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Chapter One

"Winifred Edwinna Westerly, what in the name of decency have you done now?"

At the sound of her full name uttered in her godmother's wrathful voice, Lady Fred gave a start that spilled half her morning chocolate down the front of her morning dress. She was mopping at the brown stain when Lady Evans stamped into the morning room with her newspaper in her hand.

Lady Evans flourished the newspaper. "What have you done to Lord Ebberly?"

Freddie gave the question her full concentration for a moment before she replied, "I don't think I have done anything to him. Why?"

Lady Evans perched her tiny figure in a high-backed chair across the table from Freddie and scowled. "Because he has put up his house and stables for sale and fled to the continent. Why would he have done that if you had not refused his suit?"

Freddie furrowed her brow in deep concentration. "Did I refuse him? I don't think I refused him. In fact, I don't think I remember him asking me to marry him at all."

Lady Evans threw her newspaper down in disgust. "Ha. Don't think I don't know your ways, my girl. How did you do it? Spill champagne on his cravat? Embarrass him with some nonsensical rigmarole? You found some way to run him off. You might as well admit to it."

Freddie squinted down at the chocolate stain on her gown and wondered vaguely if her maid, Peebles, would be able to remove it. "Are you very disappointed, Godmama? Really, you know, I don't think Lord Ebberly wanted to marry me at all. It was just his estate was in such a bad way, he was desperate to get his hands on a fortune."

"Don't play the bird wit with me, my girl. He was ready to offer for you a week ago. You must have done something to make him cry off."

"I don't think so," Freddie said dubiously.

Lady Evans' very discrete butler entered the morning room on silent feet. He extended a salver on which lay the morning mail and a single calling card. Lady Evans read the card. "What does he want? Blast it, never mind. Send him in, Cutler."

"As you say, Mme." The butler left the room and returned a moment later with a young man some five years older than Freddie's twenty. Artemis Cobb had been described as an Adonis in some circles, but he was more the model for a Cupid with his dark gold curls and full, sensuous mouth that seemed always to be quirked in a knowing smile.

"Georgiana," he said as he bent over Lady Evans to kiss her cheek.

"Impudence," the old woman snapped, but she tipped her face up to him and accepted the salute. "What, come to rub my nose in Winifred's latest disaster?"

Mr. Cobb kissed Freddie's hand and helped himself to a place at the table between the two women. "Hardly a disaster, Georgiana. You can't say Ebberly was any great catch for Lady Winifred." He winked at Freddie.

"Blast Ebberly," Lady Evans said. "You think I mind getting that nodcock off my doorstep? Here's the disaster I'm talking about." She snatched up the newspaper, opened it to the On Dits, which was the only section she ever bothered with, and read aloud. "Rumor has it a certain Viscount E___, seen much in company of late with a certain notorious Lady W____, has rolled up his accounts and set sail for the continent. It seems yet another hopeful suitor prefers exile to the prospect of marriage to Flighty Freddie."

Freddie sighed. "Papa will be furious."

Lady Evans appealed to Artemis Cobb. "How am I to get the girl off my hands if her name is forever appearing in the newspaper in this fashion?"

Cobb said, "At least it is too early for the city to be full of society. Really, Georgiana, I doubt anyone of consequence will read it or care." As he spoke, his fingers turned idly over the mail in the salver which Cutler had set upon the table. He paused on a folded letter, turned it to read the direction. "Edgar and Margaret Tuttle. Lady Winfred, didn't your mother have a sister who married a Tuttle?"

Lady Evans snatched the letter from his fingers. "Trust you to pry into our private mail."

Automatically, she broke the seal. She unfolded the paper and scanned the contents. After a moment, she said, "Ha. Blasted smoky if you ask me."

Freddie, watching Artemis Cobb, had noted the too-innocent way he had drawn attention to that one letter and waited for Lady Evans to read it. She said, "What is smoky, Godmama?"

Lady Evans snorted. "Your aunt Margaret asks you to visit day after tomorrow at Adderhill for your cousin Claudie's wedding."

Artemis Cobb said, "That is rather good luck, isn't it?"

"What's good about it?" Lady Evans demanded suspiciously.

Mr. Cobb raised his brows. "Why, in case anyone has read that little paragraph in the paper this morning, it will put Lady Fred out of sight and out of mind until the matter is forgotten."

"Papa will be extremely cross," Freddie reminded her godmother.

"You needn't remind me about Vincent's tempers," Lady Evans said curtly. "I suppose you're quite right, Mr. Cobb. A few days in the country will be just the thing for Winifred. I don't know what Margaret is about, though, marrying the girl off in such a hasty fashion. You'll give me a full explanation when you return, Winifred."

* * *

A hip-roofed, limestone house squatted in the lee of a hill, too close to the road like a toad crouching in the weeds. "That's Adderhill," Freddy said.

Her Abigail, Emma Peebles, looked out the window. "Don't know how you can be sure of that."

"It looks just like Aunt Margaret." Freddy rapped on the roof of the traveling carriage and signaled the driver to turn into the drive.

Peebles shook her head. "Anyway, it don't look like a house where a wedding's going to happen in the morning."

The carriage drew up at the front of the house, and Freddy stepped out, a trim and stylish blonde. Above her left eye, she wore her fair hair in a bunch of curls that concealed a crescent-shaped scar on her forehead. "You will handle the luggage all right won't you, Peebles? I'll announce myself."

The driver bent from his seat. "Will you be wanting me to knock for you, My Lady?"

Freddy waved her hand without turning around. She wielded the knocker herself to such good effect that a very small, round butler fairly shot from the house and stood puffing in the doorway. He looked about him.

Freddy regarded him with surprise. "Bulstrode, are you still with the family?"

"What?" the little man barked.

"I am Lady Winifred Westerly. Claudie's cousin. I was invited to Claudie's wedding."

The last statement made an impression on the butler. He clutched the door frame for support and squeezed his face into an expression of mild disdain. "Please come into the parlor. Mrs. Tuttle will be anxious to see you, My Lady."

Puzzled, Freddy furrowed her brow. "Really? I hadn't thought she was very fond of me."

Something in the butler's demeanor, perhaps the flared nostrils or the slight reddening of the eyes, told Freddy she had made a mistake. "Oh I say, it is a figure of speech, isn't it. The parlor is fine, Bulstrode."

The butler gave a little gasp of relief and ushered Freddy into the house. He led her down a short hall and up a flight of stairs. He had a bulldoggish air that she remembered from the last time she had seen him as a footman in her aunt's household. The impression was emphasized by the way he bounded from one side of the hall to the other, straightening a rack of antlers on one side, adjusting a vase on a small table on the other. He opened the parlor door and leaned into the room. "Lady Winifred Westerly," he announced.

Four inmates occupied the barren, little room. No draperies hung on the whitewashed walls, and the gray mist of cobwebs ratted with fly carcasses obscured the vaulted ceiling. "Are you all here for Claudie's wedding?" Freddy said.

A slender, young man with delicate features and translucent skin squinted over his spectacles for a moment. Suddenly, he beamed at Freddy and crossed the faded carpet. "Cousin Fred? I almost didn't recognize you. Come and meet everyone. Don't you remember me?"

Freddy admired the gentleman's green waistcoat embroidered with bumblebees and dandelions and his coat of canary yellow. "I should think you're Dickie Ansley--Lord Danleigh, I mean. We played together that summer in Cornwall when we met the Tuttles." The memory was so pleasant and so strong that Freddy took her cousin's arm as comfortably as though they were old friends.

Lord Danleigh said, "The family is all upstairs. It's a funny kind of a wedding, Fred. Everyone is so pop-eyed and prickly. And the groom." He shuddered. "Let me introduce you to everyone." He brought her to the group in front of the fire.

"Here's Baron Von Graff: friend of Cousin Janet come down to see her and got caught up in all this wedding business. Sir, my cousin Lady Winifred Westerly."

A little man with a stumpy face and bowed legs had thrust his pipe under his armchair when Freddy came in. He stood now and bent over her hand. "Honored to meet you, Lady Winifred," he said in a heavily accented voice that snicked like a pair of shears opening and closing.

Freddy was never at her best among strangers or crowds. She said the first thing that entered her head. "I shouldn't think you ought to leave your pipe under the chair. Aunt Tuttle is very particular about her carpets."

