do you hear? Ah," Patricia said in relief as the curricle drew up to the door of the chocolate and sweet shop. "Here we are at last. Claude, we shall send you out a cup, for being kind enough to wait for us, and do take care that my books do not get wet, if it decides to shower, won't you? Come along, my dear Letty, I declare I am quite famished."

Letty followed her friend into the chocolate shop. She did not like Patricia's expression. There was a deep disappointment there that seemed unwarranted for such a short acquaintance with the dread Lord Andrew Aragon.

Perhaps, Letty decided with a silent and repentant sigh, she should suggest another bookstore to restore her friend's good humor.

***

The chocolate being consumed and the conversation being kept strictly to dresses and shoes and the latest edition of Punch, Letty and Patricia soon returned to the refreshed Claude and the curricle.

"Shall we go back through the park, miss, as we're returning to the dressmakers?" asked Claude with a cheerful tip of his outmoded beaver hat.

"By all means, Claude," replied Patricia. "It is the closest thing in this great city of London to our country home, after all, which both my companion and myself miss sorely, though I realize that you do not. Claude, my dear Letty, is a city boy at heart, I fear. Proceed through the sylvan glade, Claude."

The day, which seemed to have threatened rain earlier, had turned off fine and clear. The horses clopped along across the paving stones with a rhythmical gait, and Claude took great pleasure in his position atop the seat of the curricle. But Letty watched her friend from under lowered lids. Patricia seemed to have forgotten their previous conversation and was quite her normal self. But Letty had known Pat for more than a dozen years and knew that she was keeping something from her. She scouted around in her mind for some way of broaching the subject without causing further pain to her friend.

Claude turned the curricle into a long broad pathway that snaked through Hyde Park. In front and all around them were other curricles and carriages, as well as single horses carrying dandies of fashion, both male and female. Letty watched as Claude carefully worked his way through the throng. She made absent but careful note of a flounce here and a ruffle there for future reference, while the forefront of her mind was engaged in the problem of her friend's silence.

"I beg your pardon?" asked a vibrant male voice from somewhere above both their heads.

A tall young man, his riding habit of the latest mode, his tall hat irreproachable, and his mount a pearly grey that matched his jacket, appeared beside their curricle as if sprung from a magical land, instead of from the horde of other riders and carriages.

Patricia grasped Letty's hand in a grip so hard that it brought tears to her companion's eyes. "Letty," she hissed, "it is he."

"I beg your pardon," said the young man again, his hat now in his hand as he sat the feisty mare with the easiest of seats, "but I believe it's Miss Mayfair, is it not?"

Patricia looked up with a solemn face and gave the barest nod of acquiescence. "Lord Andrew," she said dismissively.

The young man's face -- quite a pleasant face, thought Letty -- broke out into a broad grin. "I thought it might be you, Miss Mayfair. How pleasant to meet you again, and so soon too. And this charming lady is, no doubt, your sister?"

Letty smiled. "I am Leticia Warren, Miss Mayfair's schoolfriend and companion."

"Lord Andrew Aragon, your servant, ma'am," said the gentleman with a bow.

The curricle rolled along, kept company by the slowly prancing grey. Patricia said nothing. Lord Andrew said nothing, though Letty noted a strained smile on his face as they threaded their way through the crowd. At last, Letty could stand it no more.

"Patricia told me that she enjoyed her conversation with you last evening at Lady Russell's, Lord Andrew."

"Letty!" hissed Patricia, squeezing her hand painfully.

"Oh, not near so much as I did myself, upon my honour, Miss Warren!" said Lord Andrew. "Your friend is the most -- is a most pleasing conversationalist, I do assure you. I had hoped...that is, I was wondering...would you two ladies care to have a cup of tea with me, or some luncheon, or, or...anything at all?"

"I thank you, my lord," said Patricia, her voice as frigid as her expression, "but I do not care to spend time with those who gamble. Claude, drive on."

Claude tapped the handle of his whip against the seat and the horses speeded a fraction.

Letty looked over her shoulder, to see Lord Andrew gazing after them, his face pale and sad.

"Patricia, how rude," remonstrated her companion. "He was an acquaintance, after all. To cut him in the street like that is dangerously near to poorly bred, in my opinion."

"Not nearly so poorly bred as to gamble, Letty, in my opinion," replied Patricia with spirit. "Besides, a public rebuke may be the only way to keep him away."

Letty made no reply, and did not refer to the matter again as they spent the rest of the day going from shop to shop.

But Leticia Warren did not like the expression that she surprised in her friend's face from time to time, when Patricia thought herself unobserved.

No, Letty did not like it at all.

Chapter 7

"She cut me in the street, Gaston. Oh, it is hopeless. Hopeless! I might just as well throw myself from London Bridge."

Lord Andrew collapsed onto a sofa in his study, his lanky form as loose and defeated as a dead gamecock.

Gaston, his narrow face as saturnine as was its custom, but with a gleam in one black eye, said, "A pity indeed, milord. But it shows the ésprit of the young lady in question, does it not? The spirit, is it not so?"

Lord Andrew sighed. "Spirited or no, she cut me dead, Gaston. I shall doubtless never see her again. You may commence packing my bags. Where are my Italian phrase books?" Lord Andrew rose to his feet and strode towards one book-lined wall.

"I suppose that means, milord, that you will not avail yourself of the invitation?" Gaston said smugly, waving a pink-tinted note in one hand.

"If it is from Lady Christabel, then you are correct in your notion, Gaston," Lord Andrew tossed over his shoulder as he ran a finger along a row of books. "Greece, Corsica, Albania..." he muttered to himself.

"It is indeed from her ladyship, milord, and it says that you are invited to attend a small soirée to say goodbye to Sir Everard Balfour and his ward Miss Mayfair, before they return to their country abode. I shall send your most sincere regrets, then, milord?"

Lord Andrew turned and snatched the note from Gaston's unprotesting hand, glared to see that it had already been opened, and removed the tiny letter from within. He wrinkled his nose at Lady Christabel's signature scent.

"Odds, she must had soaked the thing in it!" he muttered, then readout loud, "Lord Andrew is invited to a small gathering, to bid farewell to Sir Everard Balfour and his charming ward..."

Gaston had wandered over to the bookcases as Lord Andrew read the note and, as his lordship's voice died away, pounced upon a small red calf-bound volume. He seized it and offered it to his master with a short bow. "Your Italian dictionary, milord."

"Be damned to your impudence, Gaston!" shouted Lord Andrew." And if I catch you opening my mail again, I'll...well, never mind this time. When is this thing?" He held the note closer to the window, trying to decipher the lady's untidy hand. "Ah, Friday evening. Four days. Good. That means I'll have time to end at least some of my gambling associations, Gaston. Come, let us begin. I warn you, I must go to that gathering with not a taint of the gambling dens about my person."

Gaston smiled. "Do not doubt it, milord. You will reek of Calvinism, if you wish it to be so. Shall I have new clothes made, in somber black, with not a ruffle on your shirt or sleeve? Shall I make sure that your cuffs are ink-stained, and your stock is of coarsest linen?"

"Don't be a fool, man!" ranted Lord Andrew, though his former expression had been replaced by a grin of delight. "I'm not trying to convince her that I'm a saint, after all. But I will convince her, by the great Harry, that I am a reformed gambler, or die in the attempt."

"Let us hope that it will not come to that, milord," said Gaston sensibly.

***

"I won't do it, Letty!" Patricia threw herself onto the bed, her face stubborn, one ink-stained hand buried in her disordered hair." I refuse to go to that odious woman's house again, even if her deuced party is in my honour!"

Letty, shocked at her friend's attitude as much as at her language, said, "But, my dearest Pat, you cannot refuse to attend! It would cause the greatest of furors, you know, and Lady Christabel would never forgive you."

"As if that could ever be a concern of mine," grumbled Patricia, crumpling the scented invitation in her other ink-stained hand and tossed it onto the carpet with an expression of utter disdain. "I have no intention of toadying to that...that creature. Why, did you know, Letty, that she is the most notorious woman in London? And that she is as thick as thieves with Sir Everard? Why, I have no more intention of attending this gathering of hers than I have of sprouting wings and flying over the Channel to take on Bonaparte himself!"

Letty burst into tears and collapsed onto the settee.

"Oh, my dear, I do apologize!" exclaimed Patricia, leaping to her feet and dashing to her companion's side. "I had forgotten about dear Sydney, I vow. Do say you will forgive me for bringing up such a sad subject!"

Letty gave a sniff and was silent. Her elder brother Sydney had succumbed to a fever at one of the disastrous battles in Belgium, and Patricia was horrified that she had brought up all the old memories to her dearest friend.

Drat my impetuous tongue, Patricia thought angrily to herself as she scrabbled for a handkerchief. "Here you are darling, here's a nice clean one." She forced one of her sensible linen squares, sans lace and embroidery, into Letty's shaking hand. "Do say you forgive me for saying such a horrid, hideous, thoughtless thing."

"Of course," sniffed Letty with a brave smile, "and I'm a fleawit to be bothered by the mention of that horrible Frenchman's name, after all. Especially since he is on every tongue, to be sure. But to think of dearest Sydney and of how close my Tom was to certain death as well, it sometimes just makes me so...oh..." she subsided into another fit of tears.

Patricia spent some time in soothing her friend, and found at the end of it, to her supreme surprise, that she had somehow contrived to promise to attend Lady Christabel's soirée on Friday evening. It was to give her poor Letty one last taste of the haut ton before their return to Kent, she told herself, then realized what had just happened.

Why, the little minx has managed me, good and proper, Patricia thought with some amusement. Still, I shan't have to be in London much longer, and doubtless Lord Andrew will not even be there. He will be ridding himself of more of his fortune on cards, or some such.

Then she fell to thinking on the way his lordship's chestnut hair had curled about his collar, and his azure eyes had flashed in amusement when she had spoken of her adventures in Bath, and her mind drifted away into a reverie that she had neither invited nor intended...

***

Sir Everard Balfour left the house of Lady Christabel Russell with a thoughtful look on his rather flat features. He had learned a great deal in the past hour, and had imparted a somewhat smaller amount of information himself. It was not common for him to trust anyone so soon after first acquaintance, but he had found something in Lady Christabel that called to a similar feeling within his own somewhat unpleasant nature. He knew himself to be conniving and underhanded, but he believed that he had met someone at last who outdid him in slyness and devious treachery.

It was going to be interesting to work closely with Lady Christabel, he pondered as he ambled down the noisy street. And the rewards would be even greater than he had anticipated. Lord Andrew was a very rich man indeed. His ward Patricia had inherited all her father's riches some dozen years before, and her brother Ambrose's problems with cards had not affected her own fortune. Together, should Lord Andrew and Patricia marry, they would have a king's ransom in riches.

Sir Everard strolled towards his club, rosy visions of endless games of chance circling in his greedy mind.

A small dog ran out from an alleyway. Sir Everard struck at it with his cane, and smiled a tight little smile when it ran yelping from him.

Life was good.

Chapter 8

The town house of Lady Christabel Russell was ablaze in lights. The sounds of a string quartet echoed through the vast ground floor rooms, as guest after guest descended from elegant carriages or sleek new cabriolets. The women were all in gauzy dresses of white or the palest of pastels, their hair worn a la mode in a tangle of curls atop the head, with a row of small wisps across the brow. Intermingled in their curls, some wore the prince's feathers, a few had bandeaux of flowers, and the matrons wore velvet turbans.

Lady Christabel's outfit outshone those of all her guests combined. Her Empire gown of gold muslin matched the gold of her hair, and her tiny slippers peeking through her trailing skirt were the smallest in the room. Her long gloves were held up with enameled armlets inset with golden flowers.

"How frightfully elegant Lady Christabel is, to be sure, Patricia," whispered Letty as she stood beside her friend in the crush of people. "One would think that she entertained the Prince of Wales, instead of some miss from the country and her fat guardian."

Patricia gave her excited friend's hand a reassuring squeeze. "She may well be called upon to entertain the prince, Letty, since she knows him quite well, I have heard. But do not excite yourself, pray, if he does deign to attend. Your pretty face will get all splotchy and you'll stutter when you're introduced to him."

Letty squeaked, "The Prince! Oh, Patricia, do you think he will come?"

Her friend made no reply, involved as she was in scanning the crowded ballroom. Letty opened her mouth to repeat the question, then closed it again without uttering a word. Patricia had spent more than her usual time preparing for this soirée. But since her usual time consisted of a brief few moments in which she allowed Letty to dress her hair, after which she shrugged on a dress and considered herself ready, this was a relative term. Letty had watched as Patricia greeted the guests at Lady Christabel's side, and had noted the disappointed look on her friend's face when the receiving line had broken up and the dancing had begun.

Letty had a very clear idea as to the reason for her friend's disappointment. There had been no sign of Lord Andrew Aragon.

Sir Everard had bowed over Lady Christabel's hand and then had disappeared into the card room. Letty had noted a strange look pass between these two, but the memory had been pushed from her mind after she was claimed for the first dance, just after Patricia herself was led onto the ballroom floor on the arm of Lady Christabel's husband, old Sir Stanton Russell. He had puffed and huffed his way through the dance, then had disappeared up the marble staircase, having officially done his duty at his wife's party.

Dance had followed dance, and the midnight supper was fast approaching. Patricia had been led out by a succession of gentlemen, all of whom had blurred together in her perception. She went through the motions of each measure, wishing all the while that she was safely in her bedroom with a book in hand and a pile of them beside her, sipping tea and eating cake while she read.

The last dance before supper ended, Patricia found herself across the ballroom from Letty. Her partner, a dashing major who seemed puffed up with his own importance, bowed over her hand and said, "May I escort you into supper, Miss Mayfair?"

Patricia, trying desperately to remember the major's name, opened her mouth to make some polite reply, when a deep voice behind her said, "I believe Miss Mayfair is having supper with me."

The major nodded over Patricia's shoulder and disappeared in the direction of the card room, an expression of relief on his broad red face.

Patricia felt her heart pound, for no good reason that she could ascertain. In irritation at the unruly organ that was distracting her, she turned to disagree with the unknown voice.

Lord Andrew Aragon stood there, his upright figure looking grave and attractive in black. He gave a deep bow, one hand over his heart. "Miss Mayfair. You must be starving after dancing with every man in the room. Shall we go in to supper?"

Patricia opened her mouth to reply, then found herself caught by the really incredible blueness of Lord Andrew's eyes. Really, they are almost the color of a robin's eggs, she thought inconsequentially. Then she shook herself, and with a frown at her own lapse, replied in her iciest of tones, "I have no desire to have supper with you, Lord Andrew."

"If it is because I used to gamble, then you would be hard pressed to find a man in this room to have supper with instead," smiled his lordship. "So you might as well give me the honour."

"Used to gamble, Lord Andrew?" asked Patricia in her most unbelieving voice. "Surely I have heard that you are one of the best gamblers in the ton. Sir Everard speaks well of you."

"That is an example, I fear, of 'damning with faint praise', is it not? But I do assure you, Miss Mayfair, that my gambling days are behind me -- if you will sup with me tonight."

"A silly thing to say, I vow, Lord Andrew," said Patricia, irritated at the way her heart fluttered at the sound of his voice. "To make such a sudden and immense change in your nature ride upon a mere meal is past ridiculous. What, will you change your religion upon a breakfast, or the color of your hair upon a snap of the fingers?"

"Well, let us say that my past gambling is not so important to me as a meal with you, Miss Mayfair, and if that be silly, I am guilty as charged." Lord Andrew gave a solemn and elegant bow, his hand over his heart still. "Now, since almost everyone else has disappeared into the supper room while we have been arguing here, I suggest that I fetch us something to eat and we retire to the terrace, with--" he held up a hand to still Patricia's disagreement at this shocking suggestion, "--the chaperonage of your charming friend, who is fast approaching behind you."

"Patricia, I've been everywhere looking for you," said Letty as she fluttered up, her pretty face flushed with pleasure. "Good evening, sir," she simpered at Lord Andrew. Not having officially been introduced since their first meeting in the street, which could not be considered such, she could not use his name.

Patricia sighed. "Lord Andrew, this is my dearest friend and companion, Leticia Warren. Letty, Lord Andrew has offered to fetch us some supper and bring it to the terrace, but if you would rather go into--"

"What a delicious idea indeed!" said Letty, ignoring the fierce look that Patricia shot her. "There is such a crush in the supper room, and I am a trifle wearied from the dancing. Shall I come with you, Lord Andrew, to help you carry things?"

"I would not hear of it, Miss Warren. Do you two ladies go out to the coolness of the terrace and I will return with what delicacies I think would suit you." Lord Andrew bowed, his tall figure looking even taller in his somber black, his snowy shirtfront rich with ruffles. Then without another word, he disappeared in the direction of the supper room, from which echoed the babbling of many voices.

"Patricia, what a delightful gentleman!" exclaimed Letty. "How considerate! How thoughtful! Truly, I take it very kindly of him to offer to do such a thing for us. Don't you?"

"How conniving and transparent, you mean, my dearest Letty," grumped Patricia, though Letty noticed that her friend was flushed with pleasure at Lord Andrew's attentions. At least, Letty suspected the flush was the result of pleasure.

"I have seen him for some time now, watching you while you danced," Letty went on as they found their way through the great ballroom and onto the wide stone terrace.

The cool night breezes felt delightfully fresh after the closeness of the interior, and Patricia was grateful for them, as well as the darkness that hid her flushed face. "Letty, don't be a ninnyhammer! He wasn't watching me, he was watching the dancing," Patricia snapped, then forced herself to go on in calmer tones. "You're such a romantic, my dear, that you see what you wish to see. He was probably just between games of whist and walked out for some air."

"No, indeed, Pat, he was watching you dance. I made certain note of it," protested Letty.

The two friends walked along the flagstones, admiring the huge stone pots full to overflowing with fragrant flowers. In the grounds that stretched beyond the terrace, they could make out by the light of the full moon, formal garden plots edged by gravel pathways, and a circular fountain that tinkled prettily in the stillness.

Patricia ignored her friend's chattering as she examined her own feelings. She had been absurdly pleased to see the tall form of Lord Andrew, and this irritated her rather more than somewhat. He was a notorious gambler, by all that was holy! She hated gamblers, and she had no intention of receiving the attentions of any man, much less one with Lord Andrew's reputation. But her treacherous heart had leaped within her at the sight of him, and she was determined to make that unruly organ come to heel.

Although perhaps having supper with him was not the best way of preventing such an upheaval in my heart, she thought wryly.

She and Letty had reached the end of the terrace and had started back towards the high French windows, from which poured the lights of the ballroom, when they saw a veritable procession issuing from a small side door. Led by the tall figure of Lord Andrew, two serving men carried three chairs and a small table, while behind them came other servants bearing dishes and glasses and bottles.

"There, beside the fountain, I think," ordered Lord Andrew, and in a trice the neatest little supper table was set up and ready for occupancy. Lord Andrew, his attention free, looked along the terrace and caught sight of the two approaching ladies.

"There you are," he called merrily as the servants disappeared back into the house. "I feared you had deserted me after all, and I would be forced to eat all this supper myself."

Letty seized her friend's hand and tugged her along. "How kind of you to think of this, Lord Andrew," she simpered. "Why, I shall have quite a romantic story to tell when we are back home in Kent."

Lord Andrew carefully handed the ladies into their chairs and poured them each a glass of champagne. "Kent, do you say? I have a small place in Kent myself, near Canterbury."

"Oh, we are quite the other side of the county from you, Lord Andrew," babble Letty in excitement. "My Tom -- my fiancé, Mr. Faraday -- has his holding between Hythe and Rye, bordering Avington House, the property that belongs to Miss Mayfair."

"I don't suppose that Lord Andrew is interested in our unfashionable county life, Letty," said Patricia with a reluctant smile for her ebullient friend.

"On the contrary, Miss Mayfair, I am enthralled," said Lord Andrew. "I have often thought of retiring to my own spot in the country. The hectic life of the city is most wearing after a while."

"But where would you manage to gamble, Lord Andrew?" asked Patricia sweetly.

Lord Andrew, engaged in the careful dissection of a chicken pasty, did not at first reply. After a moment, he looked up and said, "As I believe I mentioned a bit earlier, Miss Mayfair, I have given up all forms of gambling forever. It is, as I have heard someone say quite recently, the resort of weak men. I have no desire to be considered weak, and thus I have determined to give up gambling from this day forth."

"A noble ambition, Lord Andrew," Patricia replied with a skeptical smile, "but one I fear may give you trouble to attain. What, no whist, no vingt-et-un? No betting on horseracing, or point to points? I can scarcely credence it, my lord."

