Precious Rogue

by

Mary Balogh

Holly House, Summer 1818

She had so little time to herself. It seemed unfair that her peaceful solitude should be shattered after a scant fifteen minutes. Nobody ever came to the lily pond, since it was a full ten-minute walk from the house and inaccessible by carriage because of the trees. She had come to think of it as her own special hideaway— whenever she could get away by herself, that was. That was not very often.

She was high up in the old, gnarled oak tree that she had appropriated as her own, sitting comfortably on a sturdy branch, her back braced safely against the trunk. She had not brought a book with her as she usually did. She had learned by now that she would not read it anyway. When she was at the lily pond, surrounded by the beauties of nature and filled by its peace, she liked nothing better than to gaze about her and allow all her senses to come alive. And sometimes she merely set her head back and gazed upward at branches and leaves and sky and went into a daydream.

There was so little chance to daydream. Night dreams were not nearly as pleasant, since one could not control them—or even remember them half the time. She daydreamed about—oh, about many foolish things. About being beautiful and charming and witty, about having pretty clothes and somewhere special to wear them, about having friends and beaux, about loving and being loved, about having a home and a husband and children. All foolish things. She always reminded herself as she climbed nimbly downward back to the ground and reality that she was well blessed, that it was downright sinful to be discontented, that there were thousands of women far less fortunate than she—and that was an understatement.

But today she had only just begun to relax. She was still enjoying the sight of the pond with its large lily pads almost hiding the water and of the trees surrounding it and of the blue sky above. She was still enjoying the smell of summer greenery and the sound of silence—oh, blessed silence. Though the world about her was anything but soundless, of course. There were birds singing and insects whirring and chirping. But they were natural sounds, sounds to which she did not have to respond.

And then an alien sound. A man’s voice.

“Ah,” he said, “a lily pond. How charming. I do believe Mother Nature threw it down here this very minute in a desperate attempt to rival your beauty and distract me. She has failed miserably.”

A trilling, female laugh. “What absurd things you say,” the woman said. “As if I could rival the beauties of nature.”

There was a pause as the two of them came into sight beneath the old oak tree and stopped beside the lily pond. Mr. Bancroft and Mrs. Delaney—two of the guests from the house. The house was full of guests, Nancy having just completed her first Season in London but not having quite accomplished the purpose of that Season. Oh, it was true that she had found her future husband. Everything was settled except for one minor detail. The gentleman had not yet proposed.

It was a mere formality, of course. The two of them had a clear understanding. Mr. Bancroft was young, unmarried, heir to a barony, and thoroughly eligible in every possible way. He had paid court to Nancy quite persistently through the spring, dancing with her at a number of balls, accompanying her to the theater one evening, driving her in Hyde Park one afternoon, and generally hovering in her vicinity as much as good manners would allow. And he had accepted her invitation to spend a few weeks at Holly House.

Two facts about him particularly recommended him to Nancy and her mama—or perhaps three, if one took into account the indisputable fact that he was excessively handsome and elegant. Nancy sighed over the fact that she was about to net one of London’s most notorious rakes. All the female world loved him, and half the female world—or so the rumor went— had had its heart broken by him. It was a singular triumph for Miss Nancy Peabody to be the one to get him to the altar. Not that she had him there yet, of course. But she would before the summer was out. He had made his intentions quite clear.

The rather strange fact that recommended him to Mrs. Peabody was that he was poor—as a church mouse, if gossip had the right of it. Mr. Peabody, on the other hand, was enormously wealthy and had only his daughter on whom to lavish his riches. It might have been expected that the Peabodys would wish to ally their daughter with wealth, but far more important to Mrs. Peabody was to see Nancy move up the social scale. As Mrs. Bancroft she would be a baroness-in-waiting, so to speak. And until that day when Mr. Bancroft would inherit his uncle’s fortune as well as his title, he would have to rely upon the generosity of his father-in-law to keep him in funds. He would be a husband kept firmly to heel.

It all seemed wonderfully perfect to Mrs. Peabody.

And now he was down below the oak tree telling Mrs. Delaney that nature could not rival her beauty. What a ridiculous untruth, the young lady in the tree thought. Mrs. Delaney was too fat—though she had to admit that it was the type of fatness that some men might find appealing. Mr. Delaney was not one of the guests at the house, though apparently he was not deceased.

And Mrs. Delaney had fished for further compliments. Mr. Bancroft did not disappoint her.

“In you, ma’am,” he said, “the beauties of nature have combined with breeding and taste to produce dazzling perfection. How can I appreciate the scene around me when you are here with me? I do protest that you make your surroundings appear quite insipid.”

The young lady in the tree held her nose.

Mrs. Delaney tittered. “I do not believe a word of it,” she said. “You flatter me, sir. I wonder why.” She reached out a lace-gloved hand and rested her fingertips upon his sleeve.

Mr. Bancroft possessed himself of the artfully offered hand and raised it to his lips. “Flattery?” he murmured. “You have not looked in your glass recently, ma’am, if you believe that. I have had eyes for no one else since arriving here three days ago. And I have had sighs for no one else.”

“Now, that is a bouncer, sir,” she said, allowing him to return her hand to his lips for a second kiss. “Everyone knows that you have come here to court Nancy Peabody. She is a remarkably pretty girl, it must be admitted.”

“Girl,” he said. “Ah, yes, girl, ma’am. You are in the right of it there. A pretty girl can please the eye. It takes a beautiful woman to stir all the senses. A mature woman of your years. A woman who has passed the age of twenty.”

It appeared to the young lady in the tree that Mrs. Delaney had passed her twentieth birthday long since, but it was a clever way of paying a compliment, she supposed.

“Sir,” Mrs. Delaney asked, “are you flirting with me?”

The girl in the tree held her nose again.

“Flirting, ma’am?” His voice was like a velvet caress. “I do protest. Flirters have no serious intentions. Mine could not be more serious.”

“Indeed?” The lady’s voice too had become hushed and throaty. “Do you intend to tumble me on the ground, sir, when I am wearing my favorite muslin?”

The watcher stopped holding her nose. She felt sudden alarm.

“Ah, no,” he said. “Such charms should be tasted and feasted upon in the privacy of a locked room, ma’am. And worshiped. They should be worshiped on a soft bed.”

The lady withdrew her hand from his and tapped him lightly on the arm with it. “I have heard it said that you have some skill in—worshiping,” she said. “Perhaps it would be amusing to discover the truth of the matter for myself.”

“I am, ma’am,” he said, making her an elegant bow, “your humble slave. When? I pray you will not tease me by keeping me waiting.”

“It would please me excessively to tease you,” Mrs. Delaney said with her trilling laugh, “but I really do not believe I could bear to tease myself, sir. The door of my bedchamber will be unlocked tonight if the fact is of any interest to you.”

“I shall burn with unrequited passion and adoration until then,” he said, and he bent his dark head and set his lips to the lady’s for a brief moment.

“It promises well,” she said. “Alas that only half the afternoon has passed. But we should return to the house for tea, sir. Separately, I do believe. I would not have it said that I dally with handsome strangers in the absence of my husband.” She laughed merrily.

He bowed to her. “Far be it from me to sully the brightness of your reputation, ma’am,” he said. “I shall remain here for a while and discover whether the beauties of nature will be more apparent in the absence of your greater loveliness.”

“How absurd you are,” she said, turning from him to walk back to the house in virtuous solitude. “And what a flattering tongue you have been blessed with.” The young lady who had been an unwilling witness to this tender love scene was partly amused and partly shocked—and wondered how long the gentleman intended staying at the lily pond admiring the beauties of nature. He sat down on the grassy bank and draped his arms over his raised knees.

Mr. Bancroft probably needed the rest and the solitude as much as she did. He was a busy gentleman. She had been passing his room quite early this morning, bringing Mrs. Peabody a second cup of chocolate, which by rights her maid should have been doing, when the door had opened and Flossie, one of the chambermaids, had stepped out looking rosy and bright-eyed and slightly disheveled. Behind her as she closed the door there had been the merest glimpse of Mr. Bancroft in his shirtsleeves. It had not taken a great deal of imagination to guess that at the very least the two of them had been exchanging kisses.

At the very least!

And now he had made an assignation to spend the night, or at least a part of it, in Mrs. Delaney’s bed, tasting and feasting and worshiping. It was really quite scandalous. When Nancy confided to anyone who was prepared to listen, evident pride in her voice, that her intended husband was a rake, she was making no empty boast.

And then an insect landed on the young lady’s bare arm, and she slapped at it without thinking. The slap sounded rather like the cracking of a pistol to her own ears. She held her breath and directed her eyes downward without moving her head.

He had obviously heard it. He turned his head first to one side and then to the other before shrugging slightly and resuming his contemplation of the lily pond.

It amused him to break hearts. Oh, no, that was not strictly true. He supposed it might be mildly distressing to cause real suffering, real from-the-heart suffering. He always instinctively avoided any entanglement in which it seemed likely that the lady’s heart might be seriously engaged.

It would be more accurate to say, perhaps, that it amused him to deflate expectations. Many of his acquaintances avoided eligible females as they would avoid the plague, terrified that they would somehow be caught in parson’s mousetrap no matter how warily they stepped. Not he. He liked to live dangerously. He liked to see how close he could come to a declaration without ever actually making it or feeling that honor compelled him to do so.

He enjoyed watching young ladies and their mamas setting about entrapping him, believing that their subtleties went quite undetected by him. He liked watching them tread carefully at first and then become quite visibly triumphant as they preened themselves before less fortunate mortals. He was never quite sure what the full attraction of his person was, since he always pleaded poverty into those ears whose accompanying mouths were most sure to spread the word. A baron’s title was not exactly equivalent to a dukedom, after all, especially when it was a mere future expectation. His uncle was not yet sixty and was the epitome of health and heartiness. And one could never be quite certain that his uncle would not suddenly take it into his head to marry again and start producing sons annually.

But he knew that he was considered a catch. Perhaps his reputation and his elusiveness was the attraction. Just as men felt compelled to pursue women with reputations for unassailable virtue, even if they were not wondrously beautiful, he supposed that women might feel a similar challenge when presented with a rake.

And so after paying casual court to the rather pretty and definitely wealthy Miss Nancy Peabody for much of the Season, he had accepted the invitation to spend a few weeks at Holly House, even though his friends had made great sport of both the invitation and his decision to accept it, pulling gargoyle faces and making slashing gestures across their throats and pronouncing him a sure goner. They all clamored loudly and with marvelous wit for invitations to his wedding, and one of them volunteered to be godfather to his first child nine months after that event.

The pretty and wealthy and conceited Miss Peabody amused him, as did her gracious and pompous mama and her silent father, who appeared to be a nonentity in the Peabody household.

This visit, after all, afforded him a few weeks of relaxation in the country with congenial company and prospects enough with which to satisfy his sexual appetites. He might have made do with the buxom and eager maid who had made herself very available to him both yesterday morning and this morning, hinting of her willingness even before he had thought to sound it out. But Flossie was of that lusty breed of females who invited him with raised petticoats and parted legs to the main event without any preamble and then bounced and bucked with unabashed enthusiasm while he delivered. Just as if they ran a race. He doubted if it had lasted longer than two or three minutes either yesterday or today. And then she had been up and straightening her clothes and pocketing his guinea and going on her way to continue with what she had been busy at, almost as if there had been no interruption at all.

He needed more. He would get more—considerably more—from Mrs. Delaney, whose reputation was quite as colorful as his own, though he had never yet had her himself. Tonight he would, and he would feast on her as he had promised, slowly and thoroughly, and several times more than once. He had no doubt that he could expect little sleep of the coming night, but sleep was always worth giving up in a good cause.