The tip of the gentleman's nose turned bright red. "Is that so." He rummaged under the chair for the offending pipe.

He dropped it again when Bulstrode opened the parlor door and announced, "Miss Claudine Tuttle and her fiance, the viscount Malking."

"You'll see what I mean," Dickie said softly in Freddy's ear.

Tuttle, a fragile blond with a very pink complexion looked much younger than her sixteen years on the arm of what was presumably her betrothed.

Freddy was struck at once with loathing for the roue with his fingers sunk into Claudine's arm. The viscount was, if anything, slightly older than Claudie's father. Pox scars marked his face under his powder and rouge, and stains from wine and food discolored his carelessly tied cravat. He smirked at the guests.

The rest of the Tuttle family followed the couple into the parlor. Janet was the oldest of the Tuttle offspring. She looked daggers at Malking behind his back. Osrick, a few years younger than Janet, merely slunk to a corner and stayed there with his eyes fixed on the floor.

Edgar Tuttle was the master of the house. His square, handsome face was red with anger. He heaved his youngest daughter upright by the elbow. "Present my daughter Claudine and her fiance Viscount Malking. Malking, this is my nevvy Lord Danleigh."

Malking ought to have been presented to Lord Danleigh rather than the other way round. Freddy wondered if it were a deliberate slight on her uncle's part. She rather thought not. Her uncle was simply so self-absorbed that he had given precedence to the person most important to him.

Dickie inclined his head very slightly toward the viscount.

Malking rubbed his upper lip. "Danleigh. I've heard something about you in town. What was that rumor?"

Freddy, whose godmother kept her au courante with the on dits of fashionable London, knew the story to which the viscount referred and looked to see how her cousin responded.

Dickie's spectacles flashed. "If you think of it, be sure to come to me for confirmation."

It was, of course, a veiled threat, which Malking would recognize if he were familiar with the story. Freddy didn't get the chance to discover if he was.

Tuttle nudged Dickie aside. "And here is my niece, Lady Winifred Westerly, just arrived."

Malking lowered his eyelids and swept Freddy up and down with his gaze. "Pleased to meet you, Lady Westerly," the viscount said in an insolent voice.

Freddy tilted her head and said, "I am sure I wish I could say the same of you."

Claudine gave a little groan, and Mr. Tuttle glared so ferociously at Freddy that she blushed. She did say the most unfortunate things sometimes. They just popped out, sometimes not the way she meant them at all.

A dry, snicking voice said from the vicinity of the fireplace, "Well met again, Malking."

Malking spied Baron Von Graff near the hearth. His face darkened.

Mr. Tuttle cleared his throat. "I see you know Baron Von Graff. He is a friend of Janet come to visit her from Bath."

Malking looked sharply at Von Graff. "Is that so?" he said.

Claudine, white and frail, suddenly sagged at the knees and slithered to the floor in a little heap.

"She's fainted," Freddy observed.

Janet Tuttle pushed both Malking and her father out of her way. "Now look what you've done," she said.

"Is she unwell?" Freddy asked.

No one appeared to hear her. Janet turned to her younger brother Osrick. "Make yourself useful and carry her back to her room."

Osrick circled Malking as he might a savage and unpredictable dog and raised Claudie's limp body. Together, he and Janet carried their sister out of the room.

For a short time, no one seemed to know quite what to say. Then Malking wiped his nose on his sleeve, leaving a streak of lead powder on the fabric. "Demmed chit and her vapors. Send for a bottle of wine, Tuttle. One more night of decent fun before I'm leg-shackled, what?"

Mr. Tuttle signaled to Bulstrode and followed the viscount to the fireplace. Neither the austere gentleman by the fire nor Von Graff moved to offer up their seats, so Malking leaned against the mantle.

He looked down at Baron Von Graff. "You are a friend of our Janet are you, Von Graff?"

The baron looked up as though he had just noticed the viscount. "I am a friend of Miss Tuttle."

Malking scowled. "Where's Bulstrode with the demmed wine? Never mind, Tuttle, if you can't manage your demmed staff, I can get it myself." He strode past Freddy and Dickie and out of the room.

Dickie steered Freddy toward the austere gentleman in the chair opposite Von Graff. "By the way, Fred, I hadn't got around to presenting Mr. Hessinger. He's a friend of Osrick. Father of his fiance in fact. Mr. Hessinger, my cousin."

The gentleman's austere facade disappeared when he rose and pumped Freddy's hand. "Happy to meet you, My Lady. There's nothing like a handsome girl to make a room lively. My own gel's still primping in her room. She'd like to meet any relation of Osrick's."

Freddy felt, as she often did, that she was not quite following the conversation. "Don't you think she'll come down before very long?" she asked.

Mr. Hessinger laughed. "Just what I meant. You'll get on with my Anne all right."

Mr. Tuttle snorted. "As to that, Hessinger, I've had a talk with my boy, and you might as well take yourself off. You picked the wrong pigeon."

Mr. Hessinger sat down and tilted his head. "Don't favor the match? Dare say you may want to reconsider. It's high water with me, and the girl stands to inherit it all. Fond of the boy, too. Has his faults, but trying to improve. Can't say, in fact, that I'd let the gel have him if the wife and I were not on hand to keep him on the right track, but we are, and I'm in a mind to indulge the chit."

Puzzled, Freddy allowed Dickie to pull her aside.

He leaned close to her ear and said, "Osrick never mentioned a word about the Hessingers until he showed up with them on the doorstep and said he was marrying Miss Hessinger. Uncle threw one of his blusters. They've somehow got hold of the idea that Hessinger's a mushroom."

She whispered, "But isn't it Claudie who is getting married tomorrow?"

"Exactly. This thing with Osrick came right out of the blue."

Mr. Tuttle's mouth hardened. "We intend to look higher for Osrick."

Hessinger grinned at Tuttle. "As to that, my Annie's had offers from an Earl and a Marquis who were both pretty well dished up. Wanted her fortune, you know, and offered a title, but they didn't love her, nor she them. Girl had a mind to make her own choice, and it's Mr. Osrick she wants."

"I can well imagine'" Tuttle said through drawn lips.

"Is he a mushroom?" Freddy asked Dickie in a low voice. She had never heard of the Hessingers, but she had rather liked the man.

Dickie shrugged. "Merchant. Textiles, I think, and some shipping to the colonies. Would be a good alliance for the Tuttles, but Uncle doesn't see it that way."

Hessinger seemed undisturbed by the hostility of his host. "Well, the girl will be disappointed, but she's willing to wait, if she must, until young Osrick reaches his majority."

Freddy asked her cousin in an undertone, "Did she really have offers from peers?"

Dickie grinned. "No reason to doubt it. Hessinger's as warm as they come. Gossips said Miss Hessinger was holding out for a duke when she turned Foxhunter down."

Mr. Tuttle's square face darkened. "Mr. Hessinger, if Osrick continues to defy me in this matter, I fully intend to disinherit him. You'll get nothing but a penniless son-in-law."

Hessinger laughed. "Oh, I know the boy is no catch. He's got no money, no title, no connections and no prospects. Only thing in his favor is that my girl wants him, but that's good enough for me."

Tuttle's face darkened, and his neck swelled. He said, "Just forget about my boy. I'm not having it, and I'll hear no more about it." He glared at Hessinger with his blunt face set in a hostile grimace and stalked out of the room.

Dickie murmured, "Miss Hessinger's not pretty, but Cousin Osrick reeks of April and May. The Tuttles are mad as fire about it. Osrick's timing is as bad as it could be. Now tell me if you know this lady," he added in a louder voice. He presented Freddy before a middle-aged female who cowered on the chaise-longue knitting with the needles up before her eyes so that the grey-green wool obscured half her face like a veil. She would have been almost pretty if her features had not settled into an expression of perpetual terror.

Freddy curtsied and said, "How do you do, Aunt Maddie?"

"I'm very well," the woman whispered.

Dickie grinned. "Fred, how did you remember Claudie and Janet's Aunt Maddie? We only met her the once in Cornwall. I had to be reminded, and I was older than you at the time."

"She gave us all horehound candy," Freddy said.

"Did I?" Aunt Maddie said anxiously. Her little hand crept into her knitting basket and felt about.

