Slightly Scandalous

SLIGHTLY SCANDALOUS

Mary Balogh

CHAPTER I

By the time she went to bed, Lady Freyja Bedwyn was in about as bad a mood as it was possible to be in. She dismissed her maid though a truckle bed had been set up in her room and the girl had been preparing to sleep on it. But Alice snored, and Freyja had no wish to sleep with a pillow wrapped about her head and pressed to both ears merely so that the proprieties might be observed.

"But his grace gave specific instructions, my lady," the girl reminded her timidly.

"In whose service are you employed?" Freyja asked, her tone quelling. "The Duke of Bewcastle's or mine?"

Alice looked at her anxiously as if she suspected that it was a trick question-as well she might. Although she was Freyja's maid, it was the Duke of Bewcastle, Freyja's eldest brother, who paid her salary. And he had given her instructions that she was not to move from her lady's side night or day during the journey from Grandmaison Park in Leicestershire to Lady Holt-Barron's lodgings on the Circus in Bath. He did not like his sisters traveling alone.

"Yours, my lady," Alice said.

"Then leave." Freyja pointed at the door.

Alice looked at it dubiously. "There is no lock on it, my lady," she said.

"And if there are intruders during the night, you are going to protect me from harm?" Freyja asked scornfully. "It would more likely be the other way around."

Alice looked pained, but she had no choice but to leave.

And so Freyja was left in sole possession of a second-rate room in a second-rate inn with no servant in attendance-and no lock on the door. And in possession too of a thoroughly bad temper.

Bath was not a destination to inspire excited anticipation in her bosom. It was a fine spa and had once attracted the crème de la crème of English society. But no longer. It was now the genteel gathering place of the elderly and infirm and those with no better place to go-like her. She had accepted an invitation to spend a month or two with Lady Holt-Barron and her daughter Charlotte. Charlotte was a friend of Freyja's though by no means a bosom bow. Under ordinary circumstances Freyja would have politely declined the invitation.

These were not ordinary circumstances.

She had just been in Leicestershire, visiting her ailing grandmother at Grandmaison Park and attending the wedding there of her brother Rannulf to Judith Law. She was to have returned home to Lindsey Hall in Hampshire with Wulfric-the duke-and Alleyne and Morgan, her younger brother and sister. But the prospect of being there at this particular time had proved quite intolerable to her and so she had seized upon the only excuse that had presented itself not to return home quite yet.

It was shameful indeed to be afraid to return to one's own home. Freyja bared her teeth as she climbed into bed and blew out the candle. No, not afraid. She feared nothing and no one. She just disdained to be there when it happened, that was all.

Last year Wulfric and the Earl of Redfield, their neighbor at Alvesley Park, had arranged a match between Lady Freyja Bedwyn and Kit Butler, Viscount Ravensberg, the earl's son. The two of them had known each other all their lives and had fallen passionately in love four years ago during a summer when Kit was home on leave from his regiment in the Peninsula. But Freyja had been all but betrothed to his elder brother, Jerome, at the time and she had allowed herself to be persuaded into doing the proper and dutiful thing-she had let Wulfric announce her engagement to Jerome. Kit had returned to the Peninsula in a royal rage. Jerome had died before the nuptials could take place.

Jerome's death had made Kit the elder son and heir of the Earl of Redfield, and suddenly a marriage between him and Freyja had been both eligible and desirable. Or so everyone in both families had thought-including Freyja.

But not, apparently, including Kit.

It had not occurred to Freyja that he might be bound upon revenge. But he had been. When he had arrived home for what everyone expected to be their betrothal celebrations, he had brought a fiancée with him-the oh-so-proper, oh-so-lovely, oh-so-dull Lauren Edgeworth. And after Freyja had boldly called his bluff, he had married Lauren.

Now the new Lady Ravensberg was about to give birth to their first child. Like the dull, dutiful wife she was, she would undoubtedly produce a son. The earl and countess would be ecstatic. The whole neighborhood would doubtless erupt into wild jubilation.

Freyja preferred not to be anywhere near the vicinity of Alvesley when it happened-and Lindsey Hall was near.

Hence this journey to Bath and the prospect of having to amuse herself there for a month or more.

She had not drawn the curtains across the window. What with the moon and stars above and the light of numerous lanterns from the inn yard below, her room might as well have been flooded by daylight. But Freyja did not get up to pull the curtains. She pulled the covers over her head instead.

Wulfric had hired a private carriage for her and a whole cavalcade of hefty outriders, all with strict instructions to guard her from harm and other assorted inconveniences. They had been told where to stop for the night-at a superior establishment suitable for a duke's daughter, even one traveling alone. Unfortunately, an autumn fair in that town had drawn people for miles around and there was not a room to be had at that particular inn or any other in the vicinity. They had been forced to journey on and then stop here.

The outriders had wanted to take shifts sitting on guard outside her room, especially on learning that there were no locks on any of the doors. Freyja had disabused them of that notion with a firmness that had brooked no argument. She was no one's prisoner and would not be made to feel like one. And now Alice was gone too.

Freyja sighed and settled for sleep. The bed was somewhat lumpy. The pillow was worse. There was a constant noise from the yard below and the inn about her. The blankets did not block out all the light. And there was Bath to look forward to tomorrow. All because going home had become a near impossibility to her. Could life get any bleaker?

Sometime soon, she thought just before she drifted off to sleep, she really was going to have to start looking seriously at all the gentlemen-and there were many of them despite the fact that she was now five and twenty and always had been ugly-who would jump through hoops if she were merely to hint that marriage to her might be the prize. Being single at such an advanced age really was no fun for a lady. The trouble was that she was not wholly convinced that being married would be any better. And it would be too late to discover that it really was not after she had married. Marriage was a life sentence, her brothers were fond of saying-though two of the four had taken on that very sentence within the past few months.

Freyja awoke with a start some indeterminate time later when the door of her room opened suddenly and then shut again with an audible click. She was not even sure she had not dreamed it until she looked and saw a man standing just inside the door, clad in a white, open-necked shirt and dark pantaloons and stockings, a coat over one arm, a pair of boots in the other hand.

Freyja shot out of bed as if ejected from a fired cannon and pointed imperiously at the door.

"Out!" she said.

The man flashed her a grin, which was all too visible in the near-light room.

"I cannot, sweetheart," he said. "That way lies certain doom. I must go out the window or hide somewhere in here."

"Out!" She did not lower her arm-or her chin. "I do not harbor felons. Or any other type of male creature. Get out!"

Somewhere beyond the room were the sounds of a small commotion in the form of excited voices all speaking at once and footsteps-all of them approaching nearer.

"No felon, sweetheart," the man said. "Merely an innocent mortal in deep trouble if he does not disappear fast. Is the wardrobe empty?"

Freyja's nostrils flared.

"Out!" she commanded once more.

But the man had dashed across the room to the wardrobe, yanked the door open, found it empty, and climbed inside.

"Cover for me, sweetheart," he said, just before shutting the door from the inside, "and save me from a fate worse than death."

Almost simultaneously there was a loud rapping on the door. Freyja did not know whether to stalk toward it or the wardrobe first. But the decision was taken from her when the door burst open again to reveal the innkeeper holding a candle aloft, a short, stout, gray-haired gentleman, and a bald, burly individual who was badly in need of a shave.

"Out!" she demanded, totally incensed. She would deal with the man in the wardrobe after this newest outrage had been dealt with. No one walked uninvited into Lady Freyja Bedwyn's room, whether that room was at Lindsey Hall or Bedwyn House or a shabby-genteel inn with no locks on the doors.

"Begging your pardon, ma'am, for disturbing you," the gray-haired gentleman said, puffing out his chest and surveying the room by the light of the candle rather than focusing on Freyja, "but I believe a gentleman just ran in here."

Had he awaited an answer to his knock and then addressed her with the proper deference, Freyja might have betrayed the fugitive in the wardrobe without a qualm. But he had made the mistake of bursting in upon her and then treating her as if she did not exist except to offer him information-and his quarry. The unshaven individual, on the other hand, had done nothing but look at her-with a doltish leer on his face. And the innkeeper was displaying a lamentable lack of concern for the privacy of his guests.

"Do you indeed believe so?" Freyja asked haughtily. "Do you see this gentleman? If not, I suggest you close the door quietly as you leave and allow me and the other guests in this establishment to resume our slumbers."

"If it is all the same to you, ma'am," the gentleman said, eyeing first the closed window and then the bed and then the wardrobe, "I would like to search the room. For your own protection, ma'am. He is a desperate rogue and not at all safe with ladies."

"Search my room?" Freyja inhaled slowly and regarded him along the length of her prominent, slightly hooked Bedwyn nose with such chilly hauteur that he finally looked at her-and saw her for the first time, she believed. "Search my room?" She turned her eyes on the silent innkeeper, who shrank behind the screen of his candle. "Is this the hospitality of the house of which you boasted with such bombastic eloquence upon my arrival here, my man? My brother, the Duke of Bewcastle, will hear about this. He will be interested indeed to learn that you have allowed another guest-if this gentleman is a guest-to bang on the door of his sister's room in the middle of the night and burst in upon her without waiting for a reply merely because he believes that another gentleman dashed in here. And that you have stood by without a word of protest while he makes the impudent, preposterous suggestion that he be allowed to search the room."

"You were obviously mistaken, sir," the landlord said, half hiding beyond the door frame though his candle was still held out far enough to shine into the room. "He must have escaped another way or hidden somewhere else. I beg your pardon, ma'am-my lady, that is. I allowed it because I was afraid for your safety, my lady, and thought the duke would want me to protect you at all costs from desperate rogues."

"Out!" Freyja said once more, her arm outstretched imperiously toward the doorway and three men standing there. "Get out!"

The gray-haired gentleman cast one last wistful look about the room, the unshaven lout leered one last time, and then the innkeeper leaned across them both and pulled the door shut.

Freyja stared at it, her nostrils flared, her arm still outstretched, her finger still pointing. How dared they? She had never been so insulted in her life. If the gray-haired gentleman had uttered one more word or the unshaven yokel had leered one more leer, she would have stridden over there and banged their heads together hard enough to have them seeing wheeling stars for the next week.

She was certainly not going to recommend this inn to any of her acquaintances.

She had almost forgotten about the man in the wardrobe until the door squeaked open and he unfolded himself from within it. He was a tall, long-limbed young man, she saw in the ample light from the window. And very blond. He was probably blue-eyed too, though there was not quite enough light to enable her to verify that theory. She could see quite enough of him, though, to guess that he was by far too handsome for his own good. He was also looking quite inappropriately merry.

"That was a magnificent performance," he said, setting down his Hessian boots and tossing his coat across the truckle bed. "Are you really a sister of the Duke of Bewcastle?"

At the risk of appearing tediously repetitious, Freyja pointed at the door again.

"Out!" she commanded.

But he merely grinned at her and stepped closer.

"But I think not," he said. "Why would a duke's sister be staying at this less-than-grand establishment? And without a maid or chaperone to guard her? It was a wonderful performance, nevertheless."

"I can live without your approval," she said coldly. "I do not know what you have done that is so heinous. I do not want to know. I want you out of this room, and I want you out now. Find somewhere else to cower in fright."

"Fright?" He laughed and set a hand over his heart. "You wound me, my charmer."

He was standing very close, quite close enough for Freyja to realize that the top of her head reached barely to his chin. But she always had been short. She was accustomed to ruling her world from below the level of much of the action.

"I am neither your sweetheart nor your charmer," she told him. "I shall count to three. One."

"For what purpose?" He set his hands on either side of her waist.

"Two."

He lowered his head and kissed her. Right on the lips, his own parted slightly so that there was a shocking sensation of warm, moist intimacy.

Freyja inhaled sharply, drew back one arm, and punched him hard in the nose.

"Ouch!" he said, fingering his nose gingerly and flexing his mouth. He drew his hand away and Freyja had the satisfaction of seeing that she had drawn blood. "Did no one ever teach you that any ordinary lady would slap a man's cheek under such scandalous circumstances, not punch him in the nose?"

"I am no ordinary lady," she told him sternly.

He grinned again and dabbed at his nose with the back of one hand. "You are adorable when you are angry," he said.

"Get out."

"But I cannot do that, you see," he said. "That grandfatherly soul and his pugilistic henchman will be lying in wait for me, and I will be doomed to a leg shackle as surely as I am standing here."

"I do not want to hear any of the sordid details," she said, the significance of his dishabille suddenly borne in upon her. "And why should I care if they are lying in wait?"

"Because, sweetheart," he said, "they would see me coming from your room and draw their own slightly scandalous conclusions, and your reputation would be in tatters."

"It will doubtless survive the shock," she said.

"Have pity on me, O fair one," he said, grinning again-did he take nothing seriously, this man? "I fell for an old trick. There were the elderly gentleman and his granddaughter-a damsel lovely beyond words-in the parlor downstairs with nothing to do to while away the evening hours, and there was I, similarly employed-or unemployed. It was the most natural thing in the world for the grandfather and me to play a few hands of cards while the said damsel watched quietly and sweetly, always in my line of vision. After I had retired for the night and she came to my room to offer further entertainment-I daresay you have noticed that there are no locks on the doors?-was I to point virtuously at the door and order her to be gone? I am made of flesh and blood. As it turned out, it was just fortunate for me that I was still up and still half dressed and that the grandfather did not wait quite long enough before bursting in, all righteous wrath, with the innkeeper and his ferocious-looking thug in tow as witnesses. It was fortunate for me too that they came rushing into the room in a great zealous body, leaving the door unguarded. I made use of the exit thus provided me, dashed along the corridor as far as I could go, and . . . took the only door available to me. This one." He indicated the door of her room with a sweeping gesture of his arm.

"You were going to debauch an innocent girl?" Freyja's bosom swelled.

"Innocent?" He chuckled. "She came to me, sweetheart. Not that I was in any way reluctant, I feel compelled to admit. It is a way some men have of marrying their daughters or granddaughters to advantage, you know-or at least of extorting a hefty sum by way of compensation for lost virtue. They lie in wait in places like this until a poor fool like me happens along, and then they go into action."

"It would serve you right," she said severely, "if you had been caught. I have not the least bit of sympathy for you."

And yet, she thought, it was just the sort of scrape that Alleyne might get into, or Rannulf before his recent marriage to Judith.

"I am going to have to stay here for the rest of the night, I am afraid," the stranger said, looking around. "I don't suppose you would fancy sharing your bed with me?"

Freyja favored him with her coldest, haughtiest look, the one that froze most normal mortals in their tracks.

"No?" He grinned yet again. "It will have to be the truckle bed, then. I'll try not to snore. I hope you do not."

"You will leave this room," she told him, "before I count to three, or I shall scream. Very loudly. One."

"You would not do that, sweetheart," he said. "You would expose yourself as a liar to your erstwhile visitors."

"Two."

"Unless," he said with a chuckle, "you were to explain that I must have tiptoed in and hidden myself in the wardrobe while you still slept and then jumped out on you as soon as I surmised the coast to be clear."

"Three."

He looked at her, raised his eyebrows, waggled them, and turned with studied nonchalance toward the truckle bed.

Freyja screamed.

"Jesu, woman," he said, one hand coming up as if to be clapped over her mouth.

But it must have been clear to him that that would have been akin to shutting the stable door after the proverbial horse had bolted. Freyja had considerable lung capacity. She screamed long and loud without once having to stop to draw breath.

The stranger grabbed up his coat and boots, dashed to the window, threw up the sash, poked his head out, tossed down his garments, and then disappeared.

The drop to the ground must be at least thirty feet, Freyja estimated, feeling a moment's remorse. His mashed remains were probably splashed over the cobbled yard below by now.

The door burst open to reveal a veritable mob of persons in various states of dress and undress, the innkeeper bringing up the rear, the gray-haired gentleman and the unshaven, leering thug with him.

"He burst in upon you after all, did he, my lady?" the gray-haired man asked above a hubbub of voices demanding to know what was the matter and who had been murdered in his bed.

But she despised the man-both on her own account and on that of the stranger whom he had tried to trap by using a woman-if the story was to be believed, that was. It was altogether likely that the stranger had made off with all the man's valuables.

"A mouse!" Freyja cried, gasping and clasping her throat. "A mouse ran across my bed."

There was a great to-do as a few ladies screamed and looked about them for chairs to stand on and a few men dashed into the room and went on a spirited mouse-hunt, under the bed, behind the washstand, behind the wardrobe, under the truckle bed, among Freyja's bags.

Freyja meanwhile was forced into maintaining a part quite unfamiliar to her. She shuddered and looked helpless.

"I daresay you dreamed it, ma'am-my lady, I mean," the innkeeper said at last. "We don't often have no mice in the house. The cats keep 'em out. If there was one, he's gone now, right enough."

Alice had arrived in the midst of the commotion, all wild-eyed terror, probably imagining what she would say to the Duke of Bewcastle-or, more to the point, what he would say to her-if her mistress's throat had been slashed from ear to ear while she was sleeping elsewhere than the room where she was supposed to be.

"Your maid will stay with you, my lady," the landlord said as the other guests drifted away, some indignant at having been so rudely awakened, others clearly disappointed at not having witnessed a mouse caught and executed for its transgression in having run across a bed with a human in it.

"Yes. Thank you." Freyja thought she sounded suitably pathetic.

"I'll sleep on the truckle bed, my lady," Alice announced bravely after everyone else had left and the door was closed. "I am not very afraid of mice, not as long as they stay on the floor. You wake me if it bothers you again and I'll chase it away." She was obviously terrified.

"You will go back to your bed, wherever it was," Freyja told her. "I would like to sleep for what remains of the night."

"But, my lady-" Alice began.

"Do you think I am afraid of a mouse?" Freyja demanded scornfully.

Her maid looked understandably mystified.

"Well, I didn't think you were," she said.

"Go." Freyja pointed to the door. "And may this be the last interruption any of us suffers for the rest of this night."

As soon as she was alone, she hurried to the window, put her head out, and peered downward, fearful of what she would see. He was a rogue and a villain and deserved whatever was coming to him. But surely not death. No, she would feel sorry, even a little guilty, if that had been his fate.

There was no sign of either the stranger or his boots or his coat.

It was then that she noticed the ivy growing thick on the walls.

Well, that was a relief anyway, she thought, closing the window and turning back into the room. Perhaps now she could expect a few hours of peaceful sleep.

But she stopped suddenly before she reached the bed and looked down at herself.

That whole scene-or series of scenes-had been enacted while she was clad in nothing but her nightgown, her feet bare and her hair loose and in a voluminous bush of tangled waves down her back.

Gracious heavens!

And then she smiled.

And then chuckled.

And then sat on the edge of the bed and laughed aloud.

The utter absurdity of it all!

She could not remember when she had enjoyed herself more.

CHAPTER II

Joshua Moore, Marquess of Hallmere, was on his way from Yorkshire, where he had been staying with a friend, to spend a week with his grandmother, the Dowager Lady Potford, in Bath. He could name a dozen other places he would rather be without even stretching his mental faculties, but he was fond of his grandmother and he had not seen her for five years.

He left his horse at a livery stable, found the correct house on Great Pulteney Street, rapped the door knocker against the door, and noted with amusement how the expression on the face of the manservant who opened it changed from one of practiced deference to a look of haughty disdain.

"Sir?" he said, half closing the door and blocking the gap between it and the door frame with his black-clad person. "What might be your business?"

Joshua grinned cheerfully at him. "See if Lady Potford is at home and ask her if she will receive me, will you?" he asked.

The servant looked as if he were about to inform him without even bothering to check that his mistress was from home.

"Tell her that it is Hallmere," Joshua added.

