Did he not feel he knew enough about her? She had told him – twice – that she had killed Nigel. What was there more to know about someone who had admitted to doing that? /Perhaps I am worth knowing/.

"Perhaps," she said to Alice, "he is worth knowing."

"After what he has done to you?" Alice came back to her place and sat down with a thump. "And don't talk to me about your having seduced him, Cassie. You had reason to do it, though heaven knows I opposed it quite vigorously from the start. He had no such excuse for allowing himself to be seduced, except that he is a /man/. If he needs a woman that badly, why does he not marry? That is what wives are for!"

Cassandra looked at her and, for the first time all day, smiled with genuine amusement.

"Well." Alice's cheeks turned pink. "It is /one/ thing they are for.

Don't you go misunderstanding me, Cassie. Women are worth a great deal more than /that/, as I have tried to instill in you from childhood on. I /still/ think we ought to go to Green Park. It may be raining again tomorrow. And it is I who ought to be finding some source of income. And I /will/. I bought a paper this morning. It was a dreadful extravagance, but there is notice there of several positions for which I intend to apply. Some of them are unsuitable, it is true, but there are several distinct possibilities. A woman's usefulness cannot possibly be over at the age of forty-two. I refuse to believe it."

Cassandra smiled at her and noticed that her former governess's eyes were swimming in tears.

"Cassie," she said again, "it is /I/ who must look after us. You know it as well as I do."

"It is you who have always looked after me, Allie," Cassandra said.

"/Always/."

Alice dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief.

"It is important to you that we receive the Earl of Merton, then, is it?" she asked.

"Yes." Cassandra nodded. "And he asked particularly that you be with me, you know – as a chaperone."

Alice made a rather ugly sound, like a snort.

"I /must/ have told you that story sometime during your growing years," she said, "about the stable doors being shut after the horse had bolted."

It was too late for them to go walking now even if they wanted to. A carriage that was passing along the street outside drew to a halt outside the door. Cassandra could hear it clearly from where she was sitting.

Their visitor had arrived.

/12/

STEPHEN called upon Katherine, Lady Montford, late in the morning after leaving the House of Lords. He went with the intention of asking her to accompany him when he called upon Cassandra. But Meg was with her, having brought Toby and Sally to play with Hal in the nursery, and he was able to ask both of them to go with him.

"I ought to have asked about yesterday afternoon and your ride in the park as soon as I saw you, Stephen," Meg said. "You have taken it upon yourself to bring Lady Paget into fashion, then, have you? It is very kind of you. She is not particularly easy to like, is she? There is a habitual look on her face that suggests – well, a certain contempt for everyone she beholds, as though she held herself superior. I know it is probably just her way of protecting herself against what really is a very difficult situation, but even so her manner does not invite intimacy."

"I told her I would call this afternoon," Stephen said, "but it would not be quite the thing to go alone, would it?"

"She certainly does not need even the whisper of more gossip," Kate agreed. "You are quite right about her manner, of course, Meg, but I daresay that if I were all alone in London and everyone believed I had murdered my husband – with an axe – I would behave in much the same way. /If/ I had the courage to appear in public at all, that is. One must admire her. I will be pleased to come with you this afternoon, Stephen.

Hal will be ready for a rest after a busy morning, and Jasper is going to the races."

"So is Duncan," Meg added. "They are going together, in fact. I will come too."

It had been easier than Stephen had feared. There had been no awkward questions. It was obviously not clear to his sisters that he was nursing a guilty conscience.

When he arrived outside Cassandra's door on Portman Street during the afternoon, then, it was in a manner that was above reproach. He arrived openly, for every neighbor on the street to see if they wished, and he handed down two eminently respectable ladies to the pavement while the footman who had accompanied his coachman rapped the knocker against the door.

A few minutes later, they were seated in the sitting room, making polite conversation with Cassandra, who was pouring the tea, and with Miss Haytor, whom Stephen recognized from Hyde Park a few afternoons ago. She was sitting straight-backed in her chair, a prunish look on her face, but she was not an unhandsome woman.

And the prunish look was understandable. He just hoped he would not lose this gamble he had taken. He hoped she would not say anything that would reveal to his sisters the truth of his relationship to Cassandra. He doubted she would, though. She was clearly a lady.

In the meanwhile he set out to charm her, concentrating much of his conversation on her while the other ladies talked among themselves.

But all the while he was aware of Cassandra, who was playing the part of hostess with some ease of manner, though her face had that slightly scornful look that Meg had mentioned earlier. He wished she would relax and be herself. He wanted his sisters to like her, almost as if he really were paying her court.

She was wearing a mushroom-colored muslin dress that would have looked dowdy on most women, he thought. On her it looked simply stunning. It accentuated her figure and drew attention to the bright glow of her hair. She looked elegant.

She looked like a lady. She looked like someone to whom nothing sordid could possibly ever have occurred.

And then something happened to relax them all, though it caused Cassandra some initial dismay.

The sitting room door, which had seemed to be shut, clicked open and the shaggy, disreputable-looking dog came padding in with a bobbing gait and a lolling tongue.

"Oh, dear," Cassandra said, standing as he approached, "the latch did not catch on the door again. I am so sorry. I will take him out of here."

"I'll do it, Cassie," Miss Haytor said, getting to her feet too.

