Chloe regarded him warily, on the watch for some sign of gloating, but his smile was warm, his eyes calm, his posture relaxed as he leaned back in his chair, one booted leg crossed over the other, the Gazette open on his lap.

"I have other plans," she said, turning to the chafing dishes on the sideboard.

"May I be a party to them?" Hugo folded back the newspaper, skimming the contents of the page.

"Is that a question or an order?" She turned back to the table and put down her laden plate as she sat down.

Hugo cast an amused glance at her plate. Chagrin and annoyance hadn't affected her appetite, it seemed. "I would like to know," he said neutrally.

"Well, I haven't decided yet. I'll be sure to inform you when I do." She took a forkful of bacon and carried it to her mouth, not caring that she sounded petulant at best, uncivil at worst. She had passed the most wretchedly uncomfortable night of her life and had no intention of making peace without some statement of protest.

"I'd be glad if you would," he said with careful courtesy, refusing to rise to the challenge. "Where's your duenna this morning?"

"Breakfasting in bed on tea and toast… although I think there's a platter of sirloin in case she should recover her appetite later. She feels a touch of gout and thinks it's because the air's damp." Despite herself, the old mischief appeared in her previously frosty eyes and her voice caught on a bubble of laughter. "Do you think she can be a… a… oh, what do you call it? A valetudinarian, that's it?"

"I think it's quite likely," Hugo said with a solemnity belied by the laughter in his own eyes. He pushed back his chair and rose. "Are you sure you won't ride with me, lass?" He came around to her chair and lightly tipped her chin. "Since your plans don't appear to be written in stone." He flicked a toast crumb from the corner of her mouth with a fingertip, and smiled.

It was a smile to melt the most obdurate desire to punish. Her lip trembled in response and she tried to hang on to her justifiable grievance, but it was feathers on the wind. "I don't know whether I like you enough to ride with you," she said in a last-ditch attempt, but her eyes spoke other words.

Hugo laughed. "Cry peace, Chloe. You were in the wrong and you know it. I won't ask you to admit it, but I'll happily put it behind us if you will."

Not even with the best will in the world could she do anything else. Apart from the fact that she couldn't bear to be at odds with him, a peevish withdrawal from him would surely make him only too glad to see the back of her.

She reached up and clasped his wrist, her eyes darkening. "We could ride… but then again, we could ride."

"In broad daylight'" he mocked, trying to disguise the turbulent resurgence of the desire he'd fought so successfully to keep in check last night.

"It wouldn't be the first time."

"No, but this is London, not Lancashire, it's Mount Street with a house full of servants, not Denholm Manor and Samuel."

It was impossible. Chloe sighed and accepted reality. "Then it'll have to be Petrarch and Richmond."

They spent the morning in perfect amity and that night, when Chloe came to his bed, Hugo made love to her with a fierce need that met and matched her own and restored their equilibrium, obscuring the memories of his punishing self-control. It was a night Chloe remembered for many weeks afterward as the last occasion when they made love without constraint.

Denis DeLacy seemed to be everywhere. His voice was always to be heard in the house on Mount Street, and wherever Chloe was, Denis was in attendance.

Hugo couldn't decide what to make of the burgeoning relationship. Chloe seemed impervious first to his hints and then to his outright declaration that she was singling out DeLacy and that if she wasn't to set tongues wagging, she should be a little less particular in her attentions. She had ignored his instructions, maintaining that Denis DeLacy would make a very good husband: rich enough, very well connected, amusing, easygoing, intelligent, and probably could be persuaded to accept the kind of equal partnership she had in mind. However, when her guardian pressed her to say whether she really wanted to marry Denis, she always managed to evade the issue.

But it wasn't only because Chloe was making herself the talk of the town with the flirtation that Hugo couldn't reconcile himself to the increasing intimacy. Every time he heard Chloe's laugh, saw her brush Denis's sleeve with that delicate airy gesture that he'd come to associate with their own liaison, his gut roiled.

Was he jealous of Denis DeLacy? Of course he was.

The knowledge was bitter and unpalatable, but irrefutable. At thirty-four, he was impossibly in love with an exquisite seventeen-year-old innocent, who was showing a distinct partiality for a young man of her own generation-the perfectly appropriate match he, as her guardian, had been advocating.

He had no choice but to withdraw completely from the field. For both their sakes. As long as their intimate liaison continued, he couldn't help but hinder the progress of Denis's suit. Maybe that was what lay behind Chloe's reluctance to commit herself to the final step. And only by separating himself completely from Chloe could he gain some peace of mind. He was not going to repeat the past. He was not going to be devoured by another hopeless love.

Deliberately and joylessly he set about expanding his social circle. Night after night he stayed out until near dawn, returning to the house only after Chloe had finally yielded to sleep. During the day he was to be found in Jackson's Saloon, or Manton's Shooting Gallery, or Angelo's Fencing Studio, or the Corinthian Club, where he exorcised passion in the sports that had always been his metier in the company of men, who, like himself, eschewed the insipid pursuits of the clubs on St. James's. He grew fitter and stronger and grimmer by the day.

Samuel watched, understood, and waited for the outcome. He saw not only Hugo's unhappiness but Chloe's bewildered misery beneath the bright facade she offered the world. He heard the brittle quality to her ever-ready laughter, saw the fragility of her smile, saw the longing in her eyes as they followed Hugo whenever he was in her vicinity.