The name obviously meant something. The man's expression underwent another change, becoming a blank, polite mask as he opened the door wide, stood to one side, and bowed.

"If you would wait here, my lord," he murmured.

Joshua stepped onto the black-and-white marble checkered floor of the hall and watched the servant-no doubt the butler-ascend the stairs, his ramrod-straight back bristling with polite disapproval, and disappear from sight. No more than two minutes later he reappeared.

"If you will follow me, my lord," he said from halfway down the stairs. "Her ladyship will receive you."

Lady Potford was in a square, pleasingly appointed sitting room overlooking the wide, classical elegance of Great Pulteney Street. She was still slim and straight-backed and fashionably clad and coiffed, Joshua saw as he strode into the room, though her hair was grayer than he remembered. It was, in fact, quite white at the temples.

"Grandmama!" He would have stridden all the way toward her and caught her in his arms if she had not lifted a lorgnette from a fine gold chain about her neck and raised it to her eyes, looking pained as she did so.

"My dear Joshua," she said, "how foolish of me to have imagined that acquiring the title must surely have made you respectable. It is no wonder Gibbs was wearing his most woodenly incommunicative expression when he came to announce your arrival."

Joshua cast a rueful glance down at himself. Although his coat and pantaloons were decent enough, his Hessian boots lacked all shine and still bore traces of mud from last night. So did his coat actually. His shirt was yesterday's and wrinkled. Much of it was hidden beneath his coat, of course, but there was the lamentable absence of a neckcloth to make it look marginally respectable or a waistcoat to hide more of it. He was also without a hat or gloves. He had not shaved since last evening-or combed his hair for that matter. In plain terms, he must look quite remarkably disreputable. He must look like someone who had just staggered away from an all-night orgy.

Of course, he had kissed two different women last night, but on neither occasion was he given the time or chance to indulge in anything resembling an orgy-more was the pity.

"I ran into a spot of bother at an inn last night," he explained, "and escaped literally as you see me. I did manage to rescue my horse from the inn stable, but, alas, I was forced to abandon all my possessions. My valet will doubtless rescue them and bring them on here later. It is not the first time he will have awoken to find me already flown."

"As I can well believe," Lady Potford said tartly, dropping her lorgnette on its chain. "Well, am I to be given a kiss?"

He grinned, took the remaining three strides toward her, caught her up in his arms, swung her once about, and kissed her heartily on the cheek as he set her back on her feet. She shook her head, half in exasperation, half in acknowledgment that she might have expected as much of him.

"Saucy boy," she murmured.

"It is good to see you, Grandmama," he said. "It has been a long time."

"And whose fault is that?" she asked severely. "You have been gallivanting all over the Continent for years, if gossip and your infrequent letters have reported matters correctly, though how you could have done so while the wars were still being fought I shudder to imagine. It is a pity that it took the death of your uncle to bring you home to England."

The death of his uncle had brought Joshua his title and property and fortune-and all the burdens that came with them.

"It was not quite that, Grandmama," he said. "It was the end of the wars that brought me back to England. With Napoléon Bonaparte imprisoned on Elba and Englishmen free to roam about Europe at will again, there was no more fun to be had from dodging danger."

"Well, no matter," she said, shaking her head again. "You are home now, whatever the reason-or almost home, at least. It is as it ought to be."

"I have no intention of going to Penhallow if that is what you have in mind," he told her. "There are too many other places to go and other experiences to be lived."

"Oh, do sit down, Joshua. You are too tall to look up at." She seated herself. "You are the Marquess of Hallmere now. You belong at Penhallow-it is yours. You have duties and responsibilities there. It really is time you went back there."

"Grandmama." He grinned at her as he took the chair she had indicated and ran one hand ruefully down the stubble of one cheek. "If you intend to preach duty at me for the next week, I shall have to ride off into the sunset in search of another scrape to get into."

"You doubtless would not have to look far," she said. "Scrapes seem to come riding in search of you, Joshua. Your eyes are bloodshot. I suppose you did not sleep last night. I will not ask what else you did do last night apart from riding toward Bath in such a shockingly disheveled state."

He yawned until his jaws cracked-a most unmannerly thing to do in a lady's presence-and at the same moment his stomach rumbled quite audibly.

"You look an absolute mess, Joshua," his grandmother observed bluntly. "When did you last eat?"

"Sometime last evening," he admitted rather sheepishly. "I was forced to abandon my purse too, you see." He had been forced to make a few intricate and time-consuming detours about tollgates on his way.

"It must have been a large spot of bother indeed," she said, getting to her feet and pulling on the bell rope beside the hearth. "I am almost tempted to ask if she was at least pretty, but it would be quite beneath my dignity to do so. I shall leave you to the ministrations of Gibbs. He will feed you and shave you and then you may wish to sleep. There will be little else for you to do until your valet arrives with a change of clothes. I have several calls to make."

"Food and a shave and a sleep, in that order, sound quite like heaven to me," he said agreeably.

Lady Holt-Barron reveled happily in the coup of having enticed Lady Freyja Bedwyn, sister of the Duke of Bewcastle, to Bath as her houseguest. Charlotte was more pleased just to have a friend of her own age there.

"Mama would insist upon coming to Bath again, Freyja," she explained as the two of them strolled in the Pump Room early on the morning following Freyja's arrival while Lady Holt-Barron, ensconced at the water table with a glass of the famous waters in her hand, beamed with pride as she conversed with a group of acquaintances similarly occupied. "She believes that a month of the waters puts her in good health for all the rest of the year. I suppose she may be right, but Papa and Frederick and the boys have gone shooting, as they always do at this time of the year, and I would far prefer to be with them. I am so thankful you agreed to come."

There was not much opportunity for such private exchanges. The Pump Room was the fashionable place to gather each morning for exercise and gossip-and for the drinking of the waters for those so inclined-but really, Freyja discovered, the amount of exercise one gained from walking about the high-ceilinged, elegantly appointed Georgian room was minimal. In fact, one took a few steps and then stopped to greet acquaintances and converse with them for a few minutes before taking a few more steps and stopping again. And because she was a new arrival, and a titled one at that, she found that everyone wished to speak with her, to greet her, and to quiz her for news from beyond the confines of Bath.

The day proceeded in no more energetic a fashion. They went shopping on Milsom Street after breakfast. Freyja had never delighted in that almost-universal feminine obsession. She shuffled from dress shops to milliners' shops to jewelers' shops in Lady Holt-Barron's wake, an enthusiastic Charlotte at her side, and wondered what the reaction of all around her would be if she were to stop in the middle of the pavement and open her mouth and scream-as lustily as she had done two nights ago. She found herself smiling at the memory. She had never been a screamer, but there had been an enormous exhilaration in letting loose with that one and seeing the grinning, overconfident stranger dive out the window.

God's gift to womanhood put to rout.

"Oh, you do like it, Freyja," Charlotte said, noticing the smile. She was sporting a dashing hat with a startlingly bright scarlet plume in place of her own more modest bonnet. "I do too, and I do not believe I can resist buying it even though I already have more hats than I will ever need. Shall I, Mama?"

"If Lady Freyja likes it," Lady Holt-Barron said, "then it must be all the crack, Charlotte. And indeed it looks very handsome indeed."

During the afternoon they paid a few social calls and then took tea at the Upper Assembly Rooms, where there were more people to converse with. The Earl of Willett was there-he was staying in Bath with his uncle, from whom it was rumored he was like to inherit a hefty fortune. He had paid pointed attention to Freyja ever since Jerome's death, but she had never encouraged him. He was short and sandy-haired and sandy-eyebrowed and blond-eyelashed-though it was not his undistinguished looks that made him unattractive to her as much as his humorless, always rigidly proper demeanor. After all, she was no beauty herself. But she was never rigidly proper.

In the setting of Bath, though, where most of the inhabitants were elderly, she had to admit that the earl's youth was an attraction in itself. She greeted him more warmly that she would have done if they had met in London, and he seated himself at Lady Holt-Barron's table and made himself agreeable to all three ladies for well over half an hour.

"My dear Lady Freyja," Lady Holt-Barron said after he had taken his leave of them, her eyebrows raised significantly, "I do believe you have made a conquest."

"Ah, but, ma'am," Freyja said haughtily, "he has not."

Charlotte laughed. "I believe it would be a waste of your time, Mama," she said, "to try playing matchmaker for Freyja."

In the evening they returned to the Upper Rooms for a concert. Freyja was not averse to music. Indeed, there was much that had the power to enthrall her. Operatic sopranos did not. But, as luck would have it, the guest of honor was a soprano with an Italian name and a large bosom and a large voice, which she displayed at full volume throughout her recital. Perhaps she believed, Freyja thought, her eardrums contracting against the piercing high notes, that superior volume was to be equated with superior quality.

The Earl of Willett somehow contrived to sit beside her during the second half after conversing with her during the interval.

"One's hearing could be permanently affected by a performance such as this," she commented.

Alleyne or Rannulf would have answered her in kind and they would have found themselves after a few such exchanges fighting to contain the laughter attempting to bellow forth.

"Yes, indeed," the earl agreed solemnly. "It is divine, is it not?"

And this was only the first day.

The second began the same way, the only difference being that yesterday morning the buzz of excitement had been over Freyja's arrival in Bath, whereas today it was over that of the Marquess of Hallmere. Everyone waited with eager anticipation for his appearance in the Pump Room with the Dowager Lady Potford, his maternal grandmother. Freyja knew Lady Potford but had no acquaintance with the marquess. When the lady arrived, though, she came alone. The air of disappointment in the room was really quite palpable.

"He is a young man," Lady Holt-Barron explained, "and is said to be very personable. He is, of course, one of the most eligible bachelors in England." She looked archly at Freyja.

And so he would be deemed personable even if he looked like a gargoyle, Freyja supposed.

It took the arrival of someone new-preferably someone titled-to titillate the spirits of these people, Freyja thought with a great inward sigh as they left the Pump Room to return home for breakfast. She had surely made a dreadful mistake in coming to Bath. She would be insane within a fortnight-within a week! But she remembered the alternative-being at Lindsey Hall, awaiting the imminent announcement from Alvesley-and decided that she must somehow bear her exile for at least a month. Besides, it would be unmannerly to leave the Holt-Barrons so soon.

She could not, however, endure another morning of shopping. She made the excuse of some unwritten letters not to accompany Charlotte and her mother and did indeed, as a salve to her conscience, sit down at the escritoire in her room and write to Morgan, her younger sister. She found herself describing what had happened at the inn where she had spent a night on the way to Bath, embellishing the story considerably, though indeed the bare facts were sensational enough in themselves. Morgan would appreciate the humor of it all and could be trusted not to show the letter to Wulfric.

Wulf would certainly not be amused.

It was a lovely day for early September, if a little breezy. Freyja thought wistfully of a ride-the hills beyond Bath were made to be galloped among. But if she sent a servant to hire a horse and waited to have it brought around, Charlotte and her mother might already have returned from their shopping trip before it came and there would be a great deal of fuss over sending a groom with her for protection. She had never been able to endure having servants trailing along behind her while she rode. She decided to walk instead, and set out alone as soon as she had changed, her dark green walking dress swishing about her legs as she strode down the steep hill from the house on the Circus. Her bushy fair hair was confined in a coiffure that was almost tame beneath her feathered hat, which sat jauntily to one side of her head.

She strode through the center of Bath, nodding at a few acquaintances and hoping that by some ill fortune she would not encounter her hostesses and be forced to spend the rest of the morning in the shops with them, took a shortcut through the Abbey churchyard past the Pump Room and the Abbey itself, turned to walk along the river, and then noticed up ahead the very grand Pulteney Bridge, which she had forgotten, since she had not been in Bath for many years. On the other side of the bridge, she remembered now, was the splendidly wide and elegant Great Pulteney Street. And were not Sydney Gardens at the end of that?

She had not intended to walk quite so far, but she felt as if she were drawing air deep into her lungs for the first time in days, and she had no desire to return to the house just yet. She turned to walk across the bridge, looking briefly in the little shop windows as she passed, and then discovered that memory had not deceived her. A short distance ahead of her stretched one of the most magnificent sights of an admittedly magnificent city.

At the end of Great Pulteney Street she turned onto Sydney Place, intending to cross over to the Gardens. But then she noticed the sign indicating that Sutton Street was to her left and frowned and stopped abruptly. It did not take more than a few seconds to realize why that name sounded familiar. It was on Sutton Street that Miss Martin had her school for girls. Freyja hesitated, grimaced, hesitated again, and then struck off firmly along Sutton Street. She even knew the number of the house.

Five minutes later she was standing in a shabby genteel parlor, awaiting the arrival of Miss Martin herself. This was definitely not a good idea, Freyja decided. She had never come here in person before or written-or even allowed her solicitor to use her name.

Miss Martin did not keep her waiting long. She was as pale and tight-lipped and straight-backed as Freyja remembered her. Her dark gray eyes looked as steadily into Freyja's as they had ever looked, but now she dared to look with hostility only barely masked behind civility.

"Lady Freyja." She inclined her head but did not curtsy. She did not offer a chair or refreshments or express surprise or gratification. She did not point at the door and order her visitor to leave. She merely looked, an expression of polite inquiry in her face.

Well, Freyja thought, she liked the woman the better for it.

"I heard that you had a school here," Freyja said, masking her own embarrassment with more than usual haughtiness. "I was passing by and decided to call on you."

Asinine words!

Miss Martin did not dignify them with a reply. She merely inclined her head.

"To see how you did," Freyja added. "To see if there was anything your school was in need of. Anything I could provide."

It was amazement that was in Miss Martin's eyes now-and far more open hostility.

"I am doing very well, I thank you," she said. "I have both paying pupils and charity pupils and several good teachers. I also have a benefactor who has been both kind and generous to me and to my girls. I have no need of your charity, Lady Freyja."

"Well." Freyja had taken note of the barely concealed shabbiness of the place and decided that the benefactor was not nearly generous enough. Or that the person acting for the benefactor had different notions than his employer of what adequate funding was. "I thought it worth making the offer."

"Thank you." Miss Martin's voice quivered with an emotion her person did not show. "I can only hope that you have changed in nine years, Lady Freyja, and that you have come here out of a genuine goodness of heart rather than out of a malicious hope of finding me desperate and destitute. I am neither. Even without my benefactor's generosity my school is beginning to pay its way. I certainly do not need your assistance-or any further visit from you. Good day. My pupils are missing their history lesson."

A short while later Freyja was walking in Sydney Gardens, her heart still beating erratically, her ears still ringing from the rebuke and the obvious dislike with which it had been delivered.

It must not be a fashionable time to be here, she concluded with some relief. She passed very few other people as she walked the meandering paths, and no one at all that she knew. This was not, she supposed, the place to be walking without a maid trailing decently along behind. But she had never cared about the proprieties and at this particular moment she was very glad indeed to be quite alone. She sat on a rustic bench for a while, close to an ancient oak, feeling the sunshine on her face and the merest suggestion of autumn in the air, and watching a pair of squirrels foraging around for anything visitors to the park might have left behind by way of food. They were remarkably tame. But she sat very still anyway. She did not want to frighten them away.

She had frightened away a whole string of governesses when she was a girl. She had never taken kindly to being confined, to having to do as she was told, to giving her mind to lessons she found excruciatingly boring, to accepting the authority of insipid gentlewomen. She had been a horror, in fact.

Wulf had always found her governesses other employment after dismissing them or accepting their resignation, and Freyja had never given them another thought. Until, that was, Miss Martin had shown unexpected spirit by walking away from Lindsey Hall-literally walking-her head high, having refused any assistance whatsoever from Wulf.

For once in her life Freyja had been genuinely upset by a governess-an ex-governess, in this particular case. She had tolerated the next one, even though she was the most insipid of all, for the rest of her time in the schoolroom.

It was only by accident that she had heard of Miss Martin again. She had opened a school in Bath, but she was struggling dreadfully and must soon close it down. The story had been told maliciously to Freyja by an acquaintance who had expected her to be delighted. She had not been. She had sought out a solicitor, disabused him of the idea that she needed a man to accompany and do business for her, and paid him very well indeed to find Miss Martin, determine the needs of her school, and announce to her that an anonymous benefactor was prepared to answer those needs, provided she could prove to an inspector each year that the education she provided her pupils was up to an acceptable standard.

Since then Freyja had warmed to her unaccustomed role as a carer of deserving humanity and had sent Miss Martin several charity pupils and even one needy teacher, providing all the necessary funding for their keep.

Poor Miss Martin would have an apoplexy if she knew the identity of her benefactor.

And she herself would be mortified indeed, Freyja thought as she absently watched the squirrels, if anyone were to discover her secret softness. For softness it was. Any governess who could not control her charges deserved to be dismissed. And any dismissed governess who was too proud to accept her employer's assistance deserved to starve.

She chuckled softly. How she had liked Miss Martin this morning. How she would have despised her if she had fawned all over her former tormentor.

And then a scream jerked her back to reality-a feminine scream, coming from somewhere down the hill and around a bend in the winding path. Trees hid the screamer from Freyja's view, but there were the distinct sounds of a scuffle, a deep male voice, another less frantic scream, and a high-pitched female voice. The squirrels scampered to the nearest tree and shot up its bark to disappear among branches and foliage.

Freyja surged to her feet. She was female herself. She was small. She had no one with her, not even a maid. She was in a park that seemed almost deserted and was made even more secluded by the hills and trees of which it was composed. It was certainly not the occasion for heroics. Any normal woman in this particular situation would have turned right and hurried away in the opposite direction as fast as her legs would carry her.

Freyja was not any normal woman.

She turned left and strode down the path, almost breaking into a run as she did so. She did not have far to go. As she rounded the bend, a stretch of lawn came into view just ahead. On it stood a great tall beast of a man-a gentleman, no less-clutching a small slip of a serving girl. Her arms were imprisoned against his chest and he was lowering his head with the lascivious intent of claiming his prize-though to complete the process he would doubtless be dragging her off into the bushes within the next few moments.

"Take your hands off her!" Freyja commanded, lengthening her stride. "You uncouth villain. Let her go."

They sprang apart and turned identically startled faces her way. And then the girl-wise wench-screamed again and made off down the hill as fast as her feet would carry her and did not look back.

Freyja did not slow her pace. She strode onward until she was almost toe-to-toe with the villain, drew back her arm, and punched that assaulter of female innocence in the nose.

"Ouch!" he said, his hand jerking up to cover the offended organ. And then his watering eyes focused on her. "Well, now, I thought I recognized that gentle feminine touch. It is you, is it?"

He was fashionably dressed in a blue riding coat with buff breeches and shining top boots, a tall hat on his head. But with a shock of recognition Freyja noticed the long limbs and perfectly proportioned body, the very blond hair beneath the hat, and the very blue eyes of the man she had last seen diving from her inn window three nights ago. Adonis and devil all rolled into one. She drew an audible breath.

"Yes, it is I," she said. "And I am sorry in my heart now that I did not reveal your hiding place in the wardrobe to that gray-haired gentleman and abandon you to your fate."

"No, you are not, are you, sweetheart?" he asked, having the gall to grin at her, watering eyes and reddening nose notwithstanding. "How unsporting of you."

"You dastardly, cowardly villain," she said. "You wretched debaucher of innocence. You are beneath contempt. I shall report you and have you run out of Bath and away from the company of respectable people."

"Will you?" He leaned a little toward her, his eyes dancing with watery merriment. "And whom will you report, my charmer?"

She swelled with indignation. "I shall discover your identity," she said. "You will not be able to show your face outdoors in Bath again without my seeing you and finding out who you are."

