"How's that?"

"Both live under someone else's thumb," she explained aridly.

"But for a male ward, at least there's an end to the sentence," Cornelia pointed out.

"I never know whether you're running or not when you talk in such fashion," Charlie said, sighing.

Judith smiled. "Then you must guess."

Charlie jumped to his feet and began to pace the salon. "A man's got to play, for God's sake."

"Yes, but does he have to play as badly as you?" Judith asked with brutal frankness. "Perhaps you should join our school."

Chagrin warred with curiosity. The latter won. "What school?"

Judith explained, watching Charlie's face with ill-concealed merriment.

"Good God," he said. "You can't be serious. What a scandalous idea."

"Oh, but we are," Isobel declared, rising to her feet. "Very serious. We have every intention of earning ourselves a degree of financial independence." She drew on her lacy mittens. "I must go, Judith. It's been a most enlivening morning. Can I take you up as far as Mount Street, Cornelia?" She drifted to the door in a waft of filmy muslin.

"Thank you." Cornelia rose, tripped over her shawl, and sat down again with a thump. "Oh, dear."

Gregson announced the arrival of Sebastian just as Judith and Isobel bent to untangle Cornelia.

"Oh, Sebastian, I wasn't expecting you to call." Judith straightened as her brother entered.

"Well, I think you might have," he said, "since you're forever giving me commissions to execute for you.

"Now, what in the world do you mean?" Judith frowned.

Sebastian grinned. "I hope I haven't just bought Grantham's breakdowns for nothing. I could have sworn you asked-"

"Oh, Sebastian, you have them!" She kissed him soundly. "I didn't think you'd be able to do it so quickly."

"I have 'em right and tight." He was clearly very pleased with himself. "Only just did it, though. Steffington and Broughton were both after them."

"You're very clever, love," she said. "Where are they?"

"I put them up with my own for the moment, since I wasn't quite sure how or when you intended to spring 'em upon Carrington."

Judith pursed her lips. "Yes," she said. "I'll have to work that one out."

"What is this, Judith?" Sally refastened the ribbons of her chip-straw hat.

"Oh, I'm going to drive a perch phaeton and a pair of match-geldings," Judith announced. "Sebastian has procured them for me."

"That's very dashing," Cornelia said, steady on her feet again. "And I insist on being the first person to drive with you."

"The pleasure will be all mine." Judith kept to herself the alarming images of Cornelia combined with a high-axled perch phaeton. It didn't bear thinking about. She accompanied her friends down to the hall.

Sebastian poured himself a glass of sherry while a still slightly scandalized Charlie regaled him with the story of the gaming school. It occurred to him that his sister's philanthropic, educational zeal would have done them great disservice in the days when the more fools there were at the card tables, the better it suited them. But the edge of desperate need was blunted for both of them now. And once Bernard Melville, third Earl of Gracemere, had been constrained to return what he'd stolen, the need would be gone forever. His long fingers tightened around the delicate stem of his glass, then deliberately he loosened his grip, let the mental door drop over the turbulent emotions that would muddle cool thinking.

Judith, her head hill of match geldings, bumped into her husband as she hurried back up the stairs.

"You seem a trifle distracted," he observed, taking hold of the banister. "What's on your mind?"

To her annoyance, Judith felt her cheeks warm with a guilty flush. "Oh, nothing," she said airily. "I'm in a hurry because I'm going to ride with Sebastian. It's such a beautiful day."

It had been rather gray and overcast when Marcus had last looked out the window. He raised his eyebrows. "The weather is, of course, very changeable at this time of year."

Judith chewed her lip, and her husband's eyes narrowed. "What mischief do you brew, lynx?"

"Mischief? Whatever can you mean?"

"I can read it in your eyes. You're up to something."

"Of course I'm not." She changed the subject abruptly and to good purpose. "Why must you be so horrid to Charlie? He does no more than most young men in his position."

Her husband's face closed. "As you, of course, know so well, ma'am… Such naivete has its advantages."

Judith drew breath sharply at this well-placed dart as Marcus continued in clipped tones, "How I handle Charlie is my business and has nothing to do with you. He's been my ward since he was little more than a baby, and in general we deal extremely well together."

"Yes, I know you do." Judith persisted, despite the snub. "And he's very fond of you and respects you. But he's young…"

"If he were not, Judith, I would have no need to hold the reins, and we wouldn't be having this discussion." He drew his fob watch from the pocket of his waistcoat. "As I said, it is not your affair. I have an appointment. I must ask you to excuse me."

Discussion was hardly the word for it, Judith thought, standing aside as he moved past her on the stairs. She'd been most effectively put in her place when all she'd been trying to do was offer him a slant on Charlie's view of the situation. But then, Marcus Devlin had had no youth, so probably couldn't be expected to understand the ups and downs of that state. His father had died when he was a boy and his mother had been a semi-invalid ever since. Marcus had somehow jumped full-grown into adulthood, with the immense responsibility of an ancient title and an enormous estate. As far as she could tell, he'd assumed the whole without blinking an eye.

But then, she and Sebastian hadn't had much in the way of childhood either. Judith resolutely pushed aside her somber reflections as she returned to the drawing room.

13

The atmosphere in Sebastian's sitting room in his lodgings on Albemarle Street was relaxed and good-humored. The six men sitting around the card table were lounging back in their chairs, goblets of claret at their elbows, all exuding the well-fed complacence of satisfied dinner guests.