Freddy said, "It was very kind of you. I am too old for horehound candy now."

Aunt Maddie looked relieved, and her hand reappeared from inside the basket.

Behind them, the parlor door opened. Osrick Tuttle slipped back into the room. He was twenty, a little older than Freddy, with his father's square jaw and red face. He nodded to the stumpy-faced baron Von Graff.

The baron flicked an eyebrow and drew heavily on his pipe.

Mr. Hessinger gave his paper a thwack. "Well, young Osrick, what do you have to say for yourself?"

Osrick replied, "I'm sorry, Sir, for the way you have been treated."

Hessinger shook his head. "I meant about marrying my daughter. My Anne. Understand your family's got their backs up."

Osrick pulled his shoulders back and his chin up. "I still intend to marry Miss Hessinger, Sir, if she'll have me after meeting my family."

Hessinger eyed Osrick. "Your father says he means to disown you."

Osrick winced. "Anne says she does not care. Will it matter so much to you, Sir?"

"I don't like to come between a boy and his father, that's a fact, but as for the money and the property, my girl's got enough for two. Be good to her, and I won't grudge you the blunt."

Osrick flushed. "Sir, I'd never do anything to hurt Anne."

Hessinger nodded. "So long as you don't, young Osrick."

Freddy approached her cousin. "Osrick, I am Freddy Westerly. We met many years ago in Cornwall."

Osrick Tuttle dashed his hand through his hair. "Beg your pardon. There was only the one summer we spent in Cornwall, and I don't recall much of it."

Dickie joined them. "None of our cousins remember us, Fred."

Osrick said, "I'm sorry. Our childhood is something of a blur to me and Janet."

Freddy said, "No one ever remembers me so well as I remember them." In fact, the one summer she had spent in Cornwall with her cousins had been a rather oppressive experience. Her mother's sister Margaret and Margaret's husband had never been easy people. Freddy supposed she could not blame her cousins for choosing to remember as little as possible.

A footman opened the door. "Mrs. Hessinger and Miss Hessinger," he announced.

Mr. Hessinger closed his newspaper. "Connie, my love. Anne, how are your rooms?"

The chestnut-haired lady of mature years crossed the room and laid her hand on her husband's shoulder. "Not their best, Mr. Hessinger, but seeing we're unexpected guests, I think we have been treated quite well."

Hessinger said, "You won't mind removing to the inn in the morning, then?"

His wife gave him a knowing look. "Whatever you think best, my duck."

A young lady had entered behind Mrs. Hessinger and taken Osrick's hand. "They won't relent?"

Freddy examined Anne Hessinger with interest. She had a plump, appealing figure and a lively face. Her yellow muslin walking dress was well made and fitted and suited her well. Freddy did not at first see why Dickie had called her unattractive. A moment later, Miss Hessinger's mobile face passed from its expression of tender concern into one of intelligent consideration, and in the moment between, Freddy saw that Anne Hessinger had a pinched, changeling face and that her nose was large and red and shaped like that of a camel.

The moment passed. Miss Hessinger shook her head and was once again a strikingly pretty girl. "Then there is no help for it. We will have to wait. I am sorry, Osrick. Down, Frisky," she said to the little golden spaniel who had followed her into the parlor and laid a sympathetic paw on Osrick Tuttle's knee.

"Aunt and Uncle may still be made to change their minds," Freddy said.

Anne Hessinger turned from Osrick and smiled politely. "I have not made your acquaintance, have I? I am Anne Hessinger."

Osrick cleared his throat. "This is my cousin, Lady Winifred Westerly. She's here for Claudie's wedding."

The little spaniel presented herself at Freddy's feet and extended a courteous paw. Freddy bent to shake hands with the dog. "How do you do?" she murmured. She was prone to talk to animals, hardly aware that she did it.

Miss Hessinger laughed a little incredulously and caught the dog's collar. "Frisky, leave the company alone. Lady Westerly, may I present my mother Mrs. Hessinger."

"How do you do." Freddy said to the woman from whom Anne had inherited her nose.

Janet Tuttle stopped in the doorway, a gaunt woman, two years older than Freddy and already a spinster. She wore a plain white cap over hair so pale and thin that her scalp showed through the strands.

Baron Von Graff rose from his seat. "Miss Tuttle, come and sit by the fire where you can be comfortable," he said in his sinister, little voice.

Janet Tuttle took Von Graff's hand and sat down. "Please remove your pipe from under the chair, Baron. My mother is very particular about her carpets."

"How do you do, Janet. How is Claudie?" Freddy asked.

Janet seemed neither to hear or to see Freddy. She said to Anne Hessinger, "I hope your rooms are comfortable."

Anne looked from Freddy to Janet with a puzzled expression. "Yes they are. I don't suppose we shall find anything half so pleasant at the inn."

Janet said, "I am sorry your hopes were dashed in this abrupt way."

Dickie took Freddy by the arm and steered her away from the little group by the fire. He said in an undertone, "You see what I mean about this being a strange wedding? We are all the family that are invited. I understand a few of the neighbors will come for the reception."

Freddy made an effort to keep her voice down. "Who is Viscount Malking?"

Dickie grimaced. "He's worse than a loose screw. The thought of little Claudie in his clutches makes my skin crawl."

Freddy tilted her head. "Why?"

"Fred, I can't repeat any of the stories I've heard about him. I wish I hadn't heard them myself. I wouldn't give a dog I liked to that man."

Freddy scowled. "Why are they letting Claudie marry him?"

Dickie shrugged. "Osrick introduced him to the family. After that, I suppose Malking flattered Uncle Edgar's consequence. You can imagine what followed. "

Freddy nodded. "Osrick? Yes, I can see how Osrick might become involved with such a man."

"Can you?" Dickie gave her a curious look. "I can't say that I can."

Anne Hessinger passed them on her way out the door. Frisky trotted anxiously at her heels.

Dickie poked his spectacles higher on his nose. "The thing I can't understand is that it's obvious she doesn't want to marry him."

Freddy's eyes had become unfocused. She answered absently. "I shouldn't think Uncle Edgar would notice what anyone wanted except himself." He was, she thought, not the sort to notice anything outside his particular ambitions. All the Tuttles were like that in one way or another. Janet had always been the one most like her father, failing to see or hear what she did not care to.

Dickie said, "So it falls to us to rescue her. How does one go about it, do you suppose?"

Startled back to herself, Freddy said, "What about the moment when the vicar asks whether anyone knows of any reason why they shouldn't marry?"

Dickie snorted. "That's in case one of the couple is married already, or if the bride turns out to be the groom's sister or something of that sort."

"But mightn't it work in this case? If one of us stood up and said something about the groom being, well, not at all the thing?"

"I don't think so, Fred. The real trouble is, there isn't time. If we had received our invitations sooner, got here even a day earlier, we might have time to take Claudie away with us. I'm guessing Uncle Tuttle counted on that."

"They can't make her marry him," Freddy said.

Dickie shrugged. "Legally, they can't, but you remember Claudie. Unless she faints again, she's going to say, 'I do.' Say, Fred, where is Malking? He's been gone a long time."

Freddy calculated. The Viscount had gone to fetch a bottle of wine. "Longer than he needed, I should think. Why?"

His spectacles flashed. "Because Miss Hessinger went alone out to the garden with only her dog for company."

Freddy's eyes widened. "You don't think he would misbehave. He's to marry Claudie tomorrow."

Dickie tightened his slender lips. "Let's take a walk in the garden, Fred."

---

Chapter Two

The garden, never a promising feature of Adderhill, rustled with wet leaves and bare twigs. "I don't see anyone," Dickie murmured.

Freddy tilted her head. "I hear voices behind the hedge."

They moved softly down the path and soon heard Anne Hessinger cry, "Take your hands off me at once."

Malking said, "You might wish to be a little friendly. I could arrange for Tuttle to change his mind about letting you marry his pup."

Miss Hessinger gave a cry of mingled pain and fear, then a small dog snarled with very serious intentions.

Malking cried out in a shrill voice. "Bitch bit me."

A soft thud, and Frisky yelped.

Anne cried, "Don't you dare hurt my dog."

