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Lord Lindsey seemed oblivious to his sarcasm. “Did you bring that little minx with you? I must say, that Miss Masters is a breath of fresh air.”

“But you don’t
like
fresh air, Uncle Edward.” Gideon now sounded as surly as a dockworker.

Startled, Lord Lindsey gave Gideon his full attention then, and something he saw made him frown. “Gideon, your face is— Come over here, lad.”

Gideon hesitated.

“
Now,”
Lord Lindsey commanded.

Gideon moved closer, and his uncle’s eyes widened in concern.

“Good God, what is it, boy? What has happened? Is it an investment? A case? It can’t possibly be a—tell me it isn’t a
woman
, Gideon. Is it that Constance chit? Sit down and tell me.”

“I’ve brought a parcel addressed to you, Uncle Edward.”

“Never mind that. Something is eating at you, and I doubt it has anything to do with that package.”

Gideon lowered himself into the chair next to his uncle’s bed. He slumped there for a moment, wishing he hadn’t come up to his uncle at all, wishing he had gone through the main door and kept walking, maybe to… Dover, or something. But he decided he’d better speak.

“I can’t tell you about it, sir. But thank you.”

“Oh, nonsense, son. Look up at me. Are you in any trouble? I’ll fix it straight away.”

This made Gideon smile weakly. “No. It’s nothing like that, I promise you. I apologize for the dramatics. It’s a mood; it will pass.”

“Do you have a mistress, Gideon?”

“Uncle Edward!”

“Honestly, you are far too serious; you work far too hard. If you don’t intend to take a wife soon, you best take a mistress. Mistresses can do wonders for… ‘moods. ’”

Gideon studied his uncle for a moment. “Did
you
have a mistress, Uncle Edward?”

“Of course.” Lord Lindsey smiled rakishly.

Gideon regarded him in intensely curious silence.

“Go ahead: ask me, lad.”

“
While
you were married to Aunt Beatrice?”

“Well. I loved your aunt, Gideon.”

“That’s not an answer, Uncle Edward.”

“Let me finish: I loved Beatrice. We had a wonderful life together, and there were the boys… But Therese, well…”

He paused, and something passed over his face; a remembered pain, perhaps, or a remembered pleasure. “Therese
was
life.”

Gideon sensed it would be unkind, selfish, to press him for more. But suddenly it seemed critical to know. “Did you love Aunt Beatrice when you married her?”

His uncle regarded him again for a moment thoughtfully, perhaps mulling over how to answer the question, or whether to answer it at all. Gideon held his breath.

“Beatrice and I were fond of each other when we married, Gideon.” Lord Lindsey’s voice faltered a bit, as though these were thoughts he had never before shared. “Life, and time, and shared joys and sorrows—that’s how it became love. It is like that with most marriages. But I saw Therese as often as I could.”

“Did you love Therese? Or was it just…”

Lord Lindsey inhaled deeply; he exhaled gustily. “In for a penny, in for a pound. I suppose I may as well tell you. Gideon, I loved Beatrice. But if we are being truthful, I was
in
love with Therese. It was often inconvenient, but it was never… it was never ‘just. ’”

Gideon absorbed this; it was less of a shock than he would have expected. “What became of her?” he asked softly.

“She decided to marry, for reasons of her own. A farmer. She moved to Devonshire many years ago and refused to see me after that. It very nearly killed me.”

The deeply felt words hung in the room. Gideon and his uncle sat together for a time without speaking, immersed in separate thoughts.

“There was no one else after her,” Lord Lindsey added distantly.

“Uncle Edward…” Gideon took a deep breath. “Did you ever regret your choice?”

“Choice, Gideon?” The baron looked surprised. “There was no choice. A well-bred young man does not marry his mistress. I loved and was loved by two good women. And I knew profound passion with one of them.”

Gideon wished again he could leave the room so he could be alone with his thoughts, sift through his own feelings. He jounced his knee restlessly.

“I’m not sure you came in here to interrogate me about my romantic past, Gideon, but perhaps you did, and I hope I’ve said something of use to you. You’re a good lad. You’ve indulged me above and beyond the call of duty, and I know it’s not just because you hunger for a title. I loved my boys, as well you know. But I am proud of you, Gideon, and I think of you… well, I think of you as a son.”

