He was surprised when the set ended. What, /already/? "Is there not a /third /Miss Huxtable?" he asked her as he was leading her back to the spot at which he had met her. "A third?" She looked inquiringly at him. "I was presented to Miss Huxtable, the dark-haired lady standing over there," he said, nodding in her direction, "and to Miss Katherine Huxtable, her younger sister. But I thought there was a third." She looked keenly at him, saying nothing for a moment. "There is not a third /Miss Huxtable,/" she said, "though there /is /a third sister. I am she." "Ah," he said, his hand going to the handle of his quizzing glass. "I was not informed that one of the sisters had been married." And poor woman, she had certainly been passed by in the looks department in that family, had she not? "/Ought /you to have?" Her eyebrows arched upward in evident surprise. "Not at all," he said briskly. "It was merely idle curiosity on my part.

Was your husband Sir Humphrey's eldest son?" "No," she said. "He was the younger of two. Crispin is the elder." "I am sorry about your husband's demise," he said. A foolish thing to say really since he had not known the man and it had happened quite a while ago. "It must have been a nasty shock." "I knew when I married him," she said, "that he was dying. He had consumption." "I am sorry," he said again.

How the devil had he got himself into this? "So am I," she said, unfurling her fan and plying it before her face. "But Hedley is gone and I am still alive and you did not know him and do not know me and so there is no point in either of us becoming maudlin, is there? Thank you for the set. I will be the envy of all the other ladies, having been the first to dance with you." She smiled dazzlingly at him as he bowed to her. "You will not boast of it, though," he said. "You are not conceited." She laughed. "Good evening to you, Mrs. Dew," he said, and turned away.

Before Sir Humphrey could bear down upon him again and take it upon himself to force another dancing partner upon him, he strolled off in the direction of what he thought must be the card room.

Fortunately, he was right. And the din in there was marginally muted.

He had made himself visible in the ballroom and reasonably agreeable for quite long enough.

So Mrs. Vanessa Dew was the third sister, was she? Strange irony that one so plain had been the first to marry. Though there was admittedly a sparkle to her that sometimes belied her looks.

She had knowingly married a dying man, for the love of God.

4

THERE was still no one up at Rundle Park when Vanessa had finished her breakfast the following morning except for Sir Humphrey, who was preparing to ride into the village to call upon Viscount Lyngate and Mr.

Bowen at the inn. He was, he told Vanessa as he rubbed his hands together and looked thoroughly pleased with life, going to invite them to dinner. "Perhaps," he said, "if I were to call out the carriage, you would care to ride with me, Nessie, to visit your sister. /She /is an early riser like you, I daresay." Vanessa was happy to accept. She was eager to discuss the assembly with Margaret. It had been /such /a wonderful evening. She had, of course, lain awake half the night thinking about the opening set. It was hardly surprising. No one else at the assembly had been willing to allow her to forget it. The viscount had danced with her and /only /with her.

She had made up her mind even before the dancing began that she would not maintain an awed silence with him. After a few minutes it had become obvious, though, that /he /had no intention of conversing with /her, /though surely any really polite gentleman would have made the effort.

Obviously he was not a very polite gentleman - yet another fault she had found in him without really knowing him at all. And so /she /had started talking to /him/.

They had ended up almost joking with each other. Almost /flirting/.

Perhaps, she had conceded, there was more to the man than she had thought. Goodness, she had never flirted with any other man. And no other man had ever flirted with her.

One dance with her, though, had obviously frightened him off from dancing with anyone else. He had spent the rest of the evening in the card room. It would all have been very lowering if she had felt that his good opinion was worth having. As it was, it had merely been disappointing for a dozen other women who had hoped to catch his eye and dance with him.

But it was what he had said to her after the set was over that had kept her awake more than anything else. It had puzzled her at the time and had continued to puzzle her ever since. She wondered what Margaret would make of it. "Viscount Lyngate and Mr. Bowen are remarkably amiable young gentlemen, would you not agree, Nessie?" Sir Humphrey asked her when they were in the carriage. "Indeed, Papa." Mr. Bowen had been very amiable. He had danced with as many different partners as there had been sets, and he had conversed with them and with almost everyone else too between sets and during supper. Viscount Lyngate, Vanessa strongly suspected, had not really enjoyed the evening at all. And it was entirely his own fault if he had not, for he had arrived expecting to be bored. /That /had been perfectly obvious to her.

Sometimes one got exactly what one wished for. "I think, Nessie," Sir Humphrey said, chuckling merrily, "the viscount fancied you. He danced with no one else but you." "I think, Papa," she said, smiling back at him, "he fancied a game of cards far more than he did me or anyone else. It was in the card room he spent most of the evening." "That was dashed sporting of him," her father-in-law said. "The older people appreciated his condescension in playing with them. Rotherhyde relieved him of twenty guineas and will not talk of anything else for the next month, I daresay." It was not raining, though it looked as if it might at any moment. It was also chilly. Vanessa was grateful for the ride, as she informed Sir Humphrey while his coachman handed her down from the carriage outside the cottage gates.

She found Katherine at home as well as Margaret, this being one of the days when the infants did not attend school. Stephen was there too, but he was upstairs in his room, toiling over a Latin translation since Margaret had told him at breakfast that he ought not to go out until it was done.