Dickie shook himself from Freddy's hand and lunged toward the hedge to Miss Hessinger's aid. There was no need for heroics. Malking tottered through a gap in the shrubbery. He snarled at Freddy and Dickie then limped past them nursing his hand.

Miss Hessinger called from behind the hedge, "Who is that? Osrick?" She stepped onto the path and stopped at the sight of them.

Dickie cleared his throat. "No, it is Fred--Lady Fred--and Lord Danleigh."

"I should think she had recognized us, Dickie," Freddy said.

Miss Hessinger's face was red, and her shift showed through a rip at the shoulder of her gown. She tried to smooth the torn fabric back into place. She looked stunned, frightened, and her odd face was gnome-like.

"Do you need a pin?" Freddy asked. "I almost always have a pin about me."

Miss Hessinger's voice shook. "I do need one. Thank you."

Dickie said, "Are you hurt, Miss Hessinger?"

Freddy, bending to search the flounce of her gown for pins, found herself nose to wet nose with Frisky. "Was it the little dog who bit the viscount? I knew I had a pin. Thank goodness you had the dog with you. It mightn't have occurred to Dickie and me that Malking had been gone too long for his errand."

Miss Hessinger took the pin from Freddy with shaking fingers. "My mother will wonder where I have been."

Freddy tilted her head. "I shouldn't think the viscount will leave her in doubt for very long."

Anne's face turned red and withered. "I hope he is at least gentleman enough to say nothing about it."

Freddy would have assured Miss Hessinger that Malking certainly was not any sort of gentleman at all, but Dickie nudged her with an elbow. "Not to worry, Miss Hessinger. Fred and I are witnesses. Whatever he tries, we will see he doesn't get away with it."

They walked back to the house together. Dickie held the door for Freddy and Miss Hessinger who still looked plain as a monkey from shock and anger.

Freddy shook her hem as she crossed the lintel. When she looked up, she stared directly into the pocked and painted face of Viscount Malking. She stopped dead and peered past his shoulder at Edgar and Margaret Tuttle who stood behind the viscount.

Before Malking could deliver whatever wickedness he intended, Mrs. Hessinger pushed through the crowd in the hall and clasped Anne in her arms. "My poor dove. What did that brute do to you?"

Malking said, "I expect that animal to be shot."

Freddy tilted her head. "Shoot Miss Hessinger? Oh, I should think you mean Frisky."

Anne gasped and struggled out of her mother's clasp. "I'll bring you up on charges if you harm my dog."

Mr. Hessinger had joined the scene by this time. He said, "Anne, this...gentleman." He seemed to choke slightly on the last word, "claims he was bitten by your dog."

Dickie said, "The dog did just as she ought. Did a good job of it, too." He nodded toward Malking's foot and the white stocking stained black with blood above the viscount's wide-buckled shoes.

Anne raised her head and looked, at that moment, like a valkerie. "The viscount assaulted me," she said. "I would have been badly hurt if Frisky had not protected me."

The viscount snarled. "Assaulted her? This ape-faced barmaid?"

Mr. Tuttle said coldly, "Ma'am, this man is to be married in the morning."

Miss Hessinger arched her left eyebrow and looked down her nose. "I am heartily sorry for the bride."

Meanwhile, Freddy had been thinking about the scene in the garden when Malking had come through the shrubbery. He had been cradling his hand. She stepped forward and took the viscount's right hand in hers. "Here you are: these are the marks of Miss Hessinger's teeth where he tried to cover her mouth so that she could not call for help. She has rather crooked teeth, you see. If they were sharper, Miss Hessinger, you would not need Frisky's protection."

Malking jerked his hand away and struck Freddy hard on the shoulder. She stumbled against a table and knocked a large, hand-painted vase to the floor. A small bottle, which had been concealed inside the vase, rolled under the table.

"I say, you can't do that to Lady Fred." Dickie stepped between Freddy and the viscount and raised his fists in a boxer's stance.

Malking laughed at the sight of Dickie's spectacles, his delicate face and slight form.

Dickie's spectacles flashed. "Perhaps My Lord has recalled a certain rumor to which he referred earlier this evening."

Malking's brow furrowed.

Freddy, being somewhat accident-prone, was unperturbed at being shoved aside by the viscount. She recovered her balance and remarked, "I shouldn't think you would want to box with Lord Danleigh, My Lord Malking."

Upon hearing Dickie's title mentioned in the same breath with boxing, Malking clearly recalled the rumor in question. He clenched his teeth and backed away.

Freddy nodded. "I rather thought so," she said.

Mr. Hessinger put his arm around his daughter's shoulders and stuck his hand on the pin that held Miss Hessinger's gown together at the shoulder. He spied the torn bodice. "Blast it to bloody hell. I'll be damned if I'll let my women stay in this house one moment longer than the time it takes to have horses put to our carriage, and I'll be sending for the runners to deal with you, Malking."

Mrs. Tuttle was a stern woman with a square face and a wattle of loose flesh under her chin that wobbled with her outrage. "I won't have that kind of language used in front of my family."

Hessinger sneered. "I see how it is. You won't have my language, but you'll let this poxy, overdressed, backgammoning man-milliner assault decent girls like my Anne."

Mrs. Tuttle waved for Bulstrode. The little, round butler bounced down the hall barking at the footmen to send for the Hessinger carriage and bring down the Hessinger trunks. They could not arrive too soon to suit Mr. Hessinger. He shepherded his wife and daughter past the crowd in the hallway, which had grown to include Janet and Osrick Tuttle.

As they passed Malking, the viscount caught Anne's arm and bent toward her. He spoke softly, but Freddy happened to be in a position to read his lips. "Say your good-byes to that bitch of yours." He released Miss Hessinger before her father had time to react, and only Freddy and Miss Hessinger knew what he had said.

Miss Hessinger's face turned white with two spots of high, red color under her eyes. Freddy looked thoughtful.

Osrick, the last to arrive, had missed the substance of the confrontation. "What's going on? Why are you leaving, sir?"

Mrs. Tuttle turned to her son. "Go back to your room, Osrick. I am very displeased with you."

Baron Von Graff leaned against the wall with his pipe in his hand. "It seems, young Osrick, that our friend Malking has offered an insult to your betrothed."

"Fortunately, Frisky bit him," Freddy added.

Osrick turned deadly white, and Freddy had no doubt that if he had possessed either sword or pistol at that moment, he would have given Malking the opportunity to kill him. Lacking a weapon, he turned on his parents. "You let that animal...ravage the guests in your own home."

Mrs. Tuttle shrieked, "Not another word. Go to your room."

Osrick straightened. "I won't spend another night under this roof. If you want me for anything, you can find me at the inn."

Osrick left with the Hessingers. The Tuttles and Malking disposed themselves in the parlor, and Freddy and Dickie strolled back and forth before the windows.

"There's something sinister going on," Dickie said grimly.

Freddy, abstracted with her own thoughts, made a non-committal sound in her throat.

"I mean what in the name of everything holy is Tuttle thinking? Is he mad?"

Freddy said, "Hmm."

From her seat by the fire, Margaret Tuttle called, "Winifred, dear. You must come sit by me. We have not had a moment to speak since you arrived."

Freddy did not at first hear her, and Dickie had to jog her to her senses before she turned her blue eyes to her aunt. Margaret Tuttle's chair was a good deal too close to the Viscount for Freddy's comfort. Malking watched her approach and peered openly into her bodice.

Margaret Tuttle showed no sign of noticing the viscount's behavior. She held out her hand to Freddy. "Dearest one, how is my poor sister?"

Freddy never saw her mother above once or twice a year. "Lady Alice is well. At least, she is usually under the hatches, but I have not heard that she was indisposed in any way. I am sorry that Claudie is not feeling well."

"Nerves," Margaret said. "She is excited about the wedding. How have you been? I can't think why you are not married yourself. Here you are every season in London and not a suitor to be seen, and little Claudine finds herself a rich husband without so much as leaving the garden."

Freddy couldn't help the squirm of revulsion that went up her back. Viscount Malking was staring at Margaret Tuttle with such plain contempt it seemed a wonder she couldn't feel his look burning on her.

Freddy forced herself to look Malking in the face. "And did you fall in love with Claudie the moment you saw her, My Lord?" she asked.

Malking sneered. "Can't abide the whey-faced chit," he said.

