Jocelyn did not often entertain, but when he did, he did it in lavish style. His chef grumbled belowstairs at having been given no notice at all of the monumental task of preparing a grand dinner to begin the evening and a tasty supper to sustain it at midnight. But he set about the task with a flurry of creative energy instead of resigning on the spot as he threatened to do whenever he stopped work long enough to draw breath.

The housekeeper did not complain, but marshaled her troops with grim determination to banish every speck of dust from the rooms that would be used for the entertainment and to have every surface polished and gleaming. She arranged the lavish mounds of flowers that Michael Quincy had ordered.

As Jocelyn had predicted, almost everyone accepted his invitation even though doing so doubtless involved the breaking of other commitments at the last moment. The chance to attend a dinner and soiree at Dudley House did not come often.

Jocelyn instructed his housekeeper to select or to hire a maid accomplished at dressing a lady’s hair. He did toy with the idea of also taking Jane Ingleby to a fashionable modiste and commanding that an evening gown be made up with all haste – he had considerable influence with two or three of London’s most exclusive dressmakers – but he did not do so. She would without doubt make a fuss and end up refusing to sing. Besides, he must not make her look too much the lady, he decided, or his guests would be wondering about the propriety of her having spent almost three weeks beneath his roof as his nurse.

He spent some time during the afternoon in the music room with her, rehearsing two contrasting songs to show off her voice as well as an encore, the possibility of which she protested was nonsense, but which he insisted was not.

He found, as he dressed for the evening, that he was feeling nervous. A fact that thoroughly alarmed him and made him despise himself heartily.

When she had been younger, when her parents had both been alive and healthy, there had been frequent picnics, dinners, and dances at Candleford Abbey. They had loved entertaining. But Jane did not believe they had ever invited anywhere near fifty guests at one time. And even those parties she remembered had been a long time ago. She had been just a girl.

She sat in her room for several hours before getting ready to go downstairs, listening to the distant sounds of voices and laughter, imagining what was happening, what was yet to happen before she was summoned to sing. But it was impossible to predict the exact time of the summons. Ton parties, Jane was aware, were quite unlike their counterparts in the country, which almost never continued past eleven o’clock or midnight at the very latest. Here in town no one seemed to consider it strange to be up all night – and then, of course, to sleep all the following day.

She might not be called down before midnight. She would collapse in a heap of the jitters if she had to wait that long.

But finally she could see from the clock on the mantel that Adele, the French maid who had been hired for the evening just to dress her hair, would be knocking on her door in ten minutes’ time. It was time to get dressed.

It was far too late to regret agreeing to this madness. There was no one among the guests – she had perused the guest list with great care – who might know her identity. But the Earl of Durbury was in town. What if everyone at tonight’s gathering had been furnished with her description? Her stomach lurched. But it was too late.

She determinedly pulled off her maid’s frock and drew over her head the carefully ironed sprigged muslin dress she had set out on her bed earlier. It was a dress perfectly suited to afternoon tea in the country. It was not at all appropriate for an evening party even there, of course, but that did not matter. She was not a guest at tonight’s entertainment, after all.

She shivered with mingled cold, excitement, and fear.

She had never meant to hide when she fled to London. What she should have done after making the ghastly discovery that Lady Webb was not at home, Jane thought belatedly, was to stay at the hotel where she had taken a room and apply to the earl’s man of business in town for funds. She should have boldly proclaimed to all the world that she had been abused and assaulted by a drunken rogue during the earl and countess’s absence from Candleford and had quite justifiably defended herself by hitting him with a book and removing herself far from proximity to him.

But she had not done it, and it was too late now.

She was in hiding. And about to show herself to fifty members of the crème de la crème of British society.

What utter madness.

A female voice laughed shrilly in the distance.

Someone tapped on Jane’s door, making her jump foolishly. Adele had arrived to dress her hair.