He would have her for perhaps a week and then be overcome with an onslaught of conscience over her married state before sounding out one of the two or three other prospects that the guest list had presented to his experienced intuition. Two for certain. The third probable.

Oh, yes, it would be an amusing few weeks. Not the least amusement would be that derived from looking into the faces of Miss and Mrs. Peabody on the day he took his leave of them, his leg still quite, quite free of a shackle. It was perhaps unkind of him to look forward to the moment. Undoubtedly it was. But then, what did kindness have to do with anything?

It was as he was thinking along these rather uncharitable lines, enjoying the quietness of his surroundings and the rare interlude of solitude and relaxation, that he heard the sound. He could not identify it, but it was unmistakably a human sound. A glance to either side showed him that no one was coming through the trees toward the lily pond, but the edge of his vision caught the lightness of some fabric up in the old oak tree close by. It was a dress. Worn by a woman or a girl. Someone who had just been entertained to the events leading up to an assignation. He was very tempted to punish her by sitting where he was for an hour or more. But he was too curious. He had not looked directly at her. He did not know who she was.

“Are you not getting cramped up there?” he asked after five minutes, not looking up. “Would you not like to come down?”

He expected confusion, stuttered apologies, a scrambled descent. A cool voice answered him without hesitation.

“No, thank you,” it said. “I feel safer where I am.”

“Do you indeed?” he said. It was the voice of a young woman. A light, pretty voice—a cultured voice. “Are you afraid I will pounce on you and ravish you here on the ground?”

“I imagine,” she said, “that you expended enough energy in that direction this morning with Flossie. And I would expect you would wish to conserve energy for tonight with Mrs. Delaney. But I would rather be safe than sorry.”

He felt a gust of very genuine amusement. The voice was very matter-of-fact, neither frightened nor accusing. He was reluctant to look up. He was very afraid that the person would not live up to the voice.

“Ravishment is not in my line even when my energy is neither expended nor being conserved,” he said. “You are quite safe from me. You may descend without a qualm. And it might more accurately be said that Flossie seduced me than that I seduced her. Mrs. Delaney, as you must have witnessed, was quite as eager as I to acquire a bedfellow for the night.”

“I thought,” she said, “that you were going to worship her.”

He chuckled and looked up. She was tucked snugly between the massive trunk of the tree and a sturdy branch, her knees drawn up, her arms clasped about them. She was dressed quite unfashionably in drab gray. Her light brown hair was pinned back in a knot at the neck without any nonsense of curls to soften its severity. Her face was thin and rather pale and quite unpretty. Except for the large gray eyes, which looked unblinkingly down into his.

“Little bird,” he said, “you have a sharp tongue. Who are you?” She looked like a governess, except that there were no children at the house. He got to his feet and strolled to the foot of the tree.

“Patricia Mangan,” she said. “It was a foolish question, was it not? You are none the wiser and must either ask another question or walk away.”

“I’ll ask the question,” he said, feeling wonderfully diverted. “Who is Patricia Mangan? Apart from a little bird who likes to eavesdrop on private conversations, that is.”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “I rushed from the house to this spot an hour ago just so that I might listen to all the private conversations that go on below. It must be the busiest spot in all England, sir. But I must express my gratitude to you for insisting upon a private room and a soft bed for your feasting and worshiping.”

He grinned at her. “Would you have been thoroughly embarrassed if I had been less cautious and less patient?” he asked and was rewarded by the sight of Miss Patricia Mangan blushing rosily. He grinned again. “Or perhaps envious?”

“I cannot tell you,” she said, having abandoned the momentary weakness of the blush, “how unspeakably thrilled I would be to be told that the beauty of nature quite paled beside my own. Your sincerity would bring me tumbling out of the tree to comply with your every demand.”

“Ah,” he said, “but I would never say such a thing to you, Miss Mangan. It would be patently untrue.” 

“I believe,” she said, “I would prefer the quite ungentlemanly setdown, sir, to the ridiculous flattery to which I was just the unwilling witness. At least the setdown was honest.”

He chuckled. “A woman immune to flattery,” he said. “Almost challenging. Who are you, Patricia Mangan? You still have not told me.”

“You have seen me a dozen times,” she said. “Well, half a dozen, at least. I am the shadow to be seen frequently behind the shoulder of Mrs. Peabody. It is my function in life, sir, to be a shadow. It can be vastly amusing. I hear and see all sorts of things because people do not realize I have eyes and ears. Indeed, people do not even realize I exist. I am Mrs. Peabody’s niece, only daughter of her brother, the Reverend Samuel Mangan, who committed the unpardonable sin of dying without a penny to his name. My aunt rescued me from destitution, sir.”

“And took you to her bosom as if you were her own daughter,” he said. Was she speaking the truth? Had he seen her before? Was she frequently in Mrs. Peabody’s shadow, at her constant beck and call? He had not noticed her.

“Yes,” she said. “Or so she tells me several times each day—whenever I do something to displease her.” 

“Dear me,” he said. “Are you really so disagreeable and so disobedient, Miss Mangan?”

“Oh, more so,” she said. “I pretend to be obliging just so that I will not be turned off and have to beg my bread in the streets. You ought not to be dallying with either Flossie or Mrs. Delaney, you know. You are to marry Nancy—or so she and Mrs. Peabody say.”

“Am I?” he said. “But I am not married to her yet, little bird. Perhaps I am sowing my wild oats before settling to a sober and blameless married life. Or perhaps I am an incurable rake and will continue with my wicked ways until my life is at an end. And perhaps it is none of your business.”

“Nothing ever is,” she said. “But I would remind you, sir, that you are the one who chose to talk to me. I was quite content to sit in silence and watch the clouds scud by. That is why I came here, you know.” 

“You escaped?” he asked. “You flew the nest?” 

“Perhaps Mrs. Peabody went into the village with some of the lady guests,” she said. “Perhaps I had finished the tasks she had left me and had an hour or so to myself. And perhaps now I will be late back at the house and will be scolded. And perhaps it is none of your business.”

“Touche!” he said. “Come down from there, Miss Mangan. We will walk back to the house together.” 

“So that I may be seen in your company and be thought to be setting my cap at you?” she said. “I would be scolded for a week without a pause for breath, sir. I can escort myself back to the house, I thank you.”

“Come down!” he commanded. He had the notion that she was a small female and wanted to confirm the impression. He did not like small females, being rather on the tall side himself. He liked tall, generously endowed women.

“Oh, yes sir, right away, sir, if you are going to use that tone of voice on me,” she said. She came down the tree with sure, agile movements, as if it was something she was quite accustomed to. She had trim ankles encased in white stockings, he could not help but see. Not that he had been even trying to avert his gaze. “You had better stand well back if you do not wish to be bowled over. I have to jump from the bottom branch.”

“Allow me,” he said, making her his most elegant bow and then reaching up and lifting her down before she had a chance to tell him if she would allow him or not.

His hands almost met about her waist. She was as light as the proverbial feather. When he set her down, the top of her head reached perhaps to his chin. Not the width of one hair higher. She was slender almost to the point of thinness.

Those large eyes of hers looked up into his. “Certainly,” she said. “Yes, do please help me down, sir. I may slip and sprain an ankle if left to myself. But now that you have done so, you may remove your hands from my waist whenever you wish.”

From sheer principle he took his time about doing so. “Tell me,” he said, “do you have to use a knife with your meals, or is your tongue sharp enough without?”

“I could almost pity Nancy,” she said. “You are not really a gentleman, are you?”

“I have been severely provoked,” he said. He offered her his arm, which she took after a moment’s hesitation, and began to lead her slowly through the trees in the direction of the house. “You could always save poor Miss Peabody by warning her about my, ah, expenditures of energy this morning and tonight.”

“Ah, but she already knows you are a rake,” she said. “It is your greatest attraction in her eyes. Well, almost the greatest.”

The greatest being that he could elevate her to the rank of baroness at some distant time, he supposed.

“Of course,” she added, “she will expect you to be a reformed rake once you are married.”

“Ugh!” he said.

“Reformed rakes are said to be the best, most constant of husbands,” she said.

“Best as meaning most experienced?” he asked. He was enjoying himself more than he had since leaving behind his male cronies in London. “Constant as meaning most constantly able to please in— You are steeling yourself not to blush again, are you not, Miss Mangan?”

“And you are thoroughly enjoying trying to make me do so, sir,” she said. “I would have you remember, if you will, that I am the daughter of a parson.” 

“Why are you so different from your cousin?” he asked. “Why are you dressed so differently? Why were you not with her in London for the Season? Were you there?”

“I was in London,” she said.

“But were not brought out with her?” he said. “Why are you not mingling with your aunt’s guests now?”

“I live in greater luxury here than I knew at the parsonage,” she said. “All my needs are seen to. Mrs. Peabody is to find me a suitable husband.”

“Ah,” he said. “That must be a delightful prospect.”

“Yes,” she said firmly, “it is.”

The trees were thinning. He was not sure he wanted to be seen with her any more than she wished to be seen with him. He stopped, took her hand from his arm, and raised it to his lips.

“My dear little bird,” he said, “we must not be seen consorting in clandestine manner like this. With the greatest reluctance I must part from you. Your beauty makes the sunshine seem dim, you know.”

“Oh.” She fluttered her eyelashes. “I was dreadfully afraid you would not have noticed, sir. I shall go this way. You may go that. So much for my lovely solitary hour.” She sighed and turned to hurry across the grass toward a door at the side of the house.

He watched her go before strolling off in the direction of the terrace at the front of the house. Her step was light, her stride rather long. He could almost picture her with a basket over her arm, delivering food and clothing to the poor in her father’s parish.

What a very amusing and refreshing little creature, he thought. There appeared to be no artifice in her at all. He felt no sexual stirring for her, but he stood and watched her nonetheless, a half smile on his lips. He rather believed he liked her. Liking was something he rarely felt, or thought of feeling, for a woman.

It was very true what she had always thought about the relative merits of dreams and daydreams. Dreams could not be controlled, and they were not always pleasant. Sometimes they were quite the opposite.

She woke up in the middle of the night aching with grief, and she realized that she had actually been crying in her sleep. Her cheeks were wet, she found when she touched them, and her nose felt in dire need of a good blowing. She felt beneath her pillow for a handkerchief, blew hard until she could breathe more comfortably, and tried to remember what had made her so miserable. That was the trouble with dreams. They were often hard to remember even when they had aroused such a real and deep emotion.

Mama’s death, perhaps, and Papa’s following it a scant year later? The contrasts between her life then and her life now? The almost total absence of love from her life now when it had used to be so filled with it? No. She turned back the sheet neatly to her waist and crossed her hands over her stomach. No, she would despise herself if she ever allowed self-pity to rule her. It was such a negative, such an unproductive emotion. She had long ago done all her crying and tucked her memories away into the past. That was the past; this was the present. Perhaps the future would be different again. That was life. In her twenty-two years she had learned that life was unpredictable and that all one could do was live it one day at a time, always refusing to give up hope when times were bad, always consciously enjoying the moment when times were good.

Except that these days there were so few good times. It was a thought not to be dwelled upon. It was too bad that dreams could not be controlled, that one must wake up in the middle of the night bawling like a baby and not even knowing exactly why one wept.

He would be in Mrs. Delaney’s room now, she imagined, her thoughts flitting elsewhere, either sleeping the sleep of the justly exhausted in her arms or else doing with her what would make him exhausted. Was that what had grieved her and then awoken her—the fact that he was not doing either of those things in her bed?

What a strange, shocking thought! And yet her breasts felt uncomfortably taut, and when she reached up one hand she could feel that the nipple she touched was hard against the cotton of her nightgown. And there was an aching throbbing down between her legs.