"Patricia, you must admit it is an admirable intention, whether Lord Andrew succeeds at it or no," commented Letty as she nibbled a pastry.

"Oh, admirable, to be sure," said Patricia with another sweet smile, tinged just the faintest bit with vinegar, "but one wonders what brought on this sudden change in manner. Will you enlighten us, Lord Andrew?"

She was rewarded for her barb by seeing a flush spread across Lord Andrew's face, whether in anger or embarrassment, she could not determine. Patricia decided to press her advantage.

"Surely you cannot expect us to believe that a Pink of the ton such as yourself would willingly give up a favorite exercise such as gambling on horses, Lord Andrew? Why, what would your friends say? No, Letty, Lord Andrew is making sport of two country girls, that is all there is to it."

"I beg to disagree, Miss Mayfair," said Lord Andrew. The flush had deserted his face, leaving it deadly pale. "I am as resolute in this as in anything in my life. I vow never to gamble again, and I ask Miss Warren here to witness my vow."

"Why, I am sure it is noble of you, Lord Andrew," twittered Letty, her hands clutched together in admiration, her pretty eyes gleaming. "For whatever reason you choose, to give up something that has doubtless been a life-long habit is more than admirable."

"But again, why, Lord Andrew?" asked Patricia, determined to get an answer from him. She could feel her heart doing its strange revolutions again, and it was making her irritable indeed.

"Why, because you said you did not like men who gamble, to be sure, Miss Mayfair," said Lord Andrew simply.

Patricia saw her own hand rise in protest. Amazed, she watched it as if it belonged to another, noting the whiteness of the glove, picking out a tiny greyish spot on one finger, listening to the almost inaudible clank of the links of her bracelet as they struck together. Pull yourself together, she chided herself. You've had compliments paid you before, and more elegantly. For indeed, her wealth had brought her many suitors, some of them even more attractive that Lord Andrew. But she knew that never had a compliment been more charming, or more suited to her taste than this one.

"I...I hardly know what to say, my lord," Patricia stuttered. "If I have been of service to you, I am overjoyed, of course. But do not, pray, tell me that one chance remark of mine has determined your future course. I am but a recent town acquaintance, after all, and we shall doubtless not meet again when I return to my country house."

"Oh, do not say so, Miss Mayfair," Lord Andrew begged, a beseeching smile on his handsome features. "I have never felt...that is, I am quite mindful of the fact that we are but recent met, but I cannot help but wish that our acquaintance should grow."

"Oh, indeed, I cannot but agree, Lord Andrew," cried Letty, her dark eyes sparkling with emotion. "Why, you are quite nearly a neighbor, after all, if you have a property in Kent. Tell him so, Patricia, I beg."

"Yes," said Patricia slowly as she tried to reckon with all that had gone before in this most remarkable of conversations, "we are very nearly neighbors, are we not? Lord Andrew, may I ask you a question?"

"With all my heart, Miss Mayfair."

"Are you in debt?"

Letty gasped and turned red, but Lord Andrew laughed aloud. "I assure you, Miss Mayfair, I am as solvent as it is possible to be. My father left me in full possession of all his riches, and I have yet to squander a fraction of them. Why, are you looking for a rich bridegroom?"

"I am not looking for a bridegroom of any kind, I thank you," retorted Patricia, with a smile to remove the sting of her rather sharp words. "But you will forgive me for asking, since I have been worried to distraction by gentlemen in varying degrees of debt, who seek my hand with an eye to my fortune."

Lord Andrew blushed. "I have no wish for anything from you but your hand in friendship," he said, holding out his own over the table." If you will grant me that, I will find myself a richer man than when I first sat down here with you...and Miss Warren, of course," he finished hastily.

"With the best will in the world," cried Patricia, her heart touched by his words beyond anything she had ever felt. "I will be the friend of any honourable man who professes such things as you do, my lord."

Patricia held her own hand over the table and Lord Andrew gripped it so tightly that she had to restrain a gasp. Her heart was doing that ridiculous leaping motion again, but for once she did not regard it as she shook Lord Andrew's hand heartily.

Letty watched her friend's face, glowing in pleasure and admiration, and began to ponder idly on suitable bride gifts.

None of the three noticed the tiny stream of cigar smoke that spiraled upward from behind a towering stone pot full of gardenias. The fragrant flowers masked the scent of tobacco and the three new-formed friends had no interest in aught but themselves.

Sir Everard was pleased. His plans were proceeding apace. He finished his cigar as he listened shamelessly to the prattling of Letty, the laughing of Patricia and the murmured compliments of Lord Andrew. Then Sir Everard walked silently away, keeping to the shadows, though he did not believe that the others would notice if he had stamped his feet upon the flagstones.

He had much to tell Lady Christabel.

Chapter 9

Patricia wandered into the withdrawing room, a letter in her hand and a serious expression on her face. Letty was engaged in embroidering a pillowcase. This domestic sewing would, of course, never have appeared in her hands if it had been time for callers.

"Letty, I fear that your Tom is affronted with me," said Patricia with a smile for her industrious companion.

"Nonsense," said Letty stoutly as she bit off the end of her thread and picked up the skein for a new length. "Tom adores you, as do I."

"But he's a bit sharp with me in his latest letter...here, let me read it to you. 'My dearest Pat. I realize that we have been friends from childhood, and that I would not have been able to purchase my current home without a loan from you. This does not, however, give you the right to keep my fiancée from me for such an unconscionable time as this. When are you two gadabouts returning home, pray?' There, Letty, doesn't he seem a bit testy to you?"

"Not in the least," said Letty as she calmly threaded her needle. "But the corn is in, so he doesn't have anything to do and he wants entertainment, that's all."

"My dear, you speak of him as if you'd been married for years, I vow," laughed Patricia. "You'll handle him as well as he handles a horse, come your wedding." She dropped the letter in Letty's lap and went to stand at the window and peer out into the street.

Letty watched her friend covertly as she pretended to read the letter that Thomas Faraday had sent; since he had already told her in his letter to her what he had said to Patricia, Letty had little need to read it. But it afforded her a pleasant diversion as she watched Patricia.

Her friend had gained colour in the last few days, Letty noted, and the distressing ink stains were more assiduously removed each morning, only to reappear afresh each night. Patricia did not argue about having her hair done, and their shopping trips concentrated more often upon dressmakers than before, though booksellers were not neglected. Letty knew full well what had caused these changes in her friend, though Patricia would have laughed her out of countenance if she had suggested any such ridiculous thing.

Patricia was in love. Letty was sure of the signs, so recently had she gone through them herself. Pat would colour most becomingly whenever Lord Andrew's name was mentioned, and could be seen to glance out the window repeatedly when his lordship was due for a visit. Letty did not mention these facts to Patricia, but she was more than happy to see them. Her friend's future had been her despair, ever since Thomas Faraday had realized that he had loved Letty for years and finally had proposed to her just that spring. Letty had spent many hours worrying, her kind heart wounded by the thought of her darling Patricia left alone, with none but Sir Everard for company when Letty left to marry.

But now things were looking far brighter. Lord Andrew called nearly every day, bringing bonbons and books and taking them both on excursions about London. There was even a discussion of a trip to Bath soon. No wonder Tom was anxious! Their visit to London had been extended twice, and Letty must soon go back to Blythe House or take the very real chance of missing her own wedding. Still, Letty could take consolation in the fact that she had put her time to good use. Stacks of embroidered linen filled a surprising number of trunks, and due to her friend's kindness, she had a trousseau that would have put many a titled lady to shame.

"What time did Lord Andrew say he would call today?" asked Letty idly, her needle twinkling in the bright sunshine that poured through the window.

"After luncheon. He has discovered a new bookshop in Leadenhall Street and is all agog to take us there," said Patricia. She kept her back to her friend and continued to stare out the window. After a time, she said, "Letty, do you like Lord Andrew?"

"Very much indeed," replied her friend, stabbing away with her needle. "He is a most charming gentleman."

"Yes..." said Patricia, playing with the fringe on the curtain. After another length of time, she asked, "Would Tom like him, think you?"

Letty did not bother to hide her smile as she replied, "Why, I think they would have a great deal in common. Tom is not interested just in farming, you know. He has other tastes. He can beat you at chess, remember."

"Only after a great battle," agreed Patricia cheerfully. She worried the fringe a bit longer, then said, "Sir Everard is quite civil to Lord Andrew as well, do you not agree?"

"I would not think that it would matter to you how civil Sir Everard was, Patricia," commented Letty dryly. "Not from the things you have said about your guardian to me."

"That's just it, Letty." Patricia freed the fringe from its torment at last and turned to face her friend. "It is hard for me to trust Sir Everard, after what I know of him and his influence on poor Ambrose. To see him so eager for me to spend time with Lord Andrew is, well, it's a bit confusing, to say the least. You know his guardianship would no longer be in effect if I were to, well, to wed."

There, thought Letty with satisfaction, she's said it at last!

"My dear, I'm sure that Sir Everard wants nothing but your happiness," was what Letty said, however." Surely he's been pleasant to other of your suitors?"

"He has not, Letty, and the fact that he is so pleasant to Lord Andrew has me worried. I fear that he is so far in debt that he has designs upon a loan, and has picked upon Lord Andrew of all his acquaintances as having the deepest pockets. He knows full well that he shan't get a farthing from me, save for what he draws as my guardian, and that would end on the date of my, er, if I ever decided to marry. If only my poor papa had known what kind of a man Sir Everard was, he would never--"

Patricia stopped at the sound of a rap on the withdrawing room door, followed by the sound of her guardian's voice outside in the hallway.

"Shh, there he is," warned Letty unnecessarily, just as Sir Everard's portly figure waddled into the room.

"Good morning, ladies," he boomed, rubbing his hands together. His bulbous nose was a ruddy colour, betokening a recent visit to his club, Patricia knew. Brandy fumes mingled with the scent of cigars, encircling his stout body like a miasma called up by some ill-tempered sorcerer. "What, no young lords dancing attendance today? My dear Miss Mayfair, you surprise me!"

"If you speak of Lord Andrew Aragon, pray call him by name, sir," said Patricia coolly.

"Hoity-toity, miss," said Sir Everard, stung by her tone. "I meant nothing unpleasant, I do assure you. It is only because he seems to haunt our house of late that I--"

"My house, I believe, Sir Everard," Patricia replied, her tone no warmer than before. "Mine, as my money pays for it."

"To be sure, to be sure," said Sir Everard with a weak and sickly grin. "And kind of you to mention it, miss. I'm sure your dear father would be proud of his daughter, if he could see the way you treat the man he chose himself to take care of you. But, no matter, no matter. Doubtless I shall soon be replaced by one more to your liking."

"What do you mean, sir?" asked Patricia in the most frigid tone she could muster.

Sir Everard laid a finger to the side of his nose. "Oh, I have eyes, after all, my dear young lady. And I hope that you will recall, when we are no longer together, that I have always done my poor best where you are concerned. This I would swear on your father, my dearest friend's, grave."

Patricia was touched by Sir Everard's words and her heart, full as it was with an unaccustomed emotion, overflowed even for this man whom she had blamed for her brother Ambrose's death. "No doubt you have, sir, and I should not judge you ill. Come," she held out her hand, "let us pledge a new friendship."

"With all my heart!" cried Sir Everard, and they shook hands heartily.

"Well, my dear ladies," said Sir Everard with a sniff, "I will leave you to your nuncheon, and your afternoon of shopping, no doubt? I have business at my club. I merely stopped off for my snuffbox, which that rascal Claude forgot to take with us this morning. Goodbye, Miss Warren. Miss Mayfair, my respects."

And Sir Everard was gone in a whirl of tobacco and spirit fumes.

"I am so glad you decided to make it up with Sir Everard, Pat!" cried Letty when they had heard the sound of the outer door close behind him. "I am sure that, as he said, he has done his best for you."

"Perhaps, Letty, perhaps," said Patricia thoughtfully, "but you are correct. It seems as if I am incapable of remaining angry with anyone, be he ever so horrid, these days. Whatever can have got into me, I wonder?"

"Whatever indeed?" said Letty complacently.

***

Sir Everard did not return to his club, as he had said. Instead he directed the carriage to take him to Lady Russell's town house.

Claude drove the hired barouche to that lady's door, helped his portly master to alight, then was dismissed with a gruff, "I don't know how long I shall be, Claude, but I will go to my club from here. Return home and pick me up there this evening."

Claude gave a tip of his treasured hat and clucked to the horses. As the barouche pulled away from the kerb, he cast a wondering glance at Sir Everard entering the Russell residence.

"Old bounder," Claude muttered aloud as he drove off, "what could such a lady see in him? What she needs is a young lively sort of a man, one with hot blood in his veins." With these pleasant images dancing through his head, Claude turned towards home, although he gave himself the privilege of taking his favorite long way round.

Sir Everard found himself admitted to Lady Christabel's boudoir, a delicate room full of flounces and pink silk walls. Lady Christabel sat sipping chocolate, her elfin face a little drawn this morning.

"Sir Everard," she drawled, "la, you are looking particular stylish this morning. However do you manage to do it, pray, and at this time of day?"

Sir Everard preened for a moment, his barrel chest protruding. Lady Christabel hid a smile at his dandyish attitude.

Really, she thought, these men are too comic. It takes no effort at all to twist them about a finger.

"And you, madame, are your usual picture of beauty this day. Why, you look a green girl in that fetching bit of lace. Quite the most beautiful lady in London, I vow," replied Sir Everard as his sharp eye took in the slight sagging under her chin and the incipient crow's feet that marred her lovely eyes.

She'll be a hag at forty, he pondered as he settled his portly frame in a straight-backed chair covered in striped silk. And she'll still be seducing gallants fresh from the cradle.

"How are our plans proceeding, Sir Everard?" Lady Christabel poured him a demitasse of chocolate.

"Apace, madame, apace," assured that gentleman as he sipped the sweet concoction with a hidden grimace. "They delight in each other's company, and the young lord spends money on outings as if it fell from the sky. I encourage my ward to the hilt, of course."

"What?" snapped Lady Christabel, her face losing its practiced sweetness of expression and taking on the lineaments of a harpy. "Encourage her? Upon my word, sir, you are uncommon stupid."

"Madame?" huffed Sir Everard, stung to the quick at her words.

"Listen to me, Sir Everard, and try to follow my reasoning, if you can. " Her tone made it plain that she suspected he could not do so. "I vow I will use small words, so that you may perhaps manage to keep up. Your ward Miss Mayfair -- and what Lord Andrew can see in such a bluestocking, I cannot imagine -- has never accepted a proposal of marriage, I believe. This is no doubt due to her own overparticular ways, as well as the good taste of most acceptable men, who would not deign to offer for her. But her fortune, at least, Sir Everard, must have drawn some admirers?"

"Yes, but--"

"Did you," Lady Christabel interrupted, "not say that you had discouraged all such gentlemen before this?"

"Well, yes, it is so, but--"

"Well, yes, it is so," mocked Lady Christabel, setting her cup down in its saucer with a decisive rattle. "Then do you not think that your ward, the intelligent and perceptive Miss Mayfair, might suspect you have some other motive if you do not disagree to Lord Andrew's suit, as you have done to others?"

Sir Everard sat for a moment, his tiny half-filled cup forgotten in his plump fingers. "Damme, my lady, you are as right as right. I should be forbidding my ward from seeing her gallant. You combine brains with remarkable beauty, and I say that with not a word of flattery, I do assure you, madame."

"Oh, do not speak of it, I pray you, Sir Everard," said Lady Christabel sweetly, rescuing the tiny cup from Sir Everard's sausage fingers before he could do it some damage. "I am merely trying to ensure that our plans do not go awry. I have as much at stake in the matter as you do yourself, as you know."

"How in the world a man could let a prize like you escape is beyond me, madame." Sir Everard captured his hostess' hand and placed a rather wet kiss upon its creamed and powdered back, transferring a portion of that concoction onto his flabby lips. "Perhaps, when this is all over, we might continue our present association even further?" As if I won't be able to afford better, Sir Everard added silently, disliking the taste of the powder on his lips.

"Sir Everard, I cannot help but feel that we are soul mates, destined to spend a great deal of time together in the future," murmured her ladyship in dulcet tones. At least until I get your share of our venture, you slimy old toad, she thought to herself with a sly secret grin.

The two continued to smile and nod and drink their chocolate, in more complete accord than even they realized.

Chapter 10

"Gaston!"

Gaston, engaged in conveying a mirror finish to a high boot, looked up from his task. "Milord?"

Lord Andrew, fully clothed but in his stocking feet, paced back and forth across his bedchamber. A broad smile illuminated his handsome face.

"Gaston, don't you think Miss Mayfair is most intelligent?"

"I do indeed, milord," replied Gaston. "Although some gentlemen of my acquaintance would consider this an impediment, I fear."

Lord Andrew jerked to a stop and turned a threatening face to his manservant.

Gaston continued his polishing, as phlegmatic and imperturbable as it was possible to be.

"An impediment, you say? By all that's holy, it is the most important thing in a wife, in my considered opinion!"

"Indeed, milord?" Gaston did not remove his attention from the task at hand as he awaited the reply he knew was forthcoming. Lord Andrew usually spent his dressing hour extolling Miss Mayfair, and Gaston had learned more about that young lady than he had ever learned about any of his own numerous inamorata.

"What, would you be linked for life to some simpering, giggling ninny, who hasn't a thought in her head beyond muslins and silks? Or some meretricious, conniving great lady, who is more interested in what she can get from you than she is in your feelings or interests?"

This last, Gaston suspected, was a description of Lady Christabel in the flesh.

"Not in the least, milord," Gaston replied soothingly. "You are in the right of it, I vow."

"No, I should think you would not," said Lord Andrew with a snort of derision. "Oh, I see it now; perhaps you would prefer a woman who is always in the middle of a fit of vapours, languishing about in yards of lace and ruffles? Or one of those misses who are sent into the dismals at the sight of a poor child begging on the streets, then are laughing in the next instant when offered a pretty bauble? No, Gaston, take it from me. An intelligent woman, with a pretty taste in books and a talent for chess, is the perfect woman in all the world for me."

"I am happy to hear it, milord. And have you found this acme of perfection in Miss Mayfair, think you?"

Lord Andrew sighed. "I hope so, Gaston, I hope so. I ask for little enough in life, I swear. A decent horse or two, a place to lay my head, a bit of travel when the mood hits me."

Gaston, used to a great deal in his youth and forced, since the tragedy that had struck not only his own family but thousands of other French nobility, to do without, did not comment on these simple tastes. Instead, he replied, "It is said by the philosophers, milord, that the simple life is best. A pleasant home, a young woman to whom one is devoted and who is in return devoted to you...these are the true joys of life."

"Precisely, Gaston. You have hit upon it, I vow. Now if only Miss Mayfair did not have that horrible plaguey guardian, Balfour. The man is always grinning and slithering about, like a dratted toad!"

Gaston finished his polishing and set the boot beside its gleaming brother, then rose and seized both boot tops in one hand. "If you will allow me, milord, your boots are ready to don. Shall I have Figgis prepare the barouche, or will you ride Nelson today?" Figgis being his Lordship's driver, and Nelson being his Lordship's favorite gelding, Gaston was sure that one or the other would be required.

"Figgis, if you please, Gaston, and make sure that Cook has prepared the basket. Go, off with you, man. I can put my boots on quite by myself, I assure you."

Gaston deposited the boots before a chair and disappeared out the bedchamber door without further ado. Lord Andrew then proved his own words false as he sat down in that same chair and at once forgot that his boots were before him.

His lordship's mind was in a whirl. He had spent the last fortnight squiring Miss Mayfair and her friend Miss Warren all about London, to bookstores --some dozens of these -- to dressmakers, to bonnet makers, to shoemakers, to mantua makers -- in short, to any pleasant establishment organized to remove money and provide sustenance for the body or mind. What was surprising to Lord Andrew was not so much the fact that he had done so -- although he had spent a great deal of time in the past complaining about wasting his time in shops -- but that he had enjoyed each and every second of each and every day.

He leaned back in his chair, his glossy boots forgotten, and tried to decide if at last, after having given up the mere concept in disgust, he may now be in love.

Miss Mayfair -- Patricia, as he called her to himself, though he had not dared to do so to her face as he was neither related nor betrothed to her -- was the most pleasant companion he had ever had. Even the constant companionship of Miss Warren did nothing to dampen his feelings, though he would gladly have assigned that unassuming and charming lady to the bottom of the Thames at times. Patricia...his heart overflowed at the mere thought of her name, and when he remembered the evening when she had beaten him at chess, he could scarce catch his breath.