At eleven o’clock Lady Heyward, Jocelyn’s hostess for the evening, announced the end of the card games that were in progress, while Jocelyn himself directed a few footmen in the moving of the drawing room pianoforte to the center of the room and the arrangement of chairs about the room’s perimeter. The musical part of the evening was about to begin.

Several of the younger ladies volunteered or were persuaded to play the pianoforte or to sing. One gentleman – Lord Riding – was brave enough to sing a duet with his betrothed. All the recitals were competent. The guests listened more or less attentively and applauded politely. This was, after all, a familiar form of evening entertainment to them all. Only a few of the acknowledged patrons of the arts ever hired professional artists, but on those occasions the evening was heralded as a private concert.

Finally Jocelyn got to his feet with the aid of his cane.

‘Do feel free to stand up and move about for a few minutes,’ he said when he had everyone’s attention. ‘I have engaged a special guest for your entertainment before supper. I shall go and bring her down.’

His sister looked at him in surprise. ‘Whoever can she be, Tresham?’ she asked. ‘Is she waiting in the kitchen? Where on earth did you find her when you have been almost shut up here for the past three weeks?’

But he merely inclined his head and left the room. Fool that he was, he had scarce been able to think of anything else all evening but this moment. He just hoped she had not changed her mind. Five hundred pounds was a considerable inducement, of course, but he was of the opinion that if Jane Ingleby had decided she did not want to sing, even five thousand pounds would not convince her.

He had been pacing the hall, leaning heavily on his cane, for two minutes after sending Hawkins up for her before she appeared on the staircase. She stopped on the third stair up and turned into a decent imitation of a statue – a pale, grim statue with its lips set in a thin, hard line, who nevertheless looked like an angel. The light, simply styled muslin dress did wonders for her form, accentuating her tall, slender grace. Her hair – well, he simply could not remove his eyes from it for a long moment. It was not elaborately styled. It was not a mass of curls and ringlets, as he had half expected. It was dressed up, but all the usual severity was gone. It looked soft and healthy and shiny and elegant. And pure gold.

‘Well, well,’ he said, ‘the butterfly has fluttered free of its cocoon.’

‘It would be much better if we did not do this,’ she said.

But he moved to the bottom of the staircase and reached up a hand for hers, holding her eyes with his own.

‘You will not turn craven on me now, Jane,’ he said. ‘My guests await my special guest.’

‘They will be disappointed,’ she warned him.

It was entirely unlike her to cower. Not that she was doing that exactly. She was standing straight with her chin lifted proudly. She also looked as if she might have sent roots down into the third stair.

‘Come,’ he said, using his eyes shamelessly to compel her.

She came down to the second stair, and when he turned his hand palm down, she set her own hand on his and allowed him to lead her toward the drawing room. She had the bearing of a duchess, he thought with what might have been amusement under different circumstances. And in the same moment he felt as if scales had fallen from his eyes. An orphan? Raised in an orphanage? Turned out on the world to make her own way in life now that she had grown up? He did not think so. He was a fool ever to have been taken in by that story.

Which made Jane Ingleby a liar.

‘“Barbara Allen” first,’ he said. ‘Something that is familiar to my fingers while they limber up.’

‘Yes. Very well,’ she agreed. ‘Are all your guests still here?’

‘Hoping that forty-eight or forty-nine of them have retired to their homes for their beauty sleep, are you?’ he asked her. ‘Not one has left, Jane.’

He felt her draw deep, steadying breaths as a liveried footman leaped forward to open the drawing room doors. She lifted her chin a little higher.

She looked like a fresh garden flower amid hothouse plants, he thought as he led her inside and between two lines of chairs, on which his guests were seating themselves again and from which they looked with curiosity at his guest.

‘Oh, I say.’ It was Conan Brougham’s voice. ‘It is Miss Ingleby.’

There was a buzz as those who knew who Miss Ingleby was explained to those who did not. They all, of course, knew about the milliner’s assistant who had distracted the Duke of Tresham’s attention during his duel with Lord Oliver and had then become his nurse.

Jocelyn led her into the open space occupied by the pianoforte at the center of the room. He released her hand.