“Oh, dear God,” she whispered into the darkness. It was a prayer. She followed the introduction with confused apologies for sin and pleas for forgiveness. And then she apologized for her insincerity and promised to enter the Presence again when she was truly sorry and could truly expect forgiveness.

“What must you think of me?” she asked God.

God held his peace.

For the first time in a long while she had stopped being a shadow. Just for a few minutes. He had talked to her and looked at her and laughed at her and insulted her and kissed her hand and mocked her with that silly compliment about the sunshine and called her his little bird. And what had she done? She had talked back and matched wits with him and scolded him and set her arm through his and—oh, yes, she might as well admit the ultimate humiliation.

She had gone and tumbled headlong in love with him.

Stupid woman. Idiotic woman. Imbecile.

She had despised Nancy for wanting him when she knew that he was a dreadful, unprincipled rake. Yet now she was being as bad as Nancy. Horrid, ghastly thought. He was here at the house to court Nancy. He would be married to her before the end of the summer in all probability. And yet he had tumbled Flossie yesterday morning—Patricia was not so naive as really to believe that he had merely kissed the girl. And tonight he was feasting upon the almost fat and definitely voluptuous Mrs. Delaney—a married lady. And beneath the roof of his future father-in-law’s house.

Was there ever such an unprincipled rogue?

Yet she was besotted with him because he had asked who she was and then demanded further details. Because he had a handsome face and compelling dark gray eyes and a manly muscular figure and elegant costly clothes. And because she had felt his lips and his breath against the back of her hand. Because for a few minutes she had come out of the shadows and had been dazzled by the sunshine. She made the sunshine look dim, he had said, deliberately teasing her with the lavishly untrue compliment, knowing that she would have some answer to amuse him.

Idiot. Imbecile. Fool. She set her mind to thinking of a few other names to call herself. And she fished the damp handkerchief from beneath her pillow again. She was going to need it when she had finally scolded her snivelings to a halt.

She hated him. He could have played the gentleman and pretended not to have seen her up the tree. He could have gone away and left her to enjoy the pattern the branches made against the sky. But oh, no, he had had to talk to her and make her fall in love with him.

Oh, she hated him. She hoped that he was not finding Mrs. Delaney enjoyable after all. She quite fervently hoped it.

He was finding Mrs. Delaney something of a disappointment. Oh, she was quite as voluptuous without her clothes as with them, and she was quite as skilled as she was reputed to be and quite as eager to give whatever pleasure he demanded and in whatever manner and at whatever pace he chose. If she had been able to keep her mouth shut, he might have found himself thoroughly contented to bed only her for the remainder of his stay at Holly House and to forget about the other three prospects he had in mind.

But the lady liked to talk. While he undressed her and she undressed him. While they were engaged in foreplay. While he had her mounted. And after they were finished. He never minded a certain amount of eroticism whispered into his ear or even shouted out to him at the most crucial moments of a sexual encounter. It could be marvelously arousing. He liked to do it himself.

What he did not particularly enjoy—what he did not enjoy at all, in fact—was having the events of the previous day mulled over when his body was clamoring to shut down the workings of his mind or to have gossip repeated and commented upon while he labored to make the lady as mindless as he. He did not expect love from her—heaven forbid!—but he did expect a little respect for his famed prowess as a lover. The woman came to lusty climax each time he mounted her body, and it seemed genuine enough, but he never knew quite where it came from. It was almost as if, like Flossie and her ilk, she needed only the last couple of minutes for her own pleasure but was quite willing to grant him all the extra minutes provided he would allow her to make free with his ears while she waited for the good part.

During the second night and perhaps the seventh or eighth encounter all told, he loved her almost languidly in his tiredness and actually opened up his ears to hear what she was saying. She was planning the rest of their summer—their summer. He was to go to Brighton, where Mr. Delaney was a minor player in Prinny’s court. They would have to be moderately discreet, but Mr. Delaney would not make any great fuss anyway. Mr. Delaney, it seemed, had a greater love for clothes and gossip than he had for any exertions of the body. In the autumn they would go to Bath, where Mrs. Delaney had an aged aunt. It was unclear where Mr. Delaney would be, but regardless the affair was to flourish in Bath until the winter drew them back to London. Mr. Bancroft, Mrs. Delaney knew, owned a very superior love nest there where they could meet once or twice a week. Or perhaps more often—she nipped his earlobe with her sharp teeth as an inducement to him to make it three or four times a week.

He finished what he was doing to her, having the good manners to allow her to shout out her own completion first, disengaged himself from her, reluctantly shook off the need to try to doze for a while, and promptly decided it was time for his crisis of conscience.

“It is a dream utopia, love,” he said, regret in his voice. “It cannot be done. Your husband—”

Mrs. Delaney cozied up to him in such a way that if he had not already had her seven or eight times during the past one and three-quarter nights, his temperature might have soared. As matters were, it stayed exactly where it was.

“It weighs heavily on my conscience to have usurped another man’s rights,” he lied after she had protested. “You are too beautiful for your own good, my dear, and I am too weak for mine. But we must not continue. Let it end here, and let me be able to remember that for two all too brief nights I knew heaven on earth.”

The lady, he thought as he tiptoed to his own room in some relief several minutes later, did not know the rules of the game for all her reputed experience. He wondered in some alarm if after all she was smitten with him. Surely she did not put up this much fuss every time a lover shed her. Or was she more accustomed to doing the shedding?

It did not matter. He was free of her. He would give himself tomorrow night in which to recuperate and then see what he could accomplish with Lady Myron, widow. She was a quiet lady, tall and nicely shaped, older than he at a guess, and unknown to him before this week. He had no tangible reason to believe that she was not a perfectly virtuous woman apart from certain looks she was throwing his way. More than once—he was certainly not imagining them. Come-hither looks if he had ever seen any. Well, he would try coming thither and see what came of it.

In the meantime he felt as if he had at least a week of sleep to catch up on and only a few hours in which to do it, unless he slept until noon, as some of the ladies were in the habit of doing.

But the annoying thing was, he discovered over the coming hour as he lay in his own bed, at first flat on his back, and then curled on his right side and then stretched on his left and then spread-eagled on his stomach, that sleep just would not come. He was beyond the point of exhaustion. That damned woman was inexhaustible. She was always ready to settle for a good gossip when his body was screeching for sleep. Of course, she never expended her energy as recklessly as he did. She must have learned that from experience. Now whenever he seemed in some danger of nodding off, he found that he was bracing himself for her next sally into conversation—even though she was a few rooms away.

Damn the woman. Damn all women. They would be the death of him. Sometimes he wondered if all the pleasure to be derived from them was worth the effort. And he must be exhausted to the point of death if he was starting to feel that way, he thought, kicking off the bedclothes and levering himself off the bed to go and stand naked at his window. Dawn was graying the landscape already. He ran the fingers of one hand through his hair and blew out air from puffed cheeks.

Maybe it was just that he was getting old. Twenty-nine on his next birthday, though it was still more than eight months away. Almost thirty. Time to be settling down. He could almost hear his mother saying the words in her sweet and quiet voice. He grimaced and wondered if he should stagger back to bed or get dressed and go for a vigorous ride.

And then he leaned forward to peer downward. A shadow flitted out from below him and darted across the lawn leading to the trees and the lily pond. A shadow that looked as if it was clad in a gray cloak and hood. A shadow that looked female. And small.

He found himself grinning. She had not lied. He must have seen her at least half a dozen times before he had caught sight of her up in the old oak tree. Almost wherever Mrs. Peabody went in the house, her little gray shadow went with her. The little shadow was made to carry and fetch—stools and shawls and embroidery and vinaigrettes and a dozen and one other things. She did it all with a quiet grace and downcast eyes. And it was true—incredibly true—that no one else seemed aware of her existence. Just as one could stand in the large hall of a grand house, he supposed, and think oneself alone when all the time there were perhaps a dozen silent footmen lining the walls, waiting to open doors or run errands.

In the day and a half since he had become aware of her, he had not once—not once!—been able to catch her eye. But knowing that she had eyes and ears and intelligence and a sense of humor and a quick wit, he had set about amusing her by being lavish in his attentions to Mrs. Peabody and untiring in his flattery of Miss Peabody.

She had brightened that day and a half for him. She was not at all pretty, especially since he could get no glimpse of her eyes, and she was far too small and had a figure that was trim but not in any way luscious. Her clothes were abominable, and the best that could be said of her hair was that it shone and looked clean and healthy. And yet it amused him to know that he was one of the few people at Holly House who was even aware of her existence. And to know that she was hearing every lying, flattering word he uttered and was silently scolding him.

And now she was off to her retreat again, fleeing the nest before her day of drudgery was to start. Poor girl. He felt an unaccustomed wave of compassion for her. He was not famed as a compassionate man.

He looked back at his rumpled bed with some distaste. If he lay down again, he would not sleep, he knew, especially now that daylight was beginning to replace darkness. And there was nothing worse than lying in bed, tired and unable to sleep. Much better to get dressed and stroll down to the lily pond to tease a certain little bird. He remembered her sighing and lamenting the lost hour of solitude—lovely solitude, she had called it. But he shrugged his shoulders.

He was not famed as a considerate man, either.

He walked through to his dressing room and lit a candle.

Sometimes she walked in the early morning down to the crescent-shaped lake. It was always deserted and lovely at that time of day. But there was something just a little too artificial about it. It had been constructed and landscaped to be lovely and it was, but it was a man-made loveliness. Sometimes she took the longer walk back to the hill behind the house so that she could see the surrounding countryside. She liked to do that particularly if there was likely to be some trailing mist in the lowland to add drama to the scene. But almost always, at whatever time of day she was able to get away by herself, she went to the lily pond. It was secluded and rather neglected. It was hers.

There had been no dew last night. She tested the grass with one hand, brushing it hard back and forth. Her hand remained dry. She sat down on the bank, drew her knees up, wrapped her cloak more closely about her for warmth, and clasped her legs with her arms.

It was the time of day she loved most—early dawn, even before the sun rose. She was not quite sure why she liked it, since it was a gray time of day. Perhaps it was the knowledge that there was a whole new day ahead. Perhaps it was the hope that the sun would rise to a cloudless sky and that the whole day would be correspondingly bright. Perhaps it was just that she knew this early in the day that there were still several hours to go before her aunt would summon her and begin the constant demand for service. Not that that in itself was something to be dreaded—Patricia had always led a busy life and did not enjoy endless idleness. But she could never please. There was always irritability in her aunt’s voice when it was directed at her. If she set the second cup of chocolate of the morning on the left side of the bed, she should have set it at the right. And if she set it at the right, then it should have been placed at the left. It never failed. And the rest of the day always proceeded accordingly.

Patricia sighed and rested one cheek on her up-drawn knees. She had had that dream again last night, whatever it was. She had woken up again with wet eyes and aching heart. She would be glad when all the guests were gone. Though of course then there would probably be a wedding to prepare and the certain knowledge that soon Nancy and he ...

She closed her eyes. No, she would not think of him. How very amused he would be if he knew ... And how irate her aunt would be. And how contemptuous Nancy would be.

He was quite shameless in his flattery of both her aunt and Nancy. It amazed her that they both seemed to lap it all up as a cat would cream. Could they not see that the man was all artifice, that he never spoke a true word? And had they not seen the complacent looks of Mrs. Delaney yesterday? The fact that she had spent a very satisfactory night in bed with Mr. Bancroft seemed to be written large over her whole person. And had they not noted the looks Lady Myron and Mr. Bancroft were exchanging? They were lascivious looks, to say the least.

