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She ignored the goad. “But if I
am
able to repay your thirty pounds while I am here… will I be free to go?”

“If you’re thinking of asking my uncle for thirty pounds, Miss Mas—” A motion caught his eye; Lily’s fingers had idly fallen atop the back of a plush velvet chair; he watched her eyes fly briefly wide in startled pleasure. “—Miss Masters, I hardly think that qualifies as an honorable way to repay my debt. Taking advantage of…”

Her finger was now moving over the velvet in a furtive, almost imperceptible stroke. Gideon’s breath hitched; the gesture was both heartbreaking and faintly erotic. It made him want to put everything at Aster Park beneath her fingers, just so he could watch her expression change.

“… that is, er… taking advantage of an ill and elderly man…” He was aware his words lacked a certain coherence at this point. Her finger was tremendously distracting.

Lily’s hand stilled. “
I
never ask anyone for anything, Mr. Cole.”

He raised a brow. “Of course not. You just
take.”

Her head snapped back indignantly; her mouth parted on a planned retort. But then she seemed to think better of it; she closed her mouth and studied him instead, her forehead slightly furrowed. He returned her appraisal with an unblinking, challenging one of his own.

And then it happened.

Slowly, simultaneously, wryly…

They smiled at each other.

An acknowledgment that they were each, despite themselves, taking an unexpected pleasure in their exchange.

By God, the girl was a thief by her own admission, but she reasoned like a barrister and had more pride and sheer
spine
than the majority of the men he knew. Gideon found himself absurdly gratified by the respect he now read in Lily’s eyes.

“Very well, Miss Masters,” he said softly, suddenly. “If you can come by thirty pounds
honestly
while you are here… you are free to go.”

Her smile broadened.

“Will you promise to cooperate with our plans”—and here her smile took on a mischievous edge—“to the best of your
ability
, Miss Masters?”

“All right, Mr. Cole.”

“And there is, of course, no guarantee that this undertaking is anything more than folly.”

“Oh, I couldn’t agree more, Mr. Cole. But as a start, you may have
this.”
Lily thrust her handful of winnings at him; startled, Gideon opened his hands for it. ‘Two pounds. I believe that brings my debt to
twenty-eight
pounds, Mr. Cole. You should know I told Lord Lindsey only that I am Kilmartin’s cousin from Sussex. And he is
not
a sick old man, Mr. Cole; he’s a bored and
lonely
and coddled old man looking for an excuse to get out of that bed. “

Speechless, Gideon watched her spin, the skirts of Mrs. Plunkett’s big borrowed dress whipping about her ankles, and bustle purposefully toward the sitting room doorway.

She paused again when she reached it.

What a pity he would have to spoil her dramatic exit.

“The stairs, Miss Masters, are to the left, and your room on the second floor.”

She squared her narrow shoulders, and then turned left and disappeared down the hall, her too-large slippers clacking on the marble.

And Gideon, his hand full of two pounds’ worth of coins, stared bemused at the doorway for quite a few minutes more after the sound of her footsteps had faded away.

Chapter Five

Mr. Cole was
right
, there are peacocks, Lily, and oh, how pretty they are, and they make a sound just like ladies in distress, like this:
help help help
. And Boone—Boone is the gardener—he says peacocks make good guards, as good as dogs, even—“

“Mmm. You don’t say?
Honestly,”
Lily managed to utter beneath the flow of Alice’s words, just in case Alice required a response from her. But as it turned out, it was really more of a monologue than a conversation. Lily ignored the words after a moment and studied her sister, whose thin cheeks were glowing a healthy pink from her day in the sun and fresh air.

“What did
you
do today, Lily?” Alice finally asked, magnanimously.

“Oh, I read a book today.” The hated
Instances of III Manners to be carefully avoided by youth of both sexes
sat on the writing desk, looking just as strict and humorless on the outside as it was on the inside. After her confrontation with Gideon Cole, she’d dutifully absorbed the book’s contents, and felt as though she’d spent an entire day being admonished.

She’d discovered something interesting, however: the words
Property of Gideon Cole
had been scrawled in a youthful hand on the inside of the cover. Perhaps this book was responsible for turning Mr. Cole into… whatever he happened to be. A thorn in her side. Her gaoler.

An object of increasingly unnerving fascination.