But her guardian was a major sticking point. What if he was forced to spend time with such a cad as Sir Everard, as the price for offering for Miss Mayfair's hand? Was it worth it?

Lord Andrew proclaimed a decided and resounding, "Yes!" Then he looked guiltily about the bedchamber, realizing that he was alone. Od's body, he was growing queer! Was this what love did to one? If it were so, then he could swear he had never felt the tender passion in his life before now, for all his experience with the fairer sex.

Lord Andrew began tugging on his boots, a silly grin illuminating his handsome features.

***

"Letty, my dear, will you pass the marmalade?"

Letty held out the article in question, ensconced in a tiny silver bowl with a cunning wee silver spoon peeking from its top.

Patricia, a distant look on her face, did not at first take the proffered dish.

"Dearest?" inquired Letty, with a smile for her friend's distraction.

"What?"

"The marmalade I believe you required?"

Patricia took the bowl and dished out a large portion onto her toast.

For a while there were only the sounds of contented munching. Then Sir Everard, who occupied his accustomed place at the head of the small breakfast room table, said, "Will Lord Andrew visit today, ladies?"

Patricia blushed, then went pale. Letty replied, "It is possible, Sir Everard. He did make mention of a desire to show us the Tower today. Why?"

Sir Everard harrumphed and squirmed a bit in his seat, then poured himself a bit more tea. "Well, my dear Miss Mayfair, as your guardian I feel that it is my duty to warn you about such attentions as his young lordship is paying you."

"Warn me, Sir Everard?" said Patricia in a frigid voice. "Pray, warn me of what?"

Sir Everard, not a whit put out by her tone, said, "Well, my dear young lady, your poor father left me as your guardian, and you are quite alone in the world, so it behooves me to simply point out that there are men who will try to take advantage of young ladies...especially young ladies with a sizeable fortune, such as your own."

Letty was amazed to see a smile illuminate her friend's features, where she had suspected a glare or, at the very least, a frown of displeasure. Instead, her dear Pat looked almost grateful to Sir Everard, as if he had paid her a compliment.

"I am quite aware that there are such men in this world, Sir Everard, but I thank you for pointing it out to me. If you are, however, referring to Lord Andrew as a fortune hunter, then I fear you are mistaken. He has shown no interest whatsoever in my money. Unlike yourself, if you do not mind me pointing it out, sir."

Sir Everard had the grace to blush. "I merely wished to make sure you were not being taken advantage of, my dear young lady," he huffed. "I have not been pleasing to you as a guardian, I know, but you must believe that I have always tried to do as your dear father would have wished me. Believe this or not, as you wish."

Patricia's heart was too full to hold even Sir Everard's sins against him. She replied, a smile on her face, "I believe that you are not the man my father was nor thought you to be, Sir Everard, though I could not expect you to be so, I vow. Few men would be able to live up to my dear father's level. I am grateful, I assure you, of your care over the years, and I am glad that you are concerned now about Lord Andrew's intentions. I thank you for that."

For this was, as Letty knew very well, precisely why Patricia was so glad. Pat had been worrying that her guardian planned to ask a loan of Lord Andrew. Now that Sir Everard had shown his doubts, Patricia must be greatly relieved to find that it was not so. For surely Sir Everard would not warn Pat against Lord Andrew, then go to him for a loan.

"And I thank you, sir, for the care you have shown my friend and myself," said Letty prettily. "I assure you that Miss Mayfair is correct. Lord Andrew has never asked the slightest thing of either of us about your ward's monetary condition. And I have heard that he is among the richest of men himself, and," she paused for effect, "he has given up all forms of gambling, merely so that Miss Mayfair will be his friend. For you know, sir, that of all things Patricia hates gambling the most."

There, thought Letty. See what he makes of that!

Sir Everard made little of it, it seemed. He nodded and continued his breakfast, a stormy look in his protruding eyes. In little more than a minute, leaving his cup of tea unfinished, he rose and said with a departing bow, "So long as you are careful, Miss Mayfair, I can ask no more of you."

"Believe me, sir, I intend never again to trust a man who does not deserve it," was the dismissive reply, framed though it was in the sweetest of tones.

Sir Everard's swarthy face darkened even further, and his eyes seemed about to pop from his head. But he uttered no word as he turned and departed the breakfast room.

"Really, Pat, you could be a bit more accommodating!" reproved Letty, with a rattle of her teacup. "He has only done what your father wished, after all."

"I do not believe that my father would have wished poor weak Ambrose to be introduced to such friends as Sir Everard produced for him," snapped Patricia, then immediately relented at her tone. "Oh, do forgive me, Letty! I vow, I am prodigious touchy of late. It must be because I am not sleeping well."

"Chamomile tea," proscribed Letty. "With honey. I shall make sure you have a cup last thing this night."

"Whatever you think best, Letty," agreed Patricia absently, shocking her friend almost to apoplexy with her quick and totally unexpected agreement, instead of her usual joking about Letty's doctoring practices. "Letty, I am glad that Sir Everard warned me against Lord Andrew, you know, for all the fact that he is greatly mistaken about his lordship's manner. For if he takes the trouble to warn me, then he is doubtless not planning on asking his lordship for a loan of money, don't you think so?"

"I do, Pat, and I see that you are more than glad of it yourself. Pray, give Sir Everard the benefit of the doubt, and let us speak of pleasanter matters."

"With all my heart, dear," cried Patricia. "And shall we begin by speaking of Tom? For I perceive that nothing would be more pleasant to your ears than that dear name."

Letty's pretty face had barely had time to flush when a commotion arose outside the breakfast room door. The door flew open and Letty in turn leaped and flew into the arms of a towering gentleman with blazing red hair and a smile as broad as he was.

"Tom, my darling!"

"Letty, my pet!"

Patricia waited patiently while Thomas Faraday bussed his fiancée with great thoroughness, accompanied by little murmurs of delight by Leticia. At last, when they seemed to be winding down with their greetings, Patricia said with a smile, "So, my dear Tom, you could not wait an instant longer, could you?"

Tom Faraday set his delectable bundle back on her feet and grinned down at Patricia. "Good day to you, too, Miss Mayfair. And if you say another word, I shall swoop you up as I did when we were children, and set you upon the mantle."

Patricia gazed up the long expanse of her friend. Tom had put on weight since last she had seen him; his husky frame towered well over six feet, and he must have topped nineteen stone. She and Tom had learned to ride horses together, shared books and secrets, and had at the age of seven promised solemnly to wed one day. This last promise had been overturned by mutual consent some years later, and put finished to by the arrival of Leticia Warren on a visit from school. Tom had lost his heart to the plump and pretty Letty, though he and Patricia were still the best of friends.

"You would not dare to do such a thing, sir, for fear of Letty," laughed Patricia. "She would not allow such abuse of her dearest friend, not even from you."

"Quite right indeed, Thomas Faraday," said Letty, smiling up a her enormous beau. "Why, I would give you the severest talking to that was ever heard, I vow."

The three friends settled themselves amongst the breakfast things, Tom calling for toast and ham and tea. Letty cooed upon him like the veriest pouter pigeon, while Patricia plied him with marmalade.

"Although you appear to have eaten rather more than well, since we've been away, Tom," Patricia said as she watched a slab of ham disappear as if by magic. "Mrs. Haleton has been stuffing you against your wedding, no doubt?"

"She wants to make sure that I have my strength about me, Patricia, my dear," boomed Tom Faraday. "And of course, working the farm gives one a raging appetite, for I dare not slack, owing you money as I do."

"Tom Faraday," chided Patricia as she poured him yet another cup of tea, "as you know very well, that was a bride gift for Letty, and I'll not accept a farthing of it back."

"And I'll not accept charity from my oldest friend," said Tom Faraday, his cheerful face going solemn, "not even for Letty's sake, as you very well know. I'll pay you back with interest, if it takes me ten years."

"The only interest I am interested in is being godmother to your ten children, you ninny Tom," said Patricia. "If I cannot offer my two dearest friends a bit of help, then what good is my fortune, pray?"

"Well, we shall see," said Tom, for this was a constant and ongoing battle between the two of them. "Now, my dearest ladies, I must have an explanation at once. Why in all the world have you two truant lasses stayed away from home so long? Has some marquis spoken for my Letty? Shall I have to fight a duel for her hand? Or have you, my dearest Patricia, found some dusty bookseller who has stolen your heart by offering you endless grimy tomes?"

The three friends chattered and ate and laughed and conversed for some time, until the clock in the hallway struck half past ten.

"Oh, dear," said Patricia, her hand on her bosom. Then she dashed from the breakfast room as if a hound of hell were nipping at her skirts.

"What is it?" asked Tom lazily, his eyes glued to Letty's pert face. "Her dusty bookseller, come to bring her a dozen volumes on ironmongery, bound in red leather and signed by the author?"

"Oh, Thomas, you dreadful man, she's awaiting Lord Andrew Aragon," confided Letty as she buttered yet another piece of toast. The town servants, rented as was the house, had gathered just inside the pantry door to watch and giggle at the enormous appetite of the new arrival.

"Lord Andrew Aragon? What, the one who owns Carados House, over near Canterbury, and rides in the steeplechase every fall? Whatever would such a blade of the ton be doing, calling on our Patricia?"

"Oh, Thomas, it's the dearest and most romantic thing in all the world, I vow," said Letty, and proceeded to give him a description of the current situation.

"And if you'd read any of my letters save only trying to pick out when we'd be coming home, you'd know all this already," she ended at last. "But of course, I cannot expect to take precedence over the corn or the hay or the calving, can I, sir?"

"Lord Andrew Aragon," said Tom, his jovial face gone solemn as a judge. "You surprise me, truly, Letty. For is not his lordship renowned as a gambling man? Why, Patricia would show him the door on first acquaintance, I would have sworn my life upon it."

"Oh, dearest, it's the most romantic thing in life," said Letty again. "He has promised to give up gambling if Patricia will be his friend."

"Humph!" said Mr. Faraday, his burly body swelling as his indignation grew. "Typical folderol. A fortune hunter, no doubt. What does the estimable Sir Everard think of this match, pray? All in favor, with his eyes on a prospective loan if he assists his lordship in obtaining Pat's hand?"

"Well, at first he seemed to be in favor, indeed," Letty admitted, "but he has gone off it altogether. Patricia suspected the same thing, and is most reassured that Sir Everard has begun to blow cold on the matter. But, Tom, his lordship will be here soon, and he has offered to take us to the Tower. Do you go and wash your face and hands, so you shall be presentable when he arrives, while I see if Patricia needs me."

"Well, I will," said Tom agreeably, "though I've traveled far to see you. If you're willing to pay the price, that is." He grinned to his blushing intended.

Letty proved herself more than willing, and her rosy face was rosier than ever with her Tom's kisses when she arrived at last in Patricia's bedchamber.

"Patricia, Tom will accompany us to the Tower, if we wish, so he says, and he is all agog to meet Lord Andrew," she trilled as she pattered into her friend's bedchamber.

"All agog, is he?" asked Patricia in distraction. She was seated on the chaise lounge near her window, lost in a brown study, an open book in one hand, her new pelisse draped across the chaise beside her. "Well, we must not disappoint Thomas Faraday. And if I am not mistaken, that is Lord Andrew's ring at the door!"

***

"Lord Andrew Aragon, Mr. Thomas Faraday."

Patricia introduced her new friend and her old one with a hidden smile at their differences. Lord Andrew was almost as tall as Tom, but was sleek and slender, where Tom was massive and burly. Both had hair with shades of red, but Lord Andrew's curled about his collar while Tom's blazing carrot top was cropped off short. Lord Andrew was dressed in an elegant blue coat, short-waisted and double-breasted, with turned-over collar and wide lapels. His buff waistcoat and snowy linen were irreproachable, as were his narrow breeches and Hessian boots.

Tom had had time to change from his traveling clothes, at the least, and wore a brown coat and breeches, with high boots and a narrow stock, looking most decidedly like what he was, a prosperous squire from the country.

"Your servant, Mr. Faraday," bowed Lord Andrew.

"Servant, Lord Andrew," said Tom gruffly, with a nod that was barely polite.

Then the two stared at each other will ill-concealed distrust, for all the world as if they were two cocks in a hen yard.

"Mr. Faraday is Miss Warren's betrothed, you know, Lord Andrew," said Patricia as she allowed Lord Andrew to help her into her pelisse. "And he is an old and dear friend of my own. He has surprised us both with a visit, and we did not think it proper to leave him here alone while we are enjoying ourselves with exploring the Tower, so I took the liberty of inviting him to accompany us."

Lord Andrew's face cleared at this explanation, and he replied with a smile, "By all means, Miss Mayfair. I have brought my curricle, and we shall all fit in most snuggly, if Mr. Faraday will not mind sitting a bit closer to Miss Warren than is considered proper in Town."

Tom gave a great guffaw and Letty blushed.

"Well, I consider that a resounding 'yes'," laughed Lord Andrew in delight. "Shall we go?"

***

The visit to the Tower was a resounding success. Thomas Faraday found that Lord Andrew knew which side of a horse to mount, and Lord Andrew found that Mr. Faraday cared deeply for Miss Mayfair, but was in love with Miss Warren.

It was a most pleasant and enjoyable outing for all of them. So delightful was it that they planned a longer excursion on the morrow to the gardens at Kew.

"Your young lordship is quite a pleasant sort of a man," admitted Tom Faraday as he kissed Letty and Patricia -- one on the lips, the other on the cheek -- goodnight. "I approve of him."

"La, Tom, that is all I have been waiting for, I vow," laughed Patricia as she wandered conveniently off to her room, leaving her two friends to finish their goodnights.

Chapter 11

The journey to Kew was an even more resounding success than their trip to the Tower of London had been.

Tom Faraday relaxed in the presence of Lord Andrew as he began to take his measure, and his lordship chatted with the burly Tom as if he'd known him all his life, asking him pertinent questions on horses and seeking his advice in all manner of things pertaining to farming. The two were as thick as thieves, and had kept Patricia and Letty in stitches of laughter the entire trip.

They alighted from his lordship's curricle at the gates of the Gardens and wandered through the huge display, pointing out various flowers and trees, and laughing together at Tom's comments on the herb gardens and the herbaceous borders. It seemed the most common thing in the world when Tom seized Letty's hand and dragged her towards a huge old oak, pointing out in stentorian tones how it resembled one at home in Kent. The two disappeared behind the oak, and Tom's voice could be heard extolling the virtues of his own estate, to the obvious detriment of the royal gardens at Kew.

"Your friend is a delight," laughed Lord Andrew.

"Yes," agreed Patricia with a chuckle, "but he can be just a bit tiring."

"I perceive a most convenient stone bench, just there in the shade. Shall you sit down and rest for a bit, until we are once again overtaken by the overwhelming Mr. Faraday?"

Patricia took advantage of his offer, and seated herself on the convenient bench. It sat in a most lovely location, somewhat off the common track and shaded by the drooping branches of a huge old willow. A tinkling stream ran behind it, close enough for the enjoyment of the sound, but without danger of damp.

"May I?" asked Lord Andrew. At Patricia's nod, he seated himself beside her.

Silence. Patricia stared at her gloved hands, folded in her lap.

More silence. Patricia glanced under her lashes at his lordship, who had hitherto not had any trouble with his speech. His narrow face was turned away from her and she spent some satisfying moments in contemplating the cunning way his hair curled over the top of his collar, noting how an errant breeze would catch up a stray wisp and then drop it again.

Lord Andrew turned to face her and Patricia could feel the blood rush into her face as he caught her eyes directed upon him. An answering rush suffused his features and the two of them sat for an endless moment gazing into each other's eyes.

"Miss Mayfair," said Lord Andrew at last.

"My lord?" replied Patricia, her heart in her throat -- for what reason, she could not at that precise moment determine.

"I...that is, you...I mean, would it be possible that you might...damn!"

Patricia laughed. "I fear your intention is unclear, sir."

"Miss Mayfair, I wish to ask you a most important question," Lord Andrew managed to gasp out at last.

"Yes?"

"Miss Mayfair," said Lord Andrew, and went so far as to seize Patricia's gloved hand, "my intentions of late cannot have escaped your notice. I wish, that is, I hope that you would some day consider me to be -- damn it all, will you marry me, Miss Mayfair?"

Patricia squeezed the fingers that were holding her own so tightly. "I believe," she said with a sly smile, "that most misses reply, 'Pray excuse me, sir. I am sensible of the honor you do me, but I fear we should not suit.' That is, I believe, the accepted response upon such a proposal, when first it may be offered?"

"It is, but oh, my dear Miss Mayfair, say it is not your response!"

And then Lord Andrew, to Patricia's great distress, knelt upon the graveled path, keeping her hand enclosed in his own like some treasure.

"My lord," Patricia said, her heart fluttering like a captured bird, "I have no wish to play games with you. You are a most pleasant companion, and I have enjoyed our time together vastly."

"Come, that is more encouraging that your first reply," said Lord Andrew, still keeping her hand tight within his own.

"Don't you wish to rise, Lord Andrew? That gravel must be prodigious uncomfortable, as well as a danger to the polish on your boots," Patricia pointed out with a sly grin.

Lord Andrew's face suffused with red again, though this time it portended a struggle to keep from laughing. "You are the most pestiferous woman, Miss Mayfair, I declare! Here I am, at your feet, offering you my heart and hand and fortune, and you discourse on the dangers to my boots. I will take the bloody things off and cast them into the Thames, if it will make you give me a yes."

Patricia gazed into the azure eyes that laughed up at hers.

"Yes," she said simply.

***

"Damme, I shall never get you home now, Letty!"

Letty, her plump hand secure in the massive paw of Thomas Faraday, looked up in surprise. She had been lost in a reverie of her approaching bride trip, when Tom had promised to take her to Brighton to see the Prince Regent's monstrosity of a palace. Lost as she had been in her own pleasant thoughts, Letty did not at first understand Tom's remark.

Then she peered around the bulk of her massive betrothed. There, under the sweeping fronds of a stately willow, knelt Lord Andrew Aragon, with both of dear Patricia's hands clasped in his own. Patricia leaned her head over his kneeling figure and they both radiated a joy that was apparent even from this distance.

"Well, thank God he's had the courage to ask her at last," said Letty. "And what do you mean, Thomas Faraday?"

"Why, only that you'll be stuck in town another endless time, helping Pat get her trousseau ready, that is all," grumbled Tom. "I swear, Letty, if I don't marry you soon, I shall run mad and bay at the moon, see if I don't!"

"Nonsense," soothed Letty. "Pat will wish to wed as quick as may be. And perhaps," she continued as a happy thought struck her," we may have a double wedding!"

***

Miss Patricia Mayfair was more than glad to return to her beloved Avington House. The journey from London had been long, wet and miserable. An early autumn had set in, directly after the harvest, and the road seemed more rutted and dismal than usual. It would have been far less pleasant, she realized, if they had not had the use of Lord Andrew's well-sprung carriage and set of matched bays on the first part of their journey. Though, after they had been forced to change horses at their first stop, the proceedings had not improved.

Still, thought Patricia, it could have been worse. And she had had no wish to marry out of some rented London residence, nor indeed from Lord Andrew's house there. Not for her some stately or fashionable London wedding. No, she had set her mind to being married in her own house with friends and old servants by her side, even if afterwards she must away to Lord Andrew's house, well on the other side of the county.

Her head nodded at the jumbling motion of the carriage. Across from her Letty was unashamedly asleep, her head dropped forward on her chest, the pretty feather in her bonnet nodding in time to the rumble of the carriage.

The two of them were alone in the carriage. Tom and Lord Andrew had ridden ahead, anxious to have some fresh air after giving in to Patricia and Letty's admonitions to remain in the coach for most of the day. At last the ladies had relented and the two men had ridden off towards Avington House, accompanied by Lord Andrew's manservant Gaston.

Patricia, a soft smile on her face, thought back over their last days in London. They had left Sir Everard there to close up the rented house and send their boxes of things along, so that Pat and Letty could get away with their gallants.

***

"Od's blood, my dear Miss Patricia," said Sir Everard, a mass of papers in his hand, his corpulent chins flowing out over his dingy stock. "You must away when you will, of course. I will be more than glad to stay and close things up here. But I do insist, if you are determined on marriage to his lordship, that you go over these papers concerning your inheritance and sign these few unimportant legal bits." He shook the mass of papers, which rattled like castanets.

