Harry grinned. That was Mrs. Barrow, all right. "But how-where did you see her?"

"At the Grange, of course, where else?" Luke said, dumping the basket on a nearby table.

"What were you doing there?"

Rafe rolled his eyes. "I know your penmanship is atrocious, dear boy, but if you'd written to inform us you'd moved, it would have saved us the trip."

"Not that we minded," Luke interjected. "She cooks like a dream-none of this French nonsense everyone's so mad about, but real food for real men. Frankly, Harry, I was all for staying on there. I'll wager you won't feed us nearly as well."

"I won't," Harry confirmed as he poured the drinks. "And I'll make you work."

"Work? Heavens, quel horreur," declared Rafe. "I remember work. I don't like it. It makes you dirty." He flicked at his immaculate buckskins with fastidious fingers and tried to keep the twinkle out of his eye.

"Doing it too brown, Rafe," Harry said with a grin. "There's not one of us who've forgotten the way you jumped into the rubble of that bombed Spanish church. You dug for twelve hours straight and were yellow mud from head to toe."

Rafe shrugged. "That was different-there were children trapped there. And I never did get the wretched mud out of my clothes. Ethan, you're a man of fashion, you'll appreciate my position."

Ethan nodded earnestly. "Oh I do, sir, I do. In fact I well remember a time when there weren't any children trapped in the ruins of a certain monastery, nor any monks neither but-" He frowned thoughtfully. "That wasn't you, was it, sir, heavin' a pick with the best of them under the hot Spanish sun?" He winked.

Rafe grinned. "Ah, but I'm sure I knew we were going to find that wine." He sighed. "Superb stuff it was, too, remember? Wish we had some now. I'm going to need it if you're going to turn me into a slave-oh!" He felt in his pocket and drew out two letters. "I almost forgot. Mrs. Barrow gave me these to give to you." He passed them to Harry.

Harry broke the seal and read the first one. "It's from my brother, Gabe," he told them. "He's coming to England next month. Apparently Callie insists on it-I can't imagine why."

"Wives do that," Rafe said gloomily. "Insist." He shuddered and drank deeply.

Harry poured his friend another glass of wine. Rafe's older brother, Lord Axebridge, was hounding him to make a marriage with an heiress. Rafe's brother was happily married, but his wife had been unable to bear children, so it was Rafe's duty, as his brother's heir, to provide the heirs of the next generation. And replenish the family coffers.

Poor Rafe had been trying to avoid the inevitable ever since he'd emerged from the war relatively unscathed. He didn't relish the role of sacrificial lamb-not when it involved marriage.

"Is anyone else comin' with them?" Ethan asked diffidently. "The boys, mebbe?"

Harry consulted the letter. "Yes, the boys and several of the Royal Zindarian Guard-oh and Callie's friend, Miss Tibby. She and Callie are going shopping."

"That explains it," Luke said. "Ladies always like to shop. No shops in Zindaria-not like London. When're they coming?"

"December," Harry told him. "They're staying for Christmas."

He broke open the second letter, read it, and swallowed. He took a large drink of wine.

"Who's it from?" Ethan asked curiously.

"My aunt Gosforth," Harry said. "She says she's found me several very eligible bridal possibilities. I'm to come to Bath next week and meet them."

Five.

"Come now, Harry," Aunt Maude said, "don't make a fuss-I just need a strong arm to lean on if I'm to negotiate that dreadfully steep hill."

"It's downhill, but I'll fetch you a sedan chair, shall I?" Harry knew perfectly well what his aunt wanted of him, and a strong arm was the least of it. She wanted his company in the Pump Room.

Harry loathed the Pump Room, with its rituals, its gossip, the vile tasting waters, and worst of all, the community of genteel spinsters who eyed the arrival of a young man in their midst with all the excitement of a fox come into the henhouse. Only Harry didn't feel like a fox; he felt, under their avid gaze, like a tasty ear of wheat.

And Aunt Maude knew it, too, curse her. She found the whole thing enormously entertaining.

"You wouldn't begrudge a frail old woman your help, would you?" she said in a plaintive voice.

"Frail, is it, Aunt Maudie? And who was it danced every dance at the ball last night?" Harry arched his brows. "Must have been some other frail old woman."

"It was because I danced every dance that I am feeling so delicate this morning," his aunt responded with dignity.

"Oh, it was the dancing, was it? I thought it was the champagne. How many glasses was it?" her unrepentant nephew responded.

Maude, Lady Gosforth, clutched her head and said with asperity, "A gentleman would not count."

"I didn't," Harry said. "I lost count."

"Well, if you must be so vulgar as to refer to it," his aunt declared, "you will understand why I am in need of the restorative powers of the waters at the pump room. And since the only reason I went to the ball last night was to assist you in this search for a wife, the least you can do is escort me."

