But the inn had proved to boast one fatal feature, as so many village inns did, dash it all. It had assembly rooms on the upper floor. And those rooms were to be put to use this very evening. He and George had had the singular misfortune of arriving on the day of a village dance.

It really had not occurred to either of them that the inhabitants of a remote English village might take it into their heads to celebrate St.

Valentine's Day. It had not even struck Elliott that this /was /St.

Valentine's Day, for God's sake.

The assembly rooms were directly above his head as he continued to recline in his chair beside the fire despite the fact that it was not a vastly comfortable piece of furniture and the fire needed more coal and the bell rope was just out of his reach. The assembly rooms were also directly above his bedchamber. They were directly above /everything/.

There would be no escaping the sounds and vibrations of prancing feet thumping over his bed for half the night. His ears would be assailed by merry music - doubtless inferior and inexpertly played - and loud voices and louder laughter.

He would be fortunate indeed if he were able to snatch one wink of sleep. Yet what else was there to do in this godforsaken place but try?

He had not even brought a book with him - a massive oversight.

Sir Humphrey Dew, whom Elliott had never met before this afternoon, was the sort of gentleman who asked a thousand questions and answered nine hundred and ninety of them himself. He had asked them if they would do the village the honor of attending the ball and assured them that he was much obliged to them for their kind condescension in so honoring his humble self and neighborhood. He had asked them if he might call for them at eight and assured them that they were doing him far more honor than he would be doing them a favor. He asked if he might then present them to a select number of his neighbors and assured them that they would not be sorry to make the acquaintance of such agreeable and distinguished persons - though none as agreeable and distinguished as themselves, of course. Lady Dew would be ecstatic at their kind condescension. So would his daughters and daughter-in-law. He would live in pleasurable anticipation of the advent of eight o'clock.

Elliott might have said a firm no. He did not usually suffer fools gladly. But he had intended merely not to attend the assembly but to remain closeted in his room when the baronet arrived and to send his excuses via George. What were secretaries for, after all?

Sometimes they were for prodding their employers' conscience - damn their eyes.

For of course George was quite right. Elliott Wallace, Viscount Lyngate, was - dash it all! - a gentleman. He had given tacit acceptance to the invitation by not uttering a firm refusal. It would be ungentlemanly now to barricade himself inside the dubious privacy of his inn room. And if he did not attend the revelries, he would be disturbed by them all night long anyway and be in just as bad a mood at the end of it all. Worse - he would feel guilty.

Damn /everyone's /eyes!

And the boy might indeed be at the assembly, if George was in the right of it. His sisters almost certainly would be. It might be as well to look them over this evening now that the opportunity had presented itself, to get some impression of them all before calling upon them tomorrow.

But God bless us, would he be expected to /dance/?

To romp with the village matrons and maidens?

On Valentine's Day?

Surely not. He could scarcely imagine a less agreeable fate.

He set the heel of his hand to his brow and tried to convince himself that he had a headache or some other irrefutable excuse for taking to his bed. It could not be done, though. He never had headaches.

He sighed aloud.

Despite what he had told George, he was going to have to put in an appearance at this infernal village hop after all, then, was he not? It would be just too ill-mannered to stay away, and he was never openly ill-mannered. No true gentleman was.

Sometimes - and more and more often these days - it was a tedious business being a gentleman.

There must now be considerably less than an hour in which to make himself presentable for the evening entertainment. It often took his man half an hour just to tie his neckcloth in a knot that satisfied his exacting valet's standards.

Elliott heaved both another sigh and his body to its feet.

In the future he was not going to venture anywhere beyond his own doors on February 14 - or beyond Anna's doors anyway.

St. Valentine's, for God's sake!

Whatever next?

But the answer was all too painfully obvious.

A village assembly was next, that was what!

2

THE Huxtable family lived in a thatched, whitewashed cottage at one end of the main village street. Viscount Lyngate and his secretary would have driven past it on their way to the inn. It is doubtful they would have noticed it, though. Picturesque as it was, it was modest in size.

Small, in other words.

Three members of the family lived there. They had inhabited the grander, more spacious vicarage until eight years ago, until the Reverend Huxtable had gone to his heavenly reward - or so the new vicar had assured his congregation at the funeral. His children had moved out the day after the funeral to make way for the Reverend Aylesford and his sister.

Margaret Huxtable was now twenty-five years old. As the eldest of the family - their mother had died six years before their father - she was the one who, at the age of seventeen, had taken charge of the home and her siblings. She was still unmarried as a consequence and was likely to remain so for at least a few more years since Stephen, the youngest, was still only seventeen. No one had thought, perhaps, to point out to her that he was the same age now as she had been when she had shouldered such a huge responsibility. To her he was still just a boy. And heaven knew he needed /someone /to look after him.

Margaret was a rare beauty. Tall and generously proportioned, she had shining hair of a chestnut brown, large blue eyes fringed with dark lashes, and a classically lovely face. She was reserved and dignified in manner, though there was a time when she had been known more for the warmth and generosity of her character. There was also a thread of steel in her that was all too ready to show itself if anyone threatened the happiness or well-being of any of her siblings.