Freddy had expected something of the kind. She watched her aunt's and uncle's faces for their reactions. Edgar seemed to hear nothing at all. Margaret displayed only mild distaste at the viscount's remark. Neither parent seemed in the least outraged.

Bulstrode called them to dinner, and Freddy had no more opportunity to probe her aunt and uncle's strange attachment to the viscount.

Freddy, Dickie and Maddie Tuttle sat at the foot of the table. The viscount sat near the head at Edgar Tuttle's left hand. Baron Von Graff took the seat opposite Malking and treated him to the cut sublime. Claudie and Janet ate in their rooms.

The viscount grew drunk on glass after glass of the Tuttles' indifferent table wine. He kept a bottle of it in front of him and refused to be served from the vessel brought round by the servant. He abused the staff with insults, contradictory orders and cruel tricks like spilling his wine on the floor and stepping on the fingers of the footman who came to clean up the mess.

After the third deliberate spill, the footman stood behind the viscount's chair with his powdered wig askew and pretended not to hear Malking order him to wipe up the spreading stain.

Mrs. Tuttle's wattles trembled as she scowled at the servant. "Fezzig, are you deaf? Clean up the mess before it damages the floor."

The footman cringed and held up his swollen fingers. "Ma'am."

Mrs. Tuttle stared. "Perhaps you would like to sand and refinish the entire floor when that stain sets."

"No, Ma'am." The footman wrapped his towel around his fingers, and sank below the table like a drowning man.

Since no one, least of all the Tuttles seemed likely to help the man, Freddy leaned forward and engaged the viscount's attention. "It must be irksome, My Lord, to be forced to rusticate here in the country because no one of any consequence in the ton will acknowledge you."

Dickie hissed and kicked her ankle under the table.

Freddy ignored him. "I am told that an evil reputation is all but impossible to whiten again."

Mrs. Tuttle stared at her sister's daughter. "For shame, Winifred. Viscount Malking is a peer of the realm."

Malking curled his lip. He rested his elbow on the table and pointed his finger at Freddy. "I would advise you to keep your mouth closed, Lady Winifred. You have caused me too demmed much trouble already."

Freddy tilted her head at him. "How unreasonable of you. I should think you had helped yourself to your troubles."

Maddie Tuttle gave a cry of alarm and cut it off when her brother glared at her. She rose from her seat. "A headache draught for poor Claudie. Comfrey and willow herb. So soothing." She scurried from the room.

Baron Von Graff said in his snicking voice, "Lady Winifred evidently suffers from the migraine this evening as well."

Dickie pulled Freddy to her feet. "Yes, don't try to hide it, Fred. I've got letters to write home, and you'll be better with a cool cloth over your eyes."

The footman scuttled to the kitchen with his fingers intact, so Freddy allowed her cousin to lead her out of the dining room.

On the stairs, Dickie said, "Dash it, Fred, are you determined to get yourself murdered?"

Freddy tilted her head. "Well, he could hardly marry Claudie if he murdered me, could he? Have you really letters to write?"

Dickie shook his head. "You?"

Freddy considered. "Lady Evans will expect a letter, and Mama told me to write to her, but she always does, and she never reads letters."

Dickie prodded his spectacles. "I won't be able to go to sleep for hours."

Freddy stopped in the hallway. She had a notion to do something about the morrow's nuptials. "Which of these rooms is Claudie's do you suppose?"

Dickie was quick to follow her lead. "That one near the end, I think. Von Graff wasn't coming up after us was he?"

Freddy glanced back down the stairs. "He won't stay long with Malking and the Tuttles."

Dickie slitted his eyes. "Then we've got, perhaps, ten minutes to talk to Claudie before someone catches us."

Freddy rapped at the door. "Claudie," she called softly. "It is your cousins Dickie and Freddy."

No reply from within.

"Wrong room?" Dickie suggested.

Freddy tilted her head. "I thought I heard something. It sounded like Claudie."

Dickie gave her a look, half amused and half dubious. "What does Claudie sound like?"

"Timid and indecisive," Freddy said.

Mr. Tuttle's voice drifted up the stairs. "And I think we have been more than patient waiting for you to make a settlement."

Dickie said, "They're going into the library on the landing."

Freddy drew back. "They'll see us."

Dickie glanced toward the stairs. "No, we're too far down the hall. They can see the nearer doors, but not this one."

A moment later Malking said, "The fact is that I am out of funds at the moment."

"What do you mean, out of funds?" Tuttle demanded in a kind of horrified outrage.

Malking elaborated with relish. "Dished up, cleaned out, done up, under the hatches. In short, I have no intention of settling anything on the hussy."

Mr. Tuttle's voice again: "You led us to believe that you had money. We would never have permitted you to marry the girl if we had known otherwise."

"Amazing what people will sell," Malking observed carelessly.

Tuttle's voice shook. "I see nothing for it but to cancel the wedding. I think it fortunate that it was not widely broadcast."

If this was meant as a threat, it did not frighten Malking. "Too late to mend the chit, Tuttle. Settle for the title and make the best of it."

Mr. Tuttle swore. "Don't think I'll stand for it. I won't."

Malking made a rude noise. "You will if you don't want the world to hear how matters lie with your daughter."

The library door slammed. Dickie said, "I say, that was an ugly scene. Dashed peculiar, too."

They ambled back toward Freddy's door. She said, "I shouldn't think we would have any luck convincing Uncle Tuttle to call off the wedding, now."

"Why is that, Fred? I'd have said this was the time to strike when Tuttle was still reeling from the shock of finding out Malking is penniless. I've more than half a mind to speak to him myself tonight."

She could not explain what she meant. "He is too deep in it. We'll work on Claudie in the morning."

They stopped by Freddy's door just as Viscount Malking came out of the library and looked up from the landing to the hallway above him. Being a tall man, he had a good view of Freddy and Dickie standing close together at Freddy's door, and his leer suggested that he drew an erroneous conclusion from the scene. He raised his bottle in a lascivious salute.

Dickie turned on him a look so murderous that the viscount flinched and retreated down the stairs.

Freddy arched her brows. "He really did take your nickname to heart. Silly of him. After all, you did not really kill Inglestock at all, only rattled his brains a little." She sniffed. "Deadly Danleigh indeed."

Dickie's tightly folded lips twitched. Color flooded back into his face, and he began to laugh in rattles and snorts. "Dash it, Fred, it's not funny. Try on a nickname like that and see how you like it."

In fact, Freddy had a very good idea how her cousin's reputation rankled. She said, "Two seasons ago, after I upset two tables at Vauxhall, someone put a caricature of me in the Chronicle as a bull in a china shop."

Dickie stopped laughing. "Gad, Fred, that was you? I'm sorry."

Freddy said, "Lady Evans was livid, and Mama was mortified. She didn't speak to me for a year."

Dickie nudged his spectacles and blushed. "All right, I grant you 'Flighty Freddy' is worse than 'Deadly Danleigh'. Why do I never see you in London? I've always half kept an eye open for you."

"After Cousin Laura divorced your father, and with my mother's reputation so shabby, Godmama felt I could not afford the connection."

"It's a shame. You were quite the brightest spot in Cornwall for me that summer."

A flood of pleasure made Freddy breathe faster. She tilted her head. "Yes, I rather thought the same. About you, I mean. Good night, Dickie."

Freddy's abigail Emma Peebles was unpacking when Freddy entered the room. "What an unpleasant man," Freddy said as she closed her door behind her.

The fireplace butted up almost to the bed curtains, and Peebles had to edge sideways to pass between the bed and the other furnishings. The abigail's face pruned up with disapproval. "It's that viscount you mean, I guess."

Freddy opened the writing desk. "Is there any paper?"

"No, My Lady. The room was a disgrace when I got in. I spent half an hour dusting before I would even unpack your things. I think there is some writing paper in your small trunk."

"What do they say about the viscount below stairs?"

"They don't like him, My Lady. Here's your paper. No, I haven't got a pen. I'll look in the large box. They won't talk to me yet, Miss, not knowing me like. Come tomorrow, they'll talk more freely."

"Tomorrow will be too late." Freddy took the pen from her abigail and scribbled her godmother's name at the top of the page. Peebles went back to dusting and hanging garments in the wardrobe. Freddy chewed the end of her pen, made several false starts then forgot what she had set out to do and began to doodle. She jotted down thoughts and ideas, drew caricatures of the people in the house and left ink blots all over the page.