‘Ladies, gentlemen,’ he said, ‘I have persuaded Miss Ingleby to share with you what is surely the most glorious singing voice it has ever been my privilege to hear. Unfortunately she does not have an accompanist who can do her justice, only me. I dabble along, you see, with five thumbs on each hand. But I daresay no one will notice once she begins to sing.’

He arranged the tails of his coat behind him as he seated himself on the bench, set his cane on the floor beside him, and curved his fingers over the keys. Jane was standing exactly where he had left her, but in truth he was not paying her much mind. He was terrified. He who had faced the wrong end of a pistol in four separate duels without flinching shied away from playing the pianoforte for an audience who would not even be listening to him, but to Jane. He felt exposed, almost naked.

He concentrated his mind on the task at hand and began playing the opening bars of ‘Barbara Allen.’

Her voice was breathless and slightly shaking for the first two lines of the first verse. But then she settled down, as did he. Indeed, he soon forgot his own task and played more from instinct than deliberate intent. She sang the song better, more feelingly, than he had yet heard it, if that were possible. She was the sort of singer, he realized, who responded instinctively to an audience. And his guests were a very attentive audience indeed. He was sure no one moved in any way at all until the last syllable of the ballad had faded away. And even then there was a pause, a moment of absolute silence.

And then applause. Not the muted applause of a gathering of the beau monde being polite to one of its own, but the enthusiastic appreciation of an audience who had for a number of minutes been transported into another dimension by a truly talented artist.

Jane looked surprised and somewhat embarrassed. But quite composed. She inclined her head and waited for the applause to die away and be replaced by an expectant hush.

She sang Handel’s ‘Art Thou Troubled?’ It was surely one of the loveliest pieces of music ever composed for a contralto voice. Jocelyn had always thought so. But this evening it seemed that it must have been written especially for her. He forgot about the difficulty he had had in improvising an authentic-sounding accompaniment for the words. He simply played and listened to her rich, disciplined, but emotionally charged voice and found his throat aching, as if with tears.

‘“Art thou troubled?”’ she sang. ‘“Music will calm thee. Art thou weary? Rest shall be thine; rest shall be thine.”’

He must have been troubled and weary for a long, long time, Jocelyn found himself thinking. He had always known the seductive power of music to soothe. But it had always been a forbidden balm, a denied rest. Something that was soft, effeminate, not for him, a Dudley, a Duke of Tresham.

‘“Music,”’ She drew breath, and her rich voice soared. ‘“Music calleth, with voice divine.”’

Ah, yes, with voice divine. But a Dudley only ever spoke with a firm, manly, very human voice and rarely ever listened at all. Not at least to anything that was outside the realm of his active daily life, in which he had established dominance and power. Certainly not to music, or to the whole realm of the spirit that music could tap into, taking its listener beyond the mere self and the finite world of the senses to something that could only be felt, not expressed in words.

The pain in his throat had not eased by the time the song came to its conclusion. He closed his eyes briefly while applause broke the silence again. When he opened them, it was to see that his guests were rising one by one to their feet, still clapping, while Jane looked deeply embarrassed.

He got up from the bench, ignoring his cane, took her right hand in his, and raised it aloft between them. She smiled at last and curtsied.

She sang the light and pretty but intricate ‘Robin Adair’ for an encore. He would doubtless inform her tomorrow that he had told her so, Jocelyn thought, but he knew that tonight he would be unable to tease her.

She would have fled from the room after that. She took a couple of hurried steps toward the opening between the lines of chairs that led to the doors. But his guests had broken ranks and had other ideas. The entertainment was over. It was suppertime. And Ferdinand had stepped into her path.

‘I say, Miss Ingleby,’ he said with unaffected enthusiasm. ‘Jolly good show. You sing quite splendidly. Do come to the supper room for refreshments.’

He was bowing and smiling and offering his arm and using all the considerable charm of which he was capable when he turned his mind from horses and hunting and boxing mills and the latest bizarre bets at the clubs.