"Well," he said, "we both know that you are not a duke's daughter, do we not? Where is your retinue of guardians and hangers-on?"

"You will not divert my attention," she said severely. "Do you think that any serving girl is yours to take merely because she is a serving girl? And merely because you are too handsome for your own good?"

"Am I?" He grinned again. "I suppose you are in no mood to allow me to explain, are you, sweetheart?"

"I am not your sweetheart," she said. "And I need no explanation beyond the evidence of my own ears and my own eyes. I heard the girl scream and I saw you with her clutched in your arms, about to have your wicked way with her. I am not stupid."

He crossed his arms over his chest and regarded her with dancing eyes and pursed lips. She was very tempted to punch him again.

"No," he said, "perhaps not. But are you not afraid that with my wicked will freshly thwarted and my raging appetites left unappeased I may choose to pounce upon you instead?"

"I invite you to try," she said coldly. "You would, I promise you, return home with more bruises than you would find comfortable."

"A tempting invitation." He laughed. "But, of course, you can scream far more loudly than that wench who just escaped my clutches. I think I would be wise not to risk it. Good day to you, ma'am."

He touched his hand to the brim of his hat, made her a mocking half-bow, and strode at a leisurely, long-legged pace down over the lawn to the path at the bottom.

Freyja was left victor of the field.

Joshua chuckled softly to himself as he strode along. Who the devil was she?

He had thought of her a few times in the last couple of days, every time with amusement. She had looked quite enticingly shapely in her nightgown. Her fair hair, all wild, unconfined waves about her shoulders and down her back, had done nothing to lessen her appeal. Her anger, her boldness, her total lack of self-consciousness or fear, had aroused his interest. Her unexpected refusal to let him call her bluff had won his admiration, even though he would probably have broken his neck going through that window if he had not noticed the ivy just in time.

His first impression this morning had been that she was ugly. Not from the neck down. She was small, but in her well-cut walking dress she had looked quite as shapely as she had the other night. Even her hair, confined decently today beneath her fetching little hat but still managing to look wavy and rather wild, was not unattractive. But her eyebrows were quite incongruously dark in contrast to the almost blond color of her hair, and her nose was prominent, with a bend in it. She had fierce green eyes and an unfashionably dark complexion.

There was nothing delicately feminine about her facial features. She was not beautiful, or even pretty. But she was not ugly either. There was too much character behind those looks for that. If he were to be charitable, he might call her handsome. If he were to be honest, he would call her attractive.

Whoever had taught her to punch had certainly done his job well. If many more of those landed on his nose, Joshua thought ruefully, he might well acquire a bend in it to match her own.

A week in Bath was going to seem endless indeed, he had thought just an hour ago, pleased as he was to see his grandmother again after so long. Yesterday, although he had taken a stroll up to the Pulteney Bridge and back and had gone for a ride, as he had done this morning, and then taken a shortcut from the livery stables back through Sydney Gardens to Great Pulteney Street as he was doing again now, he had spent altogether too long indoors, being sociable to his grandmother's visitors during the afternoon and accompanying her to Mrs. Carbret's private card party in the evening rather than to the concert at the Upper Rooms.

It still felt strange to be presented to people as the Marquess of Hallmere even though he had been in possession of the title for longer than six months, and to see the added deference in people's manner once his title had been mentioned.

He had never wanted the title or any of the trappings that had come along with it-least of all Penhallow, the marquess's seat in Cornwall. He had lived there from the age of six to the age of eighteen, and had hated almost every moment of it. The orphaned son of the marquess's brother, he had not been made to feel welcome at his uncle's home. There had been a few visits to his grandmother and to his maternal uncle, Lord Potford, her son, over the years, but he had never complained to them or asked to stay indefinitely-he had been too proud and perhaps too stubborn for that. He had left Penhallow as soon as he was able, though. At the age of eighteen he had begged a local carpenter to take him on as an apprentice, since he had always loved working with wood, and he had moved into the village of Lydmere across the river from Penhallow. He had been happy there for five years, until circumstances had forced him to leave.

The title, Penhallow, and all the emotional burdens he had left behind him in Cornwall felt like a particularly heavy millstone about his neck. He had dismissed his uncle's steward six months ago and installed his own. He read the monthly reports and wrote back with specific instructions when his personal input was needed. Apart from that, he ignored the place. He never wanted to see it again.

He would stay here in Bath for the full week, he decided as he neared his grandmother's house, but not a day longer. He had friends all over the country and now he had ample funds with which to travel-the one aspect of his changed circumstances that he admittedly liked. He would spend the winter moving about the country, staying a week here, two there. He would think about a more permanent occupation when next spring came.

He grinned to himself as he took the stairs inside the house two at a time. That little Amazon from the park the daughter of a duke, indeed! But she must be staying somewhere in Bath. She probably showed herself at some of the fashionable places even if she was not in the forefront of society-the Pump Room, the Assembly Rooms, the Royal Crescent, for example. He was almost bound to meet her again-and discover who she really was.

Perhaps he would flirt with her. That should be endlessly amusing, given her opinion of him and her bristling temper. He must be watching for that fist next time, though. He had already been taken unawares twice too many times by it.

As he let himself into his room and tossed his hat and whip onto the bed, he remembered her threat to find him and to report him to . . . Well, to someone in authority, he supposed. It might not be wise to try calling her bluff this time. He must be prepared for a few interesting moments when they did come face-to-face in public. Of course, he could beat her at her own game. . . .

Joshua sat down on the side of the bed and hauled off his riding boots without bothering to summon his valet. He hoped she did not plan to leave Bath within the next day or two. She might be his one hope of avoiding death via boredom.

Devil take it, he thought, touching his nose gingerly-it was still sore.

CHAPTER III

No, indeed I do not drink the waters," Lady Potford told her grandson the following morning as the carriage they rode in passed the Abbey and approached the Pump Room. "Do you think I wish to kill myself?"

"But are they not healing waters?" he asked with a twinkle in his eye. "Are they not the reason so many people flock here?"

"Most people, once they have tasted the waters," she said, "are wise enough to decide that they prefer the infirmities with which they are comfortably familiar. Actually bathing in the waters, of course, is somewhat out of fashion. No, Joshua, one comes to the Pump Room each morning, not for one's health, but in order to see and be seen. It is the thing to do when one is in Bath."

"Like promenading in Hyde Park when one is in London," he said, vaulting out of the carriage as soon as the door was open and setting down the steps himself before handing his grandmother down. "Except that that is done at teatime, a far more civilized hour than the crack of dawn."

"Ah, that hint of early autumn," she said, pausing on the step and inhaling the air. "My favorite season-and my favorite time of day."

She was dressed with consummate elegance-as was he. When in Bath one must do what the Bathians did, he had concluded yesterday. And that meant participating in all the tedious public displays that were so much a part of the daily routine here, starting with the early morning stroll in the Pump Room.

He wondered if the dark-browed little virago would be here. If so, he would discover who she was-as she would discover his identity. That might lead to interesting developments. At least his morning would not be dull if she was here-even if she chose to give him the cut direct.

She was not there. But a whole host of other people were, and large numbers of them had not yet been introduced to him. He felt like someone masquerading as a grand hero as people converged on his grandmother to congratulate her on having her grandson to stay with her, and remained to be presented to him. He resigned himself to smiling and conversing and exercising his charm.

He grimaced inwardly when he saw Mrs. Lumbard bearing down upon him. She was one of his uncle's neighbors in Cornwall, and one of his aunt's bosom bows. She had never had the time of day for him while he was growing up at Penhallow, especially after, at the age of ten or so, he had taught her daughter a swearword he had learned in the stables and she had used it in her governess's hearing. He had been even farther beneath her notice as a carpenter. Now she was approaching him, all heaving bosom and ample hips and nodding bonnet plumes, like a ship in full sail, that same daughter in tow, and sank into a gracious curtsy.

"Lady Potford," she said, addressing his grandmother though she was looking at him, "how very gratified you must be to have Hallmere with you at last. Such a handsome, distinguished gentleman he has grown into. Has he not, Petunia, my love? And I remember the time when he was such a dear mischief." She simpered at her own joke. "My dearest Corinne used to weep tears of despair over him. My dear Hallmere, I suppose it is too much to hope that you remember me?"

"I remember you well, ma'am," he said, bowing. "And Miss Lumbard too. How do you do?"

"We are both tolerably well," Mrs. Lumbard replied, "if I ignore a few twinges of the rheumatics, which are always at their worst this time of year. But I never complain. How very kind of you to ask. My dearest Corinne will be beside herself with delight when she knows I have seen you. Every day she expects you to come home. She is quite pining for a sight of you."

Joshua thought it altogether more likely that his aunt was holding her breath in the hope that he would never come, even though she had written more than once recently to invite him home. It had struck him as faintly amusing that the letters had been phrased just that way-as gracious invitations to his own home. She need not fear. She was welcome to live out her life there undisturbed by him.

He inclined his head stiffly to Mrs. Lumbard.

"Ah," she said, suddenly distracted, "there are Lady Holt-Barron and her daughter and Lady Freyja Bedwyn. I simply must go and pay my respects to them. Come along, Petunia."

Joshua offered his grandmother his arm again and prepared to stroll onward. But he glanced in the direction of the new arrivals and stopped abruptly, his lips pursed.

Well! Here was something to enliven what had promised to be an intolerably dull morning. Here she was.

She was dressed today in a russet walking dress and bonnet and looked tamer than she had yesterday. She also had a look of bored hauteur on her face as if, like him, she would far prefer to be somewhere else altogether more lively.

"Who is the lady-" he began to ask his grandmother.

But the lady in question caught sight of him even as he spoke. She held his gaze, her eyes growing noticeably more steely despite the distance between them.

And then he heard the echo of what Mrs. Lumbard had just said-and Lady Freyja Bedwyn.

That prominent nose went up in the air and with it the aggressively set chin. The green eyes grew arctic.

Joshua was already enjoying himself.

"-in russet with the two other ladies Mrs. Lumbard is approaching?" he asked, completing his question.

"Lady Freyja Bedwyn?" his grandmother asked, following the line of his gaze. "Lady Holt-Barron has been displaying her all over Bath since she arrived a few days ago, like some sort of trophy. Which is, of course, what I will be accused of doing with you."

"Lady Freyja Bedwyn?" he asked.

The woman was tapping an impatient tattoo on the floor with one foot. She was taking no notice at all of Mrs. Lumbard, who was fawning all over her, but was still gazing narrow-eyed at Joshua.

"The Duke of Bewcastle's sister," his grandmother explained.

Uh-oh. Joshua grinned slowly and deliberately.

Lady Freyja Bedwyn was leaving her group without a word or a backward glance and was moving purposefully across the room with long, manly strides. The inappropriateness of her movements in such confined, genteel surroundings drew attention even before she came to a halt less than a foot in front of Joshua, glaring at him with what he could now correctly interpret as aristocratic disdain.

"Lady Potford," she said without taking her eyes off him, "would you be so good as to inform me of the identity of the gentleman who is with you?"

There was a brief silence, the only indication his grandmother gave of the surprise she must be feeling at this quite unmannerly demand.

"Hello, sweetheart," Joshua murmured, and thought that if Lady Freyja Bedwyn only had a chimney in the top of her head she might not look quite as if she were about to explode.

"Lady Freyja," his grandmother said with admirable poise, "may I have the honor of presenting my grandson, Joshua Moore, Marquess of Hallmere? Lady Freyja Bedwyn, Joshua."

She glared at him with flared nostrils, apparently quite uncowed by what she had just learned. He returned her look with amused admiration. By God, she did not mind making a spectacle of herself before a large audience of Bath society. And the buzz of conversation had indeed hushed considerably as heads turned to see what it was that was threatening to disturb the genteel routine of the morning stroll.

"I believe," Lady Freyja said in strident tones that must be carrying clearly to every farthest corner of the room, "he would be more appropriately named the Marquess of Hellmere." She pointed one kid-gloved finger directly at his chest. "This man does not even deserve the name of gentleman."

There was an audible gasp from all around them, followed by shushing sounds. No one wanted to miss a word of this delicious scandal that was developing before their very eyes.

"My dear Lady Freyja-" his grandmother began, sounding quite dismayed.

"This man," Lady Freyja continued, "likes to amuse himself by preying upon innocent, helpless women."

There was a swell of shocked sound followed again by more frantic shushing sounds.

"I do beg you, Lady Freyja-" His grandmother tried again.

Lady Freyja poked her finger, like a blunt dagger, into Joshua's chest.

"I warned him that I would discover his identity and expose him to Bath society for the villain he is. I vowed I would have him ejected from the society of decent people." She poked him with her finger again. "If you thought I was bluffing, my man, you were sorely mistaken."

"Again," he said, smiling sheepishly and calculating that the expression would further enrage her. "I really ought to know better by now, ought I not?"

There was no further pretense of anyone's strolling. Even the water tables had been deserted. Joshua realized that he and his grandmother and Lady Freyja Bedwyn had become isolated in the middle of a rough circle that had formed about them. Their audience seemed about equally divided between those who were acutely embarrassed that a lady should behave with such lack of decorum and those who gazed with hostile eyes at the man who preyed upon innocent, helpless women.

But someone was coming to their rescue-or to join the fray-a man with self-important air come to deal with the sudden crisis. Joshua recognized him as James King, the master of ceremonies at the Upper Assembly Rooms, who had called upon him two afternoons ago at Great Pulteney Street. It was the man's job to maintain Bath's gentility and see to it that every visitor was welcomed and properly entertained-and that every visitor kept the strict rules of decorum.

Even marquesses and the daughters of dukes.

"My lady," he said, addressing Lady Freyja, "surely you are mistaken. This gentleman is the Marquess of Hallmere and grandson of Lady Potford, a longtime resident of our city. Perhaps this slight misunderstanding can be cleared up quietly outside?"

His voice was courteous, but it held a thread of steel. He took Lady Freyja by the elbow, but she shrugged him off and looked at him along the length of her nose as if he were a worm.

"This slight misunderstanding?" she said with haughty emphasis. "A peer of the realm assaulted a poor serving girl on a lonely stretch of lawn in Sydney Gardens yesterday despite her piteous screams for help and was about to drag her off into the bushes to complete his wicked designs on her while I witnessed all, and it is a slight misunderstanding? It is something to be hushed up discreetly beyond the confines of this room? I do not believe so. This matter will be cleared up here and now and before the respectable citizens of Bath. Have the courage to perform the duty for which you are employed and expel this man from Bath without further ado."

There was a smattering of applause from the gathered spectators.

Joshua grinned at Lady Freyja, who was looking magnificent enough to be a queen of the Amazons. He even made a slight kissing gesture with his lips.

Mr. King sighed and turned his attention to Joshua.

"Do you have anything to say on this matter, my lord?" he asked.

"Yes, indeed," Joshua said. "The lady has a vivid and lurid imagination."

She looked at him with haughty contempt. "I might have predicted," she said, "that you would deny it all."

"Did you see Lady Freyja in Sydney Gardens yesterday, my lord?" the master of ceremonies asked.

"Most certainly I did," Joshua said. "She was alone and wearing a dark green walking dress with a feathered hat. And she punched me in the nose."

There was another gasp from the spectators, followed by a buzzing, followed by the inevitable shushing noises.

Mr. King looked pained.

"For nothing at all, my lord?" he asked. "You expect us all to believe that she struck you, a stranger to her, for no reason whatsoever?"

"She came rushing upon me when I was holding a serving girl in my arms," Joshua explained. "Probably she had heard the girl scream a few moments before. She appeared to have concluded that I was about to-ahem!-have my wicked way with the wench."

"But you were not, my lord?" the master of ceremonies asked.

In the short pause Joshua allowed to fall before he replied, he could see the suddenly arrested look in Lady Freyja's eyes, the dawning realization that perhaps she had made a ghastly mistake. That she had just made a prize ass of herself, in fact.

"A squirrel had stepped into the girl's path as she crossed a lawn in the park," Joshua explained. "It startled her and she stopped abruptly. But instead of bounding away as any sensible squirrel would have done under the circumstances, it attempted to take refuge under her skirts and she screamed. By the time I hurried to the rescue, having witnessed the whole catastrophe, the poor girl was hysterical, though the squirrel had long ago recovered its wits and made off for the nearest tree. I, ah, gathered her into my arms to steady her."

He had, of course, been about to kiss her too, with her full and enthusiastic compliance, but there was no need to add those incriminating details.

"It was at that moment," Joshua added, "that Lady Freyja Bedwyn rushed onto the scene, frightened the poor serving girl into screaming again and taking flight, and punched me in the nose."

Mr. King transferred his gaze from Joshua to Lady Freyja. So, Joshua estimated, did everyone else in the Pump Room.

"Could this be the explanation of what you witnessed, my lady?" he asked.

To do her credit, she did not crumble or look as if she were searching the Pump Room floor for a deep hole to crawl into. Neither did she bluster or make a further idiot of herself by trying to insist upon the truth of her story. Her eyes narrowed and she continued to stare haughtily at Joshua.

"Why did you not explain all this to me yesterday?" she asked imperiously.

"Now let me see." He lifted one hand and stroked his chin with his thumb and forefinger. "I asked if I might be permitted to explain, and you replied to the effect that you knew perfectly well what you had seen and what you had heard. You added, I believe, that you were not stupid. It would have been quite ungallant of me to contradict you."

There was a titter from some members of their audience.

Her eyes grew steely again. "This was deliberate," she said. "You led me into this quite deliberately."

"I beg your pardon for contradicting a lady." He made her an elegant half-bow. "But I believe it was you who approached me this morning."

"It would appear," the master of ceremonies said, raising his voice slightly, looking about him with genial affability, and speaking with firm finality, "that this altercation has been over a slight misunderstanding. We must have you shake hands, my lord, my lady, so that all will see that there is no remaining rancor between the two of you."

Joshua, with a deliberately courtly gesture extended his right hand, palm up. He smiled. He was enjoying himself enormously. He was very glad she had not collapsed into an ignominious heap of feminine mortification-that would have lessened his pleasure in besting her. Her nostrils flared again, her chin came up and with it that splendid aristocratic nose, and like a queen conferring a favor on some poor inferior mortal, she set her hand on his.

He closed his own about it and raised it to his lips.

Again there was a smattering of applause, and then everyone got back to the serious business of strolling and gossiping or-for the intrepid few-drinking the waters.

"I will get you for this," she murmured.

"The pleasure will be all mine, I do assure you, my lady," he murmured in return-and smiled at her with the full force of his considerable charm.

Lady Holt-Barron was so severely discomposed by the scene in the Pump Room that she was quite unable to go shopping after breakfast. Indeed, even her breakfast had to be reduced to dry toast and weak tea, the only items she thought herself capable of digesting. She retired to her room afterward to lie quietly upon her bed.

"Oh, dear," Freyja said to Charlotte when they were alone in the morning room, "I forget that there are ladies with such inconveniences as delicate constitutions. Ought I to apologize to your mama, do you suppose?"

But Charlotte had turned purple in the face and was attempting to stuff her linen handkerchief into her mouth. Nothing, though, would stifle the laughter that came bubbling out of her.

"Oh," she wailed, "if Mama hears me she will have a major fit of the vapors and we will end up having to send for the physician."

She stifled further whoops as best she could.

"It might all have seemed like the farce at the end of the drama to you," Freyja complained. "I could cheerfully have died."

"If you could just have seen yourself," Charlotte said. "Stalking across the Pump Room like an avenging angel while all the dowagers gaped after you. And then speaking to the marquess just as the headmistress at my school used to talk to us when we were in major trouble. And jabbing at his chest with your finger."

But the memories were too much for her composure. She spread her handkerchief over her face and rocked with merriment.