Samuel was not deceived by her flirtation with Denis DeLacy and couldn't understand why Hugo seemed to be. These days, in a strange imitation of past bad times, he listened for the sound of the piano in the library. But it was Chloe who played it, using the music to express her unhappiness in a way that words could not, and Samuel learned to recognize her mood from the choice of music, as he had done with Hugo.

Chloe couldn't understand why her ploy had suddenly stopped working. For quite a while Hugo had shown satisfactory signs of disapproving of her flirtation with Denis. He had even become annoyed enough on one occasion to forbid her to dance more than one dance with him in an evening. She had defied this edict, hoping for an overt confrontation that would lead to a long and exciting night, only to find that Hugo dropped the subject abruptly as if it had lost all interest for him. Once he'd asked her if she intended to marry Denis and she'd had the feeling that her answer would matter to him; but now he no longer seemed to notice when she was in Denis's company, and in general no longer frequented the social occasions to which his ward was invited. On the rare occasions he did, he was always to be found in the company of some sophisticated woman of his own age. It seemed to Chloe that he had developed a life of his own that completely excluded her.

In her confusion and unhappiness, she flirted ever more provocatively with Denis. And he met and matched her pace with an eagerness that soon had tongues wagging and bets being laid in the clubs as to how soon DeLacy would lead the beautiful heiress to the altar.

The progress of the affair was watched with undisguised interest by two men lodging in a discreet inn off the Strand.

"Why don't we act now?" Crispin paced the private parlor between the two windows. A grayish light filled the room from the thick snow falling outside.

"Patience," his stepfather counseled, sprinkling nutmeg on the contents of a silver punch bowl. He dipped the ladle into the bowl and sampled the brandy punch with a critical frown before reaching for a saucer of sliced lemons and judiciously adding a few slices.

"But why?" Crispin demanded, staring down into the lane below the window. A dray loaded with ale barrels had come to a halt in a pile of drifting snow and a group of people had gathered around, offering vociferous advice to the driver, who lashed his straining horse and cursed loudly enough to carry to the watcher above.

"Because journeying to Lancashire in a snowstorm is hardly sensible," Jasper snapped. "Use your head, lad."

"We could keep her here. She can be as easily persuaded here as at Shipton. We could be married here." Crispin sounded sullen. It was hard to be kept in the background while Denis DeLacy had all the amusement and he was impatient for his own moment on center stage.

"Sometimes I think you've cloth between your ears, just like your mother," Jasper declared, ladling punch into two goblets. "Here, drink this, it might sharpen your wits." He held out a goblet.

Crispin took it, flushing at his stepfather's contemptuous tone.

"Where do you suggest we keep the girl?" Jasper went on in the same tone. "Somehow I don't see my little sister peaceably settling in one of the inn's bedchambers while we run to fetch a priest. Oh, and where do you think we'll find a priest in London willing to marry her against her will? And you can be damned sure she'll create blue murder however persuasive I might be. And I intend to be very persuasive," he added with a vicious curl of his lip. "Not a quiet process."

"There are things you can give her to keep her quiet," Crispin pointed out, still sullen.

"Yes, and we'll need them on the journey," Jasper replied. "I've no intention of sitting cramped in a post-chaise for a week with that girl spitting and struggling. We stick to the plan: Denis will bring her to Finchley, where we'll transfer her to the chaise and we will all go to Shipton. There, my impatient, lusting son, old Elgar in the parish of Edgecombe will do as I tell him. He'd tie the knot between you and a sheep if so ordered. And you will spend your wedding night in the crypt."

"What about Denis?"

"He'll have his reward, but don't worry, no one will interfere with the exercise of your conjugal rights."

Jasper drank deeply of the brandy punch, feeling its warmth curling in his belly. His father had died because of Chloe's mother and Hugo Lattimer. He'd waited fourteen years for his revenge, and he wasn't going to bungle it because of the impatience of a brainless lad who thought with his loins. He didn't want Lattimer to be more than one day behind them when he began his pursuit. One day would be long enough to get the marriage over and the scene in the crypt set up. It would be an exact replica of the scene of Elizabeth's presentation, but this time Hugo Lattimer would be in no position to do anything but watch. And afterward, Jasper would kill him, bringing the blood feud full circle.

There was a knock at the door and Denis came in, shaking snow off his curly-brimmed beaver. "It's the devil's own luck," he declared disgustedly. "I had everything set up, and now this." He gestured to the window.

"Patience," Jasper counseled yet again. He ladled punch into a third goblet. "We'll lose nothing by waiting a day or two."

Denis took the goblet with a murmur of thanks. "I'm just afraid that something will happen," he said. "I've got her right where I want her… she'll do anything I suggest at the moment. But I have this feeling that it's like… it's like… I don't know… she's like a thread stretched so tight, it's bound to snap at any moment."

Jasper looked up sharply. "Why? What's wrong with her?"

"I don't know. Nothing that you can put your finger on, but… but I can feel it. There's something." He drank from the goblet and said slowly, feeling for words, "Sometimes I have this feeling that she's just using me. Sometimes I don't think she sees me at all, even when she's paying me the most particular attention."

"Oh, nonsense," Jasper said. "Fanciful nonsense. The silly chit's fallen head over ears in love with you. She's a baby with no more experience of the world than a five-year-old. I expect she's overawed by you."