It was a barefaced lie. Wild horses couldn't keep Aunt Maude from a party, but Harry was aware she'd gone to a lot of trouble for him. He sighed and presented his arm. "All right, but only to the door."

"Nonsense." His triumphant aunt tried not to smirk. "You are clearly liverish and out of sorts. You need to take the waters."

"I don't," he snapped. "It's filthy stuff and I can't bear those rooms, full of old tabbies and-" He broke off and said in a firm voice, "I'll escort you there, but that's my limit."

He was in a foul mood. For the past three days he'd done everything Aunt Maude had asked him to do: dressed up like a tailor's dummy, sat and walked and made painstaking conversation with daughters and their fathers and mothers. He'd been as agreeable as he could possibly be to a bunch of people he never wanted to see again.

It had all been a complete waste of time. He was no closer to finding a suitable wife than he had been the last time he'd come to Bath. Worse, in fact, because then he wasn't comparing every blasted girl he met with her.

Nell, Lady Helen Freymore, with her creamy, pure complexion and her honey-dark voice. No girl he'd met had such a clear direct gaze, such quiet self-possession. And none could create such . . . fire in him.

But Nell hadn't wanted him. She preferred to be off in London pouring tea for some rich, no doubt indulgent old lady. Nell preferred to run errands rather than be married to Harry. And Harry was miles away in Bath looking for a substitute who wouldn't stir him up as she did.

So why was he all stirred up?

Aunt Maude wasn't in the sweetest of tempers, herself. She continued, "But you must. I've put myself out searching high and low for eligible middle-class girls, but you're so liverish you won't even give them a chance!"

"I did give them a chance," he told her. "It's not my fault if they weren't what I asked for."

She smacked him lightly on the hand. "Pish, tush! I find you three of the most ravishing girls and you say they're stupid-"

"They are stupid."

She rolled her eyes at him. "Pretty girls don't have to be clever, you irritating boy!" She took a deep breath and continued, "But being a loving aunt, I find you two more intelligent, lively, and still remarkably attractive girls and you say they're dull."

"They were."

"How would you know? You hardly exchanged a word with either of them."

"I did. The black-haired one liked cats, hated dogs, and was frightened of horses. And the yellow-haired one talked about poetry and went on and on about that Byron fellow." He snorted.

His aunt smacked his arm again. "Every female in England is in love with Byron, you savage! It is the fashion! The fault is not with the girls but with you. Anyone would think you didn't want to get married, but since that's obviously not true, the only explanation is that you are liverish. And a course of the waters will cure that."

Harry scowled and stumped unevenly along beside her. "I'll escort you inside, but I won't swallow any of that stuff," Harry growled, "so cease and desist, or else walk the rest of the way down this street on the very strong arm of your extremely capable footman." He gestured to the liveried servant walking quietly behind them.

His aunt sniffed, but said no more.

Their entrance caused a discernible stir of interest in the population of the Pump Room. Harry didn't feel the slightest bit flattered-he was the only male in the room under the age of seventy. He fixed his gaze on the benches set aside for peeresses and marched his aunt across the room, intending to seat her and be gone.

It took him longer than he planned, as his aunt stopped every few feet to greet acquaintances, but eventually he had her settled with one of her cronies and with a glass of the vile water in her hand.

He was about to take his leave when he heard a voice behind him say, "Lady Helen! What a clumsy creature you are!"

Lady Helen? Harry's head jerked around and he stared across the room. It was her, Nell. What the hell was she doing here? She was supposed to be in London.

A richly dressed, tightly corseted woman with a florid face was speaking to her in a loud voice, as if she were a half-wit, saying, "Well, don't stand there, girl, pick it up at once."

He watched as Nell bent with her usual grace and picked up a shawl from the floor. His mouth dried. She looked just the same. Beautiful. Thinner, perhaps. She shook out the shawl, examined it, and made to pass it to the woman.

She didn't look at Harry, didn't so much as glance his way, but he was sure she knew he was there. She couldn't have missed the entrance his aunt had made.

"No, no, you stupid girl!" The woman recoiled in a stagey manner. "It's soiled. I can't be expected to wear a soiled shawl." The woman cast a long-suffering glance around the room, clearly playing to the audience.

Nell stood in profile to him, her head held high in a lovely cameo, receiving the reprimand with an expression of quiet indifference.

How dare she be indifferent! How dare that woman speak to her like that. He wanted to strangle the red-faced cow.

He wanted to march across the room and pick Nell up and take her back to Firmin Court, ride with her through the forest . . .

Nell said something quiet to the florid woman.