Was he spending half a night in each lady’s bed? And devouring Flossie for breakfast? Patricia hoped that he would drop dead of exhaustion. Oh, yes, she really did. Men with such low morals ought not to be allowed to live on to enjoy them. And any woman who allowed herself to fall into his clutches was quite as bad as he and quite as deserving of a bad end.

Oh, dear.

And then she heard the unmistakable sounds of someone approaching. She tensed though she did not move. No one ever came here. Not at this time of day especially. She did not want to be disturbed. She had so little time to herself. Perhaps it was one of the gardeners come to cut the grass around the pond. Perhaps he would go away again when he saw her. She was not one of the great personages of the house, but then she was not a servant, either.

The footsteps stopped. “Ah,” a voice said. “Little birds who fly down from their branches are in danger of being devoured, you know. Big bad wolves—or more probably sleek stealthy cats—are likely to creep up on them unawares and pounce on them.”

Her heart performed a painful somersault, and she wished she had gone to the lake or to the hill—anywhere but the lily pond. “If I were you,” she said, not moving, “I would not apply for the position of big bad wolf or sleek stealthy cat. You would starve. I believe that on your way here you stepped on every twig that was available to step upon and brushed against every branch that could be brushed against.”

“Did I?” He chuckled. “But you did not fly up to the safety of your branch, little bird?”

Her head was turned away from him, but she could hear that he was seating himself on the grass beside her.

“So that you might order me down and lift me to the ground again?” she said. “No, thank you, sir. When a pleasure has been tasted once, it quite loses its savor.”

“What an alarming thought,” he said. “What are you doing up and out so early?”

“Seeking a solitary hour at the lily pond,” she said. “Vainly seeking, that is. And you, sir? Has Mrs. Delaney tired of being worshiped? Or is it Lady Myron? And has not Flossie yet appeared to perform any of her morning duties?”

“I see that your tongue and a whetstone have been no strangers to each other’s company during the past two days,” he said. “Would you not agree that despite my nocturnal adventures I have been behaving with faultless gallantry to my intended and her mother? Come, you must admit that.”

“Where I was brought up,” she said, “we were taught that it is a sin to lie. I do not know where a hot enough corner of hell will be found for you when you die, sir.”

“I prefer not to dwell upon the prospect at the moment, thank you,” he said. “But come, Miss Mangan, would this not be a dreadful world and would not gallantry die an ignominious death if we all spoke the truth without fail?”

She smiled, but he could not see her expression since her face was still turned away from him.

“Well, that at least has silenced you,” he said. “Just picture it, my little bird. ‘Madam, you are plain and totally lacking in any shape that might be called feminine. Silks and muslins appear lusterless when hung on your person. Looking at you is a pain only intensified when you open your mouth and speak. Madam, would you dance with me?’ or ‘Madam, would you care to shed your clothes and jump into bed with me? You appear to have been formed expressly for the purpose of satisfying my lust.’ Would I gain myself a place in heaven and a golden harp to play upon if I spoke thus honestly to a lady?”

“Your lack of tact would doubtless make it impossible for you to indulge in any other sin,” she said. “No woman would allow you within a five-mile radius of her. You might well find yourself living a spotless existence, sir.”

“Ugh!” he said.

She could resist no longer. She still wished herself a million miles away, but he was close by. She could tell that by his voice. He was sitting very close to her. She turned her head to rest the other cheek on her knees, and gazed at him. He was wearing a dark cloak. He was bareheaded. He was sprawled on the grass beside her, propped on one elbow. And his eyes were laughing at her. She remembered then what it was that had caused her great stupidity in the first place. It had happened when he had smiled and laughed at her. Nobody ever smiled at her these days.

“Little bird,” he said, “your eyes are too big for your face.”

“Am I to thank you for your honesty?” she asked.

“If you wish.” He grinned. “The thought has just struck me. Did you have a tryst here? Is there some burly and impatient swain hiding in the bushes waiting for me to make myself scarce?”

“There are probably half a dozen of them,” she said. “But no matter. They will all come back tomorrow. It is my eyes, you see. They slay men by the dozens.”

“Mrs. Peabody is choosing you a husband,” he said. “Is he chosen yet, little bird?”

She thought she detected mockery in his voice. “Yes,” she said. “He is a tenant farmer. A prosperous farmer,” she added, emphasizing the adjective.

“Is he?” He plucked a blade of grass and set it between his teeth. “And ruddy and rotund and sixty years of age?”

“He is handsome and slender and only two years my senior,” she said.

He smiled slowly at her. “And how old is that?” he asked. “Twenty-three? Twenty-four? And already a prosperous tenant farmer? He is an industrious man, or a fortunate one.”

“His father died young,” she said, “and left him everything.”

“Ah.” He chuckled. “I have heard that even the coolest corner of hell is a mite uncomfortable, little bird.”

“You will never know, will you?” she said. “You are going to turn virtuous and spend your time on useful accomplishments, like practicing the harp.”

He chuckled again and stretched out on the ground, one arm behind his head. With the other hand he reached out to touch her arm and ran it down to her elbow and then down to her wrist, which he encircled so that he could draw her arm away from her knees and down to the ground. He clasped her hand firmly and closed his eyes.

“I am weary,” he said. “And don’t tell me that you know the cause, little bird, and that I deserve to be. One day, when you are married to your young and virile tenant farmer—your prosperous farmer—you will discover that the cause of the weariness can be worth every sleepless moment. Talk to me. Tell me about your life at the parsonage. At a guess I would say you were happy there. Were you?”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes.”

He opened his eyes and turned his head to look up at her. “Tell me about it, then,” he said. “Tell me about all the sinners you led back into the fold. I am sure there were many of them. You would have scolded them with your sharp tongue and made them stubborn, and then you would have gazed at them with those too-large sorrowful eyes and melted away all their resistance. Is that how you did it?”

“Yes,” she said. “Every Sunday morning before service all of Papa’s parishioners had to file past me outside the church and gaze into my eyes for thirty seconds each. The church was always full of weeping penitents afterward.”

He chuckled and squeezed her hand. “Tell me,” he said. “Who was Patricia Mangan before she came here?”

She was the much adored only child of parents who had both been in their forties when they were blessed with her, as they had always put it. They had been married for almost twenty years before she came along. Her father had always likened himself and her mother to the biblical Abraham and Sarah. She had played a great deal, both alone with her imagination and with the other village children, and had gone to school with them to be taught by her father, the schoolmaster. But there had been work too—household chores set her by her mother, parish chores set her by her father. She had never been idle.

She had never really thought about her happiness until everything came crashing to an end. She had not been conscious at the time that she was living through an idyll. It had seemed to her a normal, plodding, unexciting type of existence if she ever thought of it. She rarely did. She had just lived it.

And then when she was seventeen Patrick had been killed in Spain.

“Who was Patrick?”

She had been hardly aware that she was talking aloud, that she had an audience. Patrick was the younger son of a gentleman who lived in a small manor outside the village. He had gone to the wars as a young ensign and been killed in his first battle. Patrick had been her childhood sweetheart, the boy she had loved. They were going to be married when he came home, a great hero. In her naivete she had not really considered the strong possibility of his dying.

But she had learned a swift and thorough lesson about death. Her mother had died less than a year later of a fever, and her father of a chill a year after that. At one moment it had seemed that she had everything—everything to bring her contentment and a continuation of the world as she knew it. And at the next it had seemed that she had nothing. Though that was not true, of course. She must not complain. Her father had had a sister who had done very well for herself by marrying Mr. Peabody, a prosperous gentleman. Patricia had been offered a home with them.

“Little bird,” Mr. Bancroft said, first squeezing her hand again and then lifting it to his lips. “I am sorry. Life often seems a very unfair business, does it not?”

“Not to me,” she said untruthfully. “Many women who are left destitute are forced to sell themselves, sir. I have not been brought that low.”

“And there is always your future with your lusty farmer to look forward to,” he said. “Tell me about your future. What will constitute a happy life to you?”

A husband and a home. A gentle and a kindly man. A good friend and companion. She did not care about good looks or social prominence or unusual physical strength or intelligence. Just an ordinary, honest, constant man.

“A rake would not do you, then?” he asked.

No, certainly not a rake. Someone she could depend upon. And a home of her own. It would not have to be very large or very grand or even very lavishly furnished. Just so that it was her own with a garden for her flowers and vegetables, and perhaps a few chickens. Oh, and dogs and cats. And children of her own. More than one of it was possible. Loneliness could be hard on children even when there were loving parents and plenty of village children to play with. Children should have brothers and sisters if it was at all possible. And she wanted to hold babies in her arms. Her own babies.

Nothing else really. She did not crave wild adventure or excitement in her life. Only contentment. She would wish too that her husband would live long, that he would outlive her—and that she would not lose any of her children in infancy, as so many women did.

It was not a very ambitious dream. But it was as far beyond her as the sun and stars. She was not speaking aloud now. It was an impossible dream. Her aunt would never let her go. She was too useful. And she had no dowry. And no beauty. Perhaps if she went away and tried to find employment ... But as what? A governess? A housekeeper? A lady’s companion? She was a lady’s companion already. None of those types of employment, even if she could find any without any experience or recommendations, would find her a husband.

If only Patrick had not dreamed of the glory of being a soldier. But that was long in the past. He had become a soldier and he had gone to war and he had been killed. There was no point in indulging in if-onlys.

Mr. Bancroft was sleeping, she realized suddenly. His hold on her hand had loosened, and his breathing was deep and even. His head was turned toward her.

He was so very beautiful. She let her eyes roam over his perfect features, over his thick, dark hair. Patrick had been blond. The folds of his cloak hid the shape of his body, but she knew that he was both slender and muscular, that a broad chest tapered to narrow waist and hips. One of his legs, encased in pantaloons and Hessian boot, was raised at the knee and free of his cloak. She could see his thigh muscles through the tight fabric. For all his attention to women, which had led her to imagine that he must spend most of his life in bed, he must work hard at keeping himself fit.

He was so very beautiful. She could feel the warmth of his hand about hers and told herself with great deliberateness that she would always remember this moment. He was a dreadful and shameless rake, and she must be thankful that her lack of beauty and charm and fortune had led him into treating her like this, like a younger cousin, perhaps, when he might have been trying to seduce her. She had had these quiet minutes with him and would be able to treasure them in memory for the rest of her life.

She was glad she had no beauty with which to tempt him. She was glad he had never tried to make love to her. She bit her lip and tried to believe her own very deliberate thoughts.

It was full daylight. The sun was probably springing over the eastern horizon, though she could not see it here among the trees. She must go back to the house and prepare herself for the day. She was tempted to sit here until he awoke. Perhaps it would be hours later. But she did not have hours to spare. Besides, she did not want to talk with him anymore. She did not believe she would be able to keep up any of their usual banter. She felt a little like crying.

She wanted to kiss him. She wanted to lean down and touch her lips to his forehead or one of his cheeks. Or perhaps even his own lips. But she might wake him. She would die of humiliation if he awoke while her lips were touched to his.

So she merely raised his hand slowly and dipped her head to meet it and set her cheek to the back of it. And she turned her head and brushed her lips against the back of his wrist. Then she set his hand down carefully on the grass, got quietly to her feet, gazed down at him for a few moments longer, and walked softly away into the trees—far more softly than he had approached a half hour or so earlier.

He was not sleeping. He merely did not want to continue his conversation with her. He did not want to have to walk back to the house with her.

She had let him into her world, a very ordinary world, but one so alien to him that he did not know how to respond to her. Life had been cruel to her— viciously cruel. And her dreams, though humble ones, were quite, quite beyond her grasp, he knew. He did not for one moment believe in the young and handsome and prosperous tenant farmer or in the ruddy, rotund, elderly one, either. She was too valuable to Mrs. Peabody. Mrs. Peabody was the type of woman who needed someone more than a personal maid to fetch and carry for her, and someone who was always there on whom to vent her spleen. Someone who could not answer back.

