It was an effort, but he managed to turn back to the brandy decanter. He filled two glasses. "Put on your smock and get into bed." He waited with averted back until a rustle and a creak indicated that he had been obeyed, then he turned and brought one of the glasses over to the truckle bed. "This will warm you."

Polly took the glass of Venetian crystal; never before had she handled anything so delicate or so precious.

"Where did you learn to speak as you do?" Nicholas asked casually. It was a question that had puzzled him, but he

also hoped that a change of topic would deflect the awkward intensity that had sprung up between them.

Polly sipped her brandy, a thoughtful frown creasing her brow. "Speak like 'ow? Oi speaks awrigh', dun Oi?"

Nicholas laughed, and she smiled mischievously over the lip of her glass. "You are an impertinent jade, Polly. Answer my question."

"Prue used to be in service with a parson in the country. Long time ago, before she married Josh. They let her keep me with her, although I was too young to work. No one really noticed me much. I used to hide in the corners and listen to the gentry talking. Then I'd practice to make the same sounds." She chuckled. "I'd make the folk in the kitchen laugh when I mimicked the master and mistress, and then I'd get an apple tart or something, so I learned to do it all the time. The family, and any visitors… I'd just listen for a bit, then I'd have it perfect." Her shoulders lifted in a tiny shrug. "Then, of course, Prue had to go and wed Josh. We came back to London, and no one thought it at all funny that I could speak like that-quite the opposite. It used to make Josh madder than a cornered fox. So I stopped."

A perfectly simple explanation, Nick thought, seeing in his mind's eye a lonely little girl of whom no one took any notice, slipping in and out of shadows, listening and observing, performing party tricks for attention and an apple tart. It was not a happy picture. "Prue is your kin?"

"My aunt." Polly drained her glass, holding it out to him. Her eyes closed, and she swayed a little. "I seem to be falling asleep." She slid down the bed, drawing the covers up to her chin. "I was born in Newgate. They were going to hang my mother, but she pleaded her belly, so she was sentenced to transportation instead. Prue took me as soon as I was born, and my mother was sent to the colonies."

There was silence, broken only by the hiss and pop of the fire. Kincaid replaced the Venetian glasses on the tray. It seemed an eon since he had walked into the Dog tavern for his rendezvous with Richard De Winter. It would be dawn in another hour; before then he had to concoct an explana-

tion for the presence in his chamber of this ravishing Newgate brat-an explanation that would satisfy Margaret, who ruled her household with a now unfashionable Puritan's severity.

The Lady Margaret first heard of the night's strange doings from her maid, when she brought her mistress her morning draft of chocolate. "A wench?" she demanded, sitting up in bed and straightening her nightcap. "Lord Kincaid brought a wench to the house?"

"So young Tom says, m'lady." Susan bobbed a curtsy, her demure expression hiding the inner excitement. There would be a mighty explosion over this, and the entire household was waiting with bated breath. The master did not share his sister-in-law's Puritan inclinations, and indeed, was known to mind his lust and his pleasure with the best at the court at Whitehall Palace. But he had some consideration for the Lady Margaret and, in general, kept those activities of which she would disapprove out of the house. Although undisputed master of the house and all within it, he had been hitherto content to leave the management entirely in his sister-in-law's hands, as long as a fair table was kept and matters ran in decent order so that he need never be afraid for the hospitality he would offer his guests.

Margaret sipped her chocolate, torn between the desire to hear all that the maid had to tell her and the knowledge that listening to servants' gossip was bad for household discipline. "And where is the girl now?" she asked, with an assumption of casualness.

There was an instant's silence as Susan bent to poke the fire. "No one's seen her, m'lady." She hesitated, then continued boldly, "But Tom says that his lordship carried her into his bedchamber." Susan kept her back to the bed, afraid that if there was an explosion of wrath, she might receive the overspill. Her statement could be considered insolent in its forwardness, and Lady Margaret corrected insolence with a supple hazel stick.

"I will rise," announced her ladyship, sending Susan bustling to the armoire.

Since it would never occur to Lady Margaret to show herself outside her chamber in even the most respectable undress, it was an hour later before she deemed herself ready. Her graying hair, free of curl, was confined beneath a lace coif. A wide lace collar adorned the kirtle of black saye that she wore beneath a sober gray silk day gown. Not a touch of color lightened the Puritan severity; the unimpeachable lace was her only decoration.

Eyes followed her measured progress down the corridor to her brother-in-law's chamber, but the owners kept themselves well hidden in doorways, or apparently busy with some domestic task that had brought them into the upper regions of the house. The house itself seemed to hold its breath as her ladyship rapped sharply on the oaken door.

This imperative demand for entrance brought Polly awake in the same instant that Nicholas pushed aside the bed curtains, irritably bidding the knocker enter. As his sister-in-law rustled in, his eyes fell on the occupant of the truckle bed; memory returned. He groaned inwardly. Margaret's eyes held the fanatical light of battle, and he had fallen asleep before he had time to concoct either explanation or a plan of action.

"I did not believe it possible," Margaret said, an extended forefinger shaking in accusation, her eyes blazing with righteous fury. "That you would bring a whore into this house-"

"I am no whore!" Polly protested indignantly before she had time to consider whether a discreet silence might be wiser. "You do not have the right-"

"Quiet!" thundered Nicholas, pressing a hand to his temples. The effects of mulled white wine, whatever potion had been intended to render him unconscious, and too little sleep were now combined to produce an appallingly dry mouth and a splitting headache. "Before you accuse, sister, you might wait for an explanation. You do not see the girl in my bed, do you?"