Good God. The old buzzard might just make me cry
. Gideon reached out his hand; Lord Lindsey gripped it and gave it a startlingly firm squeeze for one supposedly enfeebled. And then he gave it a brisk pat and released it.

“Enough sentimental claptrap, eh, m’boy? What’s in the package?”

“It’s addressed to you, Uncle Edward.”

Lord Lindsey tore through the paper like a child on Christmas morning. Two wide-mouthed brown bottles emerged, along with a sheet of foolscap.

Lord Lindsey read the note aloud. “‘Compoments of McBride. ’”

“‘Compoments’?” Gideon frowned. “What the devil is a ‘compoment’?”

“Oh!” Lord Lindsey was excited. “I think it’s meant to say ‘Compliments. ’ ‘Compliments of McBride. ’ Lily’s apothecary friend?” The baron handed one of the bottles to Gideon.

Gideon uncorked it and sniffed, then reared back, blinking. “Good God. I think this is pure gin.” He peered into the bottle. “Correction… it’s gin with bits of something floating in it.”

He passed the bottle back to his uncle, who took a deep appreciative sniff. “Ah, now
that’s
what I call an elixir. Shall we?”

“Do you really think you should, Uncle Edward?”

“It will either kill me or cure me, Gideon, and I’m quite all right with either possibility. Ring for some glasses.”

Suddenly, getting drunk on McBride’s elixir in the middle of the day sounded like a capital idea. Gideon rang for the glasses.

Lily was just about to cross the threshold to Lord Lindsey’s chambers for her game of cards when she heard a great, rending… snort. Followed by a series of soft, snuffling noises.

Rather like the nest of piglets competing for teats.

She thought it best, at that point, to approach the room cautiously. She peeked in.

Gideon and Kilmartin, bootless and in shirtsleeves, were layered across Lord Lindsey’s bed, and across Lord Lindsey himself, like puppies. The room reeked of gin. And feet. And man.

All three men were snoring, at astonishingly different rhythms and pitches. It was a veritable respiratory symphony.

She tiptoed farther into the room and spotted two familiar large brown bottles tipped on the table. So McBride had received her note! And someone, clearly, had read it for him, because he’d delivered the requested elixir. She plucked up the sheet of foolscap near the bottle. “‘Compoments of McBride, ’” she read aloud, softly. It was a reminder of home, of someone who cared for her for simple reasons, and a simpler if significantly more risky way of life, as the snorts rose and ebbed around her.

And then it occurred to her that a true luxury was at hand, one she thought she’d never be offered: the freedom to gaze unobserved at Gideon Cole.

She almost crept over to the bed; she jumped when Kilmartin twitched and murmured and flung an arm out. Her heart battering sickeningly at the walls of her chest, she looked down.

Gideon’s lashes, nearly as thick as a girl’s, shivered against the curve of his cheekbones; it seemed his dreams were as restless as his days. His eyebrows, by contrast, were ferociously masculine and wildly mussed, as though he had spent a good portion of the afternoon facedown and had finally rolled over. His firm, beautiful mouth was parted slightly; a beard was starting, darkening the hollows of his cheeks. His hair was pushed back, exposing the vulnerable blue-white of one temple.

She must really be gone on him if she found the man captivating even when he was stone drunk.

A short time ago this man had been deliberately cruel:
You’re a thief, Lily, nothing more
. That had been the intent of his words, anyhow. And yet… his words and actions had carried the bite of hurt and fear. As though he had been defending himself against her.

But what can I possibly do to him?

And oh, this tempting suspicion:
Perhaps the very same thing he does to me
.

“You’re good for him.”

Lily jumped. Mrs. Plunkett was standing in the doorway, observing the mildly debauched scene with the dispassionate air of one who has seen everything, twice. She swiftly ducked out of the room again; Lily could hear her footsteps moving down the hall, the heavy tread that Lord Lindsey had once described to her.

Lily darted to the doorway. “Mrs. Plunkett!” she called. “Good for who?”

“Whom,” the housekeeper corrected, without turning or pausing, and continued down the hall.

Dinner was served in their rooms that evening, which didn’t surprise Lily in the least. She doubted the gentlemen of the house would be fit for any activity, with the exception, possibly, of retching. So Lily and Alice took their meal together, and Alice chattered on about the gardens. And the pigs. And the servants, who, it seemed, lived astonishingly vivid lives.

