After Aunt Knowe decided to join the vicar for tea, Alaric set out on the path leading to the castle, walking at a brisk pace. Smelly Sweetpea was as good as a suit of armor—his admirers decided they would prefer to walk back to the castle in the company of Willa’s suitors.

A few minutes later, he caught up to Parth, walking behind Lavinia and Willa, who had their heads bent together, talking.

“That’s a skunk,” Parth observed, gesturing toward the basket. “American sable, my ass! That’s a skunk.”

Alaric nodded absently, watching Willa lean close to Lavinia.

Willa didn’t know it, but she’d sealed her fate when she kissed that little skunk on the nose. She was curious, adventuresome, and not put off by stinky creatures. Damned beautiful as well, but did that really matter? Catherine of Russia was beautiful, and she was—well, sexual curiosity was something, but not what a man wanted to spend his life with.

Spend his life with?

The phrase dropped into his head with no warning. And now there was no way of unthinking it. He wanted her.

He wanted to spend his life with her: a sharp-tongued, self-contained, prim miss who—according to his aunt—ruled London high society. He hated society.

This meant marriage, children, death in England, not abroad. Buried in the family chapel alongside all the other Wildes, most likely. With God’s luck, he’d breathe his last as an old man, surrounded by those he loved.

Not lost to the snow in the Steppes, or eaten by the cannibals he’d never met.

“I can’t believe you gave Miss Ffynche a skunk,” Parth was saying. “You’re out of your mind, and so is she.”

“Scent glands removed,” Alaric reminded him. “Perhaps.”

“You’re supposed to give ladies flowers. Gloves. Lace. Pretty things for pretty people.” His voice conveyed disgust.

“Willa smells like orange blossoms,” Alaric observed.

Parth grunted. “She likely has a bar of soap that cost a guinea.”

“If she bought it from you, then you made money, so stop griping,” Alaric said. “My point is that Willa is also smelly. In a good way, but smelly.”

“You’re an odd man.”

“A smelly pet for a smelly woman.”

Lavinia turned about and looked at them. Alaric waved.

“You’re taking the only acceptable one,” Parth said grudgingly. “I assume that you’re taking her?”

“Yes.” The word hit the bottom of his soul with a satisfying clunk. A good feeling, a grounding feeling.

“Good luck,” his friend said. “She’s an odd woman.”

“Willa is beautiful. Intelligent. Not too frilly. Not as frilly as North’s fiancée, Diana, for instance.”

“More beautiful than Catherine of Russia?”

Alaric glanced sideways and found his friend had a wicked smile.

“I bought a very interesting print that suggests you know the empress. Intimately, shall we say. England Takes Russia by Storm.”

“North told me about that particular print. It’s untrue.”

Parth shook his head. “I don’t believe it. The notorious Lord Wilde didn’t bed the empress?”

“All I’ll say is the opportunity was there,” Alaric said dryly. “She issued a public invitation, in the interests of raising Russian morale.”

Parth gave a shout of laughter. “The burden of improving national morale would put some pressure on a man’s performance, I’m guessing.”

“I declined the challenge and took the first ship out of Saint Petersburg.”

“Fearless when faced with a herd of elephants, yet he flees a lascivious empress,” Parth mocked. “A sad reflection on England’s greatest adventurer since Sir Walter Raleigh.”

“I avoid man-eating tigers as well,” Alaric said.

“A touch of Casanova in your writing wouldn’t go amiss,” Parth said. “Enough with the hardship, woe, and duels with two-headed men. On to randy royalty. If I were you, I would have bedded the empress and called it research.”

“As soon as you take to the roads and head for Russia, I’ll make an introduction. I’m sure you’d love to bed a woman who addresses you as a badger of delight,” Alaric retorted.

Parth let out a crack of laughter. “Badger? Are you sure she didn’t mean stallion? Imagine the book sales for Wilde Stallion of Delight. To say nothing of the prints.”