Jocelyn felt unaccountably murderous.

Jane tried to escape. She offered several excuses, but within seconds Ferdinand was not the only one she had to convince. She was surrounded by guests of both genders eager to speak with her. But though her position at Dudley House as his nurse and the circumstances of her hiring were doubtless intriguing to people who throve on gossip and scandal, Jocelyn did not believe it was those facts alone that drew so much attention her way. It was her voice.

How could he have listened to it two nights ago, he wondered now, without realizing that it was not just an extraordinarily lovely voice? It was also a well-trained voice. And good voice training was surely not something anyone came by at an orphanage, even a superior one.

She was borne off toward the dining room on Ferdinand’s arm, with Heyward walking at her other side, engaging her in an earnest discussion of Handel’s Messiah. Jocelyn turned his attention to his other guests.

Her voice teacher, whom her father had brought to Cornwall at considerable expense, had given it as his opinion that she could sing professionally if she chose, that she could hold her own in Milan, in Vienna, at Covent Garden – anywhere she liked. That she could be an international star.

Her father had pointed out gently but firmly that a career, even such an illustrious one, was out of the question for the daughter of an earl. Jane had not minded. She had never felt the need to win public acclaim or fame. She sang because she loved to sing and because she liked to entertain friends and relatives.

But this evening’s success at Dudley House was seductive, she had to admit. The house itself had been transformed into a splendid wonderland with every candle in every chandelier and candleholder lit and vases of lavish and expertly arranged flowers everywhere. Everyone was flatteringly kind. Almost all the guests approached her in the dining room, some just to smile and tell her how much they had enjoyed her performance, many to talk with her at greater length.

She had never been to London before. She had never moved in exalted circles. But there was a wonderful feeling of rightness about being with this company. These were her people. This was the world to which she belonged. If her mother had lived longer, if her father had retained his health, she would as a matter of course have come to London for a Season. She would have been brought to the great marriage mart for the serious business of selecting a suitable husband. She felt at home with the Duke of Tresham’s guests.

She had to make a deliberate effort to remind herself that she was not really one of them. Not any longer. There was a huge obstacle between herself and them, put there when Sidney, drunk and offensive, had decided to try to seduce her as an inducement to persuade her to marry him. He had been going to ravish her – with the full connivance of his equally drunken friends. But she had never been one to endure bullying meekly. She had swung a book at his head.

And so had begun the string of events that had made a fugitive of her. But some fugitive! Here she was in the very midst of a select gathering of the ton, behaving as if she had not a care in the world.

‘You must excuse me,’ she murmured, smiling and getting to her feet.

‘Excuse you?’ Lady Heyward regarded her with gracious surprise. ‘Absolutely not, Miss Ingleby. Can you not see that you have become the guest of honor? Heyward will persuade you to stay, will you not, my love?’

But Lord Heyward was deep in earnest conversation with a dowager in purple topped by a matching plumed turban.

‘Allow me,’ Viscount Kimble said, taking Jane by the elbow and gesturing to the chair she had just vacated. ‘You are the mystery of the hour, Miss Ingleby. One moment hurrying to work across Hyde Park, the next nursing Tresh like a gray shadow, and now singing like a trained nightingale. Permit me to interrogate you.’ He smiled with practiced charm, softening the effect of his words.

Lady Heyward, still on her feet, was clapping her hands to draw all attention her way.

‘I absolutely refuse to allow everyone to drift away after supper,’ she said, ‘when it is scarce past midnight. I refuse to allow Tresham to be the laughingstock tomorrow. We are going to have dancing in the drawing room. Mrs Marsh will play for us, will you not, ma’am? Shall I give the order for the carpet to be rolled back, Tresham, or will you?’

‘Dear me,’ his grace said, his fingers curling about the handle of his quizzing glass. ‘How extraordinarily kind of you to be so solicitous of my reputation, Angeline. I shall give the order.’ He left the room.

‘You really must excuse me,’ Jane said firmly a few minutes later, after giving vague answers to the questions Lord Kimble had asked her. ‘Good night, my lord.’

