An elderly couple sat at another table, the man loudly and firmly condemning England as a place to live and declaring darkly that if the government did not do something about it soon, all sensible Englishmen would take themselves off to live on the Continent or in America. He did not make it clear whether he expected the government to do something about the excessive amount of rainfall to which England was susceptible or whether he was referring to something else. Whatever the cause, he was very flushed and very angry. His wife sat across the table from him, quietly nodding. Pamela realized after a while that the nodding was involuntary. They were Colonel and Mrs. Forbes, she learned in the course of dinner.

A young and handsome couple sat at another table, perhaps the most handsome pair Pamela had ever seen. The lady was brown-haired and brown-eyed and had a proud and beautiful face and the sort of shapely figure that always made Pamela sigh with envy. Her husband, Lord Birkin, was like a blond Greek god, the kind of man she had always found rather intimidating. They were clearly unhappy both with each other and with a ruined Christmas. Apparently they were on their way to a large country party. They were the sort of people who had everything and nothing, though that was a flash judgment, Pamela admitted to herself, and perhaps unfair.

There was another gentleman in the room. Pamela’s eyes skirted about him whenever she looked up. On the few occasions when she looked directly at him, her uncomfortable impression that he was staring at her was confirmed. He was not handsome. Oh, yes, he was, of course, but not in the way of the blond god. He was more attractive than handsome, with his dark hair and hooded eyes-they might be blue, she thought-and a cynical curl to his lip. She had met his like a few times since becoming a governess. He was undressing her with his eyes and probably doing other things to her with his mind. She had to concentrate on keeping her hands steady on her knife and fork.

“Oh. On my way home, ma’am,” she said in answer to a question Mrs.

Forbes had asked her. “To my parents’ home for Christmas.Eight miles from here.”

Everyone was listening to her. They were sharing stories, commiserating with one another for the unhappy turn of events that had brought them all to the White Hart. Only the quiet gentleman seemed to have had no Christmas destination to lament.

“I am a governess, ma’am,” she said when Miss Eugenia Horn asked her the question. “My father is a clergyman.” The gentleman of the lazy eyelids-the innkeeper had addressed him as “my lord”-was still staring at her, one hand turning his glass of ale.

The conversation turned to the food and a spirited discussion of whether it was beef or veal or pork they were eating. There was no unanimous agreement.

A governess, the Marquess of Lytton was thinking, daughter of a clergyman. A shame.A decided shame. Governesses were of two kinds, of course. There were the virtuous governesses, the unassailable ones, and there were the governesses starved for pleasures of the sexual variety and quite delightfully voracious in their appetites when one had finally maneuvered them between bedsheets or into some other satisfactory location. He judged that Miss Pamela Wilder was of the former variety, though one never knew for sure until one had made careful overtures.

Perhaps she would live up to her name.

She was certainly the only possibility at the inn. There had not appeared to be even any chambermaids or barmaids with whom to warm his bed. He had the uncomfortable feeling that he might be facing an alarmingly celibate Christmas if Miss Wilder were saving herself for a future and probably illusory husband. There was the delectable Lady Birkin, of course, but then he had never made a practice of bedding other men’s wives or even flirting with them, whether the husband was in tow or not.

Miss Pamela Wilder was the only possibility then. And a distinct possibility she was, provided she was assailable. She was slim, perhaps a little slimmer than he liked his women when there was a choice, but there was a grace about her figure and movements that he found intriguingly feminine and that stirred his loins, though he had drunk only two tankards of the landlord’s indescribably bad ale. Her face was lovely-wide-eyed, long-lashed, with a straight nose and a soft, thoroughly kissable mouth. Her hair was smooth and tied in a simple knot at her neck, as one would expect of a governess, but no simplicity of style could dim its blond sheen.

Two nights, probably three, at this inn, he thought, if they were fortunate. She could help Christmas pass with relative comfort, perhaps with enormous comfort. She might console him for the fact that the consummation of his lust with Lady Frazer must be postponed beyond the festive season.

The innkeeper and his wife did not seem to feel it would be diplomatic to discuss private business in private. Mr. Joe Palmer was refilling the gentlemen’s glasses with ale when the inevitable new arrivals came to the inn, looking for a room. Mrs. Letty Palmer came and stood in the doorway to discuss the matter with him just as if the room were not full of guests who had their own conversations to conduct.

“We don’t ’ave no room for ’em,” Mr. Palmer said with firm decision.

“They’ll ‘ave to go somewhere else, Letty.”

“There’s nowhere else for ’em to go,” Mrs. Palmer said. “We’re full with quality and their servants. They aren’t quality, Joe. I thought p’raps the taproom?”

“And ’ave ’em rob us blind as soon as we goes to bed?” Mr. Palmer said contemptuously, earning a roar of fury from Mr. Forbes when he slopped ale onto the cloth beside that gentleman’s glass. “We don’t ’ave no room, Letty.”

“The woman’s in the family way,” Mrs. Palmer said. “Looks as if she’s about to drop ’er load any day, Joe.”

“Oh, dear,” Miss Eugenia Horn said, a hand to her mouth. Such matters were not to be spoken aloud in genteel and mixed company.

Mr. Palmer put his jug of ale down on the cloth and set his hands on his hips. “I didn’t arsk ’er to get in the family way, now, did I, Letty?” he said. “Am I ’er keeper? What are they doin’ out in this weather anyway if she’s close to ’er time?”