Peebles left the room to fetch a cup of warm milk from the kitchen. Freddy, lost in thought, folded the page and scribbled her godmother's direction on the outside. She stared out the window for several minutes before she realized that she had been hearing a lot of rustling and scraping outside her window. She jumped out of her seat, threw up the window sash and cried, "Claudie, what luck."

Claudine Tuttle clung to the trunks of ivy that hung deeply rooted into the limestone blocks of the outer wall. Her toes gripped a narrow ledge of outthrust stone, and the feet of her stockings were stained green. Her slippers hung around her neck by the laces.

Freddy said, "Whatever are you doing? You could fall and break your neck."

"I'm sorry," Claudie gasped.

Freddy tilted her head. "What for?"

Claudie replied, "I think I'm going to faint."

Freddy looked down. The ground was very far away. "Don't do that. Why don't you come into my room instead?"

Claudine slithered through the window without any accident except a small tear in her gown which was something the worse for its acquaintance with the ivy anyway.

Freddy got her cousin a chair and sat down opposite her.

When Claudine had got some of her color back, she looked at Freddy under her lashes. "Aren't you going to ask me why I am running away?"

"That bit is quite obvious. What I am wondering is why you agreed to marry him in the first place."

Claudine looked puzzled. "Papa said I must."

"I am sure he did, but he cannot actually force you to marry."

Claudine stared at Freddy with her near-invisible eyebrows knotted in perplexity.

Freddy explained. "You have only to say 'no'."

No dawning light of comprehension burst over Claudine Tuttle's pink countenance, so Freddy tried a more concrete approach. "Where were you running away to?"

Claudie glanced aside. "Just away."

"Does that seem wise?" Freddy said.

Claudie looked anxious. "Wise?"

Freddy sighed. "I mean, hadn't you ought to have someplace to run away to?"

Claudie's lips parted. "I don't know. I just wanted to get away, and I thought that I could climb along the ivy and down the drain spout."

Freddy said, "I don't think you have thought this out very well. Wouldn't it be better to stay here where you are safe and simply refuse to marry the viscount?"

"But I can't. All the guests are here. The banns have been called."

Freddy waved a negligent hand. "Hardly any guests. Just me and Dickie and a friend of Janet's, and I am sure the neighbors will be glad to see you give Lord Malking a flea in the ear."

"Papa would be furious, and Janet would just kill me."

Freddy sniffed. "Don't be stupid. She'd be glad you are safe from that man. Anyway, if you are afraid to stay, then Dickie and I have already decided to take you away with us. We can go early in the morning before the ceremony begins."

Claudie clutched the arm of her chair as if Freddy might carry her off that very moment. "But I can't go away."

"Only for a little while--a week at most. By that time, Uncle Tuttle will be glad to have got rid of the viscount so easily."

Claudie pulled at her lower lip, and Freddy pressed her advantage. "Let's go back to your room, and I will come for you early in the morning."

Claudie stood. "But I can't go back by the hallway."

Freddy, already at the door, looked over her shoulder. "Why not?"

"Because Papa locked my door, and Janet has the key."

Freddy said, "You cannot go back by the window. It isn't safe." She looked at the keyhole of her own door. "Are all the locks alike?"

Claudie looked bemused. "I do not know."

"I should think they would be." She removed the key from inside her door and led the way on tiptoe down the hall.

Freddy's key fit neatly in Claudie's lock. Freddy let her cousin through and handed her the key. "Now lock yourself in and hide this. I will come to you in the morning when we are ready to leave."

Quite pleased with herself, Freddy returned to her room where Peebles waited for her with a cup of warm milk. "Where did you go, My Lady?"

Freddy accepted the cup. "Claudine is really very impressionable--which is the whole trouble with her. Can we be ready to leave by six o' clock in the morning?"

Peebles looked alarmed. "Miss, I just finished unpacking your things."

"You can repack them, can't you?"

Peebles raised her hands and dropped them again. "Well, I suppose it can be done."

Freddy sat down at the writing desk. "I'll write a note to Dickie while I drink my milk, and you can slip it under his door."

"Wonderful, My Lady," Peebles said.

Freddy went to bed that night with a happy awareness of disaster averted. Dickie had been informed. Claudine would be rescued from a fate worse than death, and the Tuttles would recover when they realized that they had been spared having a monster for a son in law.

She woke with a jolt to a clear, feminine voice shrieking, "Murder! It's murder! Help!"

---

Chapter Three

While Freddy slept, Osrick Tuttle lay awake in his bed at the inn waiting for his prospective father-in-law to fall asleep beside him. Hessinger's low breath settled into a soft snore punctuated by deep silence. Osrick eased out from the bedclothes and felt his way to the chest behind the door. He felt his clothes folded atop the lid. Taking them in his arms, he felt for the doorknob and used the bundle of clothing to muffle the click as it turned.

Hessinger had commanded a suite with a sitting room and two bedrooms. The fire had died to embers in the sitting room, but the red-rippling coals gave enough light for Osrick to hurry into his clothes. He carried the boots until he went from the sitting-room to the hall and down the corridor to the top of the stairs.

He found a lantern in the common room downstairs and lit it with a taper kindled from the coals in the big fireplace that dominated the shorter wall of the common room. The door was locked, but the windows were only barred. Osrick lifted the bar from the largest, opened the shutters and climbed through. Half-shielding the light with his cloak, he made for the main road that led past Adderhill.

The night was dark without moon or stars, and without the lantern, he would have been unable to find his way even on the familiar track. He hurried toward Adderhill, his breath puffing hot and wet through his lips, a thin mist beading his lashes.

Reaching his family home, he avoided the front door and circled the house, holding his cloak up as a shield between his lantern and the overlooking windows. High weeds soaked his knees above the tops of his boots, and he stumbled over uneven flagstones in the dim light. He passed the rhododendrons at the rear of the house and came to the rear entrance, a narrow door near the kitchens which gave access to the middens.

Osrick stopped and waited. His eyes picked out a pinpoint glow of red. A long nose appeared briefly, underlit by that glow, and a soft voice like the snicking of a pair of scissors said, "Well, young Osrick, you have made a mess of our business with that dramatic display this evening. You were supposed to be inside the house where you could keep watch over our quarry."

Fear and passion mingled in Osrick's breast. "I'd have torn his damn throat out if I'd stayed another minute."

"Unlikely," said Baron Von Graff. "However, there is no harm done. Malking was in the library half an hour ago. He has not left the house."

"I couldn't get away sooner," Osrick said sullenly. "Hessinger's a damn light sleeper."

"You're in no position to sulk, young Osrick," said Von Graff in his shearing voice. "Come. We must be in position or we will miss our quarry."

Osrick led the way through the gardens, passing under dripping branches and out to the back gate where a herder's track ran up the crest of the hill. There, where the gate creaked on its hinges, the two men crouched in the shadows cast by a drooping oak.

"Douse the lantern," Von Graff commanded.

Osrick did as he was told without complaint, though the dark of a starless night seemed unbearably cold without the yellow glow. The garden sloped up from the rear of the house, and a light would be visible from the windows. Or from the back door if someone were to come out.

Von Graff settled his back against the trunk of the tree, pulled his hat low over his forehead and his cloak around him and over his hands. "Face and hands, young Osrick. Disguise them or their outlines will give us away. Did you by any chance bring a weapon?"

"No, sir." Osrick had taken a few lessons in the sword and pistol while in London, but his worsening luck at the tables had forced him to drop the pursuit for lack of funds to pay his tutors. He had not liked either weapon in any case. The noise and jolt of the pistol had never ceased to startle him, and the sharpness of the sword had filled him with such horror, he could not cease to dwell on the way its deadly point could slide into unresisting flesh, bringing forth the gush of hot blood. He shuddered. Even boxing repelled him. He'd been to one mill outside the city. He had gone with Malking, in fact, before he had learned to see the worms crawling in the man's soul. The wet smack of fists on flesh had nearly turned Osrick's stomach. He had tried to mimic the shouts and whoops of the men around him, but Malking had grinned at him, a malicious, knowing grin, and Osrick knew the viscount had deduced his true feelings.