Patricia Mangan would never hold any of those babies in her arms. It was such a humble ambition for a woman to have. She did not crave silks and jewels and fashionable beaux—only a kindly, constant husband and a small and cozy home and some babies of her own.

It was not pity he felt. He did not believe it was pity. His little bird was too sensible and too courageous a woman to be pitied. It was rage he felt. A rage against Mrs. Peabody, perhaps. A rage against God, certainly. Though he was not sure that God could be blamed for what people did to one another when they had been given the infinitely precious gift of free will.

He wanted to draw her down into his arms, to hold her against him, to warm her soul against his body. But to what end? He knew of only one thing to do with a woman’s body when it was against his own. He knew nothing about giving comfort. And she did not need comfort anyway. She did not seem to pity herself, or if she did, it was something she fought in the quiet of her own heart.

He felt humbled by her.

He could not talk to her. And so he conveniently fell asleep and waited for her to go away. It was his answer to anything troubling in his life—close his eyes and wait for it to go away.

She did go away eventually—after lifting his hand to her cheek and kissing the back of his wrist.

God! Oh, Lord God!

He did not know what she meant by it. A mere tender affection because he had listened to her—and fallen asleep while she spoke? Or—or something else?

Hell and a thousand million damnations!

* * *

The guests had been at Holly house for two weeks and were to stay for another week. Patricia did not like their being there even though there was one distinct advantage to her in that Mrs. Peabody was frequently engaged in outings with them and left her with more than usual freedom. But she did not like their being there nevertheless.

She did not like his being there. She wanted him to go away. She wanted to be free of him. Since the morning at the lily pond she had been alone with him only once, for a mere few seconds and they had exchanged only seven words, four of his and three of hers. But she wanted him gone anyway. His presence in the house and frequently in the same room as she occupied with her aunt weighed heavily on her spirits.

The only time they met face to face, or almost face to face, was one morning when she was hurrying along the upstairs hallway with Mrs. Peabody’s second cup of chocolate and he came out of his room just ahead of her. He closed the door and waited for her to draw level with him.

“Good morning, little bird,” he said quietly.

“Good morning, sir.” She did not raise her eyes and she hurried on past him. But she was upset for the rest of the day.

Mrs. Delaney was annoyed with him. Patricia could tell that from the way the lady flirted so ferociously with all the other gentlemen who made up the party— including even Mr. Peabody. Lady Myron was Mr. Bancroft’s current favorite and probable bedfellow. The lascivious looks they had been exchanging more than a week ago had become considerably hotter. And when the lady was passing him one day in a doorway, Patricia saw that she leaned deliberately forward and slid her bosom across his chest—as if the doorway was no more than six inches wide. His eyes had smoked down at her.

It amazed Patricia that no one else noticed such things. Perhaps one observed more easily when one lived the life of a shadow. Everyone else was perhaps too busy living. And everyone else seemed to assume that a betrothal announcement would be made before the final week drew to an end.

They could not be blamed for thinking so, Patricia thought, and undoubtedly they were right. He was markedly attentive to Nancy, leading her in to meals, standing behind her to turn the pages of her music when she played the pianoforte, walking out with her, strolling on the terrace with her after dinner before the evening entertainment began, dancing with her if that was the order of the evening, partnering her in cards or charades. He smiled at her and talked with her and devoured her with his eyes and made it appear that he was smitten to the very heart.

Most of them could not be blamed for not knowing that he had spent his nights with Mrs. Delaney at the start and was now spending them with Lady Myron and was also exchanging interested and assessing glances with Mrs. Hunter and had tumbled Flossie on at least one occasion.

Why should they know or suspect when a very obvious courtship was developing before their eyes and when Mrs. Peabody and Nancy were so very openly in expectation of an event to be celebrated before they sent their guests on their way?

Patricia was usually excluded from the social events that took place beyond the confines of the house. But she was informed that she was to accompany Mrs. Peabody on the picnic out to the hill one afternoon. She could make herself useful for a change, she was told, instead of being idle and indolent. She was going to have to revise her lazy ways after the guests had gone home. There was going to be dear Nancy’s wedding to prepare for, after all. And perhaps she did not realize that her keep was costing Mr. Peabody a pretty penny. It was time she did something to earn it.

And so Patricia found herself on a warm and only slightly breezy summer afternoon seated in the open barouche beside Mrs. Peabody, Nancy and Nancy’s young friend, Susan Ware, opposite them, Mr. Bancroft, riding like the other gentlemen, close to the other side of the conveyance, heaping gallantries on the ladies—on the three ladies, that was. Patricia was merely the shadow of one of them.

That morning at the lily pond had had results. Talking about her past and putting into words her dreams—as she had done to no one before, or not since Patrick’s departure for Spain, anyway—had set her to thinking. And realizing what an abject creature she had become. What a victim. Could she really be quite this helpless? Was it possible that her aunt really owned her for the rest of her life, just as if she were a slave? Was it so impossible to try to shape a life of her own?

The new parson at home, the one who had taken over from Papa, had been a friend of his. Patricia had met him once or twice before her father’s death. She had heard since in the letters she sometimes received from the Misses Jones that he did not like teaching at the village school, that he considered it to be outside the limits of his responsibilities. He did it only because there was no alternative.

What if she presented him with an alternative? Patricia had been thinking it over during the past week. What if she offered to teach at the school? She did not know how she would be paid and she did not know where she would live, unless it was in that rundown cottage that no one had wanted to live in for the past ten years or so because the former owner had hanged himself inside and his ghost was said to linger there. But what if something could be worked out?

She had written to the parson, and she was waiting hopefully and anxiously for an answer. If only ... Oh, if only something could be worked out. She would not need a fortune, only enough with which to clothe herself and feed herself and keep herself warm.

“Girl!” She could tell from Mrs. Peabody’s sharp tone that it was not the first time she had spoken. “My parasol.”

Mrs. Peabody’s parasol was at her side, at the side farthest from her niece. Patricia had to lean across her to reach it. She handed it to her aunt.

“And it is to shade my complexion as it is?” Mrs. Peabody said. “Lazy girl.”

Patricia raised the parasol and handed it to her aunt.

“Really, Patricia,” Nancy said, “you can be remarkably dense. Oh, Susan, do look at the darling bonnet Lady Myron is wearing. I am positively green with envy.”

“My dear Miss Peabody,” Mr. Bancroft said, leaning down from his horse’s back and setting one hand on the door of the barouche, “the bonnet would be wasted on you. The beholder would look into your face and not notice the beauty of the hat at all. You see, it is only now that I deliberately look that I realize how exquisitely lovely is the one you are wearing.”

“Oh, such things you say, Mr. Bancroft,” Mrs. Peabody said and laughed heartily.

Miss Peabody blushed and twirled her parasol and looked triumphantly about her to see who had heard the compliment.

Patricia would have held her nose if she could have done so without being observed. She did not look up at the gentleman, though she had the feeling sometimes that he indulged in such extravagant flattery partly for her amusement. She wondered if he would continue to say such things to Nancy once he was married to her.

Blankets had been spread on the grass at the foot of the hill. Mrs. Peabody had seated herself in the middle of one of them, Patricia slightly behind her, while most of the guests amused themselves in slightly more energetic ways until tea was served.

Most of them climbed the hill in order to gaze admiringly at the prospect Mrs. Peabody had promised them from the top, though she did not go up herself to display it to them. Mr. Bancroft led the way, Nancy on one arm, Susan on the other. A great deal of trilling laughter wafted down the hill after them. And then some of them strolled about the base of the hill while others walked the half mile to the east to look at the Greek folly that Mr. Peabody’s father had had built years ago in the form of a temple. Still others wandered to the west to lose themselves among the trees that hid from view the river winding its way down in the direction of the crescent-shaped lake.

Mr. Bancroft went with the last group, though Nancy, who had elected herself leader of the expedition to the folly, appeared somewhat chagrined. He walked with Lady Myron and two other couples.

Patricia sat on the blanket the whole while, opening and closing her aunt’s fan in concert with the passing clouds, fanning her aunt’s face when the sun shone for too long, arranging a shawl about her shoulders when a cloud took forever to pass over, carrying messages to the footmen who brought the food, first to wait awhile and then to hurry along instead of standing idle for all to see.

And then when the footmen were busy setting out the food, which had been prepared in such variety and such abundance that it surely would have fed the five thousand with more than a dozen baskets of crumbs to spare, Mrs. Peabody decided that the wine should have been served first. Everybody would be thirsty from the heat and their exertions.

“Go and help, girl,” she said impatiently to Patricia. “Make yourself useful. Go lift the wine basket from the wagon and take it over to Gregory. Instruct him to open the bottles immediately.”

Patricia went to make herself useful. But the wine must match the food in quantity, she thought as she tried to lift the heavy basket down from the wagon. It must weigh a ton. And it was an awkward size. She wormed her hands beneath its outer edges and slid it to the edge of the wagon.

“Here, I’ll take that,” a hearty voice said from behind her. “It is almost as big as you are, little lady, and probably twice as heavy.”

Patricia turned her head gratefully to see Mr. Ware, Susan’s father, hurrying toward her, smiling jovially.

“Thank you,” she said, standing back as his hands replaced hers beneath the basket. But the basket was teetering on the edge, and she withdrew her hands a moment too soon. Mr. Ware roared out a dismayed warning, Patricia’s hands flew to her mouth, and the basket came crashing to earth, bursting open and spilling its contents as it did so.

Perhaps one bottle alone would not have smashed since the wagon board was not particularly high off the ground and the ground itself was carpeted with grass. But bottles and glasses tumbled against each other and smashed with a glorious crashing and flying of glass and spilling of wine.

Everyone’s attention was drawn—it was such a magnificent disaster. Mr. Ware first swore and then apologized—but whether for his language or his clumsiness was not apparent—and then started to look sheepish. Patricia kept her hands pressed to her mouth for a few moments and then started to assure the gentleman that it was not his fault, that she had withdrawn her hands too soon.

And then Mrs. Peabody was there.

If it was really possible for anyone to turn purple in the face, Patricia thought, then her aunt had just done so, and her bosom seemed to have swelled to twice its normal buxom size. If Patricia’s own mind had been working coolly, she would have realized perhaps that her aunt for once in her life had forgotten her surroundings and her audience and the impression she was about to make on them. But it was not a cool moment.

“Imbecile!” Mrs. Peabody shrieked at her niece. “You clumsy oaf! Is this the gratitude I receive for opening my home to you when my brother left you without a farthing to your name, and for clothing you and feeding you and treating you like my own daughter?”

“Oh, I say, ma’am,” Mr. Ware said with an embarrassed cough, “I am afraid the fault was mine.”

Everyone else was still and silent, as if posing for a painted tableau. They had all returned from their various walks.

“I saw it all,” Mrs. Peabody said. “It is good of you to be so much the gentleman, sir, but you need not protect the lazy slut.”

“Aunt!” Patricia’s voice was hushed and shocked. There was a faint buzzing in her head.

“Silence!” Mrs. Peabody’s palm cracked across one of Patricia’s cheeks, and she turned away. “Now, what is to be done about this? Gregory, back to the house immediately for more wine.”

The lady seemed suddenly to remember who she was and where she was. She smiled graciously about her and set about soothing her guests and tempting them with all the edible delights spread out before them and assuring them that the wine would be brought and served in no time at all.

“Oh, I say,” Mr. Ware said ineffectually to Mrs. Peabody’s regal back. “Oh, I say.” He looked helplessly and apologetically at Patricia.