"He knew that I would do it," Freyja said, thinking with indignation of the grinning marquess, whose immaculate good looks had only fueled her wrath. "That was why he did not insist upon telling me the truth in the park."

"And if you could have seen Mama trying to make herself invisible," Charlotte continued, "and that horrid Mrs. Lumbard swelling to twice her size and Miss Lumbard's eyes fit to fall out of her head and-oh, everyone." She went off into whoops again.

"At least," Freyja said, "I have given everyone enough to talk about and write home about for a month or more. The letters will all be book-length, I daresay."

"Oh, don't!" Charlotte rocked back in her chair.

"The Pump Room is going to seem deadly dull forever after," Freyja said, "even to those who have never realized that it always is. They will all be looking to me for an encore. I will be famous."

Charlotte giggled.

"Actually," Freyja admitted, "I would have loved nothing better, Charlotte, than to have punched the Marquess of Hallmere in the nose again for leading me into that trap. But I really thought I had better not. Perhaps he will offer me some provocation to do it tomorrow."

She looked at her friend with a frown for a few moments before her lips twitched at the corners and she first chuckled and then laughed aloud.

He was a worthy foe. She must admit that much about him.

Lady Holt-Barron left her room sometime after noon, looking pale and martyred, though she smiled cheerfully and assured her daughter and Freyja that she was quite rested and had only the smallest of headaches remaining. She did not believe she would go out calling on anyone during the afternoon, though, and she did not advise the younger ladies to go out walking. She rather fancied it was going to rain, and they would both catch chills if they were caught out in it.

She looked sharply at Freyja for a moment.

"My dear Lady Freyja," she asked, "what on earth were you doing alone in Sydney Gardens yesterday? Why did you not wait for Charlotte to accompany you? Or why did you not at least take your maid with you?"

"I felt like air and exercise, ma'am," Freyja told her. "And I am far too old for chaperones."

Lady Holt-Barron looked somewhat shocked, but she did not pursue the matter. Freyja rather suspected that her hostess was a little afraid of her.

"Perhaps," Freyja continued, "you would be happier if I left Bath, ma'am. I can see that I embarrassed you this morning." And that was doubtless a massive understatement, she thought. She had embarrassed even herself, and she did not embarrass easily.

"Oh, no, Freyja," Charlotte cried.

"It is a generous offer," her hostess replied. "But I will not accept it, Lady Freyja. Within a few days the unfortunate incident will have been forgotten, I daresay. Tomorrow morning we will put a brave face on it and make our usual appearance in the Pump Room. Perhaps the Marquess of Hallmere will be tactful enough to remain at home."

"I am certainly not afraid to face him," Freyja said. "And of one thing I am quite convinced. He was about to steal a kiss from that serving girl. I would like to hear him deny that."

"Oh, my dear Lady Freyja," Lady Holt-Barron said, her voice faint with anxiety again, "I beg you not to confront him with any such accusation."

She jumped with alarm at the sound of the door knocker coming up from below, and she stood up to do a hasty hand-check of her dress and hair.

"I do hope this is not a caller," she said. "I really do not feel up to entertaining today. I expected all our acquaintance to leave us in peace until tomorrow."

As if her behavior this morning had plunged them all into quarantine, Freyja thought.

But a caller it must be. The housekeeper scratched on the door and handed her mistress a calling card.

"Gracious me!" Lady Holt-Barron exclaimed after reading the name on it. "The Marquess of Hallmere! And he is waiting below, Mrs. Tucker?"

"Waiting to see if you are at home, ma'am," the housekeeper explained.

Now what was he up to? Freyja wondered, her eyes narrowing.

Lady Holt-Barron glanced nervously at her. "Are we at home?"

"Oh, absolutely." Freyja raised her eyebrows. She was not going to hide from anyone, least of all him.

"Show his lordship up, Mrs. Tucker," Lady Holt-Barron said.

It was plain to see as soon as he set foot in the room that the Marquess of Hallmere patronized the famous Weston as a tailor. So did Wulfric and Freyja's other brothers. The marquess showed to distinct advantage in a green superfine coat that was so close-fitting that it looked as if he must have been poured into it and in gray pantaloons that clung to every impressive curve and muscle of his long legs. His linen was snowy white, his Hessian boots so shiny that he might have used them as twin mirrors if he looked down. His hat, gloves, and cane must have been left below.

Clearly the man had come here intending to impress them. And he did look impressive, Freyja was forced to admit. Even his teeth were perfect, just crooked enough to be interesting, but very white.

Lady Holt-Barron was obviously impressed too. She fluttered, a tendency she had when in the presence of someone of superior rank. She was also simpering, an unfortunate reaction to the sight of a handsome man. Charlotte was also impressed. She blushed.

Freyja crossed one leg over the other in a posture that a string of governesses during her growing years had told her was inelegant and unladylike, swung her free foot, raised her chin, and stared haughtily.

"I thank you, ma'am, for admitting me when I was not expected," he said, addressing himself to Lady Holt-Barron.

She fluttered and simpered more than ever and assured him that he was most welcome. She offered him a chair and he seated himself.

Just don't apologize for me, Freyja urged her hostess silently. And if he expected any apology from her he might wait until hell froze over.

"I will not take much of your time, ma'am," he said, still addressing Lady Holt-Barron. "I have come with an invitation from my grandmother for you and Miss Holt-Barron and Lady Freyja Bedwyn to join a small party for dinner tomorrow evening. We both consider it desirable to dispel any lingering fear anyone may be harboring that there is lasting animosity between Lady Freyja and myself over our, ah, slight misunderstanding this morning."

Freyja bared her teeth.

"I am sure there can be no such thought in anyone's mind, my lord," Lady Holt-Barron assured him. She was even batting her eyelids, though it was probably a nervous reaction rather than a flirtatious one, Freyja conceded.

"I feel no animosity," he said, finally turning his head and looking with wide, guileless eyes at Freyja. "I trust you do not, Lady Freyja?"

"No, why should I?" she said with studied nonchalance. "You gave a satisfactory explanation for what I observed in the park-for most of what I observed."

For a moment she saw laughter in the depths of his eyes and knew that he understood her meaning perfectly well. He had certainly been about to kiss that girl. But this afternoon he was playing the part of impeccably courteous gentleman and did not see fit either to grin at her or address her as sweetheart.

"I trust you will all come to Great Pulteney Street tomorrow evening, then?" he asked.

Lady Holt-Barron almost tripped all over herself in her eagerness to accept. The marquess took his leave five minutes later after they had all-with the exception of Freyja-engaged in a lively discussion of the weather.

"Lady Freyja!" Lady Holt-Barron said, clasping her hands to her bosom, her headache apparently dissipated. "I do believe all will be well after all and no shadow of scandal will be allowed to hang over your head. I even sense that the marquess is smitten by you."

Freyja snorted.

"He is gorgeously handsome," Charlotte said with a sigh.

"My love," her mother said reproachfully. "Remember Frederick."

The absent Frederick Wheatcroft, Charlotte's betrothed, was off shooting with her father and brothers.

Gorgeously handsome, indeed! Too handsome by half. And doubtless he thought now that he could charm her out of her indignation over his trickery-he had oozed charm from every pore of his body. They would see about that.

She should have let him be caught in that wardrobe like a mouse in a trap.

She should have been sure to take an inn room with all the ivy shaved off its outer walls.

She should have punched him in the nose again this morning while she had had the chance.

She should have . . .

She was so desperately glad that there was at least something of interest to look forward to tomorrow. The Marquess of Hallmere might be-and undoubtedly was-all sorts of nasty, unsavory things, but at least he was not bland.

CHAPTER IV

The planned dinner at Lady Potford's was turning into a grand affair as she kept adding names to the guest list.

"You have been the Marquess of Hallmere for longer than six months, Joshua," she explained when he asked if she had one more leaf to add to the dining room table-and perhaps one more wing to add to the dining room itself. "It is high time you took your rightful place in society instead of chasing all over the country in search of amusement with low companions."

"But amusement is so . . . amusing, Grandmama," he said with an exaggerated sigh. He did not add that some of his "low" companions were aristocrats and the sons of aristocrats.

"It is time too that you returned to Penhallow," she said, not for the first time. "It is yours, not just as a possession, but as a responsibility too."

"My aunt lives there," he reminded her, "and my cousins. It would only upset them-and me-if I went to live there too. My aunt always had the running of the place, you know, even when my uncle still lived. He did not mind. I would."

"Well, and so you ought," his grandmother said, rather exasperated as she folded the last invitation and rang the bell to have a servant take it and deliver it. "You must go and exert yourself and make other arrangements for the marchioness and her daughters, Joshua. There is a dower house at Penhallow, is there not? Goodness! When your grandpapa died and Gregory became Potford, I would no more have dreamed of remaining at Grimley House than I would of flying to the moon. Gladys would not have liked it, and I would have liked it less."

Joshua stretched his legs out in front of him along the sitting room carpet and crossed them at the ankles. "Exert myself?" He grinned at her. "That sounds remarkably painful, Grandmama."

"Joshua." She turned in her chair at the escritoire and regarded him with some severity, "I have always chosen to believe that you were in France and other countries of Europe during the past five years risking the dangers of capture in an enemy nation merely for the amusement of indulging in such a prank. But I have always realized deep down that there was a far more alarming explanation for your presence there. Do not think now to convince me that you are a lazy care-for-naught intent upon nothing but your own amusement."

He raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips. He had, of course, been spying for the British government on the military forces and maneuvers of Napoléon Bonaparte, but not in any official capacity. He had no military rank or diplomatic status.

"Ah, but it was amusing, Grandmama," he told her.

She sighed and got to her feet. "What you should do," she said, "is choose a suitable bride, take her to Penhallow, and begin the new life that is yours whether you ever wished for it or not."

"I did not," he said decisively. "Albert was the heir and I never envied him his future prospects."

"But your cousin died five years ago," she reminded him-as if he needed reminding. "It is not as if your new status was sprung unexpectedly upon you when your uncle died."

"Except that he was a robust man when I went away," he said, "and died far sooner than I expected."

"Despite that ghastly scene in the Pump Room," she said, taking a seat close to his, "I cannot but admire the forthright manner in which Lady Freyja Bedwyn confronted what she had perceived as an unpardonable offense. Most ladies would have turned a blind eye or gossiped privately and blackened your name before you had a chance to defend yourself."

Joshua chuckled. "Most ladies would not have been walking alone in the park or would have turned tail and fled at the first sound of some other poor female screaming."

"She is Bewcastle's sister," his grandmother continued. "There is no higher stickler than the duke, or one of greater consequence unless one ascends into the realm of the princes themselves."

He looked more closely at her, suddenly alerted.

"You are not, by any chance," he asked her, "suggesting Lady Freyja Bedwyn as a bride?"

"Joshua." She leaned forward slightly in her chair. "You are now the Marquess of Hallmere. It would be a very eligible match for her as well as for you."

"And that is what this is all about?" he asked her. "This grand dinner?"

"Not at all," she said. "This dinner is to restore the proprieties in the eyes of all doubters. It really was a ghastly scene though I must admit to having enjoyed a private chuckle or two since over the memory of it."

"She throws a mean punch," he said, "as I have twice learned to my cost. Yet you think she would be a suitable bride?"

"Twice?" She looked sharply at him.

"We need not make mention of the other occasion," he said sheepishly. "I am sorry to disappoint you, Grandmama, but I have too great a regard for my health to launch into a courtship of Lady Freyja Bedwyn. Or of any other lady, for that matter. I am not ready for marriage."

"I wonder why it is," she said, getting to her feet again, "that every man when he says those words appears to believe them quite fervently. And why does every man appear to believe that he is the first to speak them? I must go down to the kitchen and see that all is proceeding well for tonight's dinner."

And why was it, Joshua thought somewhat ruefully, that all women believed that once a man had succeeded to a title and fortune he must also have acquired a burning desire to share them with a mate?

Lady Freyja Bedwyn!

He chuckled aloud and remembered her as she had looked yesterday afternoon in Lady Holt-Barron's sitting room-on her haughtiest dignity and bristling with barely suppressed resentment and hostility. And unable to resist at least one barbed gibe by implying that she knew very well he had been about to kiss that serving girl.

He wondered if she would appreciate the joke of his grandmother's preposterous suggestion. He really must share it with her, he thought, chuckling again-and keep a wary eye on her fists as he did so.

There was no one at Lady Potford's dinner that Freyja did not know. She felt perfectly at ease in the company. It took her a while, though, to realize that most of the other guests were far from at ease in hers. They must be wondering, she thought, whether she was about to make another spectacularly embarrassing spectacle of herself tonight.

How foolish people were. Did they not understand that gentility had been bred into her very bones? She conversed with her neighbors at the dining table with practiced ease and studiously ignored the Marquess of Hallmere, who was seated at the foot of the table looking handsome enough in his dove-gray-and-white evening clothes to seriously annoy a Greek god or two. He ignored her too if one discounted the single occasion when their eyes met along the table. She was sure it was not a trick of the flickering candlelight that made it appear as if he blinked slowly-with one eye.

Well, every day brought something new, she thought, renewing her efforts to be sociable to the very deaf Sir Rowland Withers to her right. She had never been winked at before, unless it was by one of her brothers.

But she and the marquess ignoring each other was not, of course, the purpose of the evening. As soon as the gentlemen had joined the ladies in the drawing room after dinner, entertainment was called for and Miss Fairfax obligingly seated herself at the pianoforte and played a couple of Bach fugues with admirable flair and dexterity.

"Lady Freyja?" Lady Potford asked when she had finished. "Will you favor us with a piece or a song?"

Oh, dear-her close acquaintances had learned long ago that Lady Freyja Bedwyn was not like other young ladies, willing and able to trot out their accomplishments at every social gathering. She decided upon candor, as she usually did-it was easier than simpering.

"After I had had a few lessons at the pianoforte as a young girl," she explained to the gathered assembly, "my music teacher asked me to raise my hands and declared himself amazed that I was not in possession of ten thumbs. Fortunately for me, two of my brothers were within earshot and reported the remark with great glee to our father-intending the joke, of course, to be at my expense. The music teacher was dismissed and never replaced."

There was general laughter, though Lady Holt-Barron looked distinctly uncomfortable.

"A song, then?" Lady Potford asked.

"Not alone, ma'am," Freyja said firmly. "I have the sort of voice that needs to be buried in the middle of a very large choir-if it is to be aired at all."

"I sing a little, Lady Freyja," the marquess said. "Perhaps we can join our voices in a duet. There is a pile of music on top of the pianoforte. Shall we see what we can find while someone else entertains the guests?"

"Oh, splendid," Lady Potford said, and there were a few other murmurings of polite interest.

She should, Freyja realized belatedly, have made mention of rusty saws in connection with her singing voice, but she never liked to be quite untruthful. Hallmere was, as she expected, looking at her with polite interest-and a gleam of amusement in his eyes. And everyone else was observing with keen interest this first exchange between yesterday's antagonists.

She got to her feet and approached the pianoforte, near which he was standing.

"Miss Holt-Barron?" Lady Potford was asking politely, and Charlotte without a murmur of protest approached the instrument and began a flawless performance of some Mozart sonata.

The marquess picked up the whole pile of music and carried it to a wide, velvet-padded window seat. He sat on one side of it and Freyja on the other.

"Might I be permitted to observe, Lady Freyja," he said, "that you look particularly fetching in that shade of sea green? It matches your eyes. And might I apologize for not believing your claim to be the sister of a duke? No duke's sister of my acquaintance, you see, sleeps in unlocked inn rooms without any accompanying maid, or walks in a public park without a chaperone. Or punches men in the nose when they displease her."

"You would deny, I suppose," she said, picking up a sheet of music that announced itself as a song for two voices. But she saw at the very first glance that the singer of the top part had to soar to a high G and slipped the music to the bottom of the pile. "You would deny, I suppose, that you were about to steal a kiss from that poor girl?"

"Oh, absolutely," he agreed.

"Then you lie!" she retorted, snatching another sheet for a song in more than one part off the pile and glaring at him. "I am not quite stupid, despite your insinuation yesterday morning to the contrary."

"No!" he said, his eyes laughing at her-he was making no attempt to look through the music himself. "Did I do that? But why would I do something so ungentlemanly when the ghastly truth must have presented itself to the intelligence of everyone gathered around? It was rather a large gathering, was it not?"

Freyja was given the distinct impression that she might have met her match-something that rarely happened outside the members of her own family. She gave her attention to the music in her hands. It was all about cuckoos, and the songwriter appeared to have devised his whole piece so that the two voices-no, four-might deceive the audience into believing they were a flock of demented birds in a dither and unable to utter any sound but their own names. It was the sort of song most gatherings would exclaim over in delight and admiration. Freyja set it at the bottom of the pile.

"I feel compelled to defend my honor yet again," the marquess continued. "I was not about to steal a kiss, Lady Freyja. I was about to convey one and have one conveyed willingly in return. I cannot tell you how ill-timed your interruption was. She had lips like cherries and I was within moments of tasting their sweet nectar. Does one suck nectar from a cherry? But I daresay my meaning is clear enough anyway."

If his eyes danced any more merrily, they would be in danger of dancing right out of his head. And he was wearing some perfume. Freyja despised men who wore perfume, but this was subtle and musky and wrapped enticingly about her senses. Her eyes dipped to his lips, which had come so close to kissing the maid in the park, found them as perfect as the rest of him, and dipped lower to the pile of music. She had just remembered that those lips had actually kissed her.

"You are supposed to be helping me select a duet to sing," she said.

"I thought I would leave it to you," he said. "If you did not like my choice you would doubtless quarrel with it and with me and find some reason for punching me in the nose, and it is altogether possible that other people in the room might notice. And even if they did not, I derive no great pleasure from having my nose punched. Now why are you frowning so ferociously?"

"Nymphs and shepherds and Phyllises and Amaryllises," she said, frowning down in disgust at the music in her hands. "The last one was all about cuckoos." She set the piece with the other discarded ones beneath the pile and found another duet.

"Are you always so cross?" he asked her.

"In disagreeable company, yes," she said, looking coldly at him.

He grinned at her. "Do you ever smile?"

"I have been smiling all evening," she told him. "Until, that is, I was forced into this tête-à-tête."

"Almost, Lady Freyja," he said softly, "I am led to believe that you are trying to deliver me a resounding setdown."

"Almost, Lord Hallmere," she retorted, "I am led to believe that you must have some intelligence."

He chuckled softly, a sound that was drowned beneath the polite applause that succeeded Charlotte's playing. No one else took the instrument. Card tables were being set up and the guests were taking their places. No one attempted to include either of the two sitting on the window seat.

"Tonight," the marquess said, "you have been smiling what I suspect is your public Lady Freyja Bedwyn smile, the gracious expression that informs the world that you are someone of consequence and equal to any social situation. I have a mind to see your private Freyja smile, if there is such a thing."

There were not many men who would dare to flirt with her. And this was definitely flirtation-he had deliberately lowered his voice. Mock flirtation, of course. His eyes were still laughing at her.

"I have what my brothers describe as my feline grin," she told him, regarding him coldly. "Shall I oblige you with a display of that?"

He chuckled again and reached across the pile between them to take the music from her hands.

"Hmm," he said after examining it for a moment or two. "'Near to the silver Trent Sirena dwelleth.' I like the sound of her already. It gets better. 'She to whom nature lent all that excelleth.' The mind boggles, does it not?"

"Your mind obviously does," she said.

He did something then that had her itching to curl her fingers into fists. He let his eyes roam slowly down her body, starting with the rather wide expanse of bosom showing above the fashionably low neckline of her gown and moving on downward, giving the impression that he saw every curve beneath the barrier of her high-waisted gown and its loose, flowing skirts. He pursed his lips.