Margaret turned her full attention to the occupant of the truckle bed. Her mouth opened on a slight gasp. The girl's beauty was undiminished by her tumbled hair, sleep-filled eyes, and clearly indignant expression. Such beauty, in Margaret's opinion, could only be the devil's gift, sent to lead the unwary into temptation. The wench was bold-eyed, too, meeting Margaret's scrutiny, unflinching. It was not a reaction to which that lady was accustomed. Lowered eyes were the rule in her household when meeting the inspection of the mistress. She was dirty, too; her smock begrimed, black beneath her fingernails, her hair bedraggled, dark with dirt.

The Lady Margaret made rapid assessment, concluding that whether the girl be trull or no, her brother-in-law had not enjoyed her favors-not yet, at least. He tended to the fastidious.

"She's but a child, Margaret," Nicholas said in soothing accents, gauging his sister's reaction with a degree of accuracy. "An orphan. I found her last night in some danger of her life, through no fault of her own, and bethought me that you said Bridget was in need of a kitchen maid. You would not be so uncharitable as to deny her houseroom." It was a shrewd stroke. The Puritan, while she could be narrow and hard, could not permit herself to be thought uncharitable, although the charity she would offer would not necessarily be of a kind that suited the recipient.

"But I do not wish to be a kitchen maid," Polly expostulated. "I wish an introduction to-"

"Do you remember what we agreed?" Nicholas interrupted swiftly. If Margaret got wind of Polly's theatrical ambitions, she would cast her into outer darkness without compunction. The theatre was the devil's breeding ground!

Polly thought of being able to read and write, of a world far away from taverns and the grasping hands of drunkards, from Josh's belt and the obscene leer in his eye. She thought of the now-broken circle of her allotted destiny, and she kept silent.

"How is she called?" Margaret asked, directing the question at Nicholas.

"Polly," he answered. "What is your surname, Polly?" Polly shrugged. "Same as Prue's was before she married Josh, I suppose. Don't know my father's name," she added. "Prue didn't know either."

Nicholas winced as the pounding in his head reached a new pitch, unaided by this still uninformative if artless recital. "And what was Prue's name before she married?" "Wyat," Polly said. "But I've no need of it." "Of course you have need of it," declared the Lady Margaret. "No decent girl goes around unnamed."

"But I am a bastard," Polly pointed out, with devastating effect.

"You are insolent!" Margaret glared in ice-tipped fury, and Polly looked at Nicholas in sudden alarm. She was accustomed to bearing the brunt of Josh's anger, and Prue's on many occasion, but this lady seemed much more formidable than either of them.

"She but speaks the truth," Nicholas said swiftly. "It is innocence, not insolence, sister."

There was a tense silence while Margaret, lips compressed, continued to fix Polly with a baleful eye. Then, to Polly's heartfelt relief, she turned back to her brother. "Where are her clothes?"

Nicholas scratched his head; he had been expecting this question, but no satisfactory answer had yet come to mind. "There is the difficulty, sister. She has none but her smock."

Margaret looked astounded. "How should that be?"

"It is a little difficult to explain, and I do not care to do so at present." Kincaid opted for the assumption of authority- the master of the house who chose not to be troubled by certain matters. "Send one of the girls to the Exchange to purchase necessities for her. I will bear the cost myself; it need not come out of your household purse. In payment for her services as kitchen maid, she will receive three pounds a year and her keep." A hard look at Polly ensured her continued silence.

Margaret was not happy, but she could not gainsay the orders of her brother-in-law. Her own authority was depen-

dent upon his, for a man was master in his own house. It was a sore shame that Nicholas, unlike his late-lamented older brother, seemed to care little for the sober and devout regime that she and her late husband had fashioned for their household during the days of the Lord Protector. But Nicholas, his brother's heir, had been Baron Kincaid for the last three years, and his widowed sister-in-law was dependent upon him for house and home. Not that he was ever ungenerous in spirit or fact, but Margaret wished for the past, when he was still leading the life of a younger son, seeking what advancement he could at the court, where he was so manifestly at home. Now, with such a one at its head, what had been her household was becoming infused with the dangerous ways of that same loose and licentious court.

Such thoughts were acid and wormwood, as usual. She turned to the cause of all this trouble. "Come," she said shortly to Polly. "It is not decent for you to be in here." She went to the door, calling for Susan, who appeared, wide-eyed, almost before her name had been spoken. "Take her down to the kitchen." Margaret pushed Polly through the door with a grimace of distaste. "I will come down and see what is to be done with her in a minute."

"Sister!" Nicholas spoke with sudden briskness as he got out of bed, drawing a furred nightgown over his shirt. "One thing more." He walked to the window and drew back the heavy curtains, examining the gray day with a slight frown. "I know you do not believe in sparing the rod, Margaret, and while I would not in general interfere in your running of this household, which you do impeccably, in this instance you will stay your arm. If you find fault in her, bring it to my attention. Is it clear?"

Margaret's lips tightened. She was not accustomed to being spoken to in such a manner. "And is she not to be subject to my authority, then, brother? I cannot have, in my household, one who is excused faults for which others are punished."