But Patricia was stunned, hardly even aware yet of the stinging of her cheek. She had been called a slut and she had had her face slapped—in public. Everyone had been watching and listening. Everyone!

She turned suddenly and began to run. She did not know where she was going or what she was going to do when she arrived there. She knew only that she had to get away, that she had to hide. Instinct took her in the direction of the trees. But even when she was among them, panic did not leave her. She turned north, away from the house, and ran recklessly among closely packed trees and hanging branches, heedless of slashing twigs and threatening roots. She could hear someone sobbing and did not even realize that it was herself.

And then she remembered the other folly, the little ruined tower down by the river, with the circular stone seat inside. She could collapse onto that. She could hide there for a while. For longer than a while. Forever. She could never go back to the house.

She had stopped running. She approached the folly from behind with quiet, weary steps and rounded the circular wall to the opening and the seat.

Mr. Bancroft was sitting on it, a lady with him. Patricia could not even see who she was until he raised his head, startled, from kissing her. Mrs. Hunter. Her dress was off her shoulder on the left side and down to her waist. He had his hand cupped about her naked breast.

Panic hit again. Patricia went fleeing away with a moan, crashing through trees once more until her breath gave out and a stitch in her side had her clutching it. Her cheek was hot and throbbing. She set her forehead against the trunk of a tree and closed her eyes. When the pain in her side had dulled, she wrapped her arms about the tree and sagged against it.

He was getting bored. Three weeks was too long a time to spend at one country home in company with the same twenty or so people. He would be thoroughly glad when the remaining week was at an end and he could get back to normal life.

And what was normal life? He would follow the fashionable crowd to Brighton for a month or two, he supposed. There was always plenty happening there, plenty of congenial male company and wild wagers with which to fill his days, plenty of bored and beddable females to add excitement to his nights.

And then where? A duty visit to his mother and his uncle? Yes, he supposed so. He loved his mother dearly. It was just that her reproachful glances and accusing silences made him uncomfortable at times. She always gave the impression that she was waiting patiently for the day when he would have finally sowed the last of his wild oats and that she was perhaps giving up hope that he would ever be finished with them.

And then where? Bath? London?

He was getting bored, he thought in some alarm. Bored not just with the present reality but with the general condition of his life.

He had been conducting a heated affair with Lady Myron for more than a week. She was everything he could possibly ask for. She had a body that could arouse him at a glance, and she made that body and all the sexual skills she had acquired over the years fully available for his pleasure all night and every night. She had an energy to match his own and was eager to learn new skills from him and to teach him those few he had never before encountered. She made no demands beyond the moment.

But he was bored. And puzzled. After a week he was tired of such a desirable lover? Why? He could not think of anything wrong with her beyond the fact that they had nothing in common except a zestful enjoyment of a good tumble between the sheets. Her conversation—on the few occasions when they talked—was all of horses and hounds and hunting. He had no particular interest in such country pursuits. But that could not matter, surely. A woman’s body and her sexual prowess were all that mattered—and Lady Myron passed muster on both counts.

But he found himself eyeing Mrs. Hunter appreciatively during the days and wondering how she compensated herself for the fact that Mr. Hunter, not present at the Holly House gathering, was a septuagenarian, and by all accounts a frail one at that. He began to suspect that somehow she did it and that she would be only too willing to do so with him before the party broke up.

And so she maneuvered it and he maneuvered it that they spend some time alone together on the afternoon of the picnic, both Lady Myron and Mr. Crawford, Mrs. Hunter’s escort, having been shed somewhere along the way. And they discovered the convenience of the little folly by the river and sat inside it by mutual but unspoken consent.

The lady did not waste time on conversation or other preliminaries, he was delighted to find. She turned her face to his and kissed him. And when he had fully accepted the invitation and got his arms about her, she reached up a hand and drew down her dress to expose one breast many minutes before he would have got around to doing it for himself.

He was, he realized with pleased certainty, about to feast upon the full delights of the woman in the middle of the afternoon on a hard stone bench. And he was being given the distinct impression that she was ravenous.

Interesting!

It was at that moment and just as he had got his hand on the woman’s breast and was listening to her throaty murmur of appreciation that he knew someone else was there. Lady Myron, he thought as he lifted his head, and he had a momentary vision of the two woman going for each other’s hair with clawed fingernails—or else both going for his hair.

But it was Patricia Mangan. She stood there only for a moment before she moaned and disappeared, but he had the instant impression of a torn dress and a bonnetless head with hair pulled loose from its confining pins, and of a wild, unhappy face, one side of it red and swollen.

“Good Lord!” he said, relinquishing his hold on Mrs. Hunter’s breast and jumping to his feet. He could hear the loud crashings of a panicked retreat.

“It is just that strange drab little creature who hangs about Mrs. Peabody,” Mrs. Hunter said crossly. “She must be playing truant. It would have served her right if she had seen more. She will not dare return. Come!”

When he turned his head to look down at her, she was smiling invitingly up at him from beneath lowered eyelids and pushing down the other side of her dress.

Strangely, he thought afterward, he did not hesitate, even though the feast was being laid out before his eyes and was ready for instant devouring.

“Something has happened to her,” he said. “I had better go and find her. Can you make your own way back to the picnic site?”

“What?” The lady sounded incredulous and looked magnificent bared to the waist.

“I shall see you back there,” he said and strode away. And another strange thing, he thought later, was that his mind did not linger on the abandoned feast for even a single moment.

He could think only of the fact that his little bird seemed to have broken a wing and that he had to find her. Fortunately, she was doing nothing to hide the sounds of her progress through the dense forest of trees.

Gray was a drab color, but it was a light gray and a light fabric. It was just as visible against the trunk of a tree as it had been up in the branches of the old oak tree at the lily pond. He paused for a moment, looking at her. And then he moved up behind her and set his hands lightly on her shoulders.

She did not react for a moment. She must have heard him coming, he decided. He had been a little afraid of startling her. And then she turned, her head down, and burrowed it against the folds of his neckcloth while her arms came about his waist and clung as if only by doing so could she save herself from falling.

“Little bird?” he murmured and was answered with a storm of weeping.

Weeping women had always embarrassed him. He never knew quite what to do with them. He closed his arms tightly about her, lowered his mouth into her hair, and murmured mindless nonsense to her. He might have been holding a child, he thought, except that she was not a child. She was warm, slender, soft woman.

“What happened?” he asked her when she had fallen silent at last.

“Nothing,” she said, her voice muffled against his chest.

“Ah,” he said. “My neckcloth has been ruined for nothing. My valet will be thrilled.”

“Give him my apologies,” she mumbled. Her teeth were chattering, he could hear.

He leaned back from her a little and lifted her chin with one hand, though she tried ineffectually to push it away. Her eyes and cheeks—and nose—were wet. Her face was red and blotched all over from crying and a uniform red on one side. Most of her hair was down and hanging in tangles about her face and over her shoulders. She looked wretchedly unpretty. And inexplicably and startlingly beautiful to his searching eyes.

He drew a handkerchief from his pocket, dried her face and her eyes with it, and handed it to her. “Blow,” he said.

She drew away from him and blew. And bit her lower lip as he took the handkerchief away from her again and stuffed it back in his pocket.

“Tell me what the nothing consisted of,” he said.

“I smashed all the wine bottles and glasses,” she said.

“Over someone’s head?” he asked. “How spectacular! I am sorry in my heart that I missed the show. Tell me what happened.”

She told him.

“And found yourself in massive disgrace with Her Majesty, I suppose,” he said.

“Yes.” She was regaining her composure as he watched.

“What happened to the one side of your face?” he asked, feeling fury gather like a ball in his stomach. He knew with utter certainty what had happened.

Her face trembled almost out of control again. “She struck me,” she said. “She called me a slut.”

Pistols at dawn. How he itched to be able to challenge the woman to meet him. Right smack between the eyes. That was where he would place the bullet. He would let her shoot first and then make her stand there in frozen terror waiting for him to discharge his own pistol. And he would.

He reached out to set an arm about her slim shoulders and drew her against him again. She did not resist. She was shivering.

“I will avenge that for you, little bird,” he said. “My honor on it. Do you believe I have any honor?”

She did not answer his question. “I suppose I overreacted,” she said. “It was my fault, after all. It is just that I have never been struck in my life. And the face seems a particularly insulting place to be hit. And in public.”

She pulled back from him and smiled at him.

“It does not matter,” she said. I will not be staying here long. I am going to teach in a village school. My home village. I will be among people I know. And I think I will enjoy teaching children. I shall be going soon.”

“What has happened to the young, handsome, virile, prosperous farmer?” he asked. “Has he withdrawn his offer?”

She hesitated for only a moment. “I do not love him,” she said firmly. “I do not believe it is right to marry without love, do you? What a foolish question. You do not believe in love. But for me it is not right. So my future is all settled. My happy future.”

“Is it?” he asked her. “You have been granted the employment?”

“I am just waiting to hear from the parson,” she said. “It is a mere formality. He is bound to say yes. He was a friend of Papa’s.”

Ah. Another impossible dream. Another humble, impossible dream. He smiled at her, picturing her for no fathomable reason seated in a rocking chair, her head bent to the baby suckling contentedly at her breast. The dark-haired baby.

She was fully recovered. “I am all right,” she said. “You had better return to Mrs. Hunter. I am sure she did not enjoy being abandoned at such an interesting moment. She will, I do not doubt, be growing cold. In more ways than one, sir.”

He smiled slowly at her.

“You are going to come to a bad end, you know,” she said. “What if I had been Lady Myron? Or Mrs. Delaney? Or Flossie? Or Nancy?”

He could feel amusement bubbling out of him. 

“You think it is funny,” she scolded. “It is not. Someone is going to get hurt. With any luck it will be only you with a broken head.”

“That’s my little bird,” he said appreciatively. “Tongue sharpened at both edges and pointed at the tip. Take my arm. I am going to take you back to the house.”

“Mrs. Hunter—” she began.

“—may go hang for all I care,” he said. “I am taking you back home. It can be either on my arm or slung over my shoulder. The choice is yours.”

“Well, if you put it in that gentlemanly way,” she said, “I shall make my free choice. Your arm, I think.” 

“Now,” he said, guiding her around overhanging branches, “let me regale you with my life history, shall I? You told me yours early one morning a week or so ago. I shall return the favor if you think you can bear it.”

And so he did what he had never done with any woman before. He let her into his life.

He did not even fully realize he had done it until he thought about it later, standing at the window of his room in unaccustomed solitude, waiting for everyone else to return from the picnic. He talked without stopping, knowing that despite her spirited efforts to pull herself together, she was in reality very close to collapse and still to a certain extent in shock. She leaned against him as they walked in a manner that would have been provocative in any other woman or under any other circumstances. But he knew that she leaned because her legs were unsteady and her head dizzy.

And so he talked to her and knew that despite her distress she listened. She even asked him some questions about his mother and about his two married sisters and their children, his nieces and nephews.

He took her up to her room when they reached the house after instructing a footman in the hall to have a hot drink and some laudanum sent up to Miss Mangan.

“You will throw them into consternation in the kitchen,” she said. “I do not have maid service.”

Fury knifed into him again. “Well, then,” he said, having taken her to her room and into her room, despite her look of surprised inquiry, “I will perform one service of a maid for you myself. Hand me a brush. Your hair looks rather like a bush after a severe wind storm.”

“What gallantry,” she said, but her eyes looked wary.

“Sit down,” he instructed her, gesturing her to the stool before a dressing table mirror. He drew out the remaining pins from her hair and began to brush it, teasing the brush through the tangles at first. He kept brushing even when her hair was smooth. He could remember doing the same for his mother numerous times as a boy. She had suffered from bad headaches and had always claimed that it was soothing to have someone draw a brush through her hair.