Sebastian was an attentive host, and none of his guests was aware that his single-minded concentration was on only one of their number-Bernard Melville, Earl of Gracemere.

Gracemere had accepted the invitation to dinner and macao with alacrity, and now that the initial approach had been made, Sebastian was confident that his strategy would keep such a hardened gamester on the hook.

It was not difficult to play to lose against him. The earl was a highly accomplished card player, and it was a simple matter for Sebastian to engineer a convincing loss. Gracemere held the bank. Occasionally, his eyes would flicker across the macao table to his host, who sprawled, relaxed and nonchalant, in an armed dining chair, apparently unconcerned that his losses were heavier than any at the table.

"Your luck is out tonight, Davenport," observed one of his guests.

Sebastian shrugged and raised his wineglass, drinking deeply. "It comes and goes, dear fellow. What do you think of the claret?"

"Excellent. Who's your wine merchant?"

"Harpers, Gracechurch Street." He pushed a rouleaux onto the table. "I'm calling." He laid his hand on the table and shook his head in resignation when the earl revealed twenty points to his own nineteen. Gracemere's tongue flickered over his lips as he noted the new loss on the paper at his side.

Rage and loathing twisted, venomous serpents in Sebastian's gut. How often had Gracemere looked like that while he was playing George Devereux for his heritage and fortune? At what point had he decided to resort to marked cards? Gracemere was a good player, but not as good as Sebastian's father had been. When had he decided he couldn't win in a fair game?

Many times Judith and Sebastian had gone over that last game, trying to picture it. The moment when their father lost the final hand, convinced Gracemere had been using marked cards. The moment when he was about to expose his opponent's cheating and thus retrieve his losses. And the dreadful moment when Gracemere had gathered up the cards and somehow "discovered" a marked card in Devereux's hand. What had happened then? Their father's last letter had not said. It had simply-given them the complete explanation for the lives his children had led-an explanation that went beyond their previous knowledge of insuperable gambling debts that had forced their father's exile. This letter had been an exculpation of George Devereux, but it had not gone beyond the barest facts of Gracemere's accusation, the apparent overwhelming proof made so devastatingly public, his own innocence, and his knowledge that it was the earl who had cheated.

The ensuing scandal had sent George Devereux into exiled disgrace, disowned by his family, forced in his dishonor to relinquish the family name for himself and his children. It had driven his young wife, the mother of his children, to seek her own lonely death in an isolated convent in France. And, finally, its bitter legacy of disillusion and depression had driven George years later to follow in his wife's footsteps and take his own life.

And his children would be avenged.

The power of that conviction jolted Sebastian back to a recollection of the part he must play. Brooding in somber anger at his own table was not consonant with that part. "I think I've taken enough losses for one night," he said, yawning, pushing back his chair. "Gracemere, I'll have my revenge next time…"

The earl gathered up his cards and smiled. "It'll be my pleasure, Davenport."

"Have you played often with Gracemere?" Viscount Middleton asked, standing in the narrow passage with Sebastian after the earl's departure. He looked a little uncomfortable.

"No, I understand he's only just come to town." Sebastian drew his friend back to the parlor with the inducement of a particularly fine cognac. "How about you, Harry? How well do you know his play?"

"Devil a bit." Harry squinted into his cognac. He was a handsome young man, slightly built, with a relentlessly cheerful nature that Sebastian decided had its roots in the security of an assured fortune and the confidence of an unshakeable social position. It didn't make him any the less likable.

"Don't want to speak out of turn, dear fellow," Harry continued. "But, well, fact is, it's said he can be a bad man to play with." He peered again into his goblet and swirled the golden liquid. Then he gave Sebastian a cock-eyed look meant to be shrewd.

"Fact is, Sebastian, you're new to town and-well, just a word, you understand-don't mean to interfere."

Sebastian shook his head. "You're warning me off, Harry?"

Harry swallowed his cognac. "Gracemere's a gamester with pockets to let. You wouldn't be the first pigeon-" He stopped and coughed awkwardly. It wasn't the thing to imply that one's friends could be taken in.

"Don't worry, Harry," Sebastian said. "I wasn't born yesterday."

"No… no, didn't mean to imply any such thing. Just thought, if you weren't aware… maybe you should, well, you know…"

"Yes, I know, and I appreciate the word." Sebastian flung a friendly arm around Harry's shoulder.

"So, you'll have a care?" Harry persisted, doggedly pursuing the path of friendship's duty. "A word to the wise."

"The wise has taken the word," Sebastian assured him with a smile. "I'm not such a gull as Gracemere might think me. Remember that, Harry."

Harry frowned, trying to absorb this, but it was too much for his befuddled brain and he soon took himself home.

Sebastian himself went to bed and allowed his mind to roam over pleasanter matters. A pair of shy blue eyes, a snub nose, a soft mouth, hovered in the air above his pillow as it did most nights these days-ever since he'd made die acquaintance of Harriet Moreton. He smiled to himself in the darkness. If he'd been asked before, he'd have said an ingenue in her first season wouldn't be able to hold his attention for five minutes. But Harriet was different. He didn't know why, she just was. She was soft and yielding and he wanted to keep her safe and untouched and…

Hell and the devil! He laughed softly at himself. What would Ju say if she could hear him? He must ask her to call on Harriet's mother. It would set a seal to his hitherto unmarked pursuit of Miss Moreton.