Von Graff merely looked at him, his face a pale grey blur in the darkness, still lit by the draw of the pipe. Osrick saw neither censure nor contempt in the baron's glance. The baron turned back toward the bulk of Adderhill.

Osrick scanned the darkness beyond the creaking swing of the gate. The chill was climbing up out of the ground and into his bones. He pulled his dark cloak more tightly around him, concealing his hands and the lower half of his face in the folds. His breath warmed his chin and neck with his exhalations.

Osrick was afraid of the man beside him. He knew Von Graff to be ruthless, a cold-blooded killer and quite willing to let Osrick hang for his sins. It was only for Janet's sake the baron had given him this chance to exonerate himself after falling in so deep with Viscount Malking's business. Even so, he preferred the company of the sinister little Austrian to that of the viscount. It was cleaner. Almost clean enough to burn away the shame, to make him worthy of Anne.

It was the thought of Anne that kept him out here with the damp and cold eating through the heavy wool of his cloak. He remembered nothing of the attack from which Hessinger had saved him. Osrick had been coming back from an errand--just a little favor, Malking had promised him. Go down to the docks and hand a letter to the man who would meet him there, and when it was done, Malking would tear up the notes he held in his possession. Every last damning paper.

Osrick had known there was something wrong. Already, he had learned to hate the viscount with a revulsion that almost overpowered his sensitive nature. If the errand were indeed such a little thing as Malking had said, he would not write off the thousands of pounds of debt Osrick had stupidly and trustingly accrued. If the letter were important enough to Malking to tear up the notes, Osrick could not even imagine the evil it must contain.

He'd agreed to perform the task. What else could he do, he'd thought? Gambling debts were debts of honor. A gentleman paid them or he put a bullet in his own head, and Osrick hadn't the courage for that. And even if Malking burned a single note, wouldn't that be a stone rolled down from the mountain? And a single stone could became an avalanche. As he'd thought about it, Osrick had begun to be more cheerful. That was probably what Malking would do--promise to discharge the entire debt, then, when Osrick completed his errand, Malking would laugh in his face and tear up a single note before his eyes.

Osrick had found the quay to which Malking had directed him. He stood shivering in the fog until a thick voice said, "Here now, you got something for me?"

Osrick had turned, staring into the blank fog like a blind man. "I have a letter," he stammered. Malking had given him no way to know the man for whom he waited.

"I'll have it." The voice came again, clotted with fog, so horrible to Osrick's sensitized ears that he trembled against the urge to run. A broad figure in a flapping coat came out of the fog and snatched the letter from Osrick's outstretched fingers. He saw a woolen cap pulled down to the brows. The figure disappeared again into the fog before Osrick had time to remember the face.

He'd stood trembling for several minutes knowing if he bolted now, he would likely kill himself in a flight of blind panic. When he had talked himself down from his terror, he began to pick his way back through the streets toward Malking's apartments. He would report his errand complete, and if Malking had lied in his promise, at least Osrick would know the errand he had discharged was not what he feared.

Osrick had never arrived at his destination. He remembered little of anything after leaving the quay. There were snatches of sound and sensation as in a dream. He remembered Hessinger's face, someone telling him to get into a carriage, women bringing him tea and pressing cool cloths to his face.

His first true memory after leaving the waterfront was of seeing a girl's face bending over him and thinking it was the most beautiful face he had ever seen. Anne's face. For her, he was out here in the chill and the dark trying to burn the stain from his conscience.

Osrick settled his back to the trunk of the tree, facing away from the house the better to watch the gate while Von Graff watched the house. Osrick used the pace of his breath to school his patience. Soon, so soon, the whip would be off his back, but the very nearness of his release made the lash burn hotter. Osrick pulled the cloak more tightly around him and hunkered into himself to wait out the night.

* * *

"Murder. It's murder. Help!"

Freddy sat up in bed and shoved her curly hair out of her face. "Peebles, what is that?" she demanded, still half-fuzzed with sleep.

The abigail had been up for some fifteen minutes packing Freddy's trunks for a hasty departure. "Somebody being murdered by the sound of it, My Lady." She opened the door a crack and peeked out.

Freddy groped at the foot of her bed for her wrapper.

Peebles said, "I see one of the downstairs maids, My Lady. She was screaming, but she don't look murdered to me. The master's going downstairs now."

Freddy left her room and followed her uncle down the stairs at a safe distance.

Dickie joined her wearing a fabulously embroidered dressing gown. He had left his spectacles in the room and peered around him rather helplessly. "Who's murdered, Fred?"

"Don't know, yet," Freddy said.

They found the scene of the crime by the crowd assembled in the door of the butler's pantry. Bulstrode, in a threadbare, woolly robe, bounced about the hallway barking contradictory orders to the footmen who straggled in from their beds to gawk at the scene. The housekeeper wept and clutched her bed cap over her ears.

Freddy and Dickie edged through the crowd until they could see past Mr. Tuttle's shoulders. The butler's pantry had originally been a stillroom and retained much of its former character along with the stone sink and the marble countertops. Viscount Malking sprawled stiffly on the floor. A stain of blackened blood pooled around his head.

Baron Von Graff sidled past Freddy, spied the corpse and said in his snicking voice, "Damn him to hell."

Janet Tuttle shouldered between Freddy and Dickie. "What happened?" she said.

Freddy opened her mouth to point out that the viscount had died, but Dickie nudged her in the ribs, and she held her tongue.

Baron Von Graff said, "From the look of it, he collapsed from an excess of drink, struck his head on the sink and was too disguised to save himself."

Dickie said, "He was cup shot last night."

Freddy stood on tiptoe and peered in at the sink. "Well, at least we need not abduct Claudie."

Janet gasped. "Claudie. She's locked in her room. She doesn't know." She turned to her father. "Sir, the key."

"What?" Tuttle said. "I don't have it on me, you idiot. It's in my dressing room."

Mrs. Tuttle passed her daughter on the stairs and pushed Freddy aside, which annoyed Freddy to no end since she wanted to look closely at the edge of the sink in the stillroom. There was something about the baron's explanation that struck her as false.

Margaret Tuttle saw the body and gasped. "Edgar, what will we do? This can't happen."

"Too late," Freddy observed before Dickie could shut her up.

Baron Von Graff said to Mr. Tuttle, "This is not a scene for the ladies. I propose we close the door and make arrangements for the removal of the body."

Mr. Tuttle grunted and closed the door while Baron Von Graff shepherded Freddy down the hall. "Go back to your room, Lady Winifred. The gentlemen will take care of everything." He gave Dickie a nod. "Why don't you take Lady Winifred upstairs, Danleigh?"

Dickie squinted at the baron, reached up to poke his spectacles and found them gone. He scowled. "Come on, Fred. I think I can sleep another hour or two if I know that you are not prowling around any corpses."

* * *

Halfway up the stairs, the breath left Janet's lungs and she stumbled to her knees. Was she giddy with joy, she wondered, or was it some other emotion that made her hands prickle and her cheeks feels icy? Surely it was joy she felt. Janet pressed her hand to her forehead and bent her head to the tread of the stair before her. Of course it was joy that made her giddy. Her family was safe. Her father, blinded by a title, would no longer be used and manipulated by the lying vermin who had insinuated himself into their home. Claudine would not be obliged to marry the viper, and Osrick would be free of whatever hold the viscount had held over him as well. Everything would be all right with that poisonous creature out of their lives.

Her dizziness receded, and Janet raised her head. The numbing cold left her fingers, and she was able to breathe again. She pushed herself up on her hands and stood. She used the banister to pull herself up the stairs past the landing to the second floor.

Janet went first to her father's room. He kept a key there that fit Claudine's door. She did not knock on Claudie's door, merely thrust the key into the lock and turned it sharply. She did not see her sister at once. "Claudie. Claudine, stop being a fool and come out."

She opened the wardrobe door. Her sister was not there. "Claudine, stop playing stupid games. I came to tell you that you will not have to marry the viscount."

"You're lying," Claudie's voice came from nowhere in the room.

"Don't be stupid," Janet repeated. "He is dead as a stone in the pantry." She dropped to her knees and raised the bed covers. Her sister's watery blue eyes stared at her.

"Is he really?" Claudine began to work her way backward so as to emerge on the side of the bed opposite Janet

"I told you there will not be any wedding today."