“ ’Er man’s in search of work,” Mrs. Palmer said. “What shall we do with ’em, Joe? We can’t turn ’em away. They’ll drowned.”

Joe puffed out his cheeks, practicality warring with compassion.

“I won’t ’ave ’em in ’ere, Letty,” he said. “There’s no room for ’em and I won’t risk ’aving ’em steal all our valuables. And all these qualities’ valuables. They’ll ’ave to move on or stay in the stable.

There’s an empty stall.”

“It’s cold in the stable,” she said.

“Not with all ’em extra ’orses,” the innkeeper said. “It’s there or nowhere, Letty.” He picked up his jug and turned determinedly to the quiet gentleman. “They comes ’ere expectin’ a body to snap ’is fingers and make new rooms appear.” His voice was aggrieved. “And they prob'ly don’t ’ave two ’a’pennies to rub together.”

The quiet gentleman merely smiled at him. Poor devils, the marquess thought, having to sleep in the stable. But it was probably preferable to the muddy road. He would not think of it. It was not as if the inn itself offered luxury or even basic comfort. The dinner they had just eaten was disgusting, to put the matter into plain English.

“Poor people,” Lady Birkin said quietly to her husband. “Imagine having to sleep in a stable, Henry. And she is with child.”

“They will probably be thankful even for that,” he said. “They will be out of the rain, at least, and the animals will keep them warm.”

She stared at him from her dark eyes with an expression that never failed to turn his insides over. She had a tender heart and carried out numerous works of charity, though she always fretted that she could do so little. She was going to worry now about the two poor travelers who had arrived at safety only to find that there was no room at the inn. He wanted to reach across the table to take her hand. He did not do so, only partly because they were in a public place.

“Will they?” she said. “Be warm, I mean? The landlord was not just saying that? But it will smell in there, Henry, and be dirty.”

“There is no alternative,” he said, “except for them to move on. They will be all right, Sally. They will be safe and dry, at least. They will be able to keep each other warm.”

Her cheeks flushed slightly, and he felt a stabbing of desire for her-the sort of feeling that usually sent him off in search of his mistress and an acceptable outlet for his lust.

“I am going back upstairs,” she said, getting to her feet. He walked around the table to pull back her chair. “Are you coming?”

And impose his company on her for the rest of the evening? “I’ll escort you up,” he said, “and return to the taproom for a while.”

She nodded coolly, indifferently.

Her movement was the signal for everyone to get up except the quiet gentleman, who continued to sit and sip on the bad ale. But Lord Birkin did not wait for everyone else. He escorted his wife to their room and looked about it with a frown.

“You will be all right here, Sally?” he asked. “There is not much to do except lie down and sleep, is there?”

“I am tired after the journey,” she said.

He looked at the bed. It did not look as if it were going to be comfortable. He was to share it with her that night. For the first time in over three years they were to sleep together, literally sleep together. The thought brought another tightening to his groin. He should have slept with her from the start, he thought. He should have made it the pattern of their marriage. Perhaps the physical side of their marriage and every other aspect of it would have developed more satisfactorily if he had. Perhaps they would not have drifted apart.

He did not know quite why they had done so, or even if drifted were the right word. Somehow their marriage had never got properly started.

He did not know whose fault it was. Perhaps neither of them was to blame. Perhaps both of them were. Perhaps she had really been as fond of him as he was of her at the beginning. Perhaps they should have put their feelings into words. Perhaps he should not have given in to the fear that she found him dull and his touch distasteful. Perhaps he should not have treated her with sexual restraint, as his father and other men had advised, because she was a lady and ladies were supposed to find sex distasteful. Perhaps he should have taken her with the desire he felt-surely it was not disrespectful to show pleasure in one’s wife’s body.

Perhaps.Perhaps and perhaps.

“I’ll be up later,” he told her. “Don’t wait up for me.” You may sleep.

I’ll not be demanding my conjugal rights. He might as well have said those words too.

She nodded and turned away to the window, waiting for the sound of the door closing behind her and the feeling of emptiness it would bring. And the familiar urge to cry. It was Christmas, and he preferred being downstairs drinking with strangers to being alone with her.

She looked down into wet darkness and shivered. Those poor people-trying to get warm and comfortable in a dirty and drafty stable, trying to sleep there. She wondered if the man loved his wife, if she loved him.

If he would hold her close to keep her warm. If he would offer his arm as her pillow. If he would kiss her before she slept so that she would feel warm and loved even in such appalling surroundings.

She wiped impatiently at a tear. She did not normally give in to the urge to weep. She did not usually give in to self-pity.

The Misses Horn were busy agreeing with Mrs. Forbes that indeed it was dreadful that those poor people had to find shelter in a stable on such a wet and chilly night. But what could the husband be thinking of, dragging his poor wife off in search of work when she was in a, ah, delicate situation? There was a deal of embarrassed coughing over the expression of this idea and furtive glances at the gentlemen to make sure that none of them was listening. She would give the man a piece of her mind if she had a chance, Miss Amelia Horn declared.

The Marquess of Lytton got to his feet.

“Allow me to escort you to your room, Miss Wilder,” he said, offering her his arm and noting with approval that the top of her head reached his chin. She was taller than she had appeared when she entered the dining room.

She looked calmly and steadily at him. At least she was not going to throw a fit of the vapors at the very idea of being conducted to her bedchamber by a rake. He wondered if she knew enough about the world to recognize him as a rake, and if she realized that all through dinner he had been compensating for the appallingly unappetizing meal by mentally unclothing her and putting her to bed-with himself.