"'She to whom nature lent all that excelleth,' " he murmured again. And then he smiled-it was definitely not his grin this time but an expression of great charm clearly designed to make women turn weak at the knees. "Shall we move to the pianoforte bench, Lady Freyja, and try this one?"

She was weak at the knees with suppressed wrath, Freyja decided when she got to her feet. And then his hand came to rest against the hollow of her back. She looked haughtily over her shoulder at him.

"I am quite capable of crossing the distance between the window and the pianoforte without your guidance, I thank you, Lord Hallmere," she said.

"But I felt compelled to test a theory," he told her. "'She to whom nature lent . . .' Never mind."

"I suppose," she said, "you realize that I am quite immune to your flatteries and attempts at flirtation. But of course you do. That is why you are doing it. I suppose you hope to provoke me into some public display of temper."

"Better flirtation than courtship, I would think," he said. "My grandmother has suggested to me that I court you. She believes our marriage would be a dazzling match for both of us."

She stared at him, speechless.

He grinned at her. "We agree on one thing at least, sweetheart," he murmured, and indicated the pianoforte.

A few moments later they were seated side by side on a pianoforte bench that had not been designed to seat two. He made no attempt to perch on the very edge of his end of it, as any decent gentleman would do, but crowded her at the hip and all along her bare arm. They had apparently been forgotten by the rest of the company, who were concentrating upon their card games to the accompaniment of the low hum of conversation.

"Let us try," the marquess said, spreading the music on the stand and resting his hands on the keys-they were long-fingered, well-manicured hands, Freyja saw. Was there anything not perfect about him physically? Yes, there were his crooked teeth, though actually they were only very slightly crooked, and they looked more attractive this way than if they had been lined up all in a neat row. "Do you read music?"

"Of course I read music," she said. "I just cannot play it."

He had a pleasant tenor voice, which turned out to be rather similar to her contralto voice. Surprisingly, they made a pleasing blend of sound. The song moved slowly and melodiously so that it was fairly easy to sing it passably well even if not to master it.

"Oh, well done, indeed," Lady Potford said when, after a few false starts, they sang the song all the way through without stopping or making any major blunders.

It seemed she had not been the only one listening quietly as they had sung. There was polite applause from every table. Lady Holt-Barron was beaming her approval.

"I believe," the marquess murmured, "a crisis has been successfully weathered, Lady Freyja. I have been seen openly to have forgiven you, and you have been seen graciously to have accepted the error of your assumptions."

She leapt to her feet and glared down at him while he looked back in innocent astonishment.

"You have forgiven me?" she said with all the hauteur she could muster. "The error of my assumptions? When it was all your doing? I would have you know-"

But Lady Potford had got hastily to her feet too, mere moments after Freyja.

"It is time we had the tea tray brought in," she said. "Joshua, my dear, would you be so good as to pull the bell rope?"

Freyja busied herself with folding the music and bringing the rest of the pile back from the window seat. That had been a near escape. She was beginning to feel like a puppet dancing on the Marquess of Hallmere's string. He had done that deliberately-again. She had always been known for her outspokenness and hot temper, but she had always known where and when to use each-and, more to the point, where and when not to.

She went to stand at Charlotte's table, and looked at the cards over her friend's shoulder.

Joshua was feeling ready to move on again, though he would stay out the week in Bath since his grandmother expected it. Lady Freyja Bedwyn was avoiding him even though he went everywhere the fashionable were expected to go and so did she. It was amusing to watch her greet society with gracious, if rather bored, hauteur. He sensed that it was not entirely an act to cover the embarrassment of that scene she had trapped herself into in the Pump Room. She was the daughter and sister of a duke-arrogance came naturally to her. He ought to have believed her from the start.

He saw her two mornings in a row in the Pump Room. The first time, she was leaving with Lady Holt-Barron and the lady's daughter just as he was arriving with his grandmother, and they all exchanged the merest civilities. The second time she was strolling with the Earl of Willett, whose head was bent attentively to hers as she talked. She favored Joshua with the merest nod of acknowledgment when she saw him.

He saw her on Milsom Street that same afternoon. She was standing on the pavement talking with Willett. Lady Holt-Barron and her daughter were coming out of a milliner's shop as Joshua walked by. There was a flurry of greetings all around, and he continued on his way.

He saw her at the theater one evening. She was sitting between Miss Holt-Barron and Willett and fanning her face languidly. She raised her eyebrows when Joshua caught her eye, nodded graciously, and then turned her attention back to the conversation.

There was not much, then, by way of flirtation to keep Joshua in Bath beyond the week-not even when he accompanied his grandmother on an afternoon visit to Lady Holt-Barron's on the Circus, that splendid circle of tall Georgian terraced houses with a circular green at its center and several magnificent ancient trees. It was true that they arrived just as Lady Freyja and Miss Holt-Barron were setting out to walk on the Royal Crescent close by and that Miss Holt-Barron invited him to join them. But they already had another escort. Willett took his place firmly at Lady Freyja's side, though she did not take his arm.

She walked, Joshua noticed as he strolled along Brock Street behind them with Miss Holt-Barron, with a firm, manly stride despite her small stature. Willett's cane tapped elegantly along the cobbles. Joshua clasped his hands behind him and set about making himself agreeable to his companion.

The Royal Crescent was a magnificent semicircle of terraced houses, a deliberate complement to the Circus. Several other people were strolling along the cobbled street before the houses, enjoying the view over the park in front and down the hill to the town below. And inevitably, of course, these people exchanged greetings as they passed one another and sometimes stopped to exchange any news or gossip that had accumulated since the morning gathering in the Pump Room.

"Bath is divine," Miss Fanny Darwin declared when her group came up with Joshua's and they had all stopped, "and there are so many exciting things to do all the time. Would you not agree, Lord Willett?"

"Certainly, Miss Darwin," the earl said. "Bath offers a pleasing combination of outdoor exercise and indoor entertainment. All to be enjoyed in the congenial company of one's peers."

"We took the carriage to Sydney Gardens yesterday afternoon and strolled there for all of an hour," Miss Hester Darwin said. "It was wonderful exercise in delightfully picturesque surroundings. Have you seen the park, Lady Freyja?"

Her brother cleared his throat, her cousin, Sir Leonard Eston, picked an invisible speck of lint from one of his sleeves, her sister flushed scarlet, and Miss Hester Darwin clapped a hand to her mouth too late as everyone remembered what had resulted from Lady Freyja's solitary foray into Sydney Gardens.

Joshua grinned. "I do believe Lady Freyja has, Miss Darwin," he said. "So have I."

"Exercise!" Lady Freyja exclaimed. "People come to Bath for their health, and for the sake of their health they stroll in the Pump Room and they stroll on the Crescent and they stroll in the park. It is a word that should be struck from the English language-strolling. If I do not walk somewhere soon, or-better yet-ride somewhere where there is space to move, I may well end up in a Bath chair, being wheeled from place to place and sipping on Bath water."

Her audience chose to react to her words as if she had uttered something enormously witty. The gentlemen laughed; the ladies tittered.

"You must certainly be rescued from the Bath water," Joshua said. "Come riding with me tomorrow, Lady Freyja. We will seek out the hills and the open spaces beyond the confines of the city."

"It sounds like heaven," she said, looking at him with approval for perhaps the first time. "I will gladly come."

"But not alone, Lady Freyja," Willett said hastily. "It would be somewhat scandalous, I fear. Perhaps we can make up a riding party. I would certainly join it. Would you, Miss Holt-Barron?"

"Oh, I would too," Miss Fanny Darwin cried. "I enjoy nothing better than a ride, provided the pace is not too fast or the distance too far. Gerald, you must come too, and you, Leonard, and then Mama can have no objection to allowing Hester and me to join the party."

Joshua's glance locked with Lady Freyja's. He could sense the grimace she kept from her face. He grinned at her and winked.

He was pleased to see her nostrils flare with indignation.

Perhaps, he thought hopefully, tomorrow would be more amusing than the past few days had been.

CHAPTER V

Neither Freyja nor Charlotte had her own horse with her in Bath, but they were able to hire some for the day. Freyja sent back the first horse that was brought around to the house with the message that she had been riding since she was in leading strings and had never felt any inclination to bounce along on a tired old hack that looked to be lame in all four legs. The second mount met with her approval even though Lady Holt-Barron thought it high-spirited enough to need a man's firm hand on the reins and begged Freyja to ride very carefully.

"Whatever would I say to the duke, Lady Freyja," she asked rhetorically, "if you were carried home with a broken neck?"

Freyja and Charlotte rode side by side down steep Gay Street in the direction of the Abbey, outside which they had agreed to meet the other six members of the riding party. It was a glorious day, warm enough for summer but with more freshness in the air.

"If we have to amble along once we have left Bath behind at the horse equivalent of a stroll, Charlotte," Freyja said, "I shall have a tantrum. Will the Misses Darwin be so mean-spirited?"

"I fear they will," Charlotte said with a chuckle. "We are not all neck-or-nothing riders like you, Freyja. Will the Earl of Willett find some time alone with you today, do you suppose? He has been very determined during the past few days. He must be very close to making a declaration."

"Oh, dear," Freyja said. She had encouraged him rather, simply because she had wanted to discourage the Marquess of Hallmere, who had been deliberately amusing himself at her expense and who seemed to know exactly how to make her forget herself in public. Doubtless it was all very amusing to a man who had probably never entertained a serious thought in his life. Unfortunately, the Earl of Willett did not need much encouraging. "I do hope he can be saved from that embarrassment."

"You would not accept him, then?" Charlotte asked.

She should, Freyja thought. He was an earl with a grand estate in Norfolkshire and a fortune rumored to be very large indeed-not to mention his prospects of doubling it after the demise of his uncle. He was amiable if a little starchy in manner. He would meet with Wulfric's approval. She should marry him and be done with it. But the memory of the sort of passion she had known with Kit Butler for one brief summer four years ago came to mind unbidden. And then her eyes alighted upon the gorgeously handsome figure of the Marquess of Hallmere as they approached the appointed meeting place. And she knew that she wanted more out of life than merely making do with a marriage that promised respectability and good fortune.

He was riding a splendidly powerful and sleek black mount-the marquess, that was. Freyja was instantly envious. His long legs, encased in buff riding breeches and black top boots, showed to best advantage when he was on horseback. So did the rest of him. He might be a frivolous, licentious man, and she seemed to do nothing but bristle with hostility whenever she was near him, but at least he was alive and made her feel alive. And she was enormously grateful to him for suggesting this ride, though she hoped it was to be more than a mere sedate crawl over the countryside.

"I think not," she said in answer to Charlotte's question. "I shall try diligently to avoid riding at his side. It would quite ruin my day-and his too, I daresay-if he were to blurt out the question today."

But the Earl of Willett was not to be so easily deterred. Once encouraged-and she had encouraged him-he had become bold in his pursuit of her. While the marquess rode with the Misses Darwin on either side of him, their trilling laughter grating on Freyja's ears, and Charlotte rode between Mr. Darwin and Sir Leonard Eston, the earl led off the party with Freyja. They moved sedately through the streets of Bath and up the hill beyond it, taking the London road.

"We will not put our horses through their paces on this steep gradient," the earl informed Freyja, "or indeed when we reach level land. I am ever mindful of the fact that there are four ladies in the party and that you ride sidesaddle. I admire you immensely for your grace and skill in doing so, but I will be diligent in my efforts not to put you in any unnecessary danger."

Freyja leveled an appalled glance at him but said nothing. They were, after all, on a rather steep hill at the moment.

They all stopped when they reached the top to admire the view back down to the elegant, gleaming white buildings of Bath.

"This is what I most look forward to every time we come here," Miss Fanny Darwin said with a contented sigh. "This first sight of the city. All the white buildings are quite dazzling on the eye when the sun shines, as it does today. Are we to ride much farther, Lord Willett?"

Freyja looked sharply at her.

"There is a village not far off along the road," the earl said. "I would suggest that we ride there at a leisurely pace, drink some tea or lemonade at the inn, and ride back again. I will not suggest that we leave the road. There are always rabbit holes and uneven ground in the fields as a trap to the unwary."

It was still morning, Freyja thought. Was he intending, then, to be back in Bath for the regular activities of the afternoon? And since when had this become his outing?

"At a leisurely pace?" she said. "Along the road? For the mere pleasure of drinking tea? I came out for a ride." She pointed to her right with her whip. "I intend to ride that way, across the hills. Indeed, I intend to gallop across them."

"Lady Freyja-" The earl sounded genuinely alarmed.

"Oh, I say!" Mr. Darwin's voice was bright with interest.

"Gerald," Miss Hester Darwin said, "Mama made you promise not to let us ride fast and not to go galloping on ahead of us."

"I will see you all back in Bath, then," Freyja said, turning her horse off the roadway and edging it through a gap in the hedgerow into the field beyond.

Already she felt more exhilarated. She nudged her horse into a canter and did not look back to see if anyone had the courage to follow her. But if no one else did, she guessed, the Earl of Willett probably would. He would feel duty-bound to escort her. Perhaps after all she had trapped herself into a tête-à-tête with him. She urged her mount to a faster pace. Ah, she could feel the air in her face at last.

She could hear hooves thudding behind her. She hoped that if he had come, he was not alone. She turned her head to look and felt instant relief. Of course! She might have known that the Marquess of Hallmere would be the one to take up the challenge. It was he, after all, who had suggested this ride-for just the two of them. And it was he who had winked at her-again!-when Miss Darwin had expressed her hope that the party would not ride too far or too fast.

He was grinning. That, of course, was no surprise.

"Do you see that white rock?" he asked, coming up alongside her as she slowed somewhat and pointing ahead with his whip.

There was a white speck in the distance. At least three fields lay between it and their present position. But from the rock, jutting out over the land below, there must be a splendid panorama that included the city of Bath.

"That is to be the finishing point of our race?" she asked, anticipating what he was about to say. "Very well. I will wait for you there." She spurred her horse and bent low over its neck.

It was not her own horse, of course, but it was no slug. It responded to her commands with a surge of power. She knew only a moment's apprehension as they approached the first hedge. But it would be ignominious indeed to turn aside to find a gate. The horse soared over with surely a foot to spare, and Freyja laughed. With her peripheral vision she could see the marquess not quite one length back from her. If he was holding back out of a gallant intention to allow a lady to win, she thought, he would learn his mistake. But he was not, of course, a man from whom she need fear undue gallantry. He got past her long before the next hedge loomed near and cleared it a full length and more ahead of her. He had a splendid seat, she noticed admiringly.

The race became everything after that. She had always been intensely competitive, perhaps the more so because she had always been small and the only girl among numerous boisterous boys-her brothers Aidan, Rannulf, and Alleyne, and the neighboring Butlers, Jerome, Kit, and Sydnam. She had never felt like a girl with a sister. Morgan was seven years younger than she. She had competed with the boys and made herself their equal.

She competed now, urging her mount on ever faster and faster, hearing the thunder of its hooves beneath her, feeling the wind whip at her hat and her hair and riding habit, watching the gap between her and the horse ahead getting narrower and narrower until by the time they jumped the final hedge, they were almost neck and neck.

The marquess made the mistake after they had landed of looking across at her, perhaps in some surprise to see that she had caught up since he was certainly not making allowances either for the fact that she was a woman or for the fact that she rode sidesaddle. As they converged on the huge white rock, she was in front of him by a whole head. She whooped in triumph and turned to laugh at him.

"I have not had so much fun in ages," she cried.

"I am glad I allowed you to win, then," he said.

He was incautiously close. She reached out with her whip and dug him in the ribs with it.

"Ouch!" he said. "Where did you learn to ride like that? I expected to be fully rested and fast asleep here by the time you came trotting up." He swung down from his horse's back and tethered it to a tree, and then he strode over to her and reached up his arms. "Allow me."

She set her hands on his shoulders and would have jumped down, but he lifted her with strong hands at her waist, slid her all-too-slowly down his front, and then, as soon as her feet were on firm ground, dipped his head and kissed her on the lips-as he had done on another memorable occasion.

His hands circled her wrists as he lifted his head. "I graciously concede defeat with a kiss," he said, grinning. "And at the same time I protect my nose from having a fist collide with it."

He was an enormously attractive man, she thought. That was no new discovery, of course. But what surprised her was that at this particular moment it was not just an intellectual realization. She could feel her body reacting to his attractiveness with a heightened awareness and slight shortness of breath. She had not reacted physically to any man since Kit.

But the Marquess of Hallmere was certainly not the man with whom to conceive any sort of passion. Would he not be delighted if he could bring her to such discomfiture? She smiled her feline grin at him, released her wrists, and turned away to climb up onto the white rock. The wind whipped at the heavy skirts of her riding habit and at her feathered hat. She pulled the latter off impatiently, pocketing the pins that had held it to her hair, and then she could not resist pulling out her hairpins too. It was sheer bliss to raise her head and feel the wind blowing through her hair. She drew a deep breath of air and expelled it slowly.

"A Viking maiden standing in the prow of a Viking ship," he said from down below. "You would have inspired a boatload of warriors into hacking their way ashore and conquering a new land for you."

He had one booted foot up on the rock, one arm draped across his leg. In his other hand he held his hat. His hair blew about, gleaming very blond in the sunlight.

"I have often suspected," she said, "that I was born in the wrong era."

"Lady Freyja Bedwyn," he said, "I do not believe I insult you by observing that you must be well past the age of twenty, do I? Why are you still unmarried?"

"Why are you?" she countered.

"I asked first."

She looked out at the view and drew in another deep breath of air.

"From birth," she said, "I was intended for Jerome Butler, Viscount Ravensberg, eldest son of the Earl of Redfield, my father's neighbor. We were betrothed when I was twenty-one. He died before I was twenty-two and before we married."

"I am sorry," he said.

"You need not be," she told him. "We grew up together and were fond of each other. I mourned his death. But we felt no grand passion for each other."

"How long ago did he die?" he asked.

"Longer than three years," she said.

"And there has been no one else in all the time since then?" he asked.

"It is your turn," she told him. "Why are you not married? You too are well past the age of twenty."

"I grew up as a poor relation in the home of my uncle, the late marquess," he said. "He had a son, my cousin Albert. I would not have been considered a good catch until his accidental death five years ago suddenly made me the heir. My uncle had three daughters but no more sons. I suppose I became instantly eligible as soon as I became the heir, but from the time of Albert's death until the present I have scarcely been in one place long enough to form any lasting attachment."

"Am I to commiserate with you?" she asked, gazing down at him. "Or has the life suited you very well? Love them and leave them, is it?"

He chuckled. "My grandmother still wants me to court you," he said, "even after you began to rip up at me again during her party. She thinks you are merely high-spirited. She believes you need a firm hand on the rein. Mine, in fact."

"Setting aside the fact that you mentioned the last point-perhaps even invented it-entirely to arouse my ire," she said, "your grandmother is going to be disappointed, is she not? You have no wish to court me and I have no wish to be courted. At least we are in agreement over that."

He got up onto the rock then and came to stand beside her. She was reminded of how very tall he was, how well formed.

"You are quite right," he said. "I do not have marriage in mind, and, fortunately, neither do you. I need not fear, then, that you will get the wrong idea if I tell you that I feel an almost overpowering urge to kiss you properly. Will I acquire two black eyes and a broken nose if I give in to that urge?" He turned his head to smile dazzlingly at her. His eyes, as she fully expected, were dancing with merriment.