Just then a ragged woman with unkempt hair stepped from behind a hedge and onto the path. It was Mrs. Ferrus. Years ago, when they were boys, her husband had been arrested and hanged on a charge of treason.

After that, she went mad, and now some called her a hedge-witch, and worse.

“Mrs. Ferrus,” Alaric said, stopping, “how are you?”

She looked at him from strangely lightless eyes.

“I’m as limp as a piece of seaweed.” She turned to Parth and scowled. “You!” she said. “I remember you.”

Parth’s body went utterly still, a knack Alaric remembered from innumerable boxing matches as children.

Mrs. Ferrus spat words at him. “The angels will come at dusk, their wings ragged as crows—”

“That may well be,” Alaric said, cutting her off. Then, more kindly, “May I offer you something for your supper, Mrs. Ferrus?” He held out a couple of shillings.

Her eyes moved from Parth’s face to his own, and she took the money.

The young ladies turned around, and before Alaric could catch Willa’s eye to warn her, she returned, bringing Lavinia with her.

Mrs. Ferrus looked like an aged stork. Her hair stood in nests around her head, one knot over her right ear and another toward the back. Her dress looked as filthy as her skin.

Neither Lavinia nor Willa flinched. Instead, they smiled, as if they were encountering a duchess.

“Won’t you introduce us, Lord Alaric?” Lavinia asked.

“This is Mrs. Ferrus,” Alaric said. “She lives in the village. Mrs. Ferrus, these are friends of ours, Miss Ffynche and Miss Gray.”

“Do you have children, Mrs. Ferrus?” Willa asked, nodding to her.

It was hard to say whether Sweetpea or Mrs. Ferrus were the more pungent, but Alaric thought Mrs. Ferrus had the better odds. Her glassy eyes slowly focused on Willa.

“Two boys,” she answered.

She did? Alaric had no idea. Those sons must have grown up by now.

“Do they resemble their father?” Lavinia asked.

“Me mother’s eyes,” Mrs. Ferrus said. “And their father’s chin. They like potatoes and mash. Aye, and I’d better be cooking for them. I don’t always …” Her voice trailed off.

“Do you live close by?” Willa asked.

“On the other side of the church.” She jerked her head and looked down at her skirts for the first time, as if realizing how she was dressed. “I’d better go,” she said. “I haven’t made any bread.”

“Permit me to walk you to your cottage,” Alaric said. He handed Sweetpea’s basket to Parth.

Willa watched Alaric escort the madwoman away. It was her impression that Mrs. Ferrus had been raving when they first walked toward the men, but she was quiet now, looking up at Alaric and shaking her head to whatever he had asked her.

“When did she become mad?” Lavinia asked, as they set off on the path again. “Are her boys still living at home? Is her husband alive?”

“Do you ever ask one question and wait for an answer before the next?” Mr. Sterling met her questions with his own.

Lavinia considered it. “Not usually. I have five or six questions at any moment, so I try to marshal the two most compelling.”

“When we were boys of around ten, Mr. Ferrus attempted to blow up the king, his court, and all of Lindow Castle,” Mr. Sterling said.

“The king!” Willa exclaimed. “How awful for everyone involved.”

“He was hanged, deservedly so,” he said.

“Everyone says that about a man who tries to blow up the king,” Lavinia said to him, her voice irritated. “They ignore what his deed did to his family. Willa and I have noticed it time and again.”

“He should have stayed away from gunpowder,” Mr. Sterling stated.

Lavinia shrugged. “That’s the easy response, isn’t it? He should have stayed away from gunpowder. But he didn’t, for whatever reason. And the people who were hurt most, since he was caught before he could do damage, were his family. Those boys grew up the sons of a notorious, albeit failed, assassin.”

“As well as a mother maddened by grief,” Willa added.

“I suppose you’d put that at Mr. Ferrus’s feet as well?”

“Wouldn’t you?” Lavinia retorted.

“It’s hard to say,” Mr. Sterling replied.

Willa walked between them, feeling as if she were a wall between two warring nations.