Patricia, her mind in the whirl that had occupied it ever since the astonishing development at Kew Gardens, laughed. She was disposed to be generous and considerate to all the world in her present mood, and not least to Sir Everard. Besides which, she knew that a tiny part of all her happiness concerned the fact that she would no longer be forced to have her guardian near her.

Surely now she could at last afford to be generous to the man that she had never liked, and at time had come near to hating?

"Very well, sir, I shall be at your disposal in two minutes," she replied gaily. "Let me just swallow this cup of tea and we shall retire to your study."

Patricia suited her actions to her words, and in a trice they were in the small stuffy room where Sir Everard was wont to retire of an evening, when he did not visit his club or a crony or some gambling establishment. Since these entertainments left few nights not disposed of, the study was seldom used and their hired servants took advantage of this fact by ignoring it most of the time. It had a musty smell, and a faint patina of dust drifted across the battered old desk that was the main piece of furniture in the small room. There were bookshelves, but all were empty, and a couple of chairs completed the furnishings.

Sir Everard dumped his pile of papers on top of the cushion of dust, came uncomfortably close to knocking over the inkwell, and pulled a straight chair from the corner of the room to the edge of the desk. Motioning Patricia to be seated, he rummaged in a pocket as he went round the other side and settled into a cracked old armchair. Triumphantly pulling out a snuffbox, he took a pinch, sneezed heartily, dusted himself with a dingy handkerchief, and laid a hand atop the pile of papers.

"My dear Miss Mayfair," he began in portentous tones, "you are about to enter into a most solemn state. Against my advice, may I repeat once more." He held up a hand at Patricia's sputtered try at a comment, then continued, "Against my advice, but since you are so determined, I can not and will not stand in your way. I have taken the opportunity to check into Lord Andrew's financial affairs with his man of business, and have determined that he is not only not in debt, but remarkably solvent for a young lord of his age and habits."

"He is a gentleman, sir, and as such should not be examined like some tradesman seeking employment," said Patricia coldly.

"Yes, you are right, ma'am," said Sir Everard with a placating nod, not a whit embarrassed. "But as I was entrusted by your departed father to take the best care of you that I was able, I thought it my duty to look into his history. You will come into a sizeable fortune, Miss Mayfair, upon the day of your marriage, and it would ill behoove me to let it fall into the wrong hands."

Patricia, tired of his self-serving speeches, wished most heartily to be done with this matter. "Sir Everard, I will take as gospel that you wish nothing but the best for me. I believe that you have cared for me to the utmost of your ability since my poor father's death, and I have tried to forgive you for your unfortunate interference in my dear brother's life and subsequent death. But I would be less than honest if I did not say to you, I will be glad when we are no longer forced to spend time together."

Sir Everard's ruddy face blushed even redder. "Well, ma'am, that is pert. But since that is the case, let us be on with these few legal matters, and you may be off with your young lord as quickly as may be." He shuffled the towering stack of papers and Patricia struggled to suppress a sigh at the sight. "Come, come, miss, it is not so bad as all that. Here are the important papers, which you must sign here, where I have marked." A tight smile on his toadish face, Sir Everard slid the inkwell towards her.

Patricia took the pen with alacrity, dipped it in the well and tried it upon a scrap of paper, then began to sign her name. She signed the first half dozen or so sheets of paper without giving them more than a cursory glance, as Sir Everard slid them in stacks of two or three, with only the bottom bit showing. As each was signed, he took it from Patricia and sanded it, then placed it in a pile with the others.

"We have decided to have our wedding at Avington House, Sir Everard," said Patricia, her hand on one of the sheets, her pen raised. "After the bride trip, however, we shall doubtless away to Lord Andrew's home for a while."

"Then you will be selling Avington House?" asked Sir Everard, his eyes on the sheet of paper beneath Patricia's hand. A drop of sweat meandered down his forehead, though the room was somewhat chill. "It will fetch a pretty penny, I do not doubt, for all that those large old country places are a glut on the market just now."

"Not in the least!" said Patricia with a determined nod. "I love the house my papa left me, and we shall keep it, of course. Lord Andrew is already speaking with his bailiff about letting his own country house, after we have spent some time there. It has not the sentimental connections to his lordship that Avington House has to me, and he has graciously acceded to my request."

"Early days, Miss Mayfair, if I may make so bold as to point out," said Sir Everard with a satisfied nod as Patricia signed yet another paper and passed it over to him for sanding.

"You may not, Sir Everard," said Patricia, stung by his words. "In fact, I would take it most kindly in you if you did not mention my betrothed at all in such a manner."

"Your pardon, my dear lady, but those of us with more experience in the world do but try our poor best to warn the innocent-"

"What is this that I am signing, Sir Everard?" asked Patricia sharply, looking down at the close-writ page. "Do I see something about the loan that I made to Thomas Faraday?"

Sir Everard had the grace to blush. "It is but one quarter paid off, Miss Mayfair, and I thought that, since you had often expressed the wish to make him a wedding gift of the remainder, that I would just make out the papers to than effect."

Sir Everard's jaw clenched and sweat began to run more freely down his furrowed brow, but Patricia did not see it as she read over the paper under her hand. With a stealthy air, Sir Everard moved the already signed pile closer to himself, and, carefully keeping his eyes on the reading miss opposite him, slid one from the bottom of the pile and onto his lap.

"Very good, Sir Everard," said Patricia at last as she plunged her pen into the inkwell. "How kind of you to remember, so that I would not have to do so. Perhaps I have misjudged you, sir. Now." She rapidly ran her eyes over the remaining sheets, the hastily scribbled her name on them. "But please, sir, in the future, let me see any papers you make up for me to sign. In fact, I would wish to see all those that I have already signed, if you do not mind it."

"With all my heart, Miss Mayfair," said Sir Everard heartily,shoving the pile back towards her across the desk, and raising a tiny whirlwind of dust in the process.

Patricia sneezed and scrambled in her sleeve for a handkerchief to wipe her streaming eyes.

Sir Everard took this moment to drop the paper in his lap onto the floor, where he shoved it under the desk with one booted toe.

Patricia spent the next fifteen minutes reading over the papers she had just signed. If she had taken the opportunity to regard her guardian, she would have noted a satisfied smirk on his ruddy face, but her interest was all upon the business matters at hand.

***

That evening at Almack's, Sir Everard was retiring to the card room when he met Lady Christabel.

"Sir Everard," trilled the lady. She was dressed in a confectionof silver spider gauze over the palest of frost-blue crepe, and her golden curls were caught up in the new mode that had arrived from France only that week. She was on the arm of a dashing young officer of Hussars, who seemed quite dazzled with his luck -- and quite baffled as to why this magnificent woman would deign to speak to such a ruddy-faced little toad of a man, baronet or not.

"My lady," bowed Sir Everard. "Sir."

"Your servant, sir," yawned the officer of Hussars.

"Sir Everard, I will not keep you from your game," said Lady Christabel, "but I wished to know if you have done that paperwork for which I asked?"

"I have, my lady. Put your mind at rest."

"La, sir, you might have writ me of it ere now," laughed Lady Christabel, "but as my mind is now quite relieved, I will forgive you."

"Madame," bowed Sir Everard, a gleam in his piggish eyes.

"Sir," said Lady Christabel.

Sir Everard disappeared into the direction of the card room.

"Your man of business, my dearest?" asked the young officer with another yawn.

"Yes," said Lady Christabel with a delightful smile. "He is. What, would you have me take care of my own business, sir?" she laughed, tapping him on the arm with her fan.

"Never in all the world," cried the officer of Hussars. "Why, what a waste it would be, my dearest lady, to shut your beauty away in some musty old office. Your decorative abilities are of the highest order, madame!" Rather pleased at this elegantly phrased compliment, the young officer repeated, "Decorative! Beauty! Terrible waste, terrible!"

"Oh, la, sir, you would turn a poor girl's head with your flattery," purred Lady Christabel, stroking one finger down the officer's arm. The young man quite beamed with pleasure.

What a fool, thought Lady Christabel crossly, though her face showed only delight. How easy these men are. I need someone more worthy of my talents. But doubtless such a man does not exist...

Chapter 12

"Letty, do wake up!"

Letty blinked and shook her pretty head. "La, my dearest Pat, is there a fire? Are we stopped by highwaymen?"

"No indeed, you ninny!" laughed Patricia. "We're home!"

Lord Andrew's carriage had just rattled to a stop before the door to Avington House. A flock of maidservants and footmen were rustling around the front steps, held in precarious check by the upright albeit grizzled figure of Torrington, Patricia's ancient butler.

"Oh, do look, Letty!" cried Patricia. "Torrington has a new waistcoat! How fine he looks, and how happy!"

The sound of barking rose from the direction of the stables, and a tumbled mass of flapping ears and wagging tales raced up, to resolve itself into a trio of grinning dogs. They sat most politely just beyond the circle of servants, though their anxiety to greet their mistress was palpable.

"And there's my darling Horatio, and Keeper and Beau," beamed Patricia as she took Torrington's hand and allowed the old man to help her from the carriage, careful not to lean upon his fragile frame too firmly.

"Miss Patricia," quavered the old man, "how glad we are to have you home."

"Not near so glad as we are to be here, Torrington," said Patricia gaily.

"Miss Warren," said Torrington as he turned to help Letty alight from the carriage.

"My dear Torrington," said Letty, "how wonderful you are looking. I vow, you do not look a day over thirty!"

"Oh, miss, the grand news has rejuvenated me, I swear," said that worthy man as he directed his squad of footmen with the flick of one finger. "The wedding of our dear Miss Patricia, here in her own home. Why, it's what I've been living for, indeed it is."

"Nonsense," said Patricia stoutly, though her eyes were suspiciously moist. "What a caution you are, Torrington. Now, have our trunks arrived? For as you may know, Miss Letty has spent the last two months preparing her trousseau, and if it has not arrived safely, she will be most put out."

"Indeed, Miss Patricia, the wagon arrived yesterday, and the maids have spent all this day unpacking. Your crates of books arrived as well, miss, and I've allowed no one else to touch them, but opened them myself in the library."

"You are a treasure, Torrington," said Patricia as she and Letty proceeded into the hall of Avington House. Just inside awaited Mrs. Beaton, her rosy face agleam with delight, her apron snowy white, although a tell-tale trace of flour across her massive bosom foretold a delectable tea had been prepared.

"Mrs. Beaton, how kind of you to follow Lord Andrew down to the country and cook for us," said Patricia, nodding agreeably to the cook. "We are more than pleased."

Mrs. Beaton gave a bob of a curtsy and said, "Oh, it be no more than a pleasure for me, Miss Mayfair, I do avow. Why, 'is lordship is a joy to cook for, and that Munsewer Gaston, why, what a caution 'e is, to be sure!" The cook gave another bob and disappeared into the back of the house, and in a few moments Patricia and Letty found themselves comfortably ensconced in the small parlor, with a steaming pot of tea before them and an array of sandwiches and cakes that would have done a king proud.

"Well, Letty," sighed Patricia after thirstily downing a cup of tea, "I wonder where our truants have got themselves to?"

"Oh, Pat, you know very well that Thomas Faraday will not allow Lord Andrew to come anywhere near Avington House until he has personally inspected each and every hedge and cornrow and calf and hen on the place," laughed Letty as she nibble daintily at a sandwich. "Tom will be in his element, expounding on rotating crops and feeding chickens!"

"Well, that gives us all the more time to make our plans," agreed Patricia with an answering laugh. "Who do you wish to invite to our nuptials? For I vow, Letty, we shall both be wed on the same day and at the same instant. Only think how simple it will make our future, to both be able to remind our dears when the other's anniversary is come?"

The two friends laughed and planned and ate and, though neither would have admitted it to the other for worlds, awaited anxiously for the arrival of their gentlemen.

At last the sound of horses' hooves echoed through the open window of the small parlor. Patricia leaped to her feet, just as the frail form of Torrington came into view.

"I believe that the gentlemen have arrived, miss," said the butler, his rheumy eyes gleaming in delight.

No sooner than the words had exited his mouth that two tall forms could be seen over his thin shoulders.

"Torrington, my dear fellow!" boomed Thomas Farraday. "I see that Patricia and Letty have eaten all the cakes, as usual. Do you send for more, there's a good chap."

Torrington disappeared, and Tom surged into the room, followed at one by the tall, upright form of Lord Andrew.

"There you are, then, Tom," said Letty complacently, tilting her head for a chaste buss upon the brow. Tom, not appreciating this cold attention, grabbed her by both hands and pulled her to her feet, then placed a mighty kiss upon one pink cheek.

Lord Andrew, with a smile for his friend, flung himself at Patricia's feet.

"Good afternoon, your lordship," whispered Patricia, laying a soft hand against his rumpled hair and smoothing it down.

"Good afternoon, my dearest," whispered Lord Andrew, seizing her hand and planting a kiss upon it.

"So, did you two ruffians have a lively gallop?" asked Letty.

"We did, and an even livelier visit to the stables and the barns and the fields," replied Tom Faraday. "Patricia, your gallant lord here is masquerading."

"Your pardon, Tom?"

"Why, Pat, he's a farmer at heart."

The four friends washed the dust of their trip from their throats with endless cups of tea, and Tom proceeded to down each and every victual that could be had, as plans for their futures tumbled forth in great confusion.

***

Torrington wiped an errant tear from one eye, even though a broad grin suffused his face. His dearest Miss Patricia and her friend, the only slightly less dear Miss Warren, were about to change their names forever. And he was here not as a servant, but as an honored guest!

The old house looked its very best, he was sure. Sure, because he had superintended such a furor of cleaning and shining and scrubbing that all the servants had been worked into a frazzle for days. But all the stiff joints and raw hands and bruised knees had been well worth it in the old butler's opinion.

The vicar, Reverend Nicholls, cleared his throat and cast an eye over the assembled party. Torrington knew that Miss Pat had not wanted a large wedding, no, nor had Miss Letty. So when they had both determined on a double ceremony, it had only been a matter of placing the banns and organizing the wedding supper. The banns had been his lordship's duty, but the supper was a labor of love for Torrington and the new cook come from his lordship's London house, Mrs. Beaton. That worthy woman, her broad face beaming, stood with the rest of the servants at the door of the small drawing room, but Torrington himself was actually within the room, with an unimpeded view of all the festivities.

Reverend Nicholls opened his mouth and the beautiful words of the marriage ceremony issued forth in his deep, resonant voice. Torrington watched in pleasure as his Miss Pat and Lord Andrew made their responses, followed at once by Miss Letty and Master Tom. In less time than it had taken to clean a single silver salver, the ceremony was complete and his own dear Miss Pat was now Lady Patricia.

Torrington was backing quietly away when Lady Patricia rushed to him and threw her arms about his quaking form.

"Oh, Torrington, I'm so happy!" she whispered.

Torrington, forgetting himself in the delight of the moment, hugged her heartily and wished her joy. No sooner than he had disentangled himself from Miss Pat, than Miss Letty took her place and there was a time of laughing and hugging and crying that came near to taking poor Torrington's breath away.

***

"Your lordship?"

"My lady?" asked Lord Andrew, his hand tangled in the thick brown locks of his new lady wife.

"I fear I have forgotten, in the excitement of the preparations, to buy you a wedding gift," whispered Patricia. Her simple cotton night rail -- not nearly as thick with embroidery as those that Letty had been spending so much time and effort upon, though Letty had offered to lend her dearest Pat one of hers, Pat had declined with much laughter and a few tears -- was entangled about them both as they lay together in the great bed.

"What, no wedding gift?" teased Lord Andrew, his lips close to her ear. "What about these? Or these, indeed?"

Patricia laughed and removed his hand from her bosom, kissing it in apology. "Well, since those were already aching to belong to you, I can hardly call them gifts, now can I?"

"My darling, your delightful mind is your greatest gift to me," said Lord Andrew soberly as he sat up in bed and gazed down at his beloved." Although the package in which you so thoughtfully placed it is more than pleasing to me, as well."

Patricia reached up and pulled him back down for a kiss.

Lord Andrew gave in with grace for a long moment, then sat back up again. "But what of me?" he asked in feigned dismay. "I too have forgotten your bride's gift. Shall I now have to scour London and buy you every book your greedy mind desires, in recompense?"

"Perhaps not, my lord," said Patricia lazily as she reached again to pull her new husband into her arms. "Perhaps you may find some other means of gratifying my desires."

After some intensive hours of gratification, Patricia lay content in her exhausted husband's arms. She had time, before she fell into the arms of Morpheus herself, to spare one single thought for her darling Letty and her dear Tom, hoping that they were one small fraction as happy as she.

***

A small notice appeared in several London newspapers in late August, announcing the wedding of Lord Andrew Aragon and Miss Patricia Mayfair, of Avington House, Kent. Few remarked upon the simple notice during that delirious fall of 1814, for many exciting things were happening both in London and across the channel. Queen Charlotte was ailing and it did not seem that she would last much longer. She had not regained her strength since the death from consumption of her favorite daughter Princess Amelia. The Kingwas, in another of his fits of madness, and Prince George had finally been declared regent, a position he had been occupying in all but name for some years. There were recent repercussions of the ancient scandal involving Mary Ann Clark, mistress of Frederick Duke of York, who had been caught taking bribes from officers seeking promotion and sharing them with her princely lover; it had been said in some of the more radical papers that Miss Clark was the prime example of the Hanoverian talent for taking appalling mistresses. The Duke of Clarence's mistress, Mrs. Jordan the actress, had presented him with their tenth child that summer as well. And across the channel, Napoleon, that master strategist and general, had been forced to abdicate the throne of France and was exiled to Elba.

But for all this excitement, two particular people in the great city of London were glad to see the notice of the wedding that had taken place in the wilds of Kent, though neither of them had been invited to witness the ceremony.

"La, Sir Everard," greeted Lady Christabel from the arm of a Guard's major. "I see our friends have made a match of it at last." The major, had he been a more noticing man, would have been able to detect a faint sneer upon the word 'friends'. But that gentleman was incapable of noticing anything smaller than a troop of horse, so did not remark upon it.

"Indeed, my lady," smirked Sir Everard, giving a bow to the lady and a nod to the major. "I sent them a wedding gift. Let us hope that they may make good use of it."

***

After the excitement of the fall of 1814, it had been wished by some that a time of peace would ensue. Unfortunately for those who wished for such a time of quiet, the spring of 1815 was an even more troubled time. On March 1 of that year, Napoleon escaped from his banishment on the island of Elba, landed near Cannes and marched into France, gathering troops as he went. Prince George, after having his regency made official the year before, had soon had himself promoted to field marshal and had paraded in the Royal Pavilion in his new uniform, drinking champagne and singing at the top of his lungs. In the north, the Luddites were still smashing machines and escaping from the authorities.

But Lady Patricia Aragon ignored all of these momentous happenings. She had just found out from her physician that she was expecting her first child.

"Oh, Letty dear!" Lady Patricia exclaimed as she twirled about the withdrawing room at Avington House. "Isn't it wonderful?"

"Yes, it is," replied Mrs. Faraday, her rosy face flushed now with her own somewhat more advanced condition. Mr. and Mrs. Faraday had spared no time in starting that total of ten children with which Patricia had been wont to tease them. Letty was due her first in five months, and she prayed nightly that it would be a boy -- though in her secret heart, she wished it a girl, to name Patricia.

"And what did Lord Andrew say when you told him, pray?" asked Letty as she sipped her second cup of tea.

"He pointed out how wise he had been, not to sell his place in northern Kent," said Patricia with a laugh -- she seemed to always be laughing these day, Letty thought. "He told me that we would obviously need it as a nursery, since I intend to have a dozen children."

At that instant there was an uproar outside in the hallway. The door burst open. A bear of a man entered, followed by a somewhat smaller man, both in hunting jackets and boots.

"Letty, my dear!" boomed Tom Faraday as he removed the cup from Letty's hand and scooped her into his bear's embrace. "Lord Andrew took a dozen rabbits ere I had taken one. I'll have to beat him at snooker tonight to make up for my disgrace."

Lord Andrew knelt at Patricia's side and, seizing her warm hands in his frigid ones, kissed them as if they were made of glass. "How are you feeling, my dearest?" he whispered, gazing at her in awe.

Patricia blinked tears from her bright eyes, and replied cheerily, "My only problem ere now--"

"Yes?" asked Lord Andrew, alarmed.

"--Was missing you, but your arrival has taken care of that. Now I am in the best of health and spirits."

"Od's blood, Lord Andrew," boomed Tom Faraday, "do not cosset her, pray, or she will expect it with every child. Why, my Letty here is up at dawn and eating for two."

