"I will not starve, Allie," she said. "Neither will you or Mary or Belinda. I will provide for you all. Oh, and you too, Roger," she added, tickling the dog's stomach with the toe of her slipper while his tail thumped lazily on the floor and his three and a half paws waved in the air.

Her smile was tinged with bitterness – and then with something more tender.

"Oh, Alice," she said, hurrying across the room and sinking to her knees before her former governess's chair, "don't cry. /Please/ do not. I will not be able to bear it."

"I never thought," Alice said between sobs into her handkerchief, "to see you becoming a /courtesan/, Cassie. And that is what you will be. A high-class pr – A high-class pros – " But she could not complete the word.

Cassandra patted one of her knees.

"It will be a thousand times better than marriage," she said. "Cannot you /see/ that, Alice? I will have all the power this time. I can grant or withhold my favors at will. I can dismiss the man if I do not like him or if he displeases me in any way at all. I will be free to come and go as I choose and to do whatever I will except when I am… well, working. It will be a /million/ times better than marriage."

"All I ever wanted of life was to see you happy," Alice said, sniffing and drying her eyes. "It is what governesses and companions do, Cassie.

Life has passed them by, but they learn to live vicariously through their charges. I wanted you to know what it is like to be loved. And to love."

"I know what both are like, silly goose," Cassandra said, sitting back on her heels. "/You/ love me, Alice. Belinda loves me – so does Mary, I think. And Roger loves me." The dog had padded over to her and was prodding one of her hands with his wet nose so that she would pet him again. "And I love you all. I /do/."

A few stray tears were still trickling down her former governess's cheeks.

"I know that, Cassie," she said. "But you know what I mean. Don't deliberately misunderstand. I want to see you in love with a good man who will love you in return. And don't look at me like that. It is the expression you wear so often these days that it would be easy to mistake it for your real character showing through. I know it well enough, that curl of the lip and that hard amusement of the eye that is not amusement at all. There /are/ good men. My papa was one of them, and he certainly was not the only one the dear good Lord created."

"Well." Cassandra patted her knee again. "Perhaps I will quite inadvertently choose a good man to be my protector, and he will fall violently in love with me – no, not /violently/. He will fall /deeply/ in love with me and I will fall deeply in love with him and we will marry and live happily ever after with our dozen children. You may fuss over them all and teach them to your heart's content. I will not refuse to employ you just because you are over forty and in your dotage. Will this make you happy, Alice?"

Alice was half laughing, half weeping.

"Maybe not the twelve-children part," she said. "Poor Cassie, you would be worn out."

They both laughed as Cassandra got to her feet.

"Besides, Alice," she said, "there is no reason that all your life and happiness should be lived through me. /Vicariously/ is a horrid word.

Perhaps it is time you began to live on your own account. And love.

Perhaps /you/ will meet a gentleman and he will realize what a perfect gem he has found and will fall in love with you and you with him.

Perhaps /you/ will live happily ever after."

"But not with a dozen children, I hope," Alice said with a look of mock horror, and they both laughed again.

Ah, there was so little opportunity for laughter these days. It seemed to Cassandra that she could probably count on the fingers of one hand the number of times she had felt sheer amusement during the past ten years.

"I had better go and dust off my black bonnet," she said.


***

Stephen Huxtable, Earl of Merton, was riding in Hyde Park with Constantine Huxtable, his second cousin. It was the fashionable hour of the afternoon, and the main carriageway was packed with vehicles of all descriptions, most of them open so that the occupants could more readily take the air and look about at all the activity around them and converse with the occupants of other carriages and with pedestrians. There were crowds of the latter too on the footpath. And there were many riders on horseback. Stephen and Constantine were two of them as they wove their way skillfully among the carriages.

It was a lovely early summer day with just enough fluffy white clouds to offer the occasional welcome shade and prevent the sun from being too scorching.

Stephen did not mind the crowds. One did not come here in order to get anywhere in a hurry. One came to socialize, and he always enjoyed doing that. He was a gregarious, good-natured young man.

"Are you going to Meg's ball tomorrow night?" he asked Constantine.

Meg was his eldest sister, Margaret Pennethorne, Countess of Sheringford. She and Sherry had come to town this spring after missing the past two, despite the fact that they had had newborn Alexander to bring with them this year as well as two-year-old Sarah and seven-year-old Toby. They had decided at last to face down the old scandal dating from the time when Sherry had eloped with a married lady and lived with her until her death. There were still those who thought Toby was his son and Mrs. Turner's – and both Sherry and Meg were content to let that sleeping dog lie.

Meg had backbone – Stephen had always admired that about her. She would never choose to cower indefinitely in the relative safety of the country rather than confront her demons. Sherry himself had never had much difficulty engaging demons in a staring contest and being the last to blink. And now, because all the fashionable world had been unable to resist attending the curiosity of their wedding three years ago, that same fashionable world was effectively obliged to attend their ball tomorrow evening.

Not that many would have missed it anyway, curiosity being a somewhat stronger motivating factor than disapproval. The /ton/ would be curious to discover how the marriage was prospering, or /not/ prospering, after three years.