"No, it's not perfectly clean at all, Lady Helen," the woman declared in scornful, ringing tones. "I'm surprised you have such low standards. Run home and fetch me another. Off you go. It shouldn't take you long." She flapped her hands at Nell as though she were a child or a dog, saying, "Don't just stand there. Hurry along, Lady Helen. I'm already feeling rather chilled."

Harry gritted his teeth as Nell quietly folded the shawl and hurried out into the street. He made to follow her.

His aunt gripped his sleeve tightly. "You can't leave yet. It's too fascinating. That's the atrocious mushroom I was telling you about the other day. Remember?"

Nell would be back, Harry reminded himself. She was just fetching another shawl for the cow. He would speak to her then, when he was calmer. For a second he'd wanted to strangle that woman. Talking to Nell like that. He allowed his aunt to pull him down beside her.

The florid woman smoothed her skirts with a satisfied expression and looked complacently round the room. She glanced at Harry and her expression sharpened. Without taking her eyes off him, she ran a finger around the neckline of her dress, which framed a deep bosom, in the cleft of which a large glittering jewel rested.

His aunt made a rude sound under her breath. "The airs that woman gives herself! She's forty if she's a day. Don't you remember the tale?"

Harry vaguely recalled her telling some story about some vastly irritating woman but a great many things offended his aunt. Aunt Maude talked a great deal: the story had washed over him. Now he wished he'd listened.

"Remind me," he said, his eyes on the door.

"She calls herself Mrs. Beasley. She is a rich widow-the rumor is her late husband was a sausage manufacturer, but she keeps her vulgar origins secret-or tries to. As if she doesn't give herself away with every word she speaks." Aunt Maude snorted.

"And the one who dropped the shawl?" Harry asked casually. He felt his aunt turn her head to stare at him. He pretended not to notice.

"She didn't drop it at all." Aunt Maude's friend Lady Lattimer leaned forward. "I saw the whole thing. That Woman threw it on the floor deliberately to put Lady Helen in the wrong."

Harry clenched his fists and forced himself to say in a mildly curious tone, "Lady Helen?"

His aunt gave him a thoughtful look. "Her paid companion. She's Lady Helen Freymore, the daughter of the disgraced Earl of Denton-he gambled away his estate and killed himself. The girl is too poor and too plain to get a husband, never mind the scandal her father made."

His aunt cast the florid woman a contemptuous look. "Nasty, vulgar creature! She simply loves having the daughter of an earl at her beck and call, and she doesn't allow the poor girl a moment of peace."

"How does she stand it?" Harry muttered.

Aunt Maude gave him another piercing look, but said in a mild voice. "None of us has spoken to her-La Beasley doesn't allow it, but the girl seems to take it in her stride."

"She must be a simple creature," Lady Lattimer said. "Mrs. Beasley belittles her with every word, yet Lady Helen never turns a hair. She just smiles, and the humiliations roll off her like water off a duck's back." She shook her head. "No woman of spirit would stand to be spoken to like that by her social inferior."

"She's not simple at all," Harry found himself saying, then aware of his aunt's beady gaze on him, added, "At least she doesn't seem so . . . er, from what I saw just now . . ."

His aunt fixed him with a baleful look and said in a goaded voice, "No, well, she wouldn't, of course. From what you saw just now."

Ignoring his aunt's gimlet stare, Harry scanned the room. He needed somewhere he could talk to Nell on her own, without all these watching eyes.

"I believe she's desperately poor," continued Lady Lattimer, unaware of the undercurrents. "Quite literally doesn't have a penny to her name, poor girl."

Harry spotted two doors down the back of the room. He rose, saying, "Excuse me, Aunt Maude, Lady Lattimer, I must just . . ." and strode off to investigate.

When he returned, Lady Lattimer was dozing and his aunt was watching him with an annoyed expression.

"To think of all that time I wasted on all those other girls," Aunt Maude muttered, thumping Harry on the arm as he sat down.

It was becoming a pattern. He moved his arm out of reach. "I don't know what you're talking about."

Aunt Maude snorted. Harry passed her his handkerchief.

She stared coldly at it down her long, Roman nose. "What's that for?"

"From the sounds you've been making, you're coming down with a cold," he told her.

She glared at him and gave a loud, contemptuous sniff. He smiled faintly and put his handkerchief away.

She glanced at her friend, who was gently snoring, then said in a low voice, "So, how long have you known Lady Helen?" she asked him.

"How did you know?"

She gave him a withering look through her lorgnette. "Oh, spare me-I've known you since you were child. Besides, it was obvious. I throw nearly a dozen girls at your head and you take not the slightest notice, and now, suddenly, you're asking oh-so-casually about somebody's paid companion, a plain and unprepossessing girl whom you cannot take your eyes off. And you expect me to believe you've only just laid eyes on her?"