They followed the maidservant upstairs and along a corridor to double doors at the rear of the house.

Judith was sitting in a chair by the window, in front of a chess board, when her friends entered. She sprang up with a glad cry. "Oh, how good of you all to come. I was feeling thoroughly sorry for myself and horribly lonely."

"But of course we would come," Sally said, looking around the sitting room. It was pleasant enough, but nothing to the yellow drawing room in Berkeley Square. "Whatever are you about, Judith? Your note didn't explain, and Sebastian wouldn't say anything."

"Thinking," Judith replied. "That's what I'm about, but so far I haven't come up with any sensible thoughts… or even comforting ones," she added.

"Well, what's happened?" Cornelia sat on the sofa. "Why are you in this place?"

"It's a perfectly pleasant place," Judith said. "I have a large bedroom as well as the sitting room, and the woman who owns it is very attentive-"

"Yes, but why are you here?" Isobel interrupted this irrelevant defense of the accommodations.

Judith sighed. "Marcus and I had a dreadful fight. I had to get away somewhere quiet to think."

"You left your husband?" Even Cornelia was shaken. "You just walked out and came here?"

"In a nutshell. Marcus has forbidden my gaming and intends to control every penny I spend." Judith fiddled with the chess pieces as she told as much of the story as she could without revealing Brussels. "So, since I can't possibly accept such edicts," she finished, "and Marcus is determined that I will obey him, what else could I do?"

Isobel shook her head, saying doubtfully, "It seems a bit extreme. Husbands do demand obedience as a matter of course. One has to find a way around it."

The maidservant brought tea. "Mrs. Cunningham wants to know if you'd like some bread and butter, ma'am? Or cake?"

"Cake," Isobel said automatically, and Judith chuckled, feeling a little more cheerful. She'd been fighting waves of desolation all day… desolation and guilt, whenever she thought of how that moment of willful passion on the road to Quatre Bras had ruined all their carefully laid plans. And Sebastian had so far uttered not a word of reproach.

"But what are you going to do, Judith?" Sally asked, having sat in silence for some time, absorbing the situation.

"I don't know," Judith said truthfully. "But you can't just disappear. How would Marcus explain that?" Sally persisted. "The family…" She stopped with a helpless shrug. The might and prestige of the Devlin family were perhaps more apparent to her than to Judith. She'd been married into it for five years. The thought of damaging that prestige, of inviting the wrath of that might, sent a fearful shudder down her spine.

"Maybe I'll just be conveniently dead," Judith said. For some reason, the thought of her mother came to her. Her mother had died quietly in a French convent, leaving barely a ripple on the surface of the world… if you didn't count two children.

"Judith!" Cornelia protested. "Don't talk like that." "Oh, I don't mean really dead," she explained. "I'll disappear and Marcus can put it about that I've died of typhus, or a riding accident, or some such."

"You're mad," Sally pronounced. "If you believe for

one minute that the Devlin family will let you get away with that, you don't know anything about them."

Judith chewed her lip for a minute. She had a horrible feeling that Sally was probably right. "I'm not thinking clearly at the moment," she said finally. "I'll worry about the details later. Tell me some gossip. I feel so isolated at the moment."

"Oh, there's a famous story going around about Hester Stanning," Isobel said. "I had it from Godfrey Chauncet." She lowered her voice confidentially.

Judith listened to the on-dit with half an ear, her mind working on some way in which she could still play her part with Gracemere. Maybe, for the denouement, Sebastian could arrange a private card party and she could make an unexpected appearance…

"Don't you think that's funny, Judith?"

"Oh… yes… yes, very funny." She returned to the room with a jolt.

"You weren't listening," Isobel accused, eyeing the chocolate cake that Dora had brought in. "I wonder if I dare have another piece. It's really very good."

Judith cut another slice for her. "I was listening," she said.

"When you fight with Carrington, do you lose your temper?" Cornelia asked with the air of one who'd been pondering the question for some time.

The question brought such a wave of longing washing through her that Judith was for a moment silent, lost in the memories of the times when they'd fought tooth and nail and then made up with ferocious need. "Yes," she admitted. "I have a dreadful temper, and so does Marcus."

"Good heavens," Cornelia said. "I can't imagine Forsythe losing his temper. I wonder if I should try to provoke it. It might add a bit of excitement to life."

Judith couldn't help laughing. "You're too levelheaded and even-tempered, Cornelia. You'd start arguing with yourself instead of your husband, because you'd immediately see the other point of view."

After her visitors had left, she sat in the gloom of late afternoon. Cornelia and Sally and Isobel really didn't understand. They'd stand by her, of course. They'd keep her company and keep her secret, but they couldn't begin to understand what would drive a woman to take such a desperate stance. Never having tasted freedom- the sometimes uncomfortable freedom of life outside Society-they couldn't imagine doing anything so drastic. Judith didn't blame them for it. On the contrary, she envied the simplicity and security of their lives.

It was getting dark, but she didn't ring for Dora to light the candles. The growing shadows suited her mood and she could feel herself sliding deeper and deeper into a pit of wretchedness. She hurt every time she remembered what Marcus had said to her, what he believed her to be, every time she recalled that, believing such things of her, he had still made love to her in the way he had, with such trust, such honesty, such absolute oneness with her in body and spirit. She had entrusted herself to him in those moments, as he had entrusted himself to her. And yet all the time…

A knock at the door shattered the grim cycle of her thoughts. Sebastian entered, and she blinked in the near darkness.