Lily brushed her sister’s hair out in long strokes as they prepared for sleep. “In a day or so, Alice, I will be going on a trip with Mr. Cole and Lord Kilmartin. We shall be away for”—Lily wasn’t certain how long their stay in London would last—“for a time. But not a very long time.”

Alice absorbed this information. “May I come along?”

“Well, it really is a trip for… older people, dearest. You will find it quite dull. We thought you’d like to stay here with Mrs. Plunkett and Boone to help take care of Aster Park while we are gone. Dawson may need some help with the pigs.”

Lily had never been apart from her sister since she was born. She had a very strong suspicion that the separation would trouble her a good deal more than it would trouble Alice.

“Lily?”

“Yes?”

“Are you going to marry Mr. Cole?”

Lily froze mid-brush. “No, Alice.” She drew the brush through her sister’s tangles again. And for some reason, uttering those two words was like swallowing glass.

“But you should. Perhaps I shall ask him to marry you. Ow! Lily, that pulls!”

“Alice?”

“Yes, Lily?”

“Please make me a solemn promise that you will ask him nothing of the sort.”

Alice frowned. “But I am certain he wouldn’t mind marrying you. Then we could all live together forever. And have picnics and such.”

It was moments like these that Lily almost hated Gideon Cole. When the game was over, when Gideon was finally engaged to Lady Constance Clary, it would be Lily who was left to explain to Alice why they would never see him again.

But then again, it was more or less Lily’s fault that she and Alice were here at all.

“We shall have other adventures, dearest,” she told her sister finally, her voice thick.

And Alice still looked puzzled, but she refrained from fussing. Bless her, but Alice never fussed.

Chapter Eleven

The tap came at the accustomed time, and Lily, awake hours earlier in anticipation, bounded to the door. She took her tray from Mrs. Plunkett. Eggs and bread and coffee and—

Where was her note?

A strange little clutch of fear tightened her belly; she looked up at Mrs. Plunkett and prayed her eyes showed nothing of what she felt.

“You’re to go down to the ballroom when you’ve finished your breakfast, Miss Masters. And then you’re free to do as you like with your day. The gentlemen have… other plans.”

Casting their accounts all day, no doubt.

“Lord Lindsey, as well?”

Mrs. Plunkett hesitated, and… was that the faintest hint of a smile on her lips? “Lord Lindsey will be sleeping for the greater part of the afternoon. He sends his regrets. Dinner will be brought to your room tonight.”

“Thank you.” Lily’s voice was threadbare from nerves.

Alice skipped away with Mrs. Plunkett; Lily could hear her chattering away to the taciturn housekeeper, as though she were ever likely to reply.

* * *

There was a man in the ballroom, but it wasn’t Gideon Cole or Lord Kilmartin. A bespectacled chap, slight, with curly hair trimmed close to his scalp, stood diffidently near the pianoforte. His coat was of a dark blue cloth with brass buttons, not nearly as fine as anything she’d seen Kilmartin or Gideon wearing; perhaps he wasn’t a slave to the fashion requirements of the
ton
.

“Miss Masters?” He bowed.

Lily curtsied; odd how natural the motion had become. “Yes, Mr. —”

“Paul.” He had a soft kind voice.

“Forgive me, sir, but I must know your surname.”

“Forgive
me
, Miss Masters,” the man stammered. “I was not merely being presumptuous. My surname
is
Paul.”

Lily was confused. “You are Mr. Paul Paul?”

“I am Mr.
Geoffrey
Paul, Miss Masters. I am a pianoforte teacher.”

“Oh.” Lily frowned puzzled. And then, as understanding seeped in: “
Oh.”
She breathed the word reverently. “Were you sent here…”

“To give you a lesson? Yes.”

He knew
, she told herself, almost afraid to believe it. She’d longed to touch that pianoforte since she’d arrived.

Gideon Cole sees everything.

The maddening man. Her heart felt like a bud bursting into sudden bloom.

“Have you ever before played the pianoforte, Miss Masters?” Mr. Paul said when it appeared Miss Lily Masters did not intend to speak again.

“No. Well… yes, but I was very small. I knew only simple tunes, and I doubt I still know them.”

“All tunes are simple once you know them, Miss Masters.” He smiled at her. “And you may be surprised by what your fingers still know.”

Sheet music rustled in Mr. Paul’s hands; he settled it on the pianoforte. “Can you read music at all, Miss Masters?”