"But of course. I would not miss it for worlds," Constantine said, touching his whip to the brim of his hat as they passed a barouche containing four ladies.

Stephen did the same thing, and all four smiled and nodded in return.

"There is no /of course/ about it," he said. "You did not attend Nessie's ball the week before last."

Nessie – Vanessa Wallace, Duchess of Moreland – was the middle of Stephen's three sisters. The duke also happened to be Constantine's first cousin.

Their mothers had been sisters and had passed on their dark Greek good looks to their sons, who looked more like brothers than cousins. Almost like twins, in fact.

Constantine had not attended Vanessa and Elliott's ball, even though he had been in town.

"I was not invited," he said, looking across at Stephen with lazy, somewhat amused eyes. "And I would not have gone if I had been."

Stephen looked apologetic. He /had/ just been on something of a fishing expedition, as Con seemed to realize. Stephen knew that Elliott and Constantine scarcely talked to each other – even though they had grown up only a few miles apart and had been close friends as boys and young men.

And because Elliott did not talk to his cousin, neither did Vanessa.

Stephen had always wondered about it, but he had never asked. Perhaps it was time he did. Family feuds were almost always foolish things and went on long after everyone ought to have kissed and made up.

"What /is/ it – " he began.

But Cecil Avery had stopped his curricle beside them, and Lady Christobel Foley, his passenger, was risking life and limb by leaning slightly forward in her flimsy seat in order to smile brightly at them while she twirled a lacy confection of a parasol above her head.

"Mr. Huxtable, Lord Merton," she said, her eyes passing over Con before coming fully to rest upon Stephen, "is it not a /lovely/ day?"

They spent a few minutes agreeing that indeed it was and soliciting her hand for a set apiece at tomorrow evening's ball, since her mama had only just decided that they would go there rather than dine with the Dexters as originally planned, but she had already told simply /everyone/ that she was not going and consequently was positively /terrified/ she would have no dancing partners except dear Cecil, of course, who had been her neighbor in the country /forever/ and therefore had little choice, poor man, but to be gallant and dance with her so that she would not be an /utter/ wallflower.

Lady Christobel rarely divided her verbal communications into sentences.

One had to concentrate hard if one wished to follow everything she said.

Usually it was not necessary to do so but merely to listen to a word here and a phrase there. But she was an eager, pretty little thing and Stephen liked her.

He had to be careful about showing his liking too openly, however. She was the eldest daughter of the very wealthy and influential Marquess and Marchioness of Blythesdale, and she was eighteen years old and had just this year made her come-out. She was very marriageable indeed and very eager to achieve marital success during her first Season, preferably before any of her peers. She was likely to succeed too. If ever one wished to find her at any large entertainment, one had merely to find the densest throng of gentlemen, and she was sure to be in their midst.

But she had her sights set upon Stephen, as did her mama. He was well aware of it. Indeed, he was well aware that he was one of the most eligible bachelors in England and that the females of the race had decided this year more than in any previous one that the time had come for him to settle down and take a bride and set up his nursery and otherwise face his responsibilities as a peer of the realm. He was twenty-five years old and was, apparently, expected to have crossed some invisible threshold at his last birthday from irresponsible, wild-oat-sowing youth to steady, dutiful manhood.

Lady Christobel was not the only young lady who was courting him, and her mother was not the only mother who was determinedly attempting to reel him in.

Stephen liked most ladies of his acquaintance. He liked talking with them and dancing with them and escorting them to the theater and taking them for drives or walks in the park. He did not avoid them, as many of his peers did, for fear of stepping all unawares into a matrimonial trap. But he was not ready to marry.

Not nearly.

He believed in love – in romantic love as well as every other kind. He doubted he would ever marry unless he could feel a deep affection for his prospective bride and could be assured that she felt the like for him. But his title and wealth stood firmly in the way of such a seemingly modest dream. So – though it seemed conceited to think so – did his looks. He was aware that women found him both handsome and attractive. How could any woman see past all those barriers to know and understand /him/? To /love/ him?

But love /was/ possible, even perhaps for a wealthy earl. His sisters – all three of them – had found it, though all three marriages had admittedly made shaky beginnings.

Perhaps somewhere, somehow, sometime, there would be love for him too.

In the meanwhile, he was enjoying life – and avoiding the matrimonial traps that were becoming all too numerous and familiar to him.

"I believe," Constantine said as they rode onward, "the lady would have been happy to tumble right out of that seat, Stephen, if she could have been quite sure you were close enough to catch her."

Stephen chuckled.

"I was about to ask you," he said, "what it is between you and Elliott – and Nessie. Your quarrel has been going on for as long as I have known you. What caused it?"

He had known Con for eight years. It was Elliott, as executor of the recently deceased Earl of Merton's will, who had come to inform Stephen that the title, along with everything that went with it, was now his.

Stephen had been living with his sisters in a small cottage in the village of Throckbridge in Shropshire at the time. Elliott, Viscount Lyngate then, though he was Duke of Moreland now, had been Stephen's official guardian for four years until he reached his majority. Elliott had spent time with them at Warren Hall, Stephen's principal seat in Hampshire. Con had been there too for a while – it was his home. He was the elder brother of the earl who had just died at the age of sixteen.