She drew breath to deliver the withering set-down that such pretension deserved. But it was tempting. She was twenty-five years old and had not been kissed in four years. Jerome, strangely enough, had never kissed more than the back of her hand. Sometimes the emptiness and the aloneness of having loved and lost Kit were almost too much to bear.

And here was a man-a handsome, devastatingly attractive man-who expected nothing from her beyond a kiss and who knew that she would demand nothing in return.

"The lady hesitates," he said. "Interesting."

"You would not suffer any mutilation to your face," she said firmly. "Not unless you were to fall from the rock on your way down."

She felt horribly embarrassed then and horribly-and foolishly-aware of her ugliness. It was years and years since she had given up lamenting what could not be changed. Nature had given her a wild bush for hair and eyebrows that were a different color from it, and her father had handed on to her the Bedwyn nose, as he had to all his offspring except Morgan, who, like their mother, was perfection itself.

Freyja turned determinedly as he set down his hat in a sheltered hollow and then took hers from her hand and set it there too. She lifted her chin.

He flicked it lazily with the knuckle of his forefinger. His eyelids had become rather heavy, she noticed, and they had the strange effect of causing her insides to perform a flip-flop. This definitely had not been a good idea, but it was too late now to say no. He would be able to accuse her of cowardice, and with some reason.

He was certainly taking his time. She had expected him to dip his head and claim her lips without further ado. At least then she could have closed her eyes and hidden her embarrassment. Both his hands were up and touching her face, though he did that only with his fingertips. He ran his thumbs over her eyebrows, one forefinger lightly down her nose.

"Interesting," he said. "You have an interesting face. Unforgettable."

At least, she thought, he had not called her beautiful. Out of sheer principle she could not have continued if he had.

His hands cupped her face.

"You may touch me too, you know," he said, "if you wish."

"I do not wish. Yet," she added, and watched laughter flicker behind his eyes.

He rubbed his nose lightly across hers and then angled his head and touched his lips softly to hers for a moment. Her hands came to rest on either side of his waist. She had to concentrate upon not snatching herself free and breaking into a run. How mortifying that would be!

Skittish, aging maiden-unchaperoned-flees clutches of practiced rake.

His tongue was licking softly, enticingly against her lips. She gripped his waist a little harder, leaned a little closer, and parted her lips. His tongue came through and curled up behind to stroke the soft, moist flesh within. Raw sensation burst to life in every part of her, from her lips to her knees-no, to her toes. She slid her arms about his waist, stepped closer until her bosom was pressed to his chest and her abdomen to his, and opened her mouth.

He kissed her then with all the skill and expertise of what she later guessed to be a man of vast experience, who must have practiced his art on half the female population of Europe-at least half. She could only cling and press closer and use her tongue to fence with his and give as much as she could of her own meager skills out of sheer self-defense.

It suddenly felt like midsummer during a heat wave.

She had no idea how long it lasted. She did know that when she started to come to herself-it was when she sensed that he was about to lift his mouth from hers at last-she could feel one of his hands spread across her bottom, holding her firmly against him. And she was not such an innocent that she did not understand perfectly well exactly what she was being held firmly against.

"Well," she said, her voice only slightly breathless when he lifted his head and looked down at her, his eyelids considerably more heavy than they had been before he started, "that was very pleasant."

The smile began in his eyes and spread to his lips and then had him throwing back his head and shouting with laughter as he released her.

"That was my very finest turn-the-lady's-knees-to-jelly kiss," he said. "And it was very pleasant? And so it was too. I had better get you back up on your horse, Lady Freyja, and myself back on mine before my self-image has been quite deflated. I do believe there is a village over the next rise or the one beyond it. Shall we ride that way and see if we can find an inn or a pastry cook to feed us? Kissing is hungry work."

He grinned as he offered her her hat and put his own on with a flourish, pulling it low over his brow to prevent its being blown away in the wind.

Her knees, she realized after testing them surreptitiously before she took a step forward, were going to bear her up. That was certainly one of the more foolish things she had done recently. She had expected little more than a peck of the nature of the other two kisses he had dealt her-one in the inn room at their first encounter and the other after he had lifted her off her horse this morning. She might have guessed when he had talked of kissing her properly that he had a great deal more in mind.

She felt considerably discomposed and was not enjoying the feeling one bit. It helped that he was so careless about the whole thing that he did not seem to realize that she was not quite herself. He would surely have taken advantage of the situation if he had suspected. He would have slain her with his grinning wit.

She set her booted foot on his clasped hands, and he tossed her up into the saddle before mounting himself.

"Of course," she said in her haughtiest voice, "that was not an open invitation to maul me whenever the urge is upon you. It was a pleasant embrace, but it is not to be repeated. That would be a bore."

"There," he said, turning a laughing face to hers before leading the way across the hill in the direction of the village he thought was close by, "a set-down was not to be avoided after all. I am crushed, deflated, robbed of all my confidence with the fair sex for all time. Perhaps it will be the epitaph on my tombstone-his life was very pleasant, but any repetition would be a bore. I need some strong liquor. A tumbler of brandy at the very least."

Freyja rode after him, smiling at his back.

Now that had been a foolish error of judgment, Joshua thought while they sat in a small inn parlor, eating meat pasties and drinking tea and ale, and all the way back to Bath.

She had looked really rather magnificent standing up on that rock, her hair free and wild as it had been the first time he saw her, but with the sunlight on it and wind in it this time. He had wanted to kiss her-but in the same sort of light, flirtatious way he had treated her all through their encounters so far.

He had not-he had certainly not-intended kissing her that way. And he had not anticipated her own wild outpouring of passion. Which was foolish of him really. Despite all her haughtiness, he had had ample evidence that she was a woman of forceful character and uncertain temper and impulsive nature.

She would, he suspected now, be all wild, unleashed passion in bed.

It was something he would have been altogether more comfortable not suspecting at all since the only way he could verify such an enticing idea was through marriage, and marriage was just not in his immediate or medium-term plans.

It was fortunate indeed that it was not in hers either.

He escorted her all the way to Lady Holt-Barron's door in Bath and took her horse back to the livery stable from which it had been hired. Then he stabled his own horse and arrived back at his grandmother's in the middle of the afternoon, feeling windblown and full of energy and determined that he must leave Bath within the next few days before he was tempted to step into some further indiscretion with Lady Freyja Bedwyn that perhaps he would not be able to step out of so easily.

His grandmother was entertaining in the drawing room, Gibbs informed him. She had asked that Lord Hallmere call on her there immediately after he returned from his ride.

Joshua followed the butler up the stairs, checking to see that his riding clothes were at least marginally respectable for a brief appearance in the drawing room. But his grandmother had said immediately. He had better not take the time to go to his room to change.

There were two ladies with his grandmother. Joshua had seen neither of them in five years, but there was no mistaking his aunt, the Marchioness of Hallmere. She was of medium height and slight build and looked sweet and frail and even sickly. She had always looked the same way. But the outer appearance, as he had discovered to his cost during his years at Penhallow, hid a steely, domineering will, and a mean, humorless disposition. The younger woman with her, less plump, less plain than he remembered her, was Constance, her eldest daughter.

His aunt never left Penhallow. It was her domain and she ruled it like a private fiefdom. Even the desirability of taking her daughters to London when they reached a suitable age for presentation to the queen and an introduction to the beau monde had not coaxed her away. It must be something of immense importance that had brought her to Bath.

Himself, no doubt.

He had ignored her invitations to come home to Penhallow. So she had taken the extraordinary step of coming to him-informed of his presence here, no doubt, by her friend Mrs. Lumbard. His heart landed somewhere in the soles of his boots.

"Aunt?" he said. "Constance?" He bowed to them both before greeting his grandmother with a stiff smile.

"Joshua," his aunt said, getting to her feet and coming toward him, both slender hands outstretched. Her voice shook with emotion. There were tears in her eyes. "My dearest boy. We have been living in anxiety for too long, my poor girls and I. Hallmere-the late Hallmere-is gone, and Albert is gone. We are entirely at your mercy. You were raised at Penhallow just like one of our own, of course, but the young often forget the debts they owe to those who loved them and sacrificed for them during their growing years."

Good Lord! Could she look him in the eye and utter such nonsensical drivel? But of course she could. Joshua took her offered hands in his-they were limp and cold-and squeezed them before releasing them.

"I am not about to toss you out on the street with my cousins, Aunt," he said briskly. Besides, even if he did just that, she had her more than adequate widow's settlement from the estate.

"But you are certain to marry soon," she said, "and we will be in the way of your marchioness, much as I would welcome her to Penhallow with open arms. No, I have come to Bath to arrange matters with you to the satisfaction of all of us. I have brought Constance with me."

Of course she had brought Constance with her. And one glance at his cousin's pale, set face assured him that she knew the reason as well as he did-and liked it as little.

Why had she not spoken up, then? Why had she not refused to come with her mother? Refused to comply with the scheme his aunt was obviously concocting?

But to be fair to Constance, he knew how near impossible it was to thwart the Marchioness of Hallmere when her mind was once set upon a particular course.

She had obviously decided that her best chance of keeping her home and her dominion over it was to marry her eldest daughter to her nephew.

Lord help him!

CHAPTER VI

It was raining heavily the next morning, and Lady Holt-Barron decided against going to the Pump Room. Freyja spent the morning writing letters to Eve and Judith, her sisters-in-law, and to Morgan. She described yesterday's ride, including the Misses Darwins' fear of riding at anything faster than a cautious crawl and the Earl of Willett's fussy insistence upon treating ladies as if they were delicate hothouse plants. She described her own escape with the Marquess of Hallmere and their race across country, jumping hedgerows as they went.

She did not describe what had happened after their race was over, of course, but she did sit and think about it for long minutes, brushing the feather of her quill pen absently back and forth across her chin.

It had been a scandalously lascivious kiss, and she feared that perhaps she was the one who had made it so. He had had her face cupped in his hands when he started and then he had kissed her lips. No other part of his body had been touching any other part of hers. The whole thing would probably have ended sweetly and chastely if she had not clutched his waist for balance and then leaned right against him and then wrapped her arms about him. And then . . .

Well.

And then.

She frowned fiercely.

But she must not assume all the blame. It was he who had started licking at her lips and putting his tongue into her mouth and doing things there that he must have known very well would drive her to distraction. She felt no doubt that he was well experienced with such tactics of dalliance-and doubtless far more too. He had instigated all that had followed.

But there was no particular comfort in the thought. As usual, she had danced on his string like a brainless puppet. He had probably laughed at her all the way home and all through the evening. He was probably still laughing this morning and dreaming up ways of provoking her into making an idiot of herself again today.

Lady Freyja Bedwyn did not take kindly to being made to look a fool.

But, oh dear-she sighed aloud as she dipped her pen in the ink and prepared to resume her letter to Morgan-that one kiss had awakened hungers she had thought only Kit capable of arousing. Perhaps it was not so much Kit she had been in love with all these years as the exuberant passion of her own nature that had burst into glorious life when she had been with him four summers ago.

Now there was a thought.

Being a twenty-five-year-old virgin was really a rather dreary thing to be, she decided, and she debated with herself for a minute or two longer whether to add the advice to her letter that Morgan look seriously about her for a husband when she made her come-out next spring. But Bedwyns were notorious for never taking advice, even-or especially-from one another. And Morgan would think Freyja was sickening for some deadly disease if she did anything as uncharacteristic as advising her sister to participate willingly in the marriage mart. Besides, there was something mildly lowering about the thought of Morgan marrying before she did.

Her mind touched again upon the Earl of Willett as a prospective husband but she dismissed the thought without further consideration. She really would not be able to bear it. He would insist upon treating her like a lady every minute of every day-and of every night too, most like. She would expire of boredom and frustration and ire within a month.

She bent over her letter again.

The rain had eased to a light drizzle by the afternoon. Lady Holt-Barron still did not like the idea of their getting their shoes and hems wet or of having to carry an umbrella rather than a parasol, but the Upper Rooms were little more than a stone's throw away, and staying at home was an unattractive alternative to the prospect of tea and conversation with their peers. They walked to the Rooms.

The tearoom was fuller than usual, probably because the weather discouraged outdoor exercise, but they found an empty table and nodded politely to various acquaintances while the tea was set before them. Within five minutes the Earl of Willett was seated with them. He had come, he explained, to assure himself that Lady Freyja had taken no harm from her dash across country yesterday.

"Hallmere really ought not to have encouraged you," he said. "He ought to have remembered that you are a lady and are therefore compelled to ride sidesaddle."

Freyja regarded him with haughty disdain-and noticed that the subject of his complaint was just then entering the tearoom, looking handsome and distinguished in brown and fawn. She was thoroughly alarmed by the mode of heightened awareness into which her body immediately launched.

Hallmere really ought not to have encouraged you.

No, he ought not. But she had not needed much encouragement, had she?

She set about pointedly ignoring him. He was escorting three ladies-Lady Potford and two strangers, the elder of whom was wearing mourning and smiling sweetly about the room while she leaned heavily on his arm. But although Lady Potford soon sat down at a table with a few of her acquaintances, the marquess and the other two ladies remained on their feet and circulated slowly about the room. He was apparently presenting them to Bath society.

The earl stood and bowed when the group approached their table. Freyja looked up and met the marquess's eyes, her own cool and-she hoped-very slightly disdainful. His smile was looking somewhat more strained than usual, she noticed.

"Lady Holt-Barron, Miss Holt-Barron, Lady Freyja Bedwyn, the Earl of Willett," he said with great formality, "may I have the honor of presenting my aunt, the Marchioness of Hallmere, and my cousin, Lady Constance Moore?"

The aunt was the one on his arm.

"How do you do?" she said. "It is a wonderful pleasure to be in Bath and to meet all of dear Joshua's friends."

She clung to his arm as if she were too frail to stand alone. She smiled sweetly and spoke in the sort of high-pitched whine affected by ladies who fancied themselves permanently indisposed. In Freyja's experience they almost invariably outlived all their more robust relatives-and drove them near to insanity while they still lived.

Lady Constance, a neatly clad and coiffed, sensible-looking girl, curtsied and murmured a how-do-you-do.

"How do you do, ma'am, Lady Constance?" Lady Holt-Barron said graciously. "You have come up from Penhallow to take the waters, have you?"

"Perhaps they would improve my health," the marchioness said. "My spirits have been low since the passing of my dear Hallmere. But I came with the purpose of seeing my dearest nephew, ma'am, and of enabling him to become reacquainted with his cousin. Constance was little more than a girl when Joshua left home to seek adventure five years ago. Five weary years," she added with a sigh that sounded weary indeed.

Ah. The woman had come with the intention of marrying off her daughter to her nephew and so securing her home and her place in it, then, had she? Freyja looked more closely at Lady Constance Moore. And then she transferred her gaze to the marquess. He was looking steadily back at her, his lips pursed, a suggestion of laughter in his eyes. It was an expression that acknowledged his awareness of her understanding of the situation.

"We are staying at the White Hart Inn," the marchioness was saying in answer to a question Lady Holt-Barron must have asked. "I was told it is the best."

"Hallmere," the earl said, "I must commend you for escorting Lady Freyja home safely from your ride yesterday. I must confess that I was filled with trepidation on her behalf when you took her away from the party we had formed and went galloping across the hills with her. But you returned her safely to Lady Holt-Barron's and so no great harm was done."

Freyja was caught between amusement and exasperation.

The marquess raised his eyebrows. "Actually, Willett," he said, "to my everlasting shame I must confess that it was Lady Freyja who won our race by a full head, and so it might be said that it was she who brought me safely back from our ride. I am much obliged to her for that."

"I am only thankful," Lady Holt-Barron said, fanning herself with her linen napkin, "that I knew nothing of this race until after it was well over. I do not know what I would have said to the Duke of Bewcastle, Lady Freyja's brother, if she had fallen off her horse and broken every bone in her body."

"Oh, never say it, ma'am," the marchioness said, sounding on the verge of a fit of the vapors. "Horse racing is extremely dangerous, especially for a lady. I hope you never persuade Constance to go galloping across country with you, Joshua, dear."

Her voice was faint, but her eyes were fixed sharply upon Freyja and bored into her like twin needle points. Freyja raised her eyebrows with quelling hauteur.

Gracious heavens, she thought, I am being warned off. How very diverting!

The Marchioness of Hallmere, she decided, was a lady who liked to have her own way and would get it by any means at her disposal. It would not be a comfortable thing to have such a person as a mother-or as an aunt. It would be interesting to see how successfully she was able to maneuver the marquess.

The group moved on to the next table.

"The marchioness is a very genteel sort of person," Lady Holt-Barron said approvingly.

"It is highly commendable in her to have come all the way from Cornwall to pay her respects to the nephew who has succeeded to the title of her late husband," the earl said. "It would be very proper for him to offer for his cousin."

Freyja met Charlotte's glance across the table, and her friend half smiled. Charlotte had wanted to know yesterday after the ride what had happened. And of all the things she might have spoken of-and had written of this morning at great length to her relatives-Freyja had blurted just three words.

"He kissed me."

Charlotte had clasped her hands to her bosom, her eyes dancing with merriment.

"I knew it," she had said. "From the very first moment-that hilariously awful scene in the Pump Room-I recognized the attraction you feel for each other. And now he has kissed you. I might feel mortally jealous if it were not for Frederick, even if he is very ordinary-looking and quite unromantic, the poor love."

"And I kissed him," honesty had forced Freyja to add. "But it meant absolutely nothing, Charlotte. We were both agreed on that when we spoke of it afterward."

Charlotte had merely chuckled and whisked herself off to change her dress.

Despite the heavy rain that had kept his grandmother at home during the morning, Joshua had walked to the White Hart and escorted his aunt and cousin to the Pump Room, where he had introduced them to the few people who had braved the elements and where Mrs. Lumbard and her daughter had greeted them with obsequious enthusiasm. Afterward, he had escorted them back to their hotel and had breakfast with them. He had taken them shopping on Milsom Street and returned them to the hotel after two hours, empty-handed. The prices in the shops were outrageously high, his aunt had complained. He had taken luncheon with them before returning to his grandmother's.

But he had promised to take them up again later to convey them to the Upper Rooms for tea. Afterward, although it would have been more convenient to drop them off at the White Hart and return to Great Pulteney Street in the carriage with his grandmother, his aunt invited him in, explaining that there was some business she really must discuss with him. And so his grandmother returned home alone.

It had been a wearying day for Joshua. His aunt had always been a tyrant and had ruled even her own family with an iron will, but she had reserved all her worst venom for the nephew who had arrived at Penhallow at the age of six, a bewildered, unhappy orphan, who had just lost both his mother and his father to a fever within three days of each other-though he had not even known it at the time. As he grew older, he had understood that her hatred for him was due in large part to the fact that out of four children she had been able to produce only one son. Albert was the heir, but he, Joshua, was the spare, so to speak.

There had been no love lost between him and Albert either. Albert had been smaller, weaker, and a year younger than Joshua. He had liked trying to flaunt the one great advantage he had over his cousin-and had been infuriated to discover that Joshua really had no interest in inheriting the title.

It had been a severe trial to Joshua to be forced into spending a full day in his aunt's company, shepherding her and Constance about Bath, introducing them to everyone of any social significance, his aunt's endearments and complaints in his ear every step of the way. But he could hardly abandon them to finding their own way about. They had come with the sole purpose of seeing him. Besides, he would not deliberately shun Constance even if he could. He had always been rather fond of his girl cousins.

He wondered how long they intended to stay, how long courtesy would oblige him to dance attendance upon them. There were, after all, the Lumbards with whom they could consort after today.

His aunt sank into a chair as soon as they had arrived in her private sitting room at the White Hart and her maid had borne off her bonnet and gloves and other outdoor garments.