A tap sounded at their chamber door. Lily opened it to find a maid bearing yet another note.

LM
—
Kindly join myself and Lord Kilmartin for dinner in the first floor dining room at 8:00. Bring Alice. Be clean. Given your talent for exploration, I imagine you can find the dining room without my assistance
—
GC

“My, you’ve a funny look on your face, Lily.” Alice had kicked off her slippers to walk the winding vine pattern in their chamber carpet.

Was Gideon Cole goading her or teasing her? Lily suspected both. She felt her skin heating again. Confusion, irritation, amusement… an odd breathless pleasure…

I am out of my depth with this man.

Then again, she was no stranger to exploring new depths.

“We’ve been invited to dine downstairs this evening, Alice.”

“Dinner?” Alice marveled. “Imagine having dinner two nights in a row!”

Kilmartin and Gideon cradled their glasses of port lovingly. Port was really meant to be an after-dinner libation, but since no one but Gideon was about to monitor their manners, the two of them had decided to indulge before dinner, and were feeling as smug as two schoolboys about it.

“So how fares our… protégée?” Kilmartin wanted to know.

Gideon lifted his glass up and peered into its depths, as if he could read the answer there.
How fares our protégée
? Perhaps it was the port, but the question called to mind ten pink toes curling into the carpet… a finger sliding over velvet… and a smile as unexpected and enchanting as a shooting star.

And his uncle. Upright and playing cards in a room ablaze with sunlight. And again, perhaps it was the port, but all of these things seemed somehow part of the same miracle.

“Improved by a bath,” Gideon finally answered. For some reason, he found it difficult to meet Kilmartin’s eyes.

Kilmartin gave a quick laugh. “Gideon, are you quite certain you wouldn’t prefer to abandon this fol—” He faltered to a stop. Gideon looked up. Lily Masters was standing in the dining room doorway, her chin aimed skyward and shoulders back as usual. Alice fidgeted at her side. Both girls looked scrubbed and rosy. And hungry, if he was not mistaken.

Gideon and a goggling Kilmartin scrambled politely to their feet.

“
Improved
?” Kilmartin whispered to Gideon. “You’re a rascal, Cole.”

Gideon ignored him. “Good evening, Miss Masters. Miss Alice.”

She hesitated. “Good evening, Mr. Cole.” A hint of irony in her voice acknowledged her role as reluctant guest.

“And you remember Lord Kilmartin?”

“Good evening, Lord Kilmartin,” Lily turned her fresh-scrubbed visage up to Kilmartin.

“Good… good…” Kilmartin stammered.

Gideon shot Kilmartin a
get a hold of yourself look
. “And may I present Miss Alice Masters?”

Alice stared at Kilmartin, her small hand, the one Lily wasn’t holding, fidgeting in her skirt. “He’s very fine, but not so fine as Mr. Cole,” she whispered at last to Lily, who squeezed her hand a little too late to censor her.

Kilmartin bent toward Alice. “That’s what everyone else thinks, too,” he whispered conspiratorially. Alice giggled.

Ah
, Gideon thought.
If only grown-up women were as easy to charm as the little ones
. “Shall we?” He motioned to the table.

Footmen emerged from the shadows to pull chairs out for each of them. “Sit,” Gideon commanded the girls, who did as told. They looked bemused when the footmen pushed their chairs toward the table. Alice giggled and Lily shushed her, but her lips were pressed together, as if she were stifling giggles of her own.

The footmen reappeared bearing dishes domed in silver. With subtle flourishes, they lifted lids to reveal venison, fish, roast fowl, and peas; they deftly served portions to each diner and retreated again, their footsteps silenced by the thick carpet.

Gideon cleared his throat. “Now, Miss Masters, when you are a guest at a dinner party—”

He was interrupted by the clink of metal against porcelain.

Lily and Alice had… attacked their dinners.

Meat and fish and fowl vanished into their mourns, peas were shoveled, juices scraped up with the sides of forks, their hands nearly a blur. Gideon and Kilmartin watched, spellbound, as Alice chased the last of her peas around with the avid focus of a big game hunter, trying and failing to stab it. She finally smashed it with the flat of her fork and licked it off, beaming.

In unison, Gideon and Kilmartin turned to Lily; she was dreamily sucking the tines of her own fork; her plate glistened bone white.