"You are the one who is eating for two, Tom Faraday," laughed Lady Patricia, "but as you always have done, it is not to remark. Letty has ere now eaten like a bird, so it is good to see her taking more than a bit of toast of a morning."

The two young couples chattered and laughed, each as happy in his or her choice as one could wish or hope.

But there was another couple that was not as happy...

***

"Sir Everard, would you wish to see me have the bailiffs at my door?" asked Lady Christabel, her normally dulcet tones sharp and shrewish. "I must have money, and that right soon."

"Do not you think I know it, my lady?" snapped Sir Everard, his portly form looking oddly deflated of late. "I too am in dire need of a bit of the ready, as you very well know. But our plans must be careful and precise, to keep any hint of collusion away."

Lady Christabel strode across her morning room, her slender body draped in a loose morning robe, her tiny slippers peeking out beneath the hem. Her golden hair looked dimmer and more than somewhat faded, and her abigail had warned her that the hairdresser would not return without something be paid upon his account. Her face was pale and concerned -- if she were not able to attract the young rich men from whom she gained her sustenance, she would not be able to keep going for long. Her husband had retired to his country house in the wilds of Northumberland, disgusted at long last by his wife's actions, and had cut off her allowance.

"Sir Everard, I have had a letter," said Lady Christabel. "As you know, I have put one of my own people in Lord Andrew's household. Here. You need to read it." She flung a crumpled piece of foolscap into his lap.

Sir Everard, with irritating complacence, smoothed the sheet and commenced to make out the scrawling that covered it.

"With child?" he roared at last.

"Yes," said Lady Christabel sweetly, "and thus an heir shall come along in time. All your pretty plannings will come to naught, sir, if she has a child and it lives. I have no compunctions about murder, Sir Everard, in fair fight or foul, but I draw the line at murdering infants."

"A pretty distinction, madame," sneered Sir Everard. "I confess, I would not have thought it of you."

By this, it was evident that Sir Everard's passion for Lady Christabel had been somewhat cooled, or indeed sated.

"But come, this does not discommode us too greatly," he continued. "We must just get on with our initial plans a bit sooner, that is all. I have found a man who will do what we need done. It is only a matter of proper payment, that is all."

"Payment, Sir Everard? Cannot the payment await the completion of our plans?"

"The man, my lady, does not wish to wait," said Sir Everard dryly. "He insists upon partial payment before the job is done, then final payment afterwards. He is most adamant."

"I have no sums of that magnitude, sir, as you of all men must be aware, any more than you do. How are we to manage?"

Sir Everard pondered a moment, before a wry smile broke across his flat face. "A singular jest, is it not, my lady? That we two, who will in some little time have the use of two of the largest fortunes in England, are stopped short now for want of a hundred guineas?"

"A hundred? La, sir, for that amount I'd do the deed myself." Lady Christabel gave a sour laugh, then plumped down upon the sofa. "Well, then, let us see what we may do, shall we? Once again, I perceive, I shall have to pull you out of this mischance of your own making. Why ever did you not put away a bit of gold, instead of gambling away that pittance your former ward give you as a gift upon her wedding?"

"One might also ask, my lady," huffed Sir Everard, "why you did not keep by you some of the riches which have been showered on you and your charms. Od's body, ma'am, there've been enough of them, and to spare," he finished nastily.

Lady Christabel opened her mouth for an angry rejoinder, but closed it again in an instant. A thought had struck her scheming mind. "Let us not scream abuse at each other like two fishwives, Sir Everard," she said, her voice low and confiding. "I have thought of a way to get this problematical hundred guineas of yours. Do go to your club and gamble away more of your soon-to-be fortune. I will take care of this matter. I ask only two small things. What is the name of this man whom you wish to hire to take care of our problem, and how might I get in touch with him?"

Sir Everard looked at the avaricious and crafty face across from him and wondered how he had ever found her exciting or attractive. He rose, pulling as he did so, a bit of paper from his watch pocket.

"This is the man's name and where he may be found," he puffed as he handed it to her, "and much good may it do you, madame. I have not had the pleasure of meeting the gentleman myself, but I do not think that even your vast charms can win him over to do our business without payment. He did not take kindly to my man of business and showed him the door when he was unable to show any gold. But doubtless you may enjoy trying. I leave you to it, my lady."

With a stiff bow, Sir Everard departed the morning room.

Lady Christabel read the bit of paper, a calculating look in her shining eyes.

Yes, she thought. It is just what I need. A new thrill. An experience I have not allowed myself for far too long.

Chapter 13

Gaston settled back in his chair with a sign of repletion. He nodded to the ancient butler of Avington House, Torrington, who sat at the head of the servants' dining table.

"A most pleasant meal indeed, monsieur," said Gaston. "It is a delight to be here in the country, instead of making do in Town with boughten cheeses and pies. His lordship's cook is of the best, it is true, but even she has improved with the bounty that is now available to her talents."

"Aye, sir, that is a fact," said Torrington. He knew a little of Gaston's past, and was glad that he did not try to lord it over him with the staff. "Mrs. Beaton is a very good cook indeed, and more than welcome here. As you are yourself, sir, and we shall all drink to that, indeed."

Torrington poured a bit more into Gaston's glass.

"It's happy we all are at the joyous news, as well," beamed Torrington. "Miss Mayfair -- Lady Patricia, I should say -- her ladyship is to be a mother. Well, it does give one to rejoice, don't it, Mr. Gaston?"

"It does indeed, sir," said Gaston. "Here's to her ladyship."

The shouts rang out in the servants' hall, shaking the ancient rafters.

***

"My lord?"

"Mm?" Lord Andrew had his face buried in his lady wife's dark tresses.

"Are you happy?"

"Happier than I ever expected to be, upon my word," he murmured.

Lady Patricia ran her hand through the mat of ruddy hair that decorated her husband's chest. She twisted an auburn curl about one finger and tugged.

"Ow, minx! What did I say wrong?" cried his lordship, and tightened his arm about her.

The two lay in their huge bed, both still in their nighttime attire. Lady Patricia's rail was of the finest and softest cotton from Egypt, and Lord Andrew luxuriated in the feel of it and its precious contents against his body. He had never expected to be so happy, nor to love a woman as he loved Patricia.

"What, sir, you did not expect to be happy with me?" laughed Patricia, tilting her head so that she could gaze up at her lord. Her position, head atop his chest, gave her an intriguing view of the bottom of his chin. She kissed it.

"I did not expect to be happy at all, my dearest, until I had the good fortune to meet you," replied Andrew, acknowledging the tribute with a squeeze. "I had decided that I would die an old man, never having been loved. But then you sprang from nowhere and carried me off, in a manner of speaking."

"Dearest, may we not go to Bath this summer?" asked Patricia, after some moments of intensive mutual tributes.

"What, you've read all those books I ordered you from London already?"

"Well, yes, I have...but that's not the reason. Or not the only reason, at least. No, I should like to visit Bath above all things this summer, as I shall doubtless be confined to the house next winter. Your heir, my lord, is scheduled to arrive in late November, though if he is as intemperate as you, he will no doubt make his appearance earlier by far. I wish to have a deal of books to pass the time when I am gigantic and you shall not wish to spend your days with me."

"Dearest!" said Lord Andrew, cut to the quick. "Are you planning on becoming another Lady Hamilton, then, full figured and delicious? For if you are, I warn you, I shall not leave you for a second for fear some naval gentleman will snatch you away from me. Besides, a bit of flesh is most warming on cold nights, did not you know?"

Lady Patricia answered this remark with another tweak of one of the ruddy curls on his chest. His lordship replied to this by tumbling her over onto her back and capturing her mouth with his own. They spent the next hour reassuring each other that neither added pounds nor naval gentlemen would ever be able to come between their two hearts.

It was a lesson that they enjoyed, both the teaching and the learning of it.

***

Lady Christabel was also in her nightdress, but she had not chosen a simple cotton material. No, hers was of the richest silk -- a tribute from a trading gentleman with whom she had shared her favours for a night. The silk was of the palest ice blue, with ribands of dusky velvet that matched her eyes. Her tumbled hair fell across her shoulders and down her back. She swayed across her bedchamber, moving in a rhythmic glide that set her unconfined breasts bouncing beneath the transparent fabric.

"Very nice," said the man who lounged on her bed.

There was a dangerous air about this newest inhabitant of Lady Christabel's bed. His head, covered with close-cut dark hair, was propped up on one arm and his lean sun-bronzed chest looked even darker against the snowy sheets. His long legs were tangled in a drift of bedclothes, and his sinewy belly had an angry- looking scar that bisected it across a diagonal.

But the man's eye was the center from whence that dangerous aura emanated. His eye, in the singular, for one was hidden behind a black patch, with a distressing scar reaching out from both sides of it. The visible eye was of darkest brown, with a glitter that brought a chill to Lady Christabel.

She enjoyed that chill.

"You do not speak like a common sort of man," said Lady Christabel as she perched on a chaise longue beside the bed.

"I am not a common sort of man," agreed her visitor. "In fact, I am most decidedly uncommon."

Lady Christabel gave a tinkle of laughter.

Her guest did not offer a smile in return. Instead, he asked, "Well, now that you've had your way with me, what is it you want?"

The trickle of laughter cut off short, as from a sword's blow.

"Want?" asked her ladyship, ingenuously. "What makes you think I want anything of you save the pleasure of your body?"

The brown-skinned man rolled over on his back and crossed his arms beneath his head. Lady Christabel suppressed a shudder as more scars were disclosed running along his right side.

"My dear madam," drawled the man, "you invite a scoundrel into your bed and pleasure him. You are a lady of noble blood -- with a notorious reputation. You cannot have chosen me simply for the frisson, can you? What is it?"

"What is your name, sir?" countered Lady Christabel, stretching like a cat on her chaise.

"What is your name?" mocked the man. "Surely, we have arrived at a point in our relationship where such a question is out of order? But it would be easiest if you had something to call me, no doubt. Let us say...Black."

"Mr. Black, then," Lady Christabel said amiably. "Is that your name or your nature?"

"Does it matter?"

"Not in the least," she said, tiring of the game. "Well, Mr. Black, have you enjoyed your afternoon?"

"It was passable."

Lady Christabel flushed an angry dark colour. "Good," she snapped. "Then we shall get down to business. I have need of your services."

"I thought you had just taken advantage of them, my lady," said Mr. Black with a lazy grin. "Several times, in fact."

"Those sort of services I can find anywhere, sir," said Lady Christabel coldly. "I have need of far less common ones from you."

Mr. Black sat up in bed and flung his legs off the side. A saturnine grin split his lean dark face, and he said, "Excellent, my lady. To business at last. What is it that I can have the honor to do for you?"

"I wish you to kill a man," said her ladyship bluntly.

Mr. Black shrugged. "A simple task. Why?"

Lady Christabel tore her gaze from the man's broad chest, liberally coated with dark wavy hair. "Why indeed? Because I wish it. That is the only reason you have need of, surely?"

"Then who is this man who must die?"

"Can I trust you?"

A sharp bark of laughter. "Of course not. Or indeed, let us say, just as much as I can trust your ladyship."

Lady Christabel sat up, allowing her night rail to slip from her shoulders. She took a deep breath and it slipped even further.

"Yes," said Mr. Black sardonically, "I've seen them. Very nice. What is the man's name, my lady?"

"Lord Andrew Aragon."

A strange look crossed Mr. Black's features. Lady Christabel could not decipher it.

"Poor Lord Andrew, to be hated by such a delicious lady. The price is one hundred guineas. In gold. In advance."

Lady Christabel stood up, wandered languidly towards the bed. "I will give you two hundred -- after he is dead."

Mr. Black laughed, then lounged back on the bed. "That is most inviting. Do you take me for a fool, madame? To murder a lord of the realm, one of the richest men in England, for two hundred pounds? What scheme is in that calculating mind of yours?"

Lady Christabel perched on the side of the bed. "I have no scheme, sir," she replied sweetly. "It is only that Lord Andrew had insulted me. Would you not leap to a lady's defense who had been dishonored by such a man?"

Mr. Black seized Lady Christabel's arm and pulled her down on the bed, then rolled on top her. She smiled a lazy smile and her eyelids drooped as she gazed into his one visible eye.

"It appears to me, madame, that your honor is not a valuable commodity," said Mr. Black wryly, "if you are so willing to dispense it gratis to all comers."

The lazy smile disappeared, and Lady Christabel struggled to free an arm, but Mr. Black had both her wrists trapped within one powerful hand.

"You...you blackguard!"

Mr. Black laughed. "Perhaps I should choose that as a nom de guerre, instead of a simple Black, think you?" He stretched her pinioned arms high above her head, his hard body pressing hers against the bedclothes and was rewarded by a gasp of pain. "Now, tell me, my lady," he murmured through gritted teeth. "Why are you planning Lord Andrew's death?"

"It is...no concern...of yours," she gasped, struggling to free herself.

"No, it is not," agreed Mr. Black, "but if you wish me to carry out your delightful request, you must tell me anyway."

Lady Christabel stopped struggling. "You mean you'll do it?" she asked incredulously.

"Of course I'll do it," he replied. "I'm a footpad, a highwayman, a thief and upon occasion, a murderer. I make my living, such as it is, in just that manner. But I have a quirk that must be satisfied first. Tell me your plans -- all your plans, mind you, for I can tell if you prevaricate -- and we shall see what may be done."

Lady Christabel laughed. "You are a blackguard. Kiss me, and I shall commence the story."

Mr. Black gave her a quick buss on her crimson lips.

"Now speak," he grinned.

"Are you not going to release me first?"

"Why should I? You are enjoying it far too much."

Lady Christabel ran a pink tongue around her lips, bruised from Mr. Black's caresses, and began her story.

Chapter 14

Lord Andrew sat at his ease in the small withdrawing room of Avington House. His lady wife sat across from him, a book in her hand. A comfortable fire blazed in the hearth, removing the chill of the early spring day.

Outside was a world of mud. Days of rain had soaked everything within miles and the roads were churned into gluey pits. The freshly plowed fields were glutinous masses hidden beneath endless puddles.

Lord Andrew sighed in satisfaction. He was warm and dry and he was happy and satisfied. His nuncheon had been to his taste, his lady wife was with child, and the two of them were alone in the house with just the servants.

"My dearest lord?" asked Lady Patricia. "Do you miss Thomas and Letty, now that they are gone?"

"Not in the least," said Lord Andrew. "I am delighted beyond measure to have you all to myself again. What, are you bored with my company already?"

Lady Patricia smiled fondly at her husband. "I would wish to have you all to myself on Mr. Crusoe's island, you ninnyhammer, if it could be arranged. I am loath to share you with anyone at all. Such is the depth to which I have sunk."

"And I thank you heartily for telling me so, my dearest," said Lord Andrew with a grin on his handsome face. "For most wives would not be so free with their endearments."

"Most wives do not have the best of husbands, sir, and thus must learn to temper their speech," said Lady Patricia with a fond smile. "I have the paragon of husbands, and thus must tell you so."

"Hark you? Do you hear that sound?" asked Lord Andrew.

"What is it?"

"The sound of my head swelling to gigantic proportions," grinned Lord Andrew.

There was a discrete scratching at the door to the small drawing room, followed an instant later by Claude the footman.

"Your pardon, m'lord and m'lady, but this post has just arrived," he murmured as he held out a silver salver to Lord Andrew.

"Thank you, Claude," said Patricia. "Will you tell Cook that we would like a pot of tea, please?"

"M'lady," said Claude, and withdrew.

Lord Andrew ripped open the damp letter.

"What is it, my darling?" asked Patricia, her book forgotten in her lap. "An epistle from Letty and Tom, with stirring accounts of calving?" Thomas Faraday had accepted a temporary position at Lord Andrew's Kentish estate, to make it ready for a tenant. Tom was still trying to persuade Patricia to accept the repayment of the loan she had made him, and Patricia was adamant that she should not. They had both decided, with Lord Andrew's enthusiastic support, that he could instead pay off the loan by doing certain other work for them. This was the first, and it was working well, save that Tom and Letty were too far away across the county for more that a visit or two a month.

Lord Andrew had not told Patricia, but this was one of the reasons for his enthusiasm. He reveled in having his wife to himself, and was in dire danger of being accused of being excessively uxorious.

"No, I fear not, my dear," Lord Andrew said absently, then held up the note. A royal crest was shown gaudy atop the thick sheet of rich paper. "No, it seems that Prinny -- your pardon, our Prince Regent -- has commanded that I must attend the royal presence at once."

"What? Go to London?"

"No, indeed, to the Royal Pavilion at Brighton." Lord Andrew sprang to his feet and strode to the heavily curtained window. "It has stopped raining at least, though the roads will be unpleasant. I shall take the small curricle and Gaston will go with me."

"Oh, darling, must you?" Lady Patricia was filled in an instant with dread. She repressed it with a shake of her head and answered her own question. "Of course you must. I am a ninny. But my darling, will you not take the big coach? It will be far more comfortable."

"No, the curricle will travel better across wet roads," said Lord Andrew. He turned and noted the expression on his lady wife's face, then raced towards her and dropped to his knees beside her chair. "My dear, do not worry. It is probably just Prinny wanting a loan for one of his everlasting building projects, and he is too nice to ask it in a letter."

"So he must order you out of your home and have you slog to him in the mud, to ask you that way?" Lady Patricia said wryly. "How kind of him."

Lord Andrew laughed. "He is in Brighton, an easier journey than London. I can be there and back in four days."

"You will take at least a week, sir, and not risk your life for a speedy trip and a fractious wife," Patricia decided, then leaped to her feet. "I must see that Cook packs the two of you some sustaining victuals for the trip, and make sure that Gaston takes your heavy greatcoat, and then see if..."

Lady Patricia's voice trailed away as she dashed from the room.

Lord Andrew rose and reread the letter in his hand. It was only a short scrawl and the dampness had made it run and fade most strangely. Even the Prince Regent's signature looked odd.

Lord Andrew rang the bell, and after a moment Claude arrived.

"My lord?"

"Claude, where is the man who brought this missive?"

"He handed it to me at the door, then mounted his horse and rode off, m'lord," replied Claude. "I thought it a bit odd at the time, him not waiting for a reply."

"How was he dressed?"

"Shrouded in a great dark cloak, m'lord, and his horse with the plainest of markings."

Ah, thought Lord Andrew, satisfied, it must indeed be a loan Prinny wants. That would explain his cloak-and-dagger secrecy.

For, as Lord Andrew knew, even though Prince George had become regent the last year, his debts had been compiling for some decades and he was hesitant to have them all known to the government. Thus he had taken to the habit of asking 'loans' from some of the richest men in England; loans that each of the parties knew would never be repaid.

Lord Andrew sighed and said, "Thank you, Claude, that will be all. Oh, just send Gaston up to my dressing room, will you?"

"My lord," said Claude, and disappeared.

Damn Prinny! Lord Andrew thought.

Then he stomped upstairs, to see if he could prevent Patricia from forcing Gaston to pack his entire wardrobe for a two-day visit to Brighton.

***

"At least the rain has stopped for a while," said Patricia with a sniff as she clung to Andrew's sleeve. "It will perhaps hold out until you reach the coast before it starts falling again." For everything she could do to prevent it, Lady Patricia sniffed again.

"Now, poppet," said Lord Andrew, "none of your weeping. I'll only be gone a few days, and Gaston will be with me, after all."

"I know," wailed Patricia, "and I daresay I'm being a ninny, but it is the first time we've been separated!"

Lord Andrew gathered his sniffling lady into his arms and gave her a resounding kiss, heedless of her streaming eyes and of Gaston as he and Claude maneuvered a portmanteau down the stairs. "It will be but a few days," he murmured into her ear, "and when I return, we shall make our plans to visit Bath. Shall I have to sell all my lands so that I might buy you all the books you desire?" Encouraged by a watery smile, he went on, "We shall away there for the summer, I believe, and at the end, I shall have your rapidly growing form trundled back here by transport carriage, tucked amongst your crates of volumes."

Patricia laughed a real laugh at last, and, seeing that Gaston was for the moment out of the dressing room, took advantage of the fact to fling her arms around her husband. "Take care, beloved," she whispered in his ear, "and hurry home to me."

"Damme, madame, if you are to take on so every time I leave, I shall become quite housebound, I swear," he murmured into her hair." A more delightful fate I cannot conceive."

"Be off with you, then," said Patricia, disentangling herself from her husband's arms, "so that you may be back to me even sooner. Oh, take care, my dearest sweetheart."