"I am weary beyond words," she said, making Joshua wonder why she had been so insistent that he come inside, then. "And so are you, Constance, my love. Go and lie down on your bed for an hour. Joshua will excuse you."

"But, Mama-" Constance began.

"You are tired," her mother informed her. "Go and lie down."

Constance went obediently after Joshua had smiled sympathetically at her.

"I should leave you to rest too, Aunt," he said hopefully, but she waved him to a seat.

"Stay," she said. "Much time had passed since we last saw you, and you are Hallmere now. You must be very happy about that. I daresay it is what you always wanted."

He did not contradict her. What was the point? He sat down and crossed one leg over the other.

"You have grown into a fine figure of a man, Joshua," she said, frowning disapprovingly at him. "And your title and fortune make you doubly eligible. You are well received in Bath, I see. I am glad of it." She sounded anything but.

"Everyone is well received in Bath, Aunt," he said with a smile. "It is not as fashionable a resort as it used to be, especially among the young. Everyone is welcomed with open arms."

"There are at least some other young people here," she said. "The Misses Darwin are fine girls."

"They are," he agreed. "But I have difficulty telling them apart even though they are not twins."

"Miss Holt-Barron is very pretty," she said.

"And amiable too," he said. "I understand she is betrothed to Mr. Frederick Wheatcroft, son of Viscount Mitchell."

"Ah, yes," his aunt said. "The prettiest girls always go the fastest. Prettiness is certainly not a malady from which Lady Freyja Bedwyn suffers." Her tone had sharpened almost imperceptibly.

Joshua pursed his lips.

"She may be the sister of a duke," his aunt continued, "the Duke of Bewcastle, I believe? But her rank has apparently not made her attractive enough as a marriage prospect. She must be all of five or six and twenty and is quite sadly ugly. There is not a great deal she can do to disguise that nose, is there?"

Joshua thought Lady Freyja's nose was perhaps her most attractive feature, although her hair, especially when loose down her back and blowing out in a wild tangle in the wind, must come a close second.

"I have heard her described as handsome," he said.

"That is what people always say about girls when they are too kind to call them ugly," she said. "You went riding alone with her yesterday, Joshua? Was that not somewhat indiscreet?"

"We went riding with a party of eight," he explained, feeling amused. His aunt's unerring nose had led her to the right quarry, at least. "We went galloping alone together since the pace was not to our liking. Lady Freyja Bedwyn is a neck-or-nothing rider."

"As your aunt who knows more of life than you, Joshua," she said kindly, "I feel constrained to warn you of the wiles that aging and unattractive spinsters will employ when more genteel methods have failed to net them an eligible husband. If you are not very careful, Lady Freyja Bedwyn will trap you into compromising her virtue and you will find yourself forced to offer for her."

His lips twitched as he thought of the inn room in which he had first encountered Lady Freyja and of yesterday's hot embrace on the white rock up in the hills. He wondered if she would appreciate the joke if he were to tell her what his aunt had just said-or would her wrath know no bounds?

"Oh, you may smile, Joshua," his aunt said, looking frail and weary. "But do not say you have not been warned."

"I will not, Aunt," he promised.

"I can scarcely believe," she said, "that Constance is already three and twenty. How times does fly. She should have been married long ago. I should have grandchildren to comfort my old age. But tragedy has kept the poor girl unwed this long. Albert died just when she ought to have been making her come-out, and since then my health has been too fragile to enable me to endure a Season in London. Then, just when I thought that perhaps I was recovering enough strength to do what was right for both Constance and Chastity, Hallmere suffered his heart seizure and died. Now I do not know when my dear girls can be expected to settle in life. And as for Prudence . . ." She sighed piteously.

There was a rather lengthy pause during which Joshua knew exactly what was coming, though he was powerless to prevent it.

"It is time you considered marriage, Joshua," she said. "You are eight and twenty, and you are Hallmere now. It is your duty to produce a male heir for Penhallow. And it is your duty to provide for your cousins since you are their legal guardian-except for Constance, of course, who is of age and has come into her portion. It is time you put behind you these years when you have been sowing your wild oats, as the vulgar phrase would have it. I do not begrudge you that time or that wildness, Joshua, though Albert never showed any inclination to desert his home or his father or his sisters-or his mother. But I beg you now to remember your duty. And I beg you too not to resent this gentle reminder from the aunt who has loved you and nurtured you all your life."

"Except for the first six years, Aunt," he said quietly but firmly, "when my mother and father were still alive."

"May God rest their souls," she said. "Do you have a possible bride in mind?"

"I do not," he said. "But I will inform you as soon as I am betrothed, Aunt. It will be some considerable time in the future. And I have exercised my guardianship over Chastity and Prue-I have left them undisturbed at Penhallow with you. Constance too."

"I know you love them, dear Joshua." She regarded him with sad, fond eyes-until they lit up, apparently with a sudden idea. "How absolutely delightful it would be if you were to conceive a tendre for Constance. It would not be at all surprising. She is a sensible, dutiful girl, and she is in good looks, is she not? She has always been fond of you-and you of her, I remember. How perfectly . . . right it would be for you to marry the sister of your wards. I cannot imagine why I have not thought of this before now."

"Constance is my first cousin, Aunt," he pointed out.

"Cousins marry all the time," she said. "It is a sensible thing to do, Joshua. It keeps titles and lands and fortunes in one family, as well as duties and responsibilities."

"I am not about to turn either you or Constance or my other cousins off penniless, Aunt," Joshua said, "even if I had the power to do so. There is really no need for you to foist one of your daughters on me."

"Foist." She spoke faintly and wilted back into her chair. She produced a black-bordered handkerchief from somewhere and raised it to her lips. "I offer you my dearest Constance and you accuse me of foisting her on you? But you were ever ungrateful, Joshua. You were a difficult boy to raise, and then you shamed your uncle by spurning his generous hospitality and going to live in the village to work as a carpenter. And then you came back and forth to the house, supposedly to visit Prudence, and . . . Well, I try not even to think of the shameful vulgarity of your behavior. And when Albert went to confront and reprimand you . . . But I have made every effort to put the painful memories behind me and to forgive you. It is the Christian thing to do and has ever been my way. I have been prepared to believe that five years must have matured you, made you a better person. I have trusted you sufficiently to offer you my own daughter. Yet you speak of foisting?"

She had shriveled into what seemed like half of her usual self-a trick she had always had of drawing pity and remorse and ultimate acquiescence from anyone who had been foolish enough to try thwarting her will. She dabbed at her eyes with her handkerchief.

"I daresay," he said, "Constance has no desire to be foisted upon me either, Aunt."

"Constance has always been a dutiful girl," she said. "She will do as I advise. She knows that I always have her own good at heart. And how could any girl not wish to be the Marchioness of Hallmere? I shall relinquish the title to her without any reluctance at all. I shall delight in the title of dowager."

Joshua got to his feet. "I would not talk of this as if it were a foregone conclusion if I were you, Aunt," he said firmly. "You would doubtless be doomed to disappointment. Constance ought to have been allowed to stay for this discussion. I am convinced she would disabuse you once and for all of the notion that we will marry. You must not upset yourself, though. I have informed you before that I have no intention of returning to Penhallow to live. It is your home. You may live there in peace for the rest of your life. My cousins may live there for the rest of theirs if they do not marry."

If by some strange chance he ever did marry Constance and take up his residence at Penhallow, he thought, his aunt would have to go. She doubtless did not have the imagination to realize that.

She gazed pitifully up at him, her eyes brimming with tears.

"You were always a hard, unfeeling boy, Joshua," she said. "But I will not take offense. And I will not despair. I will consult Constance, and she will agree with me that a marriage between the two of you is the only decent way in which you can atone for your past actions."

There, Joshua thought, he had allowed her after all to get under his skin like a sharp and jabbing needle. He was angry when he ought to have kept his feelings aloof, even amused. She was going to try to wear down Constance's defenses, if she had not already done so, and then use his fondness for his cousin to make him feel guilty for resisting her suggestion-her utterly preposterous suggestion.

The trouble was he was stupidly afraid. The woman was the very fiend for getting her own way.

"There is a concert at the Upper Rooms this evening," he said. "Will you wish to go?"

"No." She sighed. "Marjorie Lumbard has invited us to a card party at her lodgings this evening. We will go to the Pump Room again in the morning, though. You may call for us here on your way. And there is to be a ball at the Upper Rooms tomorrow evening, I believe?"

"There is," he said.

"We will attend it," she said. "You may lead Constance into the opening set of dances. It would appear very strange if you did not."

She looked wan and dejected. Any man who did not know her methods of enforcing compliance with her wishes might have felt compelled to assure her that he would at least consider what she had proposed.

She needed no such assurance.

"It will be my pleasure, Aunt," Joshua said. "I will take my leave now so that you may rest before your card party."

She waved her handkerchief in a pathetic gesture of helplessness, too choked up with emotion, it seemed, even to bid him farewell.

She was, of course, absolutely determined to have him, Joshua thought grimly as he left the White Hart and strode off in the direction of the Pulteney Bridge. The drizzle had increased slightly in intensity, and he was soon damp and uncomfortable. He had realized that as soon as he set eyes upon her in his grandmother's drawing room the afternoon before. Good Lord, she had even taken the unprecedented step of leaving Penhallow.

The obvious course for him now, he supposed, was the one of least resistance. He should simply leave Bath. It was what he would do too, he decided, cheering up considerably. It was so easy to fall into old patterns of thought when under his aunt's aura of influence. For years he had had no choice but to obey or suffer the consequences. But he was free of her now. He owed her nothing except the basic courtesy of a gentleman and a relative.

He would do it the day after tomorrow. Not tomorrow, though he was very tempted to flee while the proverbial coast was clear. He had agreed to escort his aunt and Constance to the Pump Room in the morning and to the ball at the Assembly Rooms in the evening. He would fulfill those obligations, and then he would make himself scarce.

He would dance with Lady Freyja Bedwyn at the ball too. He would flirt with her one last time, perhaps find some way to provoke her into losing that very volatile temper of hers one last time. What fun if he could do it in public, in full view of all the attendees at the ball. And what a wicked thought! He chuckled softly to himself.

He was going to miss her. She was surely the most interesting lady of his acquaintance.

One of the most sexually appealing too.

A dangerous admission. Yes, for more than one reason it was time to leave Bath.

CHAPTER VII

The predictable routine of life in Bath was wearing on Freyja's spirits. The rain had stopped, though the sky was still heavy with gray clouds, and after one day's absence they returned to the Pump Room for the usual morning promenade. The same people as usual were in attendance. There were no new faces at all, in fact, unless one counted the Marchioness of Hallmere and her daughter. The marquess and Lady Potford were with them.

Freyja strolled with Charlotte and stopped to talk with Mr. Eston and one of the Misses Darwin-she was not sure which-and then with Mrs. Carbret and her sister. The Earl of Willett joined them and walked between them until they came face-to-face with the marquess's party close to the alcove at one end of the room. Freyja thought almost with nostalgia of that morning when she had stormed up to the marquess and demanded that he be expelled from the Pump Room and from Bath itself. There had been some excitement about life in those days-it seemed eons ago.

"I do admire the cut of your dress, Lady Freyja," the marchioness said after greetings and pleasantries had been exchanged and the marquess, looking sober and respectable this morning, had half depressed one eyelid while looking at Freyja and made her bristle with indignation. "You must tell me who your modiste is and whom I should patronize in Bath. Do come and stroll with me."

She took Freyja's arm, leaning rather heavily on it as if she were an invalid just risen from her sickbed, and led her off away from the others.

"I am the very last person to consult about fashion, ma'am," Freyja said. "And I patronize absolutely no one in Bath. Shopping is surely the most tedious pastime ever invented for women. I abhor it and avoid it whenever I am able. You would be better advised to talk with Lady Holt-Barron or even with her daughter."

"Ah, but it is you with whom I wish to speak," the marchioness said.

This was interesting, Freyja thought, nodding genially to a couple of elderly acquaintances. And she would wager she knew what was coming, though she guessed that it might take her companion some time to get to the point. How very diverting! She must listen attentively so that she could report the conversation verbatim to Morgan when she wrote to her later.

"I am flattered, ma'am," she said.

"I am very grateful that you are staying in Bath for a while, Lady Freyja," the marchioness said. "There are not, I have observed, many young people here of a rank sufficiently elevated to offer companionship to Hallmere."

"Your gratitude is misplaced," Freyja told her. "I did not come to Bath in order to offer companionship to the Marquess of Hallmere. I came to visit my friend Miss Holt-Barron."

The lady tittered. "Hallmere is reveling in the company of my dear Constance," she said. "He grew up at Penhallow with his cousins after the tragic death of his parents when he was very young. He doted on them and they on him. Indeed, very often his uncle and I forgot entirely that they were not all brothers and sisters."

The little-girl whine was annoying Freyja. She wished the woman would simply talk and show her claws.

"But now you are happy," Freyja said, "to remember that in fact he and Lady Constance are merely cousins."

"It is a match the late Hallmere and I expected almost all their lives," Lady Hallmere said with a soulful sigh. "It might have appeared an ineligible connection while my son still lived, since dear Joshua did not possess any fortune of his own. But our fondness for him was such and their attachment to each other was such that we would not have had the heart to refuse our consent to the match. Now, of course, there are no such barriers to be overcome. They can look forward to a happy ending to their long attachment."

"Happily-ever-after endings are the best possible endings," Freyja said, "especially when there has been an unnecessary separation of years and then a sudden, unexpected reunion." She nodded at a few more acquaintances.

"Ah, the separation," the marchioness said. "It was necessary. Constance was barely eighteen years old, far too young for matrimony, according to her papa, who had his own ideas on such matters. Yet dear Joshua's ardor was such that being so near to her every day was an unbearable torment to him. And so he went off to seek his fortune and broke all our hearts."

"How collectively painful, ma'am," Freyja murmured.

"Devastatingly so." The lady darted her a suspicious glance. "But not Constance's heart-she knew he would remain true. She knew he would not stay away forever. And now her patience and Joshua's sense of honor are to be rewarded, Lady Freyja. He will marry my daughter and Penhallow will remain my home and the home of my other daughters for as long as they remain unwed."

"I am honored indeed," Freyja said, "that you would confide such an intimate secret to me."

"I have done it," the marchioness said with a look of sad candor, "because I was given the distinct impression yesterday, Lady Freyja, that perhaps you were in danger of losing your heart to Hallmere. And the boy does have a naughty tendency to flirt with the ladies. He is so very handsome, you see, and cannot help but notice the admiring glances he attracts wherever he goes. But his heart is true, and it was given long ago."

Freyja discovered that she was enjoying herself immensely.

"Now I understand why you drew me apart with that clever ruse about the fashionable cut of my dress," she said. "I am eternally grateful to you, ma'am. If I am ever inclined to experience a weakness of the knees at the sight of the Marquess of Hallmere's handsome person or to suffer heart palpitations at one of his charming smiles bestowed upon me, I shall remember that his heart is given elsewhere and has been for five long years while his beloved has been growing up-from the tender age of eighteen to the altogether more eligible age of three and twenty. I shall remember that you brought her here to him when he was surely pining with the anxious fear that perhaps she was still too young to be snatched from her mother's bosom. It is a marvelously romantic story, in which your own part has been one of selfless maternal devotion. How could I ever even think about intruding upon such an affecting romance by conceiving a tendre for the gentleman myself?"

The marchioness's arm had stiffened beneath Freyja's. Her voice was a little more steely when she spoke again.

"I perceive that you mock me, Lady Freyja," she said.

"Do you?" Freyja asked. "How very peculiar!"

"I merely felt it my duty to offer you a friendly warning," the marchioness said. "I would not wish to see your heart broken."

"Your kindness is overwhelming," Freyja said.

"I daresay that by a certain age," Lady Hallmere said, "one's heart becomes even more vulnerable to disappointment. Let us say five and twenty? Or six and twenty? But I would advise you not to despair, Lady Freyja. I am confident that the Earl of Willett is quite prepared to have you."

Freyja was torn between outrage and unholy amusement. The latter won. One could hardly feel true outrage against such an unworthy foe.

"Oh, do you believe so, ma'am?" she asked. "What a balm to my worst anxieties that would be. At my age I must be immensely grateful to anyone-even the chimney sweep-who is still willing to relieve me of my single state. Now, ma'am, I believe we have exhausted the purpose of this conversation." She smiled at Lady Potford and Lady Holt-Barron, who were standing together at the water table. "I believe we understand each other perfectly well."

"I do not believe you understand me at all, Lady Freyja," the marchioness said sharply. "I will not have you come between Hallmere and his intended bride. I am wondering what the Duke of Bewcastle would think of his sister's leaving the propriety of a riding party of eight ladies and gentlemen in order to gallop off alone with one gentlemen in scandalously improper fashion."

Ah, this was better. The lady's claws were being bared at last.

"I imagine, ma'am," Freyja said, "that he would say nothing. He would undoubtedly, though, make deadly use of his quizzing glass, though whether upon me or upon the divulger of such foolish information I leave you to imagine. You may address any letter to his grace to Lindsey Hall in Hampshire."

"I wonder if Hallmere has thought to mention to you," the marchioness said, her sweet whine restored as she leaned more heavily on Freyja's arm again, "that he has the most adorable little bastard son living with his mother in the village close to Penhallow. She was the girls' governess until the unfortunate incident forced my husband to dismiss her. They appear not to be suffering. I understand that Hallmere still supports them."

This was somewhat surprising and displeasing, Freyja had to admit privately to herself-if it was true. She knew very well that her brothers were all lusty men-even Wulfric, who had kept the same mistress in London for years. But she knew too, though no one had ever come right out and said so in her hearing, that one of the cardinal rules by which they had grown up was that they were to make no amorous advances to anyone employed in any of the ducal homes or on their estates or in the villages attached to them. And not to any woman who was unwilling, either. There was a strong tradition too among the Bedwyns that once they married they remained true to their spouses for the rest of their lives.

"Well, that has sealed the matter," Freyja said briskly. "I renounce all claim on the marquess, ma'am, broken heart notwithstanding. I simply could not countenance any part of his fortune being frittered away on keeping a bastard and his mother from starvation. Lady Constance must be a saint if she is prepared to overlook such a useless expenditure."

"I do not consider your tone of levity ladylike, Lady Freyja," the marchioness complained. "I would have expected a lady of your years and unfortunate looks to be especially careful to cultivate a gentle demeanor."

The claws had raked a bloody path down her person, Freyja noted with interest, and left her for dead. Gone, for the moment, was all pretense of delicate health and sweet disposition.

"I am humbled," Freyja said, "and now understand why at the age of five and twenty I am still unwed. I daresay it is my nose. My mother really ought to have thought twice before bearing my father a daughter. The nose looks distinguished enough on my brothers. On me it is grotesque and has blighted all my matrimonial hopes. I shall not weep here, ma'am-you must not fear that I will draw attention to you. I shall wait until I am in my own room at Lady Holt-Barron's. I brought six handkerchiefs with me to Bath. That should be a sufficient number."

They had come up to the Marquess of Hallmere and Lady Constance Moore by the time she finished speaking. The marchioness smiled sweetly, Freyja bared her teeth in her feline grin, Lady Constance wore no detectable expression at all, and the marquess raised his eyebrows.

"Lady Freyja Bedwyn and I have been enjoying a delightfully comfortable coze together," the marchioness said. "We have been agreeing that you two cousins look delightful together. I trust you have been enjoying your stroll?"

"We have, Aunt," the marquess assured her.