The men had yet to touch their own dinners.

Gideon’s chest tightened; he could only imagine how scarce food must be to them.

“Would you like more?” he asked gently, finally.

Both girls nodded eagerly.

“I suppose we should add ‘how to dine’ to our curriculum,” Kilmartin murmured.

Gideon sighed.

Chapter Six

Lily had just doffed her enormous borrowed nightdress and donned her enormous borrowed day dress when a tap sounded at the door. She yanked it open to find the stoic Mrs. Plunkett bearing a tray of eggs and fried bread and another missive from Gideon Cole.

She relieved Mrs. Plunkett of her breakfast tray, mumbling her thanks.

“You’re to come with me, Miss Alice,” Mrs. Plunkett said.

“Hurrah! Good-bye, Lily!” Alice stood on her toes to give Lily a quick hard hug and then went off hand in hand with the housekeeper, all signs of reticence gone. Alice had been bouncing about the room excitedly from the moment she’d opened her eyes. Apparently today she was to help Boone the gardener plant flowers and help Cook make bread and cookies in the kitchen.

Lily gazed after them longingly and then sighed and settled onto the bed. She sank her teeth into her bread and shook open the folded note.

LM
—
Kindly report to the blue sitting room on the second floor for a discussion of our mission. Be on time. There are fine clocks simply everywhere, but no doubt you’ve done an inventory of your own. You will play cards with Lord Lindsey, and meet with the dressmaker thereafter
—
GC

Cards with Lord Lindsey? Lily smiled at that; apparently the baron had insisted.

But then she read the note again, and could feel her temperature rising. She might be a strange patchwork creature, part urchin, part lady. She might be thirty pounds—correction,
twenty-eight
pounds—in the man’s debt. He might be unreasonably beautiful and a little too clever… but she
did
know the word “please” was part of a gentleman’s vocabulary. And she was growing a little tired of its exclusion from his missives. It had been
years
since
anyone
had told Lily Masters what to do.

All right then. She
would
cooperate with Mr. Cole… to the best of her ability.

She smiled a wicked little smile to herself.

“Thank you for your punctuality, Miss Masters.” Surrounded by the overwhelming variety of blues of the blue sitting room, Lily’s eyes were two vivid wonders.

Lily nodded to him curtly.

“Miss Masters, perhaps you are unaware of this, but it is considered impolite not to respond when you are spoken to: in short, when someone, for instance,
myself
says, ‘Thank you, ’ you will reply, ‘You’re welcome. ’”

Lily rolled her eyes.

“Did you read your book, Miss Masters?”

“Yes, Mr. Cole, I read your little book.”

“Did it perhaps say anything about, oh, eye rolling?” he asked mildly.

Lily furrowed her brow thoughtfully. “I read something about ‘distortion of countenance, ’ I believe. But there was no specific mention of eye rolling.” For Gideon’s benefit, Lily distorted her countenance by crossing her eyes. And then, her face as clear and sweet as a rosebud, she turned to Kilmartin.

“Good morning, Lord Kilmartin.”

“Um…” Kilmartin stammered.

Gideon sighed. Despite his pedigree, Kilmartin had never developed any sort of immunity to beautiful women. “You’ll have to do more speaking than that, Kilmartin, if you’re to be of any use here. Collect yourself.”

“Quite right, quite right, Gideon,” Kilmartin said hurriedly. “Good morning, Miss Masters. Please do take a seat.” He had claimed an entire blue settee for himself.

Lily gave him a little curve of a smile and selected one of the delicate blue chairs to settle upon.

Gideon eyed those chairs and decided it was safer to lean against the mantel. “Help me, Miss Masters, for I’m confused. I seem to recall a discussion about cooperation yesterday. Did I imagine it?”

Lily cast her eyes up to the ceiling, which was painted all over in blue-robed cherubs. “Hmmm… well, yes. I recall that discussion as well. But you see, at the time, I
thought
I understood what ‘cooperation’ meant. This morning I learned I was mistaken.”

Gideon crossed his arms and studied her in growing irritation and amused curiosity.

Her return gaze was a shade too wide to be truly innocent.

“All right, Miss Masters. Your point, please.”

She looked a little disappointed; she had hoped, perhaps, to toy with him a bit. He saw reluctant respect in her eyes again. He cherished that particular expression.