"With you to return home to, what man would not become a coward?" gaily replied Lord Andrew.

Gaston peeked hesitantly around the door. "The curricle is loaded, milord -- or perhaps the mot juste is 'overloaded'," he said.

"Then let us be off, Gaston. I wish this pestiferous trip to be done with, do you not?"

Gaston smiled and turned to precede his master down the stairs.

"Will you coming to the foyer and sniff at me as I take my leave, my darling?" asked Lord Andrew, his own eyes suspiciously damp.

"I will not," said Patricia with decision. "I shall keep my appalling weakness hidden and wave to you demurely from our bedchamber window. Do not forget to turn and acknowledge my wave, for good luck."

Lord Andrew gathered his wife into his arms. Their lips melted together and for one heart-stopping instant, they were a single being. Then Lord Andrew drew away, kissed his darling's ink-stained hand and galloped down the stairway, shouting for his driving cape.

Avington House had been built by Patricia's great grandfather, Mortimer Hastings Mayfair, in the days of Queen Anne. It was a long low house of mellow golden brick set in a park thick with trees. Washed clean by the days of rain, it shown to its best advantage now in the pale lucid afternoon sunshine.

At the bottom of the steps, just outside the massive front door, Lord Andrew paused and looked back at it. Not nearly so prepossessing as any of his own estates, it was hallowed by the joy that he had found within its cheerful walls. He shook his head -- Damme, I shall be kissing the very bricks next! he thought with a rueful grin -- and mounted to the top seat of the curricle. Gaston handed him the reins and mounted beside him, settling his own coat about his narrow shoulders. Only then did Andrew look up to see the curtains twitch at an upper window. Raising his hat to the motion, he cast a grin upward, then clucked to his pair of matched bays. With high prancing steps, they proceeded down the circular drive to the gate, and out towards the high road to Brighton.

Lady Patricia watched until the curricle became a tiny speck, indecipherable as any sort of vehicle, then disappeared altogether. Only then did she collapse onto her bed, laughing at herself while she clutched her husband's discarded shirt to her face and watered it with her tears.

"Well, it is good for me to do without him for a bit," she whispered. "But, oh, I wish that Letty and Tom were here to keep me company while he is gone."

Then, with a final resolute sniff, she rose to her feet, placed her husband's shirt in the dirty linen basket (after wiping her eyes carefully on one sleeve) and proceeded down to discuss with Torrington the upcoming trip to Bath.

Chapter 15

The tavern was full. The huge fireplace belched out light, heat and smoke in equal measures, staining the ancient rafters an even darker grey while the damp cloaks and jackets of the inhabitants steamed. There was an inn attached to the tavern, a dozen dingy rooms let for a copper or two, and one decent room that went for a shilling a week.

The innkeeper, Master Swithins Hornbottle, shoved a pair of foaming tankards towards the barmaid, Moll. She scooped them onto her battered wooden tray and made her careful way through the crush, slamming them down onto a tiny table jammed against the wall. The two occupants did not even glance up as they each seized a tankard and upturned it.

At the end of the bar that stretched across the right side of the smoky room, a pair of high-backed settles created a more private nook than could be had in the remainder of the busy room. Huddled in this refuge sat four men, bundled into ragged cloaks. The intermittent clink and clatter of steel rang now and again as first one, then another shifted in his seat. They leaned forward, heads together, around a bottle of execrable wine and four dirty glasses.

"'Arry got the signal," whispered one, a large man with a surprisingly sweet voice, "and cut along as soon as 'e could.' Is lordship should be here by now, as I sees it."

"The roads are bad, and he's in a carriage. Anything could have happened. The main thing is, we've got plenty of watchers, and he'll have to come this way," replied the man who seemed to be in charge of the group.

This fellow reached forward to pour a bit more wine in his glass, and in doing so, his hood fell back, revealing the swarthy eye-patched face of Mr. Black. He took a sip of wine and gave back a grimace, then continued, "We've got all the time in the world, after all, to do the deed. It's only afterwards that we must bustle."

"Jemmy is ready for that," murmured another. "As 'e won't be in the fray, 'e's anxious for summat else to do."

"Fray!" scoffed a third man. "Wot fray, when it's five against two."

"Just you remember it's not just his purse we're after," reminded Mr. Black with a thin smile, his lean face dark and saturnine. "We're getting paid well for murder, and murder it must be."

These four gentlemen of the road huddled closer together in their private nook, heads sunk like turtles in their hooded cloaks, and drank off the bottle of wine. Only Black seemed to dislike the taste of it.

The door to the tavern flung open with a crash, and a blast of fresh outside air commenced the thick atmosphere inside to swirling. Two tall men surged inside, both shaking the wet from their greatcoats and stamping the mud from their boots.

The two strode towards the bar, the regulars politely clearing them a place at the far end, closer to the fire, and just beside the high-backed settle.

"Innkeeper, sir," laughed one, "a bottle of your best wine."

The innkeeper, knowing at a glance that these visitors were far above his usual run of customers, hastened to comply. "A bit a supper, sirs?" he asked hopefully.

"Something hot would not go down amiss," replied the taller and more richly dressed of the two gentlemen, "and a private room to eat it in. We've traveled the last two miles to your establishment in a farm cart, our own curricle having thrown a wheel in this pestiferous mud. Have you a carriage of some sort for hire?"

"Ah, sorry, sir, but we do not," said the innkeeper. "But you may stay the night and see if there might be summat in the way of transport tomorrow. It may stop raining in the night," he finished hopefully as he poured two large glasses full of ruddy wine.

"It has already stopped raining," said the other gentleman, "but the amount of water on the roads makes them to resemble the sea, I vow."

"Come, Gaston," laughed the first man, "we are neither of us averse to a ride on the back of an honest horse, are we? My greys will take us on the next leg of our journey quite well, after they've had a rest, and we've had a bite and a glass or two."

Within the private nook, four men pricked up their ears. Black, with a swift movement of one hand, enjoined silence and they were all as still as statues while they listened.

"Shall we ride bareback, milord?" asked Gaston.

"Of a certainty," replied his companion. "According to that charming gentleman who owned the farm cart, this inn is just mid way between Avington House and the main road to Brighton."

A sharp intake of breath that sounded almost like a cry of pain hissed through the settle. Mr. Black huddled deeper into his cloak, ignoring the questioning looks of his fellows.

"A pity we do not know more about the area, Gaston," went on his lordship, "but doubtless we shall learn in time. Damme, I've not been here a six-month yet!"

The innkeeper chose that moment to offer the newly arrived gentlemen a private room in which to dine, and Moll the barmaid took them away through a door behind the public bar.

Black seized the arm of the man beside him with an iron grip. "Where did Jemmy take the letter?" he hissed.

"Why, to that gentleman's house," replied the man, startled.

"The name of it, you fool!"

"As he said, Avington House. Jemmy's a local lad and knew its location right off. Seems as how his young lordship there 'as just married the lady what owns the house, not six months gone, as he was remarking."

Black released his hapless partner and leaned back. His single eye blazed out of a face gone pale and white.

"Avington House," he whispered. Then a thought seemed to strike him. "The lady's name?"

"Wot lady?"

"The lady who lives in the house, flea wit, the one his lordship married! Quick, what is her name?"

"I believes that Jemmy called her Miss Mayfair what was, "admitted the man, "and Lady Patricia Aragon now, a course, as that gentleman is Lord Andrew. A pity, so lately wed and soon to be a widow."

A general murmur of almost silent laughter greeted this sally. The others took no note that Black did not enter into their muted hilarity, nor that he gritted his teeth at further comments relating to the proper way to soothe a grieving widow.

"Enough," snapped Black at last. "We've no time for this. John, get you to the stable and find out when his lordship has left orders to have his horses ready. Harry, you and Stewie wait here until you hear from John, then cut along to the copse and take your places."

"And you?" asked John as he drained his glass and stood to leave, his hulking frame towering over everyone else in the room.

"I shall be about," was the soft reply, followed by an even softer spoken comment. "We will have plenty of time to foregather before his lordship reaches us."

"Aye," said John, and stamped across the room towards the outer door.

Harry immediately called for another bottle. Black left them to it and disappeared, more quietly than had John. Indeed, Stewie had turned to ask him a question before he noticed him gone.

"That's a right strange one," he whispered to Harry, who nodded.

"Too right. 'E speaks like a gent sometimes, but 'e'll cut your throat for a farthing."

They both nodded in unison, their heads bobbing like owls, then proceeded to finish their bottle.

***

Black, his tall lean figure swathed in a cloak as dark as his name, strode back and forth in a shadowy part of the courtyard opposite the stables. He would have seemed to an onlooker, if onlooker there had been, to be deep in some sort of argument with himself. A shake of his head was followed almost instantly by a nod of agreement; then another shake would produce itself. Mutterings escaped from his thin lips at times, soft and indecipherable.

At last a decision seemed to present itself. With a final nod and a swirl of dusky cloak, he departed from the courtyard in the direction of the inn.

***

Lord Andrew sat back with a sigh of repletion.

"Od's body, Gaston, I would never have believed the appetite one could acquire merely from an afternoon's ride."

"Since, milord, that ride included a broken wheel on the curricle, a struggle to remove it from a puddle of the grandest size, and a trip in an unsprung cart, it is perhaps not of the most surprising," said Gaston with a wry grin.

The two men were warm and dry, and had regaled themselves with meat pie and a horrible burgundy. Thus, they had both begun to think of the next leg of their journey. For to put it off, in Lord Andrew's opinion, was not an option.

"It is good that the hostler found saddles, milord, for I fear that my seat on a horse is not so impressive if he be bareback," commented Gaston.

Lord Andrew offered him a pinch of snuff, which he accepted. After accompanying sneezes, his lordship replied, "I am of your mind, Gaston. A gentleman does cut a laughable figure, trotting along with his legs dangling, does he not?"

A short sharp knock, bold yet oddly hesitant, sounded at the thick wooden door.

With a curious glance for Gaston (for servants did not, as a rule, knock at doors), Lord Andrew called, "Come!"

The door opened, not upon a servant or the hostler, but on a tall man swathed in a black cloak.

"Pardon me," said the man, with a creditable bow, "but I understand that you are Lord Andrew Aragon?"

"Guilty," said Lord Andrew, curious at this sudden appearance of the fellow. A gentleman by his voice and manners, he thought, but a blackguard by his looks. Wonder how he lost that eye?

"You will forgive me, my lord, but I fear I must ask a most personal question of you," the one-eyed man continued, to Andrew's surprise.

"Well, you may ask it, of course, but expect me to damn your eyes...er, eye, if you are impertinent," Andrew replied.

The man in black gave a sardonic smile, and touched his eyepatch with a lean fingertip.

"It gives me quite the look of a buccaneer, does it not?" he said with good humor. "But I take it I may ask my question, with the caveat that my eye may be damned?"

"You may," smiled Lord Andrew, "if I may ask the name of my interrogator." He liked this man, for all his dangerous looks, though he noticed that Gaston had a hand upon his sword.

"Black, my lord."

"A suitable and descriptive name, at any rate," said Lord Andrew, taking in the man's appearance. "Well, what is your question, Mr. Black?"

"Are you...that is, I have heard that...can you tell me...oh, blast it all. Are you married to Miss Patricia Mayfair, of Avington House?"

Lord Andrew had not expected any such question as this. He had surmised that this was the preliminary to a request for funds, and indeed had already put his hand upon his purse. Now he removed it, and held it out to their visitor.

"I am, sir, and I take it that you are a friend of hers?"

Mr. Black regarded the hand as if he had never seen one before. His amazement at Lord Andrew's reply was apparent.

"I meant no disrespect, my lord, by mentioning the lady's name," Black began hesitantly, "and hope you do not think that she would befriend a scoundrel such as myself."

"My lady wife has many friends, and I trust her judgment in all things, including the people she decides to know," was the surprising reply. "Things happen in this world, sir, and you are doubtless fallen upon hard times. If I may offer some assistance, I am happy to do so in the name of my dear lady wife."

Mr. Black gave a harsh bark of laughter. "Do not think that she could know such a one as me," he repeated, "but I have heard that she is a most beautiful lady, a prominent member of the ton?"

"If you have heard that, sir, you are misinformed," laughed Lord Andrew, ignoring a warning look from Gaston. He was missing Patricia, and speaking of her gave him great pleasure, even to this unkempt gentleman. "Lady Patricia is a bluestocking, and her disregard for the ton is a caution."

Mr. Black gave a smile that seemed to hurt his lean face. "That is Miss Mayfair to the life...or so I have heard."

There was a time of silence. At last, with ill-concealed impatience, Lord Andrew said, "This is most pleasant, sir, but we must be off to Brighton. Shall you send your respects to my lady wife?"

Mr. Black took a deep breath, as if he had come to some momentous decision.

"Lord Andrew," he grated, "you are in danger."

Chapter 16

The road to Brighton traveled mainly through cultivated fields, but in some spots thick woods encroached upon it. At one such spot, where a sharp bend directed the road towards the east, was a cluster of trees, just putting on their spring coat of leaves.

"Whssht!" warned Jemmy from the branches of a towering oak. "I sees 'em coming." He slithered down from his perch, dropping to the soft ground with no noise that could be discerned for more than a few feet away.

There were four other men hidden in the shadows of the thick trees, all cloaked and booted and heavily armed.

"Stewie, you and John hang back," ordered the eye-patched Black, "and let me speak to them. Then, when I have their attention, you fall upon them from the rear and we shall have them."

If Stewie or John noticed any hint of nervousness in the voice of the normally imperturbable Black, they did not comment upon it, but took their places further back from the road.

"Jemmy, you keep with me," continued Black, "and Harry, you're to stay behind the tree. Await my word, now."

And Mr. Black, his troops commanded and orders relayed in a most military fashion, lounged against a tree trunk at the very edge of the road, young Jemmy at his side.

The jingle of harness...The clop of horses' hooves...A low murmur of voices.

Black lay a hand on his young companion's arm. "If I tell you to cut out, do not linger, Jemmy," he whispered in the lad's ear. "Understand me, boy?"

Jemmy gave a quick nod, head bobbing on scrawny neck. The boy's face was pale under its coating of dirt, and he fiddled nervously with the handle of a dirk stuck into his broad leather belt.

The sound of horses drew nearer, though their presence was still hidden by the sharp bend in the road. Black looked back into the copse of trees, noted with a practiced eye the distance that the others were back from it, and turned back to face the road. He could feel his heart pounding within him. It was a common feeling, one he had experienced many times before on just such an occasion. But this time there was an added factor.

The men on whom he was about to pounce knew that he was there.

The jingle of harness was very near now, and Black gave Jemmy a reassuring pat. The evening sun cast long thin shadows across the road, distorting vision and throwing all into confusion.

The jingle of harness slowed and stopped. Jemmy opened his mouth, but the words died in his throat as Black raised a lean hand.

For a moment there was silence. Then a curlew called from deep within the woods.

As if this common sound had been a signal, the sound of the horses began again, so close now that their dim shapes could be seen coming around the bend in the road.

Both horses, at a steady walk, drew opposite the towering oak, where waited Black and the boy Jemmy. Black took one step forward; he could hear the rustling behind him as his comrades sneaked from the enveloping shade of the trees.

"My lord!" shouted Black.

The next few moments were a surprise to all concerned. The two figures on the horses drew swords and leaped to the ground. The three men hidden in the copse rushed forward, drawing their own swords.

And Jemmy was amazed to hear a harsh whisper in his ear. "Get down!"

Jemmy fell to the earth and scrambled on hands and knees behind the oak trunk. Peering around its protective bole, he watched as the three cutpurses raced towards the men who had leaped from the horses. Flashes from the dying sun struck against slender blades. There was a ring of steel against steel, then a grunt as one man was run through, and a steady soft cursing as accompaniment to the other sounds.

Jemmy ducked back behind the tree, gasping for breath in his excitement as he tried to untangle the images in his head. Before he could draw more than a dozen such strangled pants, the altercation was over.

"Jemmy," called a soft voice. Carefully, the boy looked around the tree.

"Come on, lad, it's all done," called Black. "Hie, we need you."

Jemmy rose to his feet, surprised to find his knees weak beneath him, then trotted hesitantly forward.

"Aye, sir?"

There was a puddled cloak upon the ground, from the midst of which echoed a soft groan, and another pile of collapsed material that lay as still as death.

Jemmy gulped at the sight of the still man.

"Is he dead, sir?" he quavered.

"Not in the least," snorted Black, as the two quarries, unharmed themselves, remounted their horses. "He's just had a knock on the head. And Harry here is scratched, no more, though John, I fear, may not see the dawn. Stubborn fellow. You, Jemmy," Jemmy was startled to feel a small purse, fat with coins, being pressed into his hand, "take this and make sure these fellows wounds are attended. Now be off with you and stay out of trouble in the future."

With a laugh, the man called Black -- whom Jemmy had admired in the short time he had known him as a true highwayman -- jumped up behind one of the two mounted men and the two horses rode away.

"Well," said Jemmy to himself, his companions being unable or unwilling to speak. "That's a stunner, I'll swear!"

***

The grey which bore both Gaston and Black, was not used to such a load, and was limping within three miles. Black slid to the ground, followed an instant later by Gaston, who seized his collar.

Black laughed. "I'd hardly run off now, no, nor turn against two such swordsmen as yourselves," he said. "Wherever did a gentleman's valet learn to swing a blade like that?"

"From his sword master," commented Lord Andrew dryly, still atop the other grey. "Gaston was a count once upon a time, back when France was sane and Bonaparte not skulking about the countryside."

"It was some years ago," admitted Gaston with a shrug, "but one does not forget, is it not so?"

It was now full dark and though a quarter moon rode the night sky, she gave little light. Luckily for the tired men the road ran smooth and straight, and there were golden glimmers in the distance.

"Ho, that must be the post inn on the London-Brighton road," said Lord Andrew. "Damme, but I'm glad to see it. This riding bareback is most disconcerting." For the promised saddles had not materialized, and they had been balancing atop the greys with no more than blankets between themselves and the horses' back.

He in turn slid to the ground, with a groan of weariness. "I'm for a bottle and a bed, after we hear the rest of your story, Mr. Black."

"I fear, my lord, that my own rest will be short. I have promised to report to my employer when I have done what was contracted of me. I must beg more gold of you, to hire a horse and hie me to London."

"As you have doubtless saved our lives, it seems very little that we can offer," said Lord Andrew as the three weary men trudged towards the distant lights, tugging their tired horses behind them. "And saying so, I would inquire exactly why you did so, sir? For I take it that this is your business, and that we are not the only gentlemen who have been set upon by you and your gang?"

Lord Andrew could hear Black sigh. "No, my lord, you are not the first. I must admit, I have taken a purse or two in the last few years, but this was a far different affair. Do you know Lady Christabel Russell?"

Lord Andrew stopped in his tracks, and only the quick response of Gaston, tired as he was, prevented Black from running into his lordship. Gaston seized Black's arm, gaining a hiss of pain for a response.

"You are wounded, I fear, monsieur?" asked Gaston politely as he released Black's arm.

"A scratch," murmured Black.

"Lady Christabel is...not my friend, if that is what you ask, sir," said Lord Andrew. "But I did not think that we were such enemies that she would put you up to murder. For murder, I take it, was the plan?"

"It was, my lord, and if you had not been on your guard, murder it would have been, for all that both of you are talented with your swords," was the reply.

"That is not what one would call a foregone conclusion," murmured Gaston with a smirk into the darkness.

"Perhaps not," agreed Black, "but you admit, it could well have gone far differently."

"Tell me all," ordered Lord Andrew. "This was some scheme of Lady Christabel's to make me sorry that I broke it off with her? But damme, that was so far into the past as to be ancient history."

"I think that the plan did not originate with her ladyship, but with some gentleman of her acquaintance," began Black. "I received a visit from some scabby lawyer's clerk, who laid it to me that I would receive a hundred guineas if I produced proof of your death to a certain location in London. I refused when the gentleman could not offer me any money upon account. Most un-businesslike, as you can imagine, my lord. Shortly thereafter, I received a note that my company was required at the town house of Lady Christabel Russell. There she endeavored to convince me to do the deed, with the promise of twice the agreed upon amount some time afterwards. I was intrigued, gentlemen, as you might imagine, especially when her ladyship sealed the bargain with the addition of...er, certain activities in her bedchamber."

Black could feel himself flushing and was amazed, not having felt any such thing in some years.

"Go on," said Lord Andrew grimly.