"And now," she said, "you may escort us back to our hotel for breakfast, Joshua. Are you to attend the ball at the Upper Assembly Rooms this evening, Lady Freyja? Joshua has insisted upon dancing the first set with Constance."

"While I," Freyja said with a sigh, "am still anxiously hoping to avoid being a wallflower."

There was a gleam of laughter in the marquess's eyes.

"I shall fetch my grandmother, Aunt," he said. "She is over by the water table with Lady Holt-Barron. May I escort you there, Lady Freyja?"

He offered his arm and she took it.

"Well, sweetheart," he said as they moved beyond earshot of his aunt. "Let me guess. She was warning you off her territory."

"Whether I felt inclined to play there or not," Freyja said. "And I am not your sweetheart."

"You displayed a great deal of admirable forbearance," he said. "I expected every moment to see you haul back your arm and plant her a facer."

"I have never yet struck a lady," she said. "It would be unsporting. My tongue is a far better weapon with them."

He threw back his head and laughed-and drew considerable attention their way from people who doubtless hoped for some renewal of the altercation between them that had so enlivened the morning scene here a few days ago.

"My guess," he said, "is that you routed the enemy quite resoundingly and sent it slinking off the battlefield in mortified disarray. That is a considerable accomplishment where my aunt in concerned. Will you dance with me this evening? May I reserve the second set with you?"

"How dreadfully lowering!" she said haughtily. "Only the second set?"

"Remember," he said, "that I insisted upon the first set with my cousin. Actually I begged and groveled, but my pride does not like to admit that too readily."

"And will you also beg and grovel for the second set?" she asked him.

"I'll go down on bended knee right here and now if you wish," he said with a grin.

"You tempt me," she said. "But these people might put the wrong interpretation on the gesture and your aunt might suffer an apoplexy. I will dance the second set with you. At least it will relieve me of the humiliation of being a wallflower if no one offers to lead me into the first set. I have just been informed that a lady of my years and looks must be careful to cultivate at least a sweet demeanor."

"No!" He grinned at her. "I would pay a sizable sum to have heard your answer."

They had come up to his grandmother and Lady Holt-Barron by that time, and the marquess bowed and took his leave, his grandmother on his arm.

"How very obliging of the Marchioness of Hallmere to stroll with you, Lady Freyja," Lady Holt-Barron said. "She is a sweet-natured lady, is she not? How sad that her health appears not to be robust. I daresay she deeply mourns her husband, poor lady."

Though she had been reminded of her advanced age and less than gorgeous looks, Freyja was inclined to be far more cheerful on their return to the house on the Circus than she had been when they had set out for the Pump Room earlier.

The mood did not last. There was a letter from Morgan propped against her coffee cup in the breakfast room, and since Lady Holt-Barron had several letters too and Charlotte had one fat one from her betrothed, Freyja slit the seal and read it at the table.

There was a long, witty description of a village assembly that Morgan had been allowed to attend with Alleyne, since she was now eighteen and was to make her official come-out next spring. And there was a lengthy discussion of a book of poetry by Mr. Wordsworth and Mr. Coleridge that she had been reading. Sandwiched between the two was a brief, terse paragraph.

"A messenger rode over from Alvesley yesterday afternoon with a note from Kit," Morgan had written. "Wulf read it to us at teatime. Viscountess Ravensberg was delivered of a boy yesterday morning. Both are doing well."

Nothing else. No details. No description of the raptures Kit must have expressed in the note. No comment on what Wulfric or Alleyne had said about the news. No description of how Morgan felt-she had always hero-worshipped Kit, who had been kind to her when she was a child with the double disadvantage of being far younger than all the rest of their playmates and of being the only girl apart from Freyja.

"Bad news, Freyja?" Charlotte asked suddenly, all concern.

"What?" Freyja looked up blankly at her. "Oh, no, no. Absolutely not. Everyone is perfectly well at home. How is your Frederick?"

A son.

Kit had a son. With the oh-so-perfect, oh-so-perfectly-dull Lauren Edgeworth he had married. The viscountess was perfect to the last detail, it seemed. She had produced a son within one year of her marriage. And so Alvesley and the earldom of Redfield had its heirs for the next two generations.

Freyja pasted a smile on her face and tried to pay attention to the contents of Charlotte's letter, which she was reading aloud.

Thank heaven, Freyja thought-oh, thank heaven she was not at Lindsey Hall now. Alleyne and Morgan would be studiously avoiding the topic in her hearing and the neighborhood would be buzzing with the glad tidings. She would feel honor-bound to pay a duty call at Alvesley with her family, and both families would be horribly uncomfortable. The fact that she had almost been Viscountess Ravensberg, first as Jerome's bride and then as Kit's, would have fairly shouted itself into every small silence that fell in the conversation. Consequently, they would all have chattered brightly without ceasing on any inane topic that came to mind.

She would have to smile graciously at the viscountess. She would have to congratulate Kit. She would have to gaze admiringly at the baby.

Thank heaven she was in Bath.

She made an excuse not to accompany the other two ladies shopping. She must write some letters, she explained. But instead she did what she very rarely did. She flung herself facedown across her bed and brooded.

She hated what had happened-and what had not happened-to her life. Who would have dreamed all through her growing years that she would end up like this? Unmarried, unattached, unheartwhole.

She ground her teeth and pressed her fists into the mattress.

If the Earl of Willett were to turn up on Lady Holt-Barron's doorstep at this precise moment to propose marriage to her, she thought, she would probably fly into his arms and drown him in tears of gratitude.

And what a ghastly image that brought to mind.

Please God, let him not do anything so stupid.

It would be far better to go to the assembly tonight and flirt outrageously with the Marquess of Hallmere. He was a far more worthy opponent, and the encounter was far less likely to bear any dire and lasting consequences. It would be worth doing if only to see the marchioness his aunt with smoke billowing out of her ears and nostrils.

Freyja rolled over onto her back and stared at the pleated silk canopy of the bed and remembered the scene in the park, when she had punched him in the nose and ripped up at him, and the scene in the Pump Room the next morning, when he had wreaked his devilish revenge. She thought of his grandmother's dinner party and their verbal sparring there. She thought of the horse race in which she had beaten him fair and square and of the embrace that had followed. And then she remembered their first encounter in her inn room on the way to Bath and first chuckled and then laughed out loud.

How ignominious it was that she had pined for Kit Butler for three long years after their brief summer of passion and had not been able to shake off her attachment to him in the year since he had spurned her and married Lauren Edgeworth instead. And how ghastly that her family was so well aware of her feelings that Morgan had felt obliged to break the news to her in such a brief paragraph that if she had blinked she might have missed it.

She would get up right now, she decided, and go out for a long, brisk walk. And tonight she would dance her feet off.

Brooding was not in any way a satisfactory activity.

Joshua had enjoyed his few minutes alone with Constance in the Pump Room. She had never been a particularly vivacious or pretty girl. It had never occurred to him to find her attractive. But she had always been sensible and good-hearted. He had been fond of her, and even now he felt the pull of their relationship. They were cousins. Their fathers had been brothers.

She had answered all his questions about her sisters. Chastity, always prettier and livelier than she, was now twenty, but she had no romantic attachment. Prudence-Prue-was eighteen. She was doing well, Constance reported-remarkably well. She had blossomed with Miss Palmer as her governess, and she had made some dear friends in the village. She was happy. But when had Prue not been happy? No one could possess a sunnier nature.

Constance had been reluctant to talk about herself until he had decided to be frank with her and introduce the topic of her mother's hopes and plans. She had admitted to him then that she had a beau-a quite ineligible connection-whom her mother would dismiss if it were in her power to do so.

"Dismiss?" Joshua had asked. "One of the servants, Constance?"

"Mr. Saunders." She had blushed.

Jim Saunders was the steward he had interviewed in London and hired and sent to Penhallow-the one servant who was indeed beyond his aunt's power to dismiss.

"He is a gentleman," Joshua had commented.

"And I am a marquess's daughter," she had said bitterly. "But I love him dearly. I will not marry you, Joshua, even though I may never marry him. You must not fear that I will join with Mama in trying to persuade you. And even if she were to induce you to make me an offer, I would say no."

"I will not," he had said. "You are my cousin and therefore dear to me. But you are not the bride I would choose."

"Thank you," she had said, and they had looked at each other and laughed. She had looked really rather pretty as she did so.

But she spoke a somewhat different story when he led her out onto the dance floor at the Upper Assembly Rooms that evening for the opening set of country dances. She was clearly agitated, though she did not speak until they were well out of earshot of her mother.

There was not a vast crowd in attendance, and many of those who were there were elderly. Nevertheless, James King, the master of ceremonies, had done his job admirably well and had coaxed almost everyone onto the floor who was not confined to a Bath chair. Joshua's aunt was not dancing, of course-she was still wearing her black mourning clothes. But Lady Freyja Bedwyn was. She was looking magnificent indeed in an ivory gown with a gold netted tunic, her hair swept up into an elaborate coiffure and tamed with gold and jeweled combs.

But there was no mistaking the fact that something had happened to shake Constance out of her usual placid demeanor.

"Joshua," she said with considerable urgency in the few private moments before the orchestra began playing, "you must be warned."

"What is it?" he asked, bending his head closer to hers.

"Mama is determined," she said.

He grinned at her. "We will thwart her," he told her. "Never fear. I will be leaving Bath tomorrow morning."

The orchestra, sitting apart on a dais, began playing before they could say more, and for a few moments the vigorous, intricate figures of the dance, which had them twirling about with the couple next to them, precluded further conversation.

"Tomorrow may be too late," she gasped out when next she could.

"Smile," he told her, smiling himself. "Your mama is watching us."

Constance smiled. They clapped with everyone else as the couple at the end of the lines twirled down between them, too far apart to converse privately. Then the figures began again.

"She is going to see to it that we dance almost every set together," Constance said when they came together for a moment again, her voice breathless from her exertions. "And she is going to mention our attachment to everyone within earshot. She is even hoping to have our betrothal announced tonight."

"Preposterous!" Joshua said. "Even your mama cannot force us into a betrothal, Constance."

She twirled away on the arm of the gentleman next to Joshua.

Joshua smiled his most charming smile at the man's partner and twirled her firmly about. It seemed forever before there was a small pocket of privacy in which to exchange a few more words with Constance.

"Oh, yes, she can," she said bitterly as if there had been no interruption. "She is Mama, Joshua. She has spoken of my duty to her and to Chastity-and most of all to Prue. And she told me that you said you would marry me if I were to consent. Did you say that?"

"Dash it, Constance," he said. "Of course not."

They took up their places in their respective lines and clapped again as another couple-Willett and Lady Freyja-went twirling down the set.

His aunt had twisted his words at the White Hart, of course. She had convinced herself that he would bow to her will if only Constance would. And poor Constance was her daughter and had to live with her every day of her life. How could the poor girl resist his aunt when he could scarcely do so himself?

He would wring her neck for her. That would settle the matter once and for all.

Hoping to have his betrothal announced tonight, for God's sake!

"Joshua," Constance said the next time they were close to each other. "Do something. Be firm. I am dreadfully afraid I will not be able to. And if she should succeed in getting us to dance together all night or induce me to admit in public that I am fond of you or some such thing, you will feel honor-bound . . . Oh, I will simply die."

He grimaced.

"I'll think of something," he said. "In the meantime I have at least promised the next set to someone else."

"Thank heaven!" she said fervently.

He should run while he still had a chance, Joshua thought. His aunt could hardly maneuver him into a betrothal with Constance if he was not even here. But, dash it all, was he going to run from a mean, manipulative little slip of a thing?

It was very tempting, he had to admit. But first he must dance with Lady Freyja Bedwyn.

"The next set is to be a waltz," his aunt said after he had led Constance back to her side. She beamed at the two of them and spoke rather loudly, somehow including a whole crowd of people standing within her orbit in the conversation. "Constance knows the steps, Joshua, and I am sure you must. Do dance it together as everyone can see you both wish to do. You make such a very striking couple, and under the happy circumstances of your recent reunion no one will object to your dancing two sets in a row together."

Good Lord, Joshua thought. His cousin had not exaggerated.

"I beg your pardon, Constance, Aunt," he said with a bow, "but I have already solicited the hand of Lady Freyja Bedwyn for the next dance."

A waltz. That was interesting. He looked across the ballroom at Lady Freyja. She really did look very fetching indeed tonight. She looked quite regal, in fact, or at least every inch a duke's daughter. She was standing with Miss Holt-Barron, her chin lifted, her fan slowly cooling her face.

"That was kind of you, Joshua," his aunt said, a sharp edge to her voice. She reduced the volume to a theatrical whisper. "She really is remarkably ugly."

He bowed to Lady Freyja a few moments later and led her onto the floor, where other couples too were gathering.

"I was delighted to see," he said, "that you were not a wallflower for the first set."

"So was I," she said. "Doubtless I would have gone home and put a bullet in my brain."

He laughed and set his hand behind her waist as she set hers on his shoulder. He took her other hand in his. Except when he was with her, he always tended to forget how small she was. She was also very shapely.

"How clever of me, sweetheart," he said, "to have chosen a waltz."

"I just hope you can dance it well," she said. "You can have no idea of the peril ladies put themselves in during this particular dance, when their slippers are in such close proximity to their partner's dancing shoes. And I am not your sweetheart."

The orchestra began playing, and for a while he forgot everything but the sheer pleasure of moving with her through the lilting steps of the waltz. He was going to regret not seeing her again after tonight, not matching wits with her. Not kissing her.

She looked up at him and arched her eyebrows.

"No squashed toes yet," she said.

"If I do anything so clumsy and unmannerly," he said, "I will allow you to use your fist on my face without even trying to defend myself."

She laughed.

"How is your courtship proceeding?" she asked him. "Your aunt looks very pleased with herself this evening."

He grimaced. "Parson's mousetrap hovers," he said. "According to Constance, who is about as eager for the match as I am, she is determined to throw us together tonight with such frequency that for very decency's sake we will be obliged to announce our engagement. It might be of interest to add that the woman's will has almost never been thwarted."

"Nonsense!" she said. "I found her quite an unworthy foe when I spoke with her this morning."

"Perhaps Connie and I should let you loose on her then, sweetheart," he said. "I don't suppose you feel like entering into a fake betrothal with me for a day or two, do you?"

He grinned at her.

She stared at him, an arrested look on her face. Her eyebrows rose haughtily. He waited for the lash of her tongue.

"Actually," she said, "it would be rather fun, would it not?"

They were still waltzing, he discovered with some surprise.

CHAPTER VIII

He was mad.

She was mad.

They grinned at each other like a pair of prize idiots.

It was a wild, mad suggestion. Surely he had not been serious. But the chance of getting even for this morning's insults in the Pump Room was irresistible to Freyja. Besides, she had been in the mopes all day because of that infernal letter-or rather, because of that one brief infernal paragraph in the letter. And this really did sound like fun.

A mock betrothal! Just what she had suspected Kit of last year, some part of her mind told her. She pushed the thought firmly aside. She was sick to death of Kit Butler, Viscount Ravensberg.

She had always been a madcap. Those many governesses she had plagued had been forever trying to explain to her that if she only learned to think before she acted instead of dashing impulsively onward with every scheme that presented itself to her vivid imagination, she would land herself in trouble far less often.

Freyja had always rather enjoyed trouble.

She found herself suddenly, irrationally, and quite inappropriately happy.

"By all means," she said to the marquess. "Let us do it. Tonight. Now. We can break it off tomorrow. It is doubtless what people will expect of us anyway."

She had always loved performing the energetic, slightly scandalous waltz. She had been particularly enjoying this one. But she was quite happy to abandon it before it ended. The marquess waited until they were close to the doorway leading to the tearoom, then waltzed her through it before releasing his hold on her, taking her by the elbow, and going in search of the master of ceremonies, who was absent from the ballroom.

Mr. King was in the tearoom, circulating among the tables there, conversing with their occupants. He beamed genially at them, rubbing his hands together as he did so.

"My lord," he said. "I am delighted to have such illustrious guests at the assembly as you and Lady Freyja Bedwyn-and the marchioness, your aunt, and her daughter, of course. A table for two, my lord?"

"No, thank you," the marquess said, smiling amiably. "Perhaps you would be willing to make a public announcement at the end of the waltz, King. I wish all my friends and acquaintances in Bath to share my joy. Lady Freyja Bedwyn has just made me the happiest of men by accepting my marriage proposal."

Mr. King looked almost speechless with wonder for a few moments. But it did not take him long to recover himself and puff out his chest with importance. He beamed with delight.

"It will give me the greatest pleasure, my lord," he declared, taking one of the marquess's hands between both his own and pumping it up and down. He made Freyja a deferential bow. "My lady. I cannot tell you how gratified and honored I am."

They left him as he called for the attention of everyone in the tearoom and informed them that if they proceeded to the ballroom when the music ended, they would hear a happy announcement indeed.

"You have just saved me from a situation akin to walking on eggs, sweetheart," the marquess murmured as he led Freyja back to the ballroom. "Perhaps I can repay you in some way one day."

"You may depend upon it," she said. "Though I do believe that just the look on your aunt's face is going to be reward enough for now. Indeed, I would not miss it for worlds."

The waltz was ending. The marquess offered Freyja his arm and led her to where Lady Holt-Barron was sitting. Very properly he bowed before returning to his own party, but his eyes were dancing with merriment, Freyja noticed, unfurling her fan and cooling her hot face with it.

She schooled her features to their customary hauteur. What on earth had she done now? Wulf would freeze her solid with a glance if he ever heard about it. How soon tomorrow could they end the joke?

But she could not deny that her heart was dancing with merriment. This was just what she needed to pick herself out of the mopes.

People were coming into the ballroom from the tearoom and the card room. They were buzzing with heightened interest, and soon their mood conveyed itself to the ballroom crowd too. Bath society thrived upon news and gossip-as did society everywhere. But rarely was there something really new to titillate their spirits and enliven their conversation. Mr. King did not need to clap his hands for attention when he mounted the orchestra dais, though he did so anyway.

The Marchioness of Hallmere, Freyja saw, looking frail and sickly in black, was nevertheless smiling graciously as she rested one arm upon the marquess's sleeve and had the other tucked through Lady Constance's arm. She clearly thought she had the evening well in hand.

Lady Constance was looking tense and unhappy. The marquess was looking nonchalant. But he caught Freyja's eye across the room and depressed one eyelid in that slow wink of his.

"I have been honored with the privilege of making an important and happy announcement," Mr. King told his avidly attentive audience. "It is a betrothal between two of the most illustrious members, not only of Bath society, but of the whole of English polite society. It is a dazzling match by any standards."

Freyja plied her fan a little faster. The marchioness turned her gracious attention to her daughter, clearly having decided that the announcement had nothing of interest to offer her.

"The Marquess of Hallmere has asked me," Mr. King said, beaming about him with pride and pleasure, "to announce his betrothal to Lady Freyja Bedwyn, who, as you all know, is the sister of the Duke of Bewcastle."

The marchioness jerked about to look up at her nephew, saucer-eyed. Lady Constance looked at him too, her eyes shining with happiness.

And then Freyja became aware of the swell of sound around her and the exclamations of surprise and delight coming from both Lady Holt-Barron and Charlotte. She became aware that the Marquess of Hallmere was striding across the ballroom toward her, his charming smile firmly in place, one arm outstretched. Freyja took a few steps forward and met him on a stretch of empty dance floor. He took her hand in his, bowed over it with courtly elegance, and raised it to his lips.

The crowd sighed with pleasure and then applauded enthusiastically.

It was all very horribly theatrical.

And very alarmingly real.

Freyja quelled a horrifying urge to relieve her feelings by throwing back her head and bellowing with laughter, and smiled instead.