‘I shall have a new reason for calling upon Tresham during the next few days,’ he told her, bowing over her hand, which he raised to his lips. His eyes looked appreciatively into her own.

Another dangerous gentleman, Jane thought as she hurried from the room, bidding several people good night as she went. And one who must surely know how devastatingly attractive pale blue and silver evening clothes looked with his blond hair.

But slipping off to the privacy of her room was not to be easy at all tonight, she saw as she approached the drawing room. The Duke of Tresham was coming out, leaning on his cane. Several of his guests were already back there, she could see through the open door. More were coming from the supper room.

‘Going to bed, Jane?’ he asked her. ‘When it is not even an hour past midnight?’

‘Yes, your grace,’ she said. ‘Good night.’

‘Poppycock!’ he told her. ‘You heard Angeline. In her estimation you have become the guest of honor. And despite her appalling taste in dress – shocking pink, you will have observed, does not become her, especially when accompanied by frills and flounces and those unfortunate blue plumes she has in her hair – despite all that, Jane, there is no higher stickler than my sister. You will come into the drawing room.’

‘No,’ she said.

He raised his eyebrows. ‘Insubordination? You will dance, Jane. With me.’

She laughed. ‘And your cane too?’

‘Now, that, Jane,’ he said, lifting it and pointing it at her, ‘is a low blow. I shall dance without my cane. A waltz, in fact. You will waltz with me.’

He had moved to stand between her and the route to the staircase. She could tell from a glance at his face that he was in one of those moods that would not brook denial. Not that she would not put up a good fight on that account. He could not force her to dance, after all.

‘You never waltz,’ she told him.

‘Now who told you that?’ he asked her.

‘You did,’ she reminded him. ‘In my hearing. When someone mentioned Almack’s one day.’

‘I will make an exception tonight,’ he said. ‘Do you waltz, Jane? Do you know the steps?’

It was her way out. All she needed to do was say no. And indeed she had never performed the steps at any public assembly, only with Charles and a few of their friends at private gatherings. But she was suddenly assailed by a deep longing to waltz here at Dudley House among her peers before she disappeared somewhere she would never be found. To waltz with the Duke of Tresham. Suddenly the temptation was overwhelming.

‘She hesitates,’ the duke murmured. He leaned closer. ‘You must not deny it now, Jane. Your silence has betrayed you.’ He offered his arm. ‘Come.’

She hesitated only a moment longer before laying her arm along his and turning into the drawing room.

To dance.

To waltz with the Duke of Tresham.

One thing was very clear to Jocelyn as he sat conversing with a few of his more elderly guests while the younger ones danced an energetic country dance. Jane Ingleby was going to have to go soon. Away from Dudley House. Away from him.

She had indeed become the focus of attention. She was not dancing, but she was surrounded by a veritable court of admirers, among them Kimble and Ferdinand, both of whom should have been dancing. She looked somewhat incongruous in her sprigged muslin dress and simple coiffure when every other lady present was decked out in silks and satins and jewels with elaborate plumes and turbans. But she made every one of them look fussy and overdressed.

She was simplicity itself. Like a single rose. No, a rose was too elaborate. Like a lily. Or a daisy.

There would indeed be questions if he kept her here any longer. Surely it must be apparent to all his guests, as it should have been to him for the past three weeks, that she was a lady from the top of her head down to her toenails. The impoverished orphan of an impoverished gentleman, at a guess. But a lady nonetheless. An extraordinarily lovely one.

He was going to have to find her employment elsewhere – a thoroughly depressing thought, which he would put out of his head for tonight. The country dance had ended. He got to his feet, leaving his cane propped against the chair. Putting his full weight on his right leg did not cause undue pain, he was relieved to find. He made his way toward Mrs Marsh at the pianoforte.