"Well, as I believe I intimated, I was intrigued. So I agreed to her ladyship's ardent requests and repaired to that fusty inn to make my arrangements. I was sent a message by her ladyship that you would be on that road at that approximate time and that the rest was up to me. There you have it, gentlemen, the history of this affair in a nutshell."

"Except for one fact. Why did you warn us and take our part in that rather stimulating mêlée?"

Black trudged along for some time without a reply. The lights of the post inn were coming very close, and soon they would arrive at its welcoming environs. At last, he said, "I found out who you are, and whom you, er, married. Miss Mayfair was kind tome once, and I could not repay her in such a way. But you must not imagine that I was a friend of hers, of course, only that I would not wish to see her harmed in any way."

"Oh, I do not think that my wife is in any danger," said Lord Andrew, though his heart grew cold within him at the thought. "Lady Christabel and I were once...involved, and she took our parting badly. This is no doubt a revenge on her part, and you perchance did not understand her fully when she told you her wishes."

Black laughed. "If you think I could mistake the word 'killed', then you are a fool, sir. She is not the only one who would like to see it, I fear, but she wishes you dead and is awaiting word of it in her town house as we speak."

"Then she must have it, and post haste," said Lord Andrew. "I would not disappoint the lady, upon my word. You will present a notice of my unfortunate demise to her, I take it?"

"I will, sir," was Black's reply, "and right gladly, too. But why do you wish me to do such a thing, pray? Surely, it were far better to have it out with her yourself, with a bailiff and lawyer at hand."

"I fancy, Mr. Black, that it were better that I should remain dead a bit longer...at least until we find out who this mysterious man is who first approached you. If he is another who wishes me dead, and not just the cat's paw of Lady Christabel, then I feel I should know of it, do not you think so?"

They had arrived at the post inn, and a hostler sprang from the evening mists to take their horses. Lord Andrew, his face illuminated by the light that beamed from the inn's windows, grinned at his one-eyed companion.

"I take your meaning, sir," said Black with a slow nod. "You may depend on me to learn all I can about the matter -- if, that is, I may have the loan of enough money for a horse."

"Only after you have dined with us, sir," said Lord Andrew. "If the lady in question is awaiting word of the successful completion of your task, then whatever else she plans must be dependant upon that. Doubtless she cannot expect to see you before morning. You will have time for a meal and a glass or two before departing for London, and still have time to reach her house by morning, surely."

Black followed Lord Andrew and Gaston into the post inn. Gaston kept a sharp eye on the man. His lordship was a trusting gentleman, but Gaston was wary enough for two.

Chapter 17

"Oh, do sit down, Sir Everard, pray!" snapped Lady Christabel. "I vow, you are spoiling my morning chocolate."

Sir Everard stopped his incessant pacing and looked down at the ravishing lady.

Not quite so ravishing this morning as in the past, he thought with a nasty humor.

"How can you eat and drink as if nothing were going on, my lady?" Sir Everard asked, his toadish face pallid and wan. "By God, madame, we await word of a man's death!"

"Come, sir, it is not news that will put either of us into the dismals, is it?" asked her ladyship, spreading butter thick and yellow onto a piece of toast. "Indeed, we shall rejoice when word comes, I vow, for it will mean an end to our lives of penury. What joy, Sir Everard, will you feel when all the doors of society open before us! Why, you and I between us will be the richest couple in England!"

But not for long, she added to herself, with a secret grin. If this Black is as good as he claims, then Sir Everard will follow his ward to the grave within a six-month.

"Couple, my lady?" asked Sir Everard. "Forget you your husband?"

"Oh, la, sir, my husband has been dangling over a grave this two years. How much longer can he linger?" said her ladyship sweetly, then took a tiny sip of chocolate.

Sir Everard suppressed a chill at this frank talk of death, and vowed to himself that he would never place himself in such a predicament as he was now. Only let the rest of their plan go through without a hitch and he would rid himself of this luscious harpy as quickly as may be.

"Of a certainty, my dearest lady," was Sir Everard's reply, knowing well that this was not the time to arouse her ladyship's suspicions.

Sir Everard resumed his restless pacing, glancing now out one window, now towards the door. Lady Christabel enjoyed her chocolate, patting her full lips from time to time with a damask napkin.

When the resounding knock came on the front door just outside the morning room, they were both unprepared. Lady Christabel set her tiny cup down with a clatter, and Sir Everard was barely able to suppress an oath. He waddled towards the door to the morning room.

"Sit down, you fool," hissed Lady Christabel, "and do not embarrass me!"

Sir Everard deflated into a small straight chair, his bulky figure overflowing its delicate frame.

There was a discrete scratching at the morning room door before it opened halfway, followed an instant later by a parlor maid who slithered through and stood with downcast eyes, frightened as a doe.

"A man to see you, my lady," she murmured, "and it do seem to be the one you said to admit. A one-eyed man, tall and grim."

"Show the gentleman in, Mary," said Lady Christabel. "And try not to sniff."

Mary disappeared, pulling the door to behind her.

"Really, servants are becoming impossible when one cannot afford to pay them," murmured Lady Christabel.

There was the sound of booted feet upon the parquet floor outside before the door was flung open and the tall figure of Mr. Black entered. He cast a quick glance about the chamber, noted Lady Christabel with a brief nod, then glared at Sir Everard. A startled expression, gone almost as soon as it appeared, danced across his dark and glowering countenance. He turned to face her ladyship, leaving only his scarred and eye-patched side on view to the baronet.

"Ma'am," nodded Black, his voice gruff and harsher even than usual. "I have the word that you requested."

"I take it that you have succeeded, sir?" asked Lady Christabel, her tone short and business-like.

Another nod was her reply.

"Good. And the...remains are hidden away, not to be found until I send you word?"

A nod.

"Then you will hear from me very soon, with instructions on obtaining your reward."

Black nodded again. He seemed to have been struck dumb, after his first brief comment.

"You may go," Lady Christabel dismissed him like a servant.

Black turned, still careful to keep his full face away from Sir Everard. That gentleman, as was his wont, took little notice of one so far below him in birth and station, and was barely able to wait until the door closed softly to behind him before saying, "What a dastardly, black-a'visaged fellow, I'll swear. Yet there was something oddly familiar about him. Still, no matter. We must away to Avington House at once. My carriage awaits."

Outside the morning room, Black had his head pressed to the door that he had just closed behind him. Blessing the poor quality of Lady Christabel's servants, he paced softly across the foyer and let himself out the front door, letting the latch to with a silent snick.

***

Around a corner in a side street awaited a sturdy coach, its windows shaded and doors plain, illumined with no crest or identifying sigil. Black looked up and down the street. Silent and still in the early morning, there were few to note what transpired.

The door to the coach opened. A hand beckoned.

Black leaped into the coach, and the driver, swathed in a huge greatcoat with a myriad of silver buttons, whipped up the horses. The coach rattled away down the still under construction Regent Street.

Inside the coach Lord Andrew seized Black's hand and gave it a hearty shake. "I am indebted to you, sir. What did you find out from her ladyship?"

Black took a deep breath. "I found out, my lord, that we must get back to Avington House as quickly as we can."

"What? Why?"

"I met with Lady Christabel in her morning room. She was not alone. Sir Everard Balfour was there, and as soon as they heard that you were, er, dead, your body hidden away by their orders, they dismissed me. I fear that I did not dismiss very far; listening at her ladyship's door, I heard Sir Everard tell her that they should take carriage for Avington House without delay."

Lord Andrew's face blanched at his words, but only for an instant. Then the fear that shone from his azure eyes was replaced by determination. He lowered the coach window and shouted at the driver, "Gaston! Avington House!"

Gaston snugged his borrowed greatcoat about his narrow shoulders and whipped up the horses.

Chapter 18

On the road between Guildford and Horsham the rented coach lost a wheel, and only Lord Andrew, who was now driving, and his consummate skills with the horses, prevented them from taking a powder into the muddy road. He wrestled with the recalcitrant beasts, cursing under his breath the while, and finally managed to bring them under control.

But the coach could not continue and they were still some miles from Avington House in a particularly dreary and lonesome stretch of road.

"Well, we must just take turns on the horses," said Lord Andrew, when he had at last accepted that the coach was a wash out. "A pity, since my backside has not yet recovered from my last trip bareback. Gaston, you and Blackride take that prancing brute and I shall take this creature."

They mounted and rode on. Behind them a thunderhead threatened and the distant rumbles kept pace with their desperate and frightened hearts.

What were Sir Everard and Lady Christabel planning?

But, more frightful than that, what would Patricia do if she heard that Andrew had died on the road, a victim of highwaymen?

Lord Andrew spurred his mount mercilessly towards the south...and Avington House.

***

The elegant phaeton with the Russell arms rolled up to the door of Avington House. Patricia, who had been looking out the withdrawing room window since before breakfast, hoping against hope for word from Lord Andrew, was surprised to see her former guardian alight from the stylish equipage, maneuvering a small but bulky portmanteau in one fist. Sir Everard then turned to hand down Lady Christabel.

"Blast!" said Lady Patricia, gritting her teeth. Then she rang for the servants to order tea and sherry to refresh her guests.

On the horizon a mass of thunderheads gathered like some dark army heralding destruction.

Now I'm waxing poetical, thought Patricia with a weak grin. Andrew would tease me unmercifully, I'll warrant.

She spread her skirts and determined to make her unexpected guests feel welcome.

***

The thunder cracked and boomed like artillery behind them, and Andrew rode as he never had before. His ungainly mount, used to harness and a heavy hand on the whip, did not take well to being ridden and alternated between balking and trying to jerk the reins from Andrew's hand. Behind him, Gaston and Black clung as best they could to their own mount, a wild-eyed brute with a leather mouth.

A crack of thunder echoed behind them and Andrew cast a quick look over his shoulder. The sky was dark behind him and a threatening fingers of inky cloud seemed to be reaching for them.

"Hah!" shouted Lord Andrew, digging his spurs into the straining horse. Streams of white lather rolled from its mouth, tinged ever so slightly with red.

***

"How kind of you to pay me a visit, Sir Everard," said Patricia as she poured the sherry for her unexpected guests. "And you as well, Lady Christabel. I shall never forget that it was at your house where I first met my beloved husband."

"Oh, my poor dear," cooed Lady Christabel. "What a sad day this is for us all. But how glad I am to be here to share your sorrows with you."

"Why, I do not understand, madame," said Patricia, her heart going cold within her. "Whatever can you mean?"

"Your poor darling Lord Andrew," said Lady Christabel with undisguised relish, "has succumbed to footpads on the road to Brighton."

Patricia felt the room twirling about her and darkness threatening to overtake her. A rumble of thunder seemed to come from within her very soul, and the sound of the rising wind slapped leafless branches against the withdrawing room window.

"You must be mistaken," gasped Patricia at last. Sir Everard was forcing sherry into her mouth, but she pushed his hand away. "No, you are incorrect. Lord Andrew has gone to Brighton, at the request of the Prince Regent himself. He left yesterday, and will doubtless be at the Royal Pavilion by now."

"My poor dear child," said Lady Christabel, patting Patricia on one hand and giving an artificial sniff. "We stopped at an inn on the way to Brighton ourselves, only to hear the news that Lord Andrew had been brought there only a short time before, badly wounded from a confrontation with outlaws. We were able to see him for a few brief moments before he breathed his last. Oh my dear lady, he gasped out his undying love for you and your unborn child, and then expired in my arms."

To Patricia, her ladyship's words were all a jumble, twisting and turning in her disordered mind. She could not, she dare not, believe that the woman spoke the truth.

But Andrew had left for Brighton, yesterday afternoon. How else would Sir Everard and her ladyship know, if they had not met him? And their unborn child...the news had only been circulated amongst close friends and neighbors, not to London.

It was true, then. Andrew, her darling Andrew, was dead.

Patricia drew a deep breath and held out a shaky hand.

"I...my thanks to you both, to break your journey and bring me the news yourselves instead of allowing me to find out by strangers," she said, mouthing the proprieties. "I do not wish to seem rude, but I desire to be alone now, for a time. I shall ring for Torrington to show you to rooms, so that you may rest from your travels."

Patricia made as if to rise, but Sir Everard pushed her back into her seat.

"I must refuse, my dear child," he said. "I dare not leave you in your present state of mind. Why, it would be more than should be asked, from one who cares as greatly about you as do I."

"Sir Everard, I am desolated," said Patricia. "I wish to be left alone with my grief."

Lady Christabel snapped, "Did you lock the door, you fool?"

"Of course," snarled Sir Everard, "and do you keep your voice down."

Lady Christabel rose to her feet, her golden curls and Empire gown of pale silver-grey shot silk, giving her the appearance of some angel fallen from the heavens if not for the expression of delighted evil on her face, or the look of fierce determination in her ice blue eyes. She opened the small portmanteau that Sir Everard had set upon a side table. From it, she drew a tiny pistol.

"Now, my dear, we are come to it," said Lady Christabel. "The purpose of our visit entire."

Patricia sat frozen in her chair at the sight of the deadly if minuscule engine of destruction, her heart seeming to go still inside her and her hands knotted together in her lap. What was afoot? Were these two her enemies, she knew now, and her husband's as well, involved in some strange plot?

Was Andrew really dead?

"Tell me what you want, madame," said Patricia coolly. "And put away your weapon."

Lady Christabel laughed one of her bell-like laughs, but the bell had gone flat, and the sound rang oddly in the still room. "What I want, my lady? You took what I wanted, snatched Lord Andrew right from my hands and fascinated him with your bookish fancies. He was a real man, a gambler in life and love, and he would have returned to me when he had found out that we were two of a kind. But you came along too soon after we had parted, with your mincing ways and your clever comments, and turned him into a milk-drinking sop."

"Lord Andrew had a tendre for you upon a time, I know, my lady," said Patricia. "But it was over ere I met him."

"But he would have come back to me, do you see?" asked Lady Christabel, her blue eyes blazing.

She's mad, thought Patricia. Utterly mad.

Even Sir Everard noticed the strange look in Lady Christabel's eye. He tried to take the tiny pistol from her hands, but Lady Christabel snatched it from him and held it behind her.

"No," she hissed, "I shall give it to her, and watch in pleasure when she blows her brains out! Or if she has not the stomach for it, I shall do it myself!"

"What?" gasped Patricia, not knowing whether she spoke aloud or not.

"We shall both watch," soothed Sir Everard, a grin of delight on his toadish face. "For too long have I put up with her polite hatred, her oh, so correct distrust, her sneaking, despicable statements to all about me."

"Sir, you wrong me!" said Patricia, frightened beyond everything now. They were both mad, and she was here alone with them, the door locked, the servants too far away; even Gaston gone away with Andrew...

Andrew?

If they had lied about his death, if he truly still lived, then she must make sure that he was not the object of their hatred, but only she alone.

"Sir, madame, I confess that you may have reason to hate me," Patricia said coldly, "but surely my husband is innocent in the matter. Tell me, I pray, that you lied concerning his death, and I will do all I can to make up to you for the pain I have caused you."

Lady Christabel laughed, one short sharp burst of insane hilarity. The sound cut into Patricia like a knife.

"Your precious lordship is a pale and lifeless corpse, lying somewhere on the side of the road," she sneered, a devil's expression on her angelic countenance. "We hired a blackguard, a notorious thief and scoundrel, to murder Andrew for us after we had lured him away with a spurious letter."

Patricia had thought herself frozen before, icy and cold as death. But this sent her so far into the frigid depths of despair that the other had been but a chill in the air. Unconsciously, she pressed her hands against her body, just under her heart.

Her heart. It was broken now, she knew. Almost she expected to feel its shattered, still remnants within her straining chest. But to her vast surprise, she could feel a faint but steady beat, as if the organ did not yet know of its demise.

Then she remembered. Her heart still beat, and soon another would join it. Her unborn child -- Andrew's unborn child.

She could not let them harm her, for that tiny life's sake if for no other. She must determine their plans and thwart them, no matter what.

"If...if that is true, then are you not avenged for any and all that I might have done to you, however unwittingly?" Patricia asked.

"Avenged?" snarled Sir Everard. "For keeping me short of money, for disliking my tastes and concerns, for giving yourself airs and putting yourself so far above me?"

"I had naught to do with how much money you drew from my estate, sir, as you well know. My father set in his will as your guardian's income."

"Aye, but you would lend money to all the ragtag and bobtail of the neighborhood and let me go wanting," said Sir Everard.

A great blast of thunder shook the old house, and at once, as if it had been a signal for which the clouds had been waiting, the sky opened and a deluge of rain tumbled down.

***

Lord Andrew was drenched to the skin, his hair hanging into his face, his hat disappeared, lost into some puddle on the road. His hack had stepped into another puddle and had fallen, tossing him head over ears into the mud, but not before he had heard the sickening crack of bone and the scream of the poor beast as it fell heavily to the ground.

Gaston and Black had cantered up just afterwards, their own beast lathered and panting. Gaston had slid to the muddy ground an instant before Black, and they both pulled Lord Andrew to his feet.

A crack of thunder. A deluge of icy rain.

"You must take this horse, milord!" shouted Gaston over the tumult. "We shall put this poor animal out of its misery for you and come after!"

Lord Andrew shuddered as a chill went through his exhausted frame, then gave a nod and reached for the reins in Gaston's outstretched hand.

Black wiped Andrew's hair from his face and his hand came away red with blood.

Andrew shook his head as another shudder ripped through his battered body. Then he dragged himself onto the back of the poor panting animal and kicked it with his heels.

The horse stumbled in the direction of Avington House.

***

Patricia took a deep breath and tried to calm herself. Sir Everard was angry, but Lady Christabel, she was convinced, was quite mad. She dared not allow them to harm her, for her child's sake, even if they had already done some grievous hurt to Andrew.

For that he was dead, she would not, could not believe.

There came a hesitant knock at the door.

"My lady?" quavered Torrington, his ancient voice almost lost in the steady rumble of thunder and the crash of the rain against the windows.

Lady Christabel held the pistol at Patricia's head.

"Tell him to go away," hissed Sir Everard, "or you shall regret it."

"From what you tell me, sir, I shall not have time for very many regrets," said Patricia calmly. "Why should I not call out and tell him of your perfidy if you are to kill me anyway?"

Lady Christabel spat, "Well, then, tell him." She moved the pistol down to point at Patricia's midsection. "Tell him whatever you wish." Her lovely face was drawn into a mask of madness, the eyes glittering like jewels, the mouth spread into a rictus of a smile.

Patricia opened her mouth, wondering what she would say. "Torrington, there has been some...bad news. Do go and leave us until I call for you," was what came out in a quavering tone, one that went far to matching the weak and shrill tone of the ancient butler outside the locked door.

"As you say, my lady," came the faint reply, "but if there be anything wrong, cannot myself and the others be of some service?"

Patricia said nothing.

Lady Christabel made one short abrupt motion with the pistol.

"I shall call if I have need of you, never fear, Torrington," called Patricia. "Do go now."

The three inside the room strained to hear over the sound of the tumultuous storm. They could barely hear the faint sound of the faithful servant say, "As you wish, my lady."

Then silence outside the barred door.

"If you plan to kill me," said Patricia, surprised that she could sound so calm, "how can you expect that none of my servants will tell the authorities of it? You cannot pay them all off, to swear that you two were not here."

"My dear young lady," said Sir Everard, "we shall have no need of 'paying' or 'swearing', I assure you. For no one will suspect Lady Christabel or myself of your death."

"Ridiculous!" snapped Patricia, her hands still firm in front of her middle, as if their poor flesh would keep a bullet away from the precious burden within. "Why would they not?"

"Oh, my dear," said Lady Christabel sweetly, that same snarling smile still on her face, "they will believe that you committed suicide."

"Suicide! I?"

"Have not they all seen how much you love your dearest husband?" asked her ladyship. Two long blonde curls had fallen across her face, hanging stiff and discolored with powder and rouge. "When they find out that he has died, don't you think that they will believe us when we say you went mad, snatched your husband's pistol from above the fireplace and destroyed yourself before we could stop you?"

Patricia looked back at the small pistol in her ladyship's hand. She recognized it now. It was the very twin of one that did indeed belong to her husband -- the one that hung above the fireplace in that very room.

"How...?"

"Did you not see it when your husband opened it?" asked Sir Everard with a laugh. "It was my wedding gift to him. I never suspected that he would be so obliging as to hang it here. How kind was your late husband."

Late. Patricia's heart skipped a beat. But she refused to believe that Andrew, her darling Andrew, was dead. Surely she would know it, feel it somehow?