Patricia Mangan had beautiful hair, he noticed. Thick and wavy and shining and waist-length and actually more blond than brown. The style she normally wore it in was doubtless her aunt’s idea. Though perhaps at the parsonage too she had been advised to tame its wantonness.

The hot tea and the laudanum were a long time coming. Flossie gawked when she came flouncing in with them. She left with considerably more respect in her step and with a shiny half guinea in her pocket.

“I really do not need the laudanum,” Patricia said, rising from the stool and turning to him a face that was blushing charmingly.

“But you will take it,” he said. “And you will lock your door after I have left and rest. You will refuse to be roused for the rest of the day. Will that give you time enough to recover?”

She nodded.

“I shall take my leave of you, then, little bird,” he said.

It was something he did by instinct, without the medium of thought. Something he might have done to a sister who had been hurt and whom he had comforted. He cupped her face with his hands, pushing his fingers into the silkiness of her hair, and lowered his head to touch his lips to hers.

Except that with a sister he would have raised his head after the merest touch, not lingered there, feeling the trembling of her lips beneath his own.

Except that a sister would not have looked at him afterward with huge unblinking eyes.

Except that with a sister he would not have stood outside her closed door a few moments later, gulping air, waiting for his knees to reform themselves beneath him so that they might assist his legs in getting him to his own room.

A stupid thing to have done, he told himself. Remarkably stupid.

Life for the next week was not as bad as it might have been. Patricia guessed that her aunt was embarrassed by the memory of her outburst at the picnic— it would doubtless appear ungenteel to her. And so she said nothing to her niece about it. Patricia was left alone to sleep for the rest of that day, and in the days to come she became her aunt’s quiet shadow once more.

No one else paid her any attention with the exception perhaps of Mr. Ware, who went out of his way to avoid her. Not even Mr. Bancroft took any notice of her, for which fact she was profoundly thankful. She was very much afraid for the first day or two that he might make a public scene, demanding that her aunt apologize to her or something horribly mortifying like that.

On the contrary. He appeared to redouble his attentions to Nancy and Mrs. Peabody, sending them into a positive flutter of expectation. If he was still carrying on with Lady Myron or Mrs. Hunter or Mrs. Delaney, there were no outward signs of it during the days following the picnic. He seemed to have put all else aside in order to concentrate on bringing his courtship to happy fruition.

Patricia refused to allow herself to mourn. He had been kind to her. Yes, amazingly for such a man, he had been. And when he had taken her face in his hands and kissed her lips—no man had done that since Patrick had smacked heartily at them the night before he left to join his regiment—he had been giving comfort as if to a child or a younger sister.

Oh, yes, she had no illusions. And so there was no point at all in allowing herself to become heartsick. That she loved him was her own foolishness. It was something she would not fight, because she knew it was something she would keep with her for a long time to come, and his kiss was something she could relive perhaps for the rest of her days. But she would not allow it to upset the quiet equilibrium of her days.

Something else did that. She had a reply from the parson at home. He wished he had known sooner of her interest in teaching the schoolchildren. He had recommended the hiring of a teacher just two months ago, and one had begun her duties just last month. He remembered Miss Mangan with fondness and wished her happiness and God’s blessings on her future.

Oh, yes, it upset her. She had counted upon this new idea of hers so much. She had dreamed of the escape it would bring her and the independence and sense of worth and self-respect. But she would not give up. Now that she had thought seriously of taking employment, she was not going to crawl back into her shell. She would try again—somehow. Perhaps her uncle would help her. He was quiet and totally dominated by his wife, but he was a sensible and a kindly man, she believed. Perhaps he would know how she might come by employment. She would ask him after the guests had gone home.

And then there was the other upset, the one she had thought herself fully prepared for. The betrothal. Nancy to Mr. Bancroft.

Patricia was in the drawing room after dinner two evenings before the party was to end, though she had not been at dinner. There was no space for her at the dining room table while their guests were with them, she had been told three weeks ago. But she had a function in the drawing room. She was seated behind the tea tray, pouring tea.

When the gentlemen joined the ladies after their port, Mr. Bancroft made his way immediately to Nancy’s side and proceeded with the customary gallantries. Patricia, as usual, insisted upon feeling only amused at what she heard. And then, when Mrs. Peabody had joined them and when somehow he had gathered about them almost all the ladies—Patricia had the strange impression that he had maneuvered it so, though she did not know how he had done it—he took Nancy’s hand in his, raised it to his lips, and gazed with warm intensity into her eyes as he spoke.

“I have asked for and been granted a private interview with your father tomorrow morning, Miss Peabody,” he said. “I doubt I shall have a wink of sleep tonight, such is the anxiety of my heart. It is my fondest hope that by this time tomorrow I will be the happiest of men.”

Nancy knew just how to behave. She blushed very prettily, lowered her eyes, opened her fan and fluttered it before her heated face, and answered in a voice that was little more than a whisper—but since everyone was hushed, it carried to the farthest corner of the room.

“I do not know what can be so important that you must speak to Papa in private, sir,” she said. She allowed herself a peep upward. “But you deserve to be happy, I am sure.”

He was returning her hand to his lips when Patricia decided she could be of no further use behind the tea tray. Everyone had been served with a first cup, but someone else must pour the second. With the present steadiness of her hands—or lack thereof—she would doubtless fill the saucers as well as the cups. She slipped quietly from the room.

And lay fully clothed on top of her bedcovers for long hours into the night, staring upward at the canopy, a pillow clasped in her arms.

He had coldly plotted his revenge. No, perhaps not quite coldly. It had never been his way to hurt anyone more than that person deserved to be hurt, though he had never pretended to be either a considerate or a compassionate man. His first idea would have brought too great a humiliation to someone whom he had intended only to embarrass. His desire was to punish the mother, not the daughter.

Until the daughter gave him good cause to be added to his black list, that was.

No one at the dinner table the evening after the picnic mentioned the incident that had happened there. He guessed that the memory of it was an embarrassment to all of them. Indeed, conversation seemed somewhat strained and over-hearty. Calling even a servant a slut in public and slapping her face hard enough to cause swelling was not considered genteel behavior among members of the ton.

He took Nancy Peabody for a stroll out on the terrace after dinner, as he often did.

“Did you hear what happened after you were forced to return to the house with a nosebleed, sir?” she asked him.

“Did I miss something?” he asked. “Beyond a precious hour of your company, that is?”

“Oh, that.” She tittered. “I am sure you must have seen more than enough of me in the past few weeks, sir.”

He returned the expected answer.

And then she proceeded to tell him about the breaking of the wine bottles. His little bird, it seemed, had been sent to lift down the wine basket from the wagon. It must have weighed as much as she did. And she had dropped it after summoning Mr. Ware and demanding that he carry it for her—and then had tried to put the blame on him. Poor Mr. Ware, like the gentleman he was, had been quite prepared to accept responsibility.

“And then when Mama tried to reprimand her gently and smooth over the situation,” Miss Peabody said to his interested ears, “she was impertinent and Mama was forced to be quite sharp with her and send her back to the house. Poor Mama. It quite spoiled her afternoon. And mine too, sir, you may be sure. You would not believe all Mama and I have done for Patricia. Mama has been a second mother to her, and I have been a sister to her despite the fact that her own mama was nothing more than the daughter of a curate who was hardly even a gentleman. But she has returned nothing for all our kindness except sullenness and sometimes open impertinence. Mama is a veritable saint for putting up with her.”

“And you too, Miss Peabody,” he said, patting the arm that was resting on his. “There are not many young ladies who would watch another taken to the bosom of their mama without losing the sweetness of their disposition as a result.”

“Oh, well.” She tittered. “It is not in my nature to feel jealousy, sir. And one must be charitable to indigent relatives.”

He led the conversation into more congenial channels, and they talked about her for the remaining ten minutes of their stroll on the terrace.

He gave her a second chance. Two days later, they all went to church in the morning. He took Nancy up to ride beside him in his curricle. They drove the mile home from church in a slow cavalcade, his curricle behind the barouche that carried Mr. and Mrs. Peabody, Patricia, and Mrs. Delaney.

“I see,” he said, “that your cousin has been forgiven and taken back to your mother’s bosom.”

Patricia Mangan had been granted the honor of carrying Mrs. Peabody’s parasol and her prayer book.

“Oh, yes,” Nancy said, tossing her head so that the feather on her bonnet nodded appealingly. “Mama is too forgiving by half.”

“And you are not?” he asked, looking at her with raised eyebrows.

She perceived her mistake immediately. “Oh, yes.” She laughed. “To my shame I must confess to an excess of sensibility, sir. I am even more tender-hearted than Mama—or so Papa always tells me. But she ought not to have been forgiven, you see. By her carelessness she smashed a dozen bottles of Papa’s best wine and twenty of the finest crystal glasses. And she did not even apologize or shed a single tear. She has never shown any gratitude at all for all we have done for her. I hate ingratitude more than almost any other vice, sir.”

“It is disturbing to know that some of our acts of charity go unobserved and unappreciated by those whose sole function in life should be to make us feel good about ourselves,” he murmured soothingly.

“Yes.” She looked dubious, as if she had not quite grasped his meaning. “I believe she should have been turned off, sir.”

“Even though she has nothing else to go to?” he said.

“Well, that is her problem, is it not?” she said.

“Even if she was to end up on the open road with nowhere to go?” he said. “Or in the nearest town with nothing to do and nothing to sell except... Well, what I was about to say is not for such delicate ears as yours. And of course, you would not really turn her off, would you? You were merely telling me what you would do if you did not have such a tender heart.”

She sighed. “You are right, sir,” she said. “Papa says he does not know how I will manage servants of my own when I find it impossible even to think of disciplining them when they break things or do not do things as they ought to be done.”

Mr. Bancroft turned the conversation again. But he had heard what he needed to hear and what he had fully expected to hear. He had given her two chances and she had squandered both.

He plotted his revenge quite coldly. All his attention was concentrated upon it for the remaining days of his stay at Holly House. He lost interest in all else. He terminated his affair with Lady Myron with one pretty speech and neglected to develop the affair with Mrs. Hunter that had had such an extremely promising beginning. His nights were spent alone. He did not sleep a great deal more than he had done during the first two weeks of his stay—though he doubtless expended a great deal less energy—but at least he was alone. He tended to spend many hours of each night lying on his back with his hands clasped beneath his head, thinking. And reliving a certain kiss, which had been easily the least lascivious he had ever given, even as a green boy.

His plot approached its culmination two nights before the guests were to leave Holly House. After the ladies had left the dinner table and after the gentlemen had drunk their port and risen and stretched and decided that the moment of rejoining the ladies could be postponed no longer, he spoke quietly to Mr. Peabody, asking if he might have a private word with that gentleman the next morning on a matter of some importance.

And then he proceeded to the drawing room to tell Miss Nancy Peabody about his hopes and anxieties, though with the skill of long practice he succeeded in gathering about him almost all the ladies before he began to speak and soon enough all the gentlemen were listening too.

It had been well done, he thought in self-congratulation as the evening proceeded. And tomorrow would come the denouement. There was only one part of it that he was unsure about—totally unsure.

And so he had a largely sleepless night again.

He had noticed her slipping from the drawing room, unseen and unlamented by everyone. No, not by everyone. And even Mrs. Peabody missed her when guests had talked up the thirst for second cups of tea and there was no little shadow seated behind the tray to pour them.

Well, tomorrow, he thought with grim satisfaction, his hands clasped behind his head. Ah, yes, tomorrow. But his heart thumped with unaccustomed nervousness when he thought about part of tomorrow.

All the ladies were gathered in the salon by late morning. All of them without exception. Even Mrs. Delaney, Lady Myron, and Mrs. Hunter were there, and even those ladies who usually slept until noon and then spent another hour or two in their dressing rooms with their maids.