Vanessa hugged both sisters and took her usual chair close to the fire in the parlor. They talked, of course, about the assembly while Margaret stitched away at some mending. "I was /so /relieved when I saw you come into the rooms with Lady Dew and Henrietta and Eva, Nessie," she said. "I thought you might talk yourself out of coming at the last moment. And I was more than delighted to see you dance every single set. It quite exhausted me just to watch you." And yet Margaret herself had danced all but two sets. "I did not sit down all evening either," Katherine said. "Was it not a delightful evening? Of course, /you /made the greatest conquest, Nessie.

You danced the /opening set, /no less, with Viscount Lyngate, who is really so handsome that I daresay there was not a steady female heartbeat in the rooms all evening. If you had not come here this morning, I would have had to walk over to Rundle. /Tell all!/" "There is not much to tell. He danced with me because Papa-in-law gave him little choice," Vanessa said. "He was /not, /alas, smitten by my charms, and if he came to the Valentine's assembly to find a bride, he gave up the search after one dance with me. How very lowering, to be sure." They all chuckled. "You belittle yourself, Nessie," Margaret said. "He did not ignore you.

He conversed with you while you danced." "Because I forced him into it," Vanessa said. "He told me that I was quite ravishingly beautiful." "Nessie!" Katherine exclaimed. "And then he went on to say that so was every other lady in the room without exception," Vanessa told them. "Which effectively negated the compliment, would you not say?" "Was that when you threw back your head and laughed?" Margaret asked. "You had everyone in the room smiling, Nessie, and wishing they could eaves-drop. You /forced /him into speaking such nonsense? How do you do it? You have always had a gift for making people laugh. Even Hedley when he was… very ill." Vanessa had used the last reserves of her energy during those final few weeks, making him laugh, keeping him smiling. She had collapsed afterward. She had scarcely been able to drag herself out of bed for two whole weeks after the funeral. "Oh," she said, blinking away tears, "but it was Viscount Lyngate who made /me /laugh." "Did he explain," Katherine asked, "why he is in Throckbridge?" "He did not," Vanessa said. "But he did say something very peculiar. He asked me about the /third /Huxtable sister, having been presented only to the two of you. Did Papa-in-law mention my existence when he presented Viscount Lyngate to you last evening?" "Not that I recall," Margaret said, looking up from the pillowcase she was mending. "He did not," Katherine said decisively. "Perhaps he said something after they walked away from us, or when he was presenting Stephen. Did you answer him?" "I told him /I /was the third sister," Vanessa said. "And he commented that he had not been informed that one of us had been married. Then he changed the subject and asked me about Hedley." "How peculiar indeed," Katherine said. "I wonder," Vanessa said, "what Viscount Lyngate /is /doing in Throckbridge - if he is not just innocently passing through, that is. But he told Papa-in-law that he has business here. How did he know there were /three /Huxtable sisters? And why would that fact be of any interest whatsoever to him?" "Idle curiosity, I daresay," Margaret said. "Whatever does Stephen do to split the seams of every pillowcase I put on his bed?" She picked up another and tackled it with her needle and thread. "Perhaps it was /not /idle curiosity," Katherine said, jumping suddenly to her feet, her eyes fixed beyond the parlor window. "He is coming here now. They /both /are." Her voice had risen to something resembling a squeak.

Margaret hastily set aside her mending and Vanessa turned her head sharply to look out the window and see that indeed Viscount Lyngate and Mr. Bowen were coming through the garden gate and proceeding up the path to the front door. Her father-in-law must have had an uncharacteristically short visit with them. "I say!" They could hear Stephen clattering down the stairs, calling as he came, obviously glad of any excuse to escape from his books for a while. "Meg? We have visitors coming. Ah, are you here too, Nessie? I daresay the viscount was smitten with your charms last evening and has come to offer for you. I shall question him very sternly about his ability to support you before I give my consent." He grinned and winked at her. "Oh, dear," Katherine said as a knock sounded at the door, "whatever does one say to a /viscount/?" The two gentlemen had come here to Throckbridge, Vanessa realized suddenly in some shock, because of /them/. /They /were the business the viscount had spoken of. He had known of them before he came here, though he had not been informed that one of them had been married. What a strange and intriguing mystery this was! She was very glad she had come here this morning.

They waited for Mrs. Thrush to open the front door. And then they waited for the parlor door to open, as if they were presenting a silent tableau on a stage. After what was only a few moments but felt like several minutes, it opened and the two gentlemen were announced.

It was the viscount who entered first this time.

There was no concession to the country in his appearance this morning, Vanessa was quick to see. He wore a calf-length heavy greatcoat, which must have sported a dozen capes, a tall beaver hat, which he had already removed, tan leather gloves, which he was in the process of removing, and supple black leather boots, which must have cost a fortune. He looked larger, more imposing, more forbidding - and ten times more gorgeous - than he had appeared last evening as he glanced around the small parlor before bowing to Margaret. He was also frowning, as though this were a visit he did not relish. He looked far from joking and flirting this morning.

Why had he come here? /Why on earth?/ "Miss Huxtable," he said. He turned to them each in turn. "Mrs. Dew?

Miss Katherine? Huxtable?" Mr. Bowen bowed to them all, smiling genially. "Ladies? Huxtable?" he said.

Vanessa told herself quite deliberately, as she had the evening before, that she was /not /going to be awed by a fashionable greatcoat and costly boots and a title. Or by a darkly handsome, finely chiseled, frowning face. Gracious heavens, her father-in-law was not a nobody. He was a baronet!