"Very well," said Patricia, desperate for more time to think of some way out of this horrifying situation, "you have a pistol just like my husband's. But what makes you think that anyone will believe I would use it upon myself?"

"Why, of course they will, my dear young lady," said Sir Everard, his voice as calm and soothing as if he spoke to a fractious child. "Everyone knows of your love for your husband. When they find that he is dead, they will expect you to do something drastic, in the romantic fashion that is all the rage in the ton. Why, Lady Caroline Lamb threatened suicide at the mere thought of Lord Byron throwing her over."

"Lady Caroline was mad," Patricia said calmly, "and I am not. Come sir, your plan is lacking a bit. Not only will no one believe that I would die by my own hand, but I fail to see what benefit you and her ladyship would gain from it."

Sir Everard nodded towards the same portmanteau from which Lady Christabel had taken the pistol.

"We will gain, my dear young lady, not only your own fortune, but that of your husband as well," said her former guardian.

***

Andrew drew a long painful breath into his heaving lungs. He could see the gate of Avington House a scant mile ahead of him, dim and misty in the pouring rain. He trudged through the muck, the thick mud dragging at his boots, trying with sticky hands to keep him from his destination.

His horse had died beneath him, overworked and harried beyond endurance by their desperate flight through the storm. Behind him, somewhere on the road, struggled Gaston and the enigmatic Black, but Andrew had no time to think of them, no time to think of anything.

There was only one image in his exhausted mind.

Patricia, his Patricia, alone with Sir Everard and Lady Christabel.

Before him, misty and indistinct in the driving rain, loomed the outline of the gatehouse -- Avington's gatehouse. The sight gave him courage and he broke into a shuffling run, the water splashing about his weary and soaked form.

There was an overhang that kept the worst of the weather from the front door of the small gatehouse. He stepped under it.

"Halloo!" he called, then stopped to spit out the water that drove into his mouth. "Halloo!"

No answer. He leaned to the side and banged on a small window with his fist.

"Halloo!"

The door creaked open a crack and a startled face peered out into the driving rain.

"Your lordship!" The young girl, Andrew could not have remembered her name at this moment if his life had depended upon it, opened the door wider. "Come into the house, m'lord, you're soaked through!" she squeaked.

"No time," panted Andrew. "Send someone back down the road. Gaston's there with another man. Carriage wrecked. Horses dead."

The girl looked at him stupidly, as if he had lost the power to speak the King's English.

"Do you understand me?" rapped Andrew. He reached out and took her by one arm. "Does my wife have visitors?"

This was too much for the girl, and her corn-blue eyes widened. Then, luckily for Lord Andrew's sanity, a full-figured woman came bustling up behind her, radiating comfort and decision.

"Yer lordship!" the woman exclaimed. Mrs. Carlton, Andrew's weary mind supplied, wife to the gatekeeper.

"No time to explain," Andrew said, more clearly now as he regained his breath. "We've had an accident on the road. Send someone along to fetch Gaston."

"At once, m'lord," nodded Mrs. Carlton, and the girl nodded as well. Clarice, the scullery maid, Andrew remembered in a sudden burst of clarity.

"Is my wife all right?"

"Lady Patricia has guests, m'lord," clucked Mrs. Carlton, "arrived just before the storm broke. Sir Everard and a lady."

"Damn!" said Andrew, though he had known that Balfour and Lady Christabel must have made it before the full furor of the storm struck. He shook his head, dislodging a fair amount of water from his person. "Send someone for Gaston. And send everyone else you can find to the house. Now."

Lord Andrew plunged back into the storm. Above him the heavens echoed back his fears for his wife. Pray God, he thought as he trotted up the long gravel drive that led to Avington House, pray God that I am mistaken.

Or that I am in good time.

A jagged streak of lightning, followed by a blast that was not, could not be thunder.

A towering tree, one of a dozen that lined the drive, exploded at its uppermost tip, showering bits of charred wood and smoking twigs into Andrew's path.

He ignored the carnage, sidestepping it as he would an ant hill or a broken toy.

Chapter 19

Lady Patricia sat at the rosewood desk in the corner of the withdrawing room. Before her was a single sheet of foolscap, closely covered with writing. She kept trying to decipher it, but her eyes would persist in filling with tears.

"Read it!" snapped Sir Everard.

"And if I do, you will kill me," sighed Patricia. "And if I do not, you will kill me anyway." Cold. She was so cold she could not think. "Why should I do it, then? Give me a single reason."

"Because if you do not," drawled Lady Christabel, "I will tell you exactly how Lord Andrew suffered before he died. And if you do, I will confer the last words that he spoke of you."

Patricia picked up the sheet of paper, her frigid fingers stiff and sullen. She held it to her face. Outside, the clouds were thick and ominous, preventing all but a little light from creeping through the pouring rain and entering the windows.

Patricia struggled to make out the words, recognizing here a 'dearest guardian', there a 'totally and fully', more than one 'of sound mind'.

"This is a will," she exclaimed at last.

"No, no, my dear young lady," said Sir Everard, "it is your will."

"But I have made no will."

"No, you have not. I have made it for you. A will of your own," he cackled.

"But," objected Patricia as she made out the signature on the bottom of the sheet. It was, without a doubt, her own. "How...when...?"

"When did you sign it, my dear?" asked Sir Everard complacently. "Why, do you not remember all those boring bits of paper that I made you sign, just when you were so involved in your wedding plans? Well, my dearest ward, one of those bits was this. In it, you assign all your worldly goods to your 'blessed benefactor' -- my humble self -- as recognition for all that I have done for you. And, since Lord Andrew is dead before you, not only do I inherit your fortune, but his as well."

Patricia placed the paper carefully upon the desktop. She must think, she knew. If Andrew were indeed, truly dead -- no, she would not think of that -- she must now think of herself, and the tiny life that burgeoned within her.

She must live and make sure that Sir Everard and the mad Lady Christabel did no further harm to herself or any that she loved.

Patricia slid her chair back and rose. Lady Christabel, the tiny pistol still in one slender white hand, stood back, careful to keep the barrel pointed at Patricia's midsection.

"I see that you have thought of everything, sir," Patricia said, her mind spinning with desperate plans. "You have out-thought and out-maneuvered us upon every turn. Surely, sir, you should have been a general. Sir Arthur Wellesley has not a jot nor title on you."

Sir Everard preened a bit, his flat swarthy face beaming with unholy pleasure. "It was a most fortuitous set of circumstances, to be sure. That you were kind and considerate enough to decide to marry a rich man, worked of course in my favour. As for your own fortune, it should have been mine to distribute in any case if your father had not circumvented me. Even your brother Ambrose would have liked to have gotten his fingers on it, you know."

"Do not try to affix your evils upon my poor brother, sir!" said Patricia, stung. "His weaknesses were used to the hilt by you, and his own fortune was lost due to your influence."

"Nonsense, my dear child," laughed Sir Everard, "Ambrose took to gambling with his eyes wide open. Then, when he had failed and lost his fortune, he had no wish to drag your reputation down with his own. That is why he ended up in the Thames, instead of me."

"Instead of you, sir?"

"Of course," Sir Everard grinned. "He backed my losses as well as his own. When he came to you that day to ask for a loan to pay off his debts -- that time when you so angrily refused, my dear -- they were not just his debts, but mine as well. And when he could not talk you into the loan, his only recourse was to throw himself upon the mercy of the moneylenders. They are not, as a clan, remarkable for that trait, I fear. That is why he ended up drowned."

Patricia threw her head back. "I suspected as much, though I have never had concrete information until now. But even if you had won, and had no debts, the fact that you introduced poor Ambrose to such a thing would be enough for me to hate you, sir. Now that I know to what depths you sunk, nurturing your addiction, I am not surprised."

Sir Everard threw his head back and laughed.

"Shut up, you fool!" snapped Lady Christabel. "If the servants hears you so, they'll not believe what must happen next!"

Sir Everard quieted at once, though his face was ruddy with ill-suppressed glee. "You are correct, my dear Lady Christabel. We must carry out our little play, so that there will be no question as to the outcome. 'The play's the thing', as Lear said."

"You surprise me again, sir," said Patricia coldly, "that you recognize a quote from the bard, however incorrectly. Well, then. Let us proceed. What do you intend to do now?"

"My dear Lady Patricia," cooed Christabel, her hand as steady as a stone on the grip of the pistol, "it is the simplest thing in the world, I vow. You, poor despairing widow that you are, distressed and overcome with sorrow and despair, will take your own life with your darling's pistol. Oh, Sir Everard and I will do all that we can to prevent it, but in the madness of your grief, you are too strong for us. What a pity, truly. Then, after a time, Sir Everard will present your will for probate, and all your lovely money will come to us."

"Us, my lady? Think you then that he will share with you? If so, you know him little," replied Patricia. Her mind was working again, and she suspected that she could find a way to set these two against each other, and thus supply herself with a way out of this frightful situation. "He will cast you aside for his greatest love of all, gambling, and what will you have to show for this disgraceful and evil thing? Naught but the dangers inherent in joining with such a man as he."

There, thought Patricia with satisfaction as she saw the barrel of the pistol sway just the tiniest fraction. That has given her something new to think on, I vow. Now let me see if I can improve upon it.

"Why, when the authorities come visiting -- and come they will, my lady -- for my friends will know full well that I would never in my right mind sign such a piece of work as that." Patricia motioned towards the will that Sir Everard held in one thick-fingered hand. "Thomas Faraday will take you to the courts, and so will everyone else that knows me."

"Will he, miss?" asked Sir Everard, his face dark with anger. "Will he? Even if I wipe out that great loan you made him, and sell him Avington House as well at a bargain price? Do you trust your friend that far?"

"Do not think that he is the villain you are, sir," snapped Patricia. "You would be mistaken."

"Perhaps," said Sir Everard complacently, "but we shall see."

"Enough of this prattle," interrupted Lady Christabel. "The storm is at its height and the servants are doubtless huddled in the kitchens. This is the best time to do it, Sir Everard."

Patricia felt the air grow colder in the room. Surprised, she looked out the window, noted for the first time in many minutes that the tumult outside had not abated. She had been so frightened, then so engrossed in trying to hit upon someway of escaping her fate, that she had not been aware that Nature was so horribly angry.

"Do sit here upon the sofa before the fireplace," ordered Lady Christabel with a wave of her pistol. "It will be the most comfortable place for you to die."

Patricia swallowed through a throat gone dry as dust. What was she to do, she thought frantically? Two of them, one armed, against her poor self?

"Go!" spat Lady Christabel.

Patricia moved slowly towards the indicated spot, her mind working feverishly. The most direct route led in front of the fireplace. With Sir Everard's bulky body to one side of her, and Lady Christabel's slender form on the other, Patricia began to make her slow way towards the sofa.

And her doom.

***

Lord Andrew was at the front door to Avington House at last. All his travels, all his pain and fears, were at last to find respite.

But what respite could he expect, he wondered?

He tried the handle of the great wooden door.

Locked.

Doubtless the servants had battened down the entire house and taken up residence in the cellars while the storm raged in unabated fury without. An image rose up in his mind of sparkling glass. The French doors that led into the withdrawing room.

Andrew raced towards the verandah that stretched along the west side of the house.

Almost without pausing, he reached down and picked up a sizeable stone in one hand. As he ran, he pushed impatiently at the wet bedraggled hair that persisted in falling into his eyes. His hand came away red, though he did not mark it.

***

Patricia managed to manufacture a stumble just as she drew near the fireplace. She fell onto her knees, then tumbled heavily onto her side against the shining brass fire irons. They were the pride of Torrington, dusted with meticulous care each day.

Patricia seized the long poker and raised it threateningly.

"Come, come, my dear," laughed Lady Christabel, well out of Patricia's reach, "will you throw it at me?"

With a deep sense of satisfaction, Patricia slammed the length of bright brass full against Sir Everard's left knee.

Sir Everard hissed in pain and dropped to the other knee, cursing mightily. He rocked back and forth, crooning his suffering in a low voice full of curses.

"Shoot her!" he muttered when he could speak at last.

Lady Christabel raised the barrel of the pistol, pointing it with unerring precision directly at Patricia's face.

***

Lord Andrew felt that he was moving through a dream, so heavy and resistant were his very limbs, as he struggled down the long verandah towards the withdrawing room windows. At last he reached the first one and leaned forward to peer inside.

At first, in the dimness, he could make out little. Then a flash of lightning lit up the interior of the room like a tableau vivant.

Before the fireplace Patricia lay upon the floor, brandishing a shining poker in one hand. Beside her rested Sir Everard, squatting like the toad he resembled, his face red with fury, a pained look in his eyes. Before these two stood Lady Christabel like an avenging fallen angel, her bright hair streaming down her back.

In one slender hand, she held a tiny pistol.

Andrew raised one hand. The rock, that he had not even noticed picking up, and would indeed have wondered that he did so, rested like a silent savior in his bloody and torn fingers.

He crashed the rock into the bright wet glass of the French door.

***

Patricia watched the pistol in Lady Christabel's steady hand. This was the end, then. She had done all she could to save herself and her unborn child. If Andrew were indeed dead, then she would go to him gladly.

Proudly, Lady Patricia Aragon lifted her head, eyes wide open, a brave smile on her face.

"Shoot, damn you!" hissed Sir Everard.

There was a crash.

But it was not the crash of exploding gunpowder.

Instead, it echoed from one of the tall French doors that made up one side of the withdrawing room.

"Patricia!" came a frightened wail.

Patricia looked away from the death that pointed directly at her, and saw a bloody and dripping apparition framed within shattered glass. But not blood, nor fear, nor anything else could keep her from recognizing her beloved husband.

"Andrew!" she cried, both in delight and in warning.

But Andrew needed no warning. He knocked away the remaining fragments of glass and raced towards Lady Christabel.

But the room was long and wide, and Lady Christabel held a pistol in one hand.

Her ladyship's attention was not upon the device in her hand, however. No, it was direct upon the specter running towards her. The tall figure of Lord Andrew, his face streaked with blood, his hands outstretched desperately towards her as if trying to seize her and carry her back into the hell from which he must have arisen.

This wraith was too much for the shaky mind of Lady Christabel Russell. With a shriek of horror, she backed away from what she was convinced must be the ghost of her murdered lover, the pistol falling forgotten from nerveless fingers. She backed into a fat stuffed ottoman and toppled over it.

There was a sickening thud as her golden-tressed head struck hard against a marble pot that rested beside the sofa. Bright red began to mingle with the gold, seeping out in slow but unceasing profusion.

Lord Andrew reached her crumpled body an instant later. Sparing no further glance at her form, he bent down and seized the pistol that she had dropped, then turned to face Sir Everard's squatting form.

"Sir," panted Lord Andrew Aragon, "I believe we have some matters to discuss."

Patricia sighed one long relieved sigh.

"My dearest," she whispered.

Lord Andrew grinned at her. His face was streaked with mud and blood, his clothes were drenched and filthy, and a puddle was forming around him.

Patricia thought him the most beautiful sight she had ever seen in all her days.

Chapter 20

The storm's fury had begun to dissipate by the time Gaston and Black cantered up to the front door of Avington House. A cart had been sent to fetch them, but such was their hurry and concern that they had unharnessed the great plow horse and had ridden him back, leaving the poor boy who had driven out to rescue them alone with his cart on the side of the road.

"Hurry," said Black as he slid from the horse's back, "they will be in the withdrawing room."

The eye-patched gentleman disappeared around the corner of the house, followed by the lanky form of Gaston, who wondered mightily how Mr. Black knew where the withdrawing room was.

Their aches and pains were forgotten as they pushed their tired bodies to one last hurdle.

What would they find?

Black, his long legs outpacing even those of Gaston, was first to reach the verandah and first to approach the long line of French doors that marked the withdrawing room.

But one door was missing, replaced by a jagged opening from which shards of glass were still falling, blown loose by dying gusts from the storm. Mr. Black stopped, as if frightened of what he might find on the other side of that ominous gaping hole.

Gaston nearly ran him down. The Frenchman dashed through the opening, treading alike over shiny parquet, soaked carpet and shattered glass.

"Milord?" called Gaston, then skidded to a stop when he saw the crumpled figure of Lady Christabel, her head surrounded with a halo of bright blood.

Black entered just behind Gaston, a battered hat pulled down over his face. His single eye took in the entire room with a glance.

Sir Everard Balfour sat in an armchair, his pudgy figure looking oddly deflated. His arms were securely bound to the arms of the chair, one with a blue scarf, the other with a grimy and muddy handkerchief. He kept his feet back fastidiously from the ever-spreading circle of gore that seeped from the crushed skull of Lady Christabel Russell.

Before the fireplace stood Lord Andrew and Lady Patricia, so wrapped about each other that Gaston would have been hard pressed to ascertain where one ended and the other began.

"Well," said Black, his voice rough and low, "it seems that you were in time, m'lord."

Lord Andrew drew his attention from the precious burden in his arms, and gave a nod to Gaston and Black.

"I was, thanks to you, sir," his lordship replied. "You have my undying and heartfelt gratitude. And you, Gaston, as well."

Patricia looked up from what seemed to be her rapt perusal of her husband's waistcoat. Her face was pale, and liberally smeared with dirt and blood.

"You are hurt, Pat?" cried Mr. Black, rushing forward.

"Ambrose!" cried the much-beleaguered Lady Patricia, struggling away from Lord Andrew's loving grasp.

Then she fainted into the one-eyed man's arms.

***

"Ambrose Mayfair, at your service, my lord," said Mr. Black with a grin that illuminated his dark face.

The small morning room of Avington House had always been Patricia's favorite in all the house. Now she looked around her from the encircling arms of her husband.

On the small settee that matched the one where she and Andrew sat, lounged a fierce gentleman with one eye, whom she had at once recognized, through mud, eye patch, scar and all to be her brother Ambrose. Beside him sat Gaston, both with tumblers of sherry in their hands.

"I take it that the reports of your demise were somewhat exaggerated?" asked Lord Andrew, sipping his own sherry.

"They were indeed," admitted the former Mr. Black. "I knew little of it at first. I spent some months recovering from the blow that gave me this," he tapped the leather patch ruefully, "and was not precisely in the manner of caring. By the time I was myself again, I found that I had been declared deceased and that my estate -- what little that was left after my days of dissipation, that is -- had been seized to pay my gambling debts."

"No doubt Sir Everard had some hand in that, as well," commented Gaston, sipping the sherry with every sign of appreciation and approbation.

"Yes, I do not doubt it," agreed Ambrose Mayfair. "He had spent enough of it ere then, and would know how to go about acquiring more of it when I was presumed dead."

"But, Ambrose, why did you not let me know that you were alive?" asked Patricia, leaning forward and holding out her hands to the disreputable figure across her. "Did you not know that I would understand your troubles?"

"Well," admitted Ambrose, "I did not think it the safest thing for you, to be quite honest, my dear. I was afraid that Sir Everard would somehow manage to get his sticky fingers on your own fortune as well, and leave you penniless and starving. Then, of course, I, er, had a difference of opinion with some other gentlemen, and as a result, spent some length of time outside the country -- Australia, don't you know. So informing you of my continuing existence was not an option. Still, I am very glad to see that your oft-repeated vow never to wed was not kept."

"No more so than I, I assure you," agreed Lord Andrew.

"But, milord, what about Sir Everard? Not to mention, the distressing death of Lady Christabel. What will you tell the authorities?" asked Gaston.

"Well, since I was ninny enough to actually sign my will without reading it," said Patricia, "I do not believe that we shall be able to use that against him. But he was involved in the plot on your life, my dearest. Even then, we would not wish to put Ambrose in danger by mentioning that to the authorities, I fear."

"He did not contact me," Ambrose shook his head with a wry grin at his sister's words, "I only heard from his man of business. Lady Christabel, on the other hand..." His voice trailed off as he watched the shining face of his sister, involved in gazing with the greatest of appreciation at her husband.

"Perhaps it would be best to throw Sir Everard onto the mercy of his creditors," suggested Gaston. "They will without doubt be anxious for the money that he promised them. And Lady Christabel's death could well have been a sad accident, brought on by the sudden appearance of so frightful a figure as you cut, milord."

Lord Andrew nodded in slow agreement. "Perhaps so, Gaston. But all this has taught me one thing."

"And what is that, my dearest?" asked Patricia, squeezing his hand.

"It has taught me to never complain about your reading anything from beginning to end, my dear, no matter what it is nor how long it takes you."

Then Lord Andrew kissed his wife, against all notions of propriety from the ton, and in full view of his manservant and his newly discovered brother- in-law.

The End

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