The air positively pulsed with excited expectation. Mr. Bancroft had been closeted in the library with Mr. Peabody since shortly after breakfast. Nancy and Mrs. Peabody had explained to everybody who had been unfortunate enough not to witness it for themselves— though in fact there was no such person, except Patricia—that before leaving the breakfast room Mr. Bancroft had bowed over Nancy’s hand again and lifted it to his lips again and gazed at her with adoring eyes—the adjective was supplied by Mrs. Peabody, Nancy being too modest to use it herself—and murmured to her that he had one hour of excruciating anxiety to live through before putting the question to some lady—he had emphasized the words, not naming her—the answer to which would determine the happiness or misery of the whole of the rest of his life.

Nancy was becomingly flushed. Her eyes shone. She looked about her with slightly elevated nose as if she pitied all the other lesser mortals who were not about to receive an offer from Mr. Bancroft. She was dressed in her very best muslin, though it was still only morning, and her hair was a glorious and intricate mass of carefully constructed ringlets and curls.

She looked, Susan declared, faint envy in her voice, like a princess.

They all waited for the moment when the door would open and someone—surely the butler himself and not a mere footman—would summon Nancy to the library to receive the addresses of her beau.

Patricia sat quietly on her chair just behind Mrs. Peabody’s, thinking determinedly about her own planned talk with her uncle during the afternoon if in all the excitement she could get him alone. She was going to ask him if he knew how she would go about applying for employment as a governess or schoolteacher.

And then the door handle was heard to turn and all the ladies fell instantly silent and turned toward the door, awaiting the summons. Nancy sprang to her feet, her hands clasped to her bosom. Mrs. Peabody smiled graciously about at her gathered guests.

It was neither a footman nor the butler who opened the door and stood in the doorway for a moment, looking impossibly handsome and elegant, before proceeding inside the room. It was Mr. Bancroft himself. Nancy’s lips parted and she leaned a little toward him. Mrs. Peabody clasped her own hands to her bosom.

“Ma’am,” Mr. Bancroft said, proceeding across the carpet toward Mrs. Peabody, smiling at her, and then turning his gaze on Nancy, “my meeting with Mr. Peabody has been brought to a successful and happy conclusion. It seems that at least some of the anxieties that kept me awake and pacing last night have been laid to rest.”

Mrs. Peabody sighed. “Of course, my dear sir,” she said. “Mr. Peabody has never been a difficult man with whom to deal. He would certainly not find it difficult to deal with a future baron.”

But his eyes were upon Nancy, devouring her. “Miss Peabody,” he said, “may I be permitted to compliment you on your appearance this morning? Your taste in dress is, as always, exquisite. But as always the loveliness of your person quite outshines the finest muslin.”

“Oh, sir.” Nancy’s eyes were directed quite firmly on the floor.

“And so.” Mrs. Peabody’s voice had become hearty. “You will be wishing to step into another room or perhaps outside—”

“Outside, with your permission, ma’am,” Mr. Bancroft said with a bow. “It is a lovely day for a lovely lady and for what I hope will be a lovely conversation.”

“And you have a lovely way with words, sir,” Mrs. Peabody said regally. “You will wish to step outside, then, with my—”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, smiling his most dazzling and charming smile. “With your niece, if you please.”

Mrs. Peabody’s mouth hung open inelegantly. Nancy did a fair imitation of a statue. So did all the other ladies. Patricia’s head snapped up and all the blood drained out of it at the same moment. Mr. Bancroft continued to smile at his hostess.

“With my—?” she asked faintly.

“With your niece, ma’am,” he said, transferring his gaze and his smile to Patricia. “With Miss Mangan. I have your husband’s permission.”

“With—Patricia?” Mrs. Peabody stared at him in disbelief.

“Thank you, ma’am,” he said, bowing to her once more and stretching out a hand toward Patricia. “Miss Mangan, will you honor me with your company for a stroll outside?”

She merely stared at him, quite as dumbfounded as everyone else until his eyes warmed and one eyelid closed in a slow half wink. And she understood in a flash. She understood what he had done and was doing and why.

The—oh, the precious rogue!

She got to her feet and, when he stepped close enough, placed her hand in his. Her own was icy, she realized when she felt the warmth of his.

“Thank you, sir,” she said, allowing him to place her hand on his sleeve and lead her from the room, in which a pin might have been heard crashing to the carpet.

It was, Patricia decided, quite the most delicious moment of her life.

It had worked beautifully. He had feared that perhaps she would not be in the salon with the other ladies, that perhaps she would have to be sent for. That would have spoiled the drama of the moment a little. But she had been there and everything had proceeded according to plan, almost as if he had written the script and all the players had learned their lines and actions to perfection.

And here she was, tripping along at his side, the top of her head reaching barely to his chin. His little bird, who had kept him awake for a weekful of nights, though not in the usual way.

“To the lily pond?” he suggested when they were outside the house and down the marble steps. “It seems the appropriate place to go, does it not?”

“To the lily pond.” She smiled up at him, tying his stomach in unfamiliar knots. No one had told him that when she smiled she was pretty even by objective standards. Not that he could really see her by objective standards any longer.

He had expected her to be quiet, serious, wary. Puzzled. Reluctant to come with him. But she was still tripping along.

“Well, little bird,” he said, “did you like it? Was it appropriate?” He did not expect her to understand his meaning. He thought he would have to explain.

“It was quite the most fiendish scheme I have ever been a witness to,” she said. “It was cruel in the extreme. You will certainly fry for this one, sir. They are going to have to construct a particularly fiery corner for you in hell. I loved it.”

He chuckled. “Did you?” he said. “I expected that after I had confessed all to you, you would lash out at me with both sharp edges of your tongue. Have I pleased you, Patricia?”

She darted a startled look up at him. “Yes,” she said. “Thank you. Doubtless my life here will be made a misery once I have returned to the house and once you have gone on your way tomorrow, but it will be worth every moment. Perhaps I am cruel too, because undoubtedly Nancy will suffer dreadful mortification, but I cannot help feeling spiteful and glad. And I will not have to suffer for long. Soon I will be leaving here to teach.”

“Will you?” They were among the trees already, and he was parting branches for her so that her face and arms would not be grazed. “You have heard from the parson who has your father’s living?”

He watched her hesitate and then smile. “Someone else has that appointment already,” she said. “But it will be better to go somewhere new anyway. My uncle is going to help me find something. It will not take long, I think. I am looking forward to it.”

They were at the lily pond, and he gestured for her to sit down before seating himself close beside her. “Are you?” he said. “I am disappointed.”

She turned her head to look at him.

“It was common knowledge why I went to talk to your uncle this morning,” he said.

She smiled with bright mischief. “What did you talk to him about?” she asked. “You certainly deceived everyone quite spectacularly.”

“I went to talk about a marriage contract,” he said. 

“Oh.” Her smile faded. “I see. I misunderstood. You are merely teasing her, then. Punishing her for a little while. You will ask her later today or tomorrow. Well ... Well, it is good enough. It still felt good.” 

“Little bird.” He took one of her hands in his and held it tightly. His heart was thumping like a hammer. This was the part he had been unsure about. He was still unsure. “It was you I talked to your uncle about. It is you I intended—and have intended for all of the past week—to ask to marry me.”

She stared into his eyes, her own huge. Was she trying to drown him? She was succeeding.

“Will you?” he asked. “I can think of every reason in the world why you would say no, but I must ask anyway. Will you marry me, Patricia?”

“Why?” He saw her lips form the word though he heard no sound.

“Because I love you, little bird,” he said. “Because you flew down into my heart from the branch up there that first afternoon I saw you, and have lodged in my heart ever since. Because you have wrecked the life with which I have been quite contented for the past ten years and have got me to thinking of constancy and a permanent home and a garden and cats and dogs. And babies, my love. And you, darling.”

“You feel you owe it to me,” she said. “You think this is the best way to spite them. And you feel sorry for me. You don’t need—”

He dipped his head and kissed her. And brought one hand behind her head to hold it steady while he did it more thoroughly, parting his lips over hers, licking them and teasing his tongue through to the flesh within.

“And you are a rake,” she said.

“Guilty,” he said. “But past tense, not present or future, my love. I don’t know how I can be sure of that, and I certainly don’t know how I can convince you that I am. But I know it is true. I know it here, darling.” He held his free hand over his heart. “I will be a model husband, as reformed rakes are reputed to be, I believe. Or so someone once told me.”

He kissed her again. And coaxed her backward to the ground so that he could do so without having to hold her head steady. Her arms came about him as he slid his tongue past her teeth into her mouth.

“I have not a farthing to my name,” she said, twisting her face away from his after a heady couple of minutes. “You have to marry money because you have squandered your own fortune.”

“Tut,” he said. “Where did you hear such a malicious rumor, little bird? It is one I put about myself quite deliberately at regular intervals in order to discourage fortune-seeking mamas. On this occasion it seemed to work the other way, I must admit. I believe your aunt expected to have more power over a poor man than she would have had over one who was independently wealthy.”

“You are not poor?” she whispered.

“Not at all,” he said. “Gambling has never been one of my vices, my love, though almost everything else you might name has. Will you marry me now that you know I am almost indecently wealthy?”

“But I am not,” she said.

He kissed her again—her mouth, her eyes, her temples, her chin, her throat. He touched her breasts through the cotton of her dress and found them small but firm and well shaped. Perfect for his babies—and for his own delight.

“I cannot,” she said, pushing first his hands away and then his face. “I do not know—”

“I will teach you,” he said. “It will be my joy to teach you, Patricia. Little bird, I have not slept in a week, fearful that you would say no, knowing that I am unworthy of you, knowing that I have nothing to offer you but security and a fortune and my love. I am not going to let you say no. I was going to be very noble and honorable about it, but I have changed my mind. I am going to use all my expertise on you here, or as much of it as becomes necessary until you are mindless enough to say yes. Say yes now so that I will not have to live with guilt afterward. Why are you laughing?”

Gloriously, wonderfully, she was laughing up at him. Giggling up at him, her arms about his neck.

“You lifted me down from that tree without waiting for my permission to do so,” she said. “And you took me home from the picnic last week with only the choice of whether I would go on your arm or over your shoulder. Why change things now? Why wait for my acceptance? You might as well marry me and be done with it.”

He was sure of her suddenly. All anxiety fled, leaving not a trace behind. He grinned down at her. “Parsons can be sticky customers, though, little bird,” he said. “They wait to hear the bride say yes and will not proceed with the marriage service until she has done so. Unreasonable of them, I always say, but that is the reality. Are you going to say yes when he asks?”

Her eyes were huge again. “Are you quite, quite sure, sir—Mr. Bancroft?” she asked.

“Josh,” he said. “It is my name, you know. Joshua. My father was rather fond of the Bible. My sisters are Miriam and Hagar.”

“Joshua,” she whispered.

“Or darling for short,” he said, grinning at her again. “As with Patricia. Little bird for short. Will you marry me?”

“If you are quite, quite sure,” she said.

“I am quite, quite sure,” he said against her lips. “Will you?”

“Yes,” she whispered. “Joshua. Darling.”

“And three words more, if you please, little bird,” he said, closing his eyes and brushing his lips lightly over hers. “I have said them to you already.”

“You precious rogue,” she said out loud.

He threw back his head and shouted with laughter. “Well,” he said, looking appreciatively down at her, “you have asked for it now. I am going to have to live up to your expectations, am I not?”

“Yes, please, Joshua,” she said.

“Starting now?” He smiled tenderly at her.

“If you please, sir,” she said.

“Starting now, then,” he said, lowering his head.