"Why are you sitting in the dark?" He struck flint against tinder and lit the branched candlestick on the table. He subjected his sister to a comprehending scrutiny, one that confirmed his suspicions and satisfied him that he'd done the right thing that morning.

"I thought you might like some company for dinner," he said, as if he didn't notice her pallor or the sheen of tears in her eyes. "Mrs. Cunningham informs me that she has a carp in parsley sauce and a boiled fowl with mushrooms. Sounds quite appetizing, I thought."

Judith managed to blink back her tears. "Thank you, Sebastian," she said with composure. "1 was dreading a solitary dinner."

"I rather thought that might be the case." He bent to kiss her. "Blue-deviled?"

"An understatement," she said. "What are we going to do about Gracemere?"

"It's not important at the moment." He pulled the chess board over to the fire. "We'll work something out once you've recovered your equilibrium."

"But-"

"Which hand?" Sebastian interrupted, offering his clenched fists.

"I only want-"

"Which hand?" he repeated.

Judith pointed to his left. He opened it to reveal the black pawn.

"Oh, good, I have the advantage," he said cheerfully, sitting behind the white pieces. "Sit down, Ju, and stop looking like a week of wet Mondays."

She sat down and watched him move his pawn to king four. She moved her own in response. "Have you seen Marcus?" She tried to keep the quaver from her voice.

"He paid me a visit this morning." He moved up his queen's pawn.

She made the ritual responding move. "What did he say?

Sebastian examined the neat center arrangement of four pawns. "He wanted to know where you were." He brought out his knight.

Judith moved her own knight and they exchanged pawns. "What did you say?"

"That I was sworn to secrecy." Sebastian sat back. The ritual opening moves made, the real play would begin.

"Was he angry?"

"Not pleased," her brother said, bringing his queen's bishop into play. "But then you wouldn't expect him to put his neck under your foot, would you?"

"I'd expect him to be more understanding," she snapped, hunching over the board. "He makes no effort to understand me."

"Oh, I wouldn't say that," Sebastian said judiciously, waiting for his sister to make her move. "I think on the whole he has a fairly good handle on you, Ju."

"How can you say that?" Judith's hand hovered over her knight.

"He knows damn well that if he allows you to ride roughshod over him, you'll have no relationship at all," Sebastian said. "Be honest, Ju. Do you want some nodcock for a husband, a man who couldn't stand up to your"

"No," she said. "Of course not. But why do we have to stand up to each other, Sebastian? That's what I don't understand."

Her brother shrugged. "It's the kind of people you are. I don't think you're going to change that, quite frankly."

"Harriet won't stand up to you," she observed.

"She won't have to," he responded promptly. "I won't give her cause. I intend to become a country bumpkin-a squire, devoted to farming and hunting and my children.'1

"Yes, because when you and Harriet make your vows, you'll do it without deception," Judith said, bitterness lacing her words. "You'll be the person she believes you to be. She'll know nothing of father, of Gracemere… and she'll never have to know. All of that will be in the past forever. It won't come back to destroy your marriage before it's ever really begun." Her voice choked and she turned aside from the board. "I'm sorry."

Sebastian handed her his handkerchief. He had no doubts now that his interference had been justified. "Make your move, Ju," he said, indicating the board. "It's true that my marriage would be founded on something different from yours, but maybe you could move beyond that with Marcus. Once it's all over-"

"How could I possibly?" she exclaimed. "And how can you talk like this anyway? After what he believes, what he's said, what he intends to do…?"

"I know," Sebastian said soothingly. "It's insupportable, I agree. I was thinking you might consider going to that little village in Bavaria, where the Helwigs are. They invited you to stay with them whenever you wished. It might tide you over an awkward few months."

"Yes," Judith agreed, wondering why Sebastian's company was so irritating. She couldn't remember ever before finding it so.

It was close to midnight when he left. Young Tom, shivering in a doorway opposite, heaved a sigh of relief.

Surveillance was a tedious business, he reckoned, setting off after the gentleman-cove in the beaver hat and long cloak. It involved hanging around for hours outside houses and clubs, going without his dinner in case the cove came out unexpectedly. However, he could take his lordship unerringly to every one of the places visited by his quarry.

Sebastian hailed a passing hackney and the jarvey pulled over immediately. If Sebastian was aware of the nonpaying passenger clinging to the back of the carriage as it swung through the quiet streets of nighttime London, he gave no sign.

Tom sprang off as the carriage turned into Albemarle Street. It seemed his quarry was going home for the night, which left his follower free to make his report to his lordship, and hopefully find some supper in the kitchen, before seeking his own bed above the stables.

Marcus had had no stomach for company that evening and had remained by his own fireside, trying to divert his thoughts with Caesar's Gallic Wars. The diversion was only minimally successful since he found contemplation of the war in his own back garden to be much more compelling.

The library door opened. "Young Tom is here to see you, my lord."

"Send him in, Gregson."

Tom came in on the words. "Take your cap off, lad," Gregson directed in an outraged whisper. Stableboys were not usual library visitors.

Tom snatched off his cap and stood awkwardly, twisting it between his hands. "The cove's gone 'ome to 'is bed, m'lord," he offered in explanation for his end of duty. "I thought as 'ow you'd like me report straight-way.