‘Take your partners, gentlemen,’ he announced after consulting her, ‘for a waltz.’ He moved in the direction of Jane and had the misfortune to meet the eyes of both Kimble and Brougham as he did so. Both were looking at him rather as if he had sprouted another head. He knew why. It was common knowledge that the Duke of Tresham never waltzed. He extended his right hand. ‘Miss Ingleby?’

‘You will suffer for this,’ she warned him as they took their places on the polished floor, from which the carpet had been rolled back. ‘You will probably be forced to spend the next two weeks with your leg up on a cushion.’

‘Then you may have the satisfaction of saying you told me so,’ he said, setting his right hand behind her waist and taking her right hand in his left.

He never waltzed, for the simple reason that it was far too intimate a dance for a man who had become adept at avoiding matrimonial traps. But he had always thought that if the occasion and the woman were ever right, he would find the waltz truly enchanting.

The time was right and so was the woman.

Her spine arched pleasingly beneath his hand. The curve of her other arm and her hand resting on his shoulder brought her tantalizingly close to him though their bodies did not once touch as they twirled about the room, their eyes on each other, the other dancers and the spectators forgotten, as if they did not exist. He could feel her body heat and smell the faint aroma of roses that seemed to cling about her.

She danced divinely, as if her feet did not quite touch the floor, as if she were a part of himself, as if they were both a part of the music or it a part of them. He found himself smiling at her. Although her face remained in repose, it seemed to him that an answering warmth beamed through her blue eyes.

It was only as the music drew to an end that he realized two things – that he had inadvertently let go of his customary haughty aloofness, and that his leg was aching like a thousand devils.

‘I am going to bed,’ she said breathlessly.

‘Ah, Jane,’ he said softly, ‘I cannot come with you. I have a houseful of guests.’

She withdrew herself from his arms as everyone changed partners or returned to the sidelines.

‘But I will escort you to your room,’ he told her. ‘No, you may not look significantly down at my leg. I am not a cripple, Jane, and will not behave like one. Take my arm.’

He did not care who saw them leave together. He would not be gone long. And she would not be here at Dudley House much longer to fuel any gossip. That was clearer than ever to him.

The hall and staircase seemed very quiet in contrast to the buzz of conversation they had left behind in the drawing room and could still hear. Jocelyn did not attempt conversation as they ascended slowly – he had not brought his cane with him. He did not speak at all until they were walking along the dimly lit corridor to Jane’s room.

‘You were as much of a success as I knew you would be,’ he said then. ‘More so, indeed.’

‘Thank you,’ she said.

He paused outside her room, standing between her and the door.

‘Your parents,’ he said, ‘must have been very proud of you.’

‘Y—’ She caught herself in time. She looked keenly at him, as if to see whether his words had been a mere slip of memory. ‘The people who knew me were,’ she said carefully. ‘But a talent is not something to be unduly proud of, your grace. My voice is something for which I can take no credit. It was given me, just as was your ability to play the pianoforte as you do.’

‘Jane,’ he said softly before dipping his head and setting his lips to hers.

He did not touch her anywhere else. She did not touch him. But their lips clung softly, warmly, yearningly for many moments before one of them drew back – he was not sure who.

Her eyes were dreamy with latent passion, her cheeks flushed with desire. Her lips were parted and moist with invitation. And his own heartbeat was drumming in his ears and threatening to deafen him to reality. Ah, Jane, if only …

He searched her eyes with his own before turning and opening her door. ‘It is as well that I have guests below, Jane. This will just not do, will it? Not for much longer. Good night.’

Jane fled into her room without a backward glance. She heard the door close behind her before spreading her hands over her hot cheeks.

She could still feel his hand at her waist as they waltzed. She could still feel his heat, still smell his cologne, still feel the sense of perfect rhythm with which they had moved to the music. She could still feel the waltz as an intimate, sensual thing, not the sheer fun it had been when danced with Charles.

Yes, it was as well there were guests downstairs.

She could still feel his kiss, not fierce, not lascivious. Much worse. A soft, longing kiss. No, it would not do. Not for much longer. Not for any longer, in fact. A great yawning emptiness opened up somewhere deep inside her.