Because they had only one servant - Mrs. Thrush had remained with them after their move even though they could not really afford her, because she refused to leave or to accept more than her room and board in payment for her services - Margaret did a great deal of the housework herself and all the gardening. Her garden in summer was her pride and joy, one of the few outlets for the more sensual, spontaneous side of her nature. It was also the envy and delight of the village. She helped anyone who needed her and was often called out to assist the village physician in changing bandages or setting broken limbs or delivering babies or feeding gruel to the elderly and infirm.

Margaret had had a number of would-be suitors over the years, even a few who were willing to take her /and /her siblings, but she had quietly and firmly discouraged them all. Even the man she had loved all her life and would probably love until she went to her grave.

Katherine Huxtable was twenty. She too was beautiful in the tall, slender, willowy way of youth. She had a figure, though, that would mature well. Her hair was lighter than her sister's - a dark blond highlighted with golden threads that glinted in the sunlight. She had an eager, mobile, lovely face, her best feature being dark blue eyes that often seemed fathomless. For though she was good-natured and almost always cheerful in company, she loved also to be alone, to take solitary walks, to lose herself within her own imagination. She wrote poetry and stories whenever she had the time.

She taught the infants - the children aged four to five - at the village school three days a week and often helped the schoolmaster with older pupils on the other days.

Katherine too was unmarried though she was beginning to feel a little uneasy about her single state. She wanted to marry - of course she did.

What else was there for a woman except to be a burden upon her relatives for the rest of her life? But though she had admirers galore and liked most of them, she could never decide which one she liked best. And that, she realized, probably meant she did not like any one of them sufficiently to marry him.

She had decided that it was sometimes a distinct disadvantage to be a dreamer. It would be far more comfortable to be a practical person without any imagination. Then she could simply choose the best candidate and settle into a worthy life with him. But she could not simply wave a magic wand and make herself into what she was not.

And so she could not make a choice. Not even a sensible one. Not yet, anyway, though the day would come, she supposed, when she would have to decide - or remain forever a spinster - and there would be an end of the matter.

Stephen Huxtable was tall and very slender, not having yet quite grown into his man's body. And yet there was an energy and natural grace about him that saved him from appearing either thin or awkward. His hair was almost purely golden, and it fell about his head in soft curls that defied taming - much to his occasional despair and just as much to the eternal satisfaction of almost all who knew him. His face was handsome and brooding when it was not filled with laughter. His blue eyes gazed intensely at the world, the outer sign of a restless nature that had as yet not found sufficient outlet for his energy and curiosity and need to master his world.

He played hard. He rode and fished and swam and played sports and indulged in 101 other energetic activities with his peers. If there was any scrape to be got into, he was sure to be there. If there was any scheme to be dreamed up, he was sure to be the chief dreamer. He was liked and admired and followed almost worshipfully by all the boys and young men in the neighborhood. He was adored by women of all ages, who were charmed by his good looks and his smiles but were captivated most of all by the brooding restlessness of his eyes and lips. For what self-respecting woman can resist the challenge of taming a potential bad boy?

Not that he was bad… yet. He worked as diligently as he played. For as the only boy of the family, he was the privileged one. It was for him that Margaret had set aside the portion their mother had brought to her marriage so that when he was eighteen he would be able to go to university and thus secure a good future for himself in steady and perhaps even lucrative employment.

Much as Stephen sometimes chafed against the yoke of his eldest sister's authority, he understood too the sacrifice she was making for his sake.

There was very little money left for her daily needs or for Katherine's.

He studied with the vicar and worked long and hard at his books. The career that a good education might bring him would be his means of escape from the confinement of life in the country. But because his was not an entirely selfish nature, he planned one day to repay his sisters for all they had done for him. Or, if they were married by then and did not need his support, then he would shower them and their children with gifts and favors.

That, at least, was his dream of the future. But in the meanwhile he worked to make his dream come true. And played hard too.

There was a fourth member of the family.

Vanessa, formerly Huxtable, now Dew, was twenty-four years old. She had married Hedley Dew, Sir Humphrey's younger son, when she was twenty-one and lost him a year later. She had been a widow for a year and a half now, but had remained at Rundle Park with her in-laws rather than return to the cottage to be an added financial burden there. Besides, her in-laws had wanted her to stay. They had needed her. She was a comfort to them, they had always assured her. How could anyone resist being needed? Besides, she was fond of them too.

Vanessa was the plain one of the family. She had always known it and had accepted it with cheerful resignation. She was not as tall as Margaret or Katherine. Neither was she small enough to be called petite. She was not as shapely as Margaret or as willowy as Katherine. The least said of her figure the better, in fact, since really there was nothing much to say. If the family hair color went in a descending scale from Margaret's vibrant chestnut through Katherine's gold-flecked dark blond to Stephen's golden, then Vanessa's fell somewhere on the line that was difficult to describe with a single word - or even a word with an adjective added. Her hair color was really quite uninteresting. And the hair itself had the misfortune of waving without curling. If ever she wore it loose, it fell in heavy ridges down her back rather than in a single shiny column like Margaret's.