"Oh, but he is adorable," Kate said. "Please let him stay – if he is allowed in the sitting room at all, that is."

"Roger tends to be Cassandra's shadow whenever he is given the opportunity," Miss Haytor said, sitting down again. "He believes the whole house is his and that he is lord and master here. And usually he is."

For the first time she smiled. She even chuckled when Kate smiled back.

Cassandra took her seat again and half smiled too. Stephen, watching her, saw a look of pure affection on her face and felt something catch at his heart, something so elusive that it was quite impossible to grasp on to it or understand quite what it was.

"Roger," he said as the dog padded past and he reached out a hand to scratch his good ear. "You have a distinguished name, sir."

The dog stopped, set his chin on Stephen's lap, and gazed up at him with one mournful eye. The other eye was glazed over and blind.

"You are either one very unfortunate dog," Stephen continued, "who keeps running into trouble and coming out of it the worse for wear, or you are one very /fortunate/ dog who survived a terrible disaster."

"The latter," Cassandra said.

"Oh, how very dreadful, Lady Paget," Meg said. "It is only in very recent years that I have had pets in the house – my eldest son brought a whole litter of puppies inside when he could no longer stand having to go out to the stables every time he wanted to see them, and of course their mother had to come too, though she was not at all housebroken at the time. But I know how quickly pets become family, as precious in their own way as the human members."

"I believe," Cassandra said, her gaze still on Roger, "a part of me would have died with him had he not recovered from his injuries, Lady Sheringford, but he did. I refused to let him die."

Her gaze moved up the short distance from the dog's head to Stephen's face before she looked away.

No one asked what the accident had been, and she did not volunteer the information.

"You are going to be covered with hairs, Lord Merton," Miss Haytor said.

He smiled at her.

"My valet will doubtless scold, ma'am," he said, "but he will brush off every last one of them. And a valet must be provided with something to scold about from time to time, you know, if he is to feel wanted and enjoy his work."

She almost smiled back at him. But she had not forgiven him quite yet – if she ever would.

No one had thought to cross the room to close the sitting room door and make sure it was shut fast this time. As a result, a little curly haired, rosy-cheeked head appeared about it, as it had about the maid's skirts the day before, and the child, seeing the dog, stepped inside the room. She was wearing a pink dress that was faded, though it was spotlessly clean and had been crisply ironed.

"Doggie," she said, laughing as she came.

But Roger seemed quite happy where he was, having his ear smoothed out and his head scratched, though he did humph a lazy welcome and opened his eye when she buried her fingers in the hair on his back and bent her head to kiss him.

"Oh, dear," Cassandra said, sounding embarrassed again. "I am so sorry.

I will take – "

But the child appeared suddenly to have noticed that there were people in the room as well as the dog, and that one of them was a lady wearing a flower-trimmed straw bonnet. She stepped away from Roger and Stephen and pointed at Meg's bonnet.

"Pretty," she said.

"Why thank you," Meg said. "And your curls are pretty too. Perhaps you can spare one. I'll cut it off with the scissors I have in my reticule and take it home with me and paste it onto my own head, shall I? Do you think it would look pretty on me?"

The child was giggling with glee.

"No-o!" she cried. "It would look s-silly."

"I suppose you are right," Meg said with a sigh. "I will have to leave it on your head, then, where it looks quite lovely."

The child lifted one foot and held her leg behind the knee.

"I got new shoes," she said.

Meg looked at them.

"They are very fine indeed," she said.

"My others was too small," the child said, "because I am a big girl now."

"I can certainly see that," Meg said. "I daresay the old shoes were very much too small. Would you like to sit on my knee?"

Cassandra sat down again, exchanging glances with Miss Haytor as she did so. But they need not have worried. It might not be perfect etiquette to allow a shaggy, decrepit dog and a servant's child to wander into the sitting room while one was entertaining noble guests, but those noble guests were charmed. Stephen knew both Meg and Kate were. And he certainly was. This was a house, he realized, where children and pets were allowed to roam virtually at will. It was a home. He had felt it yesterday from without the door. Today he was sure of it.

Cassandra did not live in perpetual gloom. Even now she was looking at the child with exasperated affection.

"I have a little boy," Meg said when the child was on her lap, "but he is older than you. And I have a little girl who is younger. And another boy who is a tiny baby."

"What are their names?" the child asked.

"Tobias," Meg said, "though we call him Toby. And Sarah, whom we call Sally. And Alexander, who is Alex. What is your name?"

"Belinda," the child said. "What else could you call /me/?"

"Hmm, let me see," Meg said, making a show of thinking. "Belle? I have a niece who is Belle, short for Isabelle. Lindy? Linda? Lin? None of them sound as pretty as /Belinda/, though, do they? I think maybe your name is perfect as it is."

Roger had settled on the floor across Stephen's boots. Kate had turned her attention to Miss Haytor. Stephen was smiling at Cassandra, who was biting her lip and looking back, an answering smile surely lurking in her eyes.

He was glad he had come. He was glad Meg and Kate had come with him. And he was glad about that faulty catch on the drawing room door. This was so much better than last night despite the sensual pleasures the night had brought him. This was a new beginning and a good one. Cassandra was seeing the best of his family, and he was seeing the best of hers.