"You might say it so that I would come out and get dressed and you could trick me into marrying him after all."

Since there was no arguing with her sister's logic, Janet merely said, "There is no need for me to lie because he is dead." It did not surprise Janet in the least that her sister seemed to find her reasoning sufficient.

She climbed onto the mattress of her high bed and sat cross-legged in the middle. "What did he die of?"

Claudine had hated and feared the viscount as much, in her own way and for her own reasons, as Janet herself, but her cool indifference annoyed Janet. It was not, and never had been concern for her family that motivated Claudie. Her hatred of the viscount had been entirely selfish. "Why are you not dressed? The maids were supposed to be giving you a bath and dressing you."

"I didn't want to get dressed," Claudie said as if that ended the matter.

Janet ground her teeth. No doubt the stupid girls had felt sorry for little Claudie forced to become a viscountess with a husband so many years older and debauched in his habits he must certainly drop dead before they had been married ten years on the outside. Stupid, shortsighted girls.

Claudine bounced up from her bed and ran to her wardrobe. She threw open the doors and began pulling out dresses.

"What are you doing?" Janet demanded.

"I want to see him. Where is he?" She threw a walking dress onto her bed and reached behind her neck, trying to unfastened the tapes of her nightgown. "I want to see for myself. Help me with these knots."

"You are not going anywhere. Papa has given orders you are to stay in your room."

"That is stupid. He can't make me marry now that man is dead."

There was nothing Janet despised so much as disloyalty. She took Claudie by the arm and thrust her back down onto the bed more roughly then she intended. Smothering her guilt with anger, Janet said, "He is our father, and he has given an order which it is our duty to obey."

Another girl might have cried either at the rough handling or from resentment, but Claudie had never cried. Even as an infant, there had been no tears in her. Screams, yes, when she wanted her wet-nurse, but Janet had never seen or heard her sister to shed tears. Claudine merely stared up at her, as impervious to the lecture as to the pinch of Janet's fingers on her elbow.

The innocence of that stare affected Janet as tears never would have. "I will speak to father."

Claudine tossed her head defiantly. "You can ask him as many times as you like. I will come downstairs whatever he says."

Irritated again, Janet backed toward the door with the key ready in her fingers. "You'll do as you are told." She reached behind her to open the door, ready to stop her sister if she made a bolt for the exit, but Claudie remained seated on the side of her bed, watching Janet with the same bland countenance she turned to whatever passed before her eyes.

It was empty defiance, Janet realized as she locked the closed door. Claudine lacked the will to act. She might pout and sulk, but she would do as she was told. The knowledge soothed Janet's ragged temper as she put the key in her pocket and turned away.

* * *

Freddy had reluctantly returned to her room and informed Peebles they need not leave at once as there was now no danger of Claudie being forced to marry the Viscount.

Peebles looked dubious. "So that's who was murdered. I would have said he was too wicked to live and too mean to die."

Freddy stopped filling her hem with spare pins and frowned into the air. "No one would let me look at the sink."

Peebles was used to her mistress' digressions, and if she could not follow them, she ignored them. Instead, she went to answer a scratch at the door.

Snide, Dickie's valet, had dressed his master in record time. The speed of Lord Danleigh's toilet had much to do with the fact that he had left off the cravat in favor of a belcher neckerchief that wreaked havoc with his pea green morning coat.

Freddy waved her cousin in. "How do you do, Dickie. I thought you were going back to bed. Are we to get breakfast this morning?"

Dickie took a seat and yawned while Freddy tied the ribbons on her slippers. He said, "Snide informs me that a breakfast is being assembled in haste."

Freddy said, "With chocolate, I hope. I will never think clearly without chocolate."

They found their breakfast on the sideboard in the breakfast room, and Freddy sighed with relief to see a pot of chocolate beside the coffee and tea. She ate a breakfast of kidneys, eggs, toast, steak and oysters while Dickie contented himself with tea and toast. Halfway through her meal, Freddy set her fork down beside her plate. "I want to get in to see the sink."

Dickie looked with disfavor at the heaps of food still on Freddy's plate. "Why are you so anxious about the sink?"

"Because I didn't see any stains on the side."

Dickie frowned. "Should there be stains?"

Freddy said, "I don't know."

"Fred, you're doing it," Dickie said.

She tilted her head at him.

He elaborated. "That thing you used to do that drove everyone mad. No one understands what you are talking about. I don't think even you know what you are talking about."

Freddy glared at him. "Don't be silly, Dickie. Of course I know what I am talking about. Baron Von Graff said Viscount Malking struck his head on the sink."

Dickie abandoned his tea. "Well, gruesome curiosity aside, I doubt you will have the chance to investigate before we leave. I propose we see to our packing. I would like to be on the road to London by noon at the latest."

Freddy finished her breakfast in a rush and followed her cousin down the stairs. They crossed the ground floor hallway and were about to mount the stairs to the first floor bedrooms when they heard a knock at the door. Bulstrode leaped from his office and bounded past them down the hall. Dickie went on up the stairs, but Freddy lingered to see who would be admitted.

"Yes?" the butler barked at the visitor.

A friendly, little nasal voice said, "The Reverend Adolphus Pitt to see Mr. and Mrs. Tuttle."

Bulstrode said, "I have been instructed to say that the wedding is not to take place today."

The nasal voice said, "So I heard. I have come to offer the family my condolences."

Bulstrode snuffled with indecision, and Freddy drifted down the hallway to get a better look at the caller. Judging from the voice, she had expected a small man, but the person on the doorstep would have towered over Mr. Tuttle. He had a smooth, rounded face and brown eyes, and when he spied Freddy behind the butler, he smiled slightly in greeting.

"How do you do," Freddy said.

Bulstrode whirled about with an alarmed expression. "Madam has asked that no one be admitted this morning," he said.

Freddy ignored the butler. "I am Lady Freddy Westerly. Won't you come in?"

The visitor bowed like a swallow stooping on the side of a barn. "Perhaps I should come back another time."

His extreme height and the slight bow of his shoulders gave Freddy an uncomfortable sense of vertigo when she looked up at him. She said, "Don't be silly. Bulstrode, go fetch some tea for the rector."

"But My Lady," Bulstrode began.

Freddy waved her hand at him. "It's quite all right. I will show Mr. Pitt to the sitting room."

Dickie came down the stairs again in time to see Bulstrode slink away with his head down and a hangdog expression. "I say, Fred, I was waiting for you. What have you done to Bulstrode?"

"Dickie, here is the rector come to comfort Aunt and Uncle. Reverend Adolphus Pitt, my cousin, Lord Danleigh."

The rector bowed again. "How do you do? The Tuttles are members of my parish, but I fear they may feel I am unwelcome this morning."

"Probably," Freddy said as she held the door of the sitting room for the guest.

Dickie gave his cousin a pained look. "What Fred means is that Aunt and Uncle are not in the best temper."

"I perfectly understand," the towering man said in his kindly, little voice.

Freddy sat first, and the gentlemen took chairs nearby. "Were you to perform the ceremony?" Freddy asked the rector. She could not imagine this gentle-voiced person in the same room with Viscount Malking much less agreeing to marry him to a girl like Claudie.

The rector shook his head. "That honor was given to the Reverend Pillshanks of the neighboring parish."

Freddy nodded. "Are Aunt and Uncle very devout?" she asked.

The rector folded his hands in his lap, and Freddy noticed all at once that whereas his frame was long and thin, his hands were nearly the size of dinner plates. She stared at them while he spoke.

"The Tuttles attend the reverend Pillshanks' services. I believe they are very devout, although they do not approve of my sermons." He smiled.

Freddy tilted her head. "Really? What do they dislike about them?"

Dickie said, "I am sorry, Rector. Fred doesn't mean to be rude."

Had she been? Freddy looked at her cousin and back to Mr. Pitt. "Do you know the family well?"

Dickie said, "That is not really our business is it?"

Bulstrode entered with the tea tray, and Freddy bit off her reply. When the butler plunged from the room and the rector's great hands had engulfed a delicate, painted cup in their long grip, Freddy said, "Of course it is our business."

The cup looked like a child's toy in Mr. Pitt's hand. He raised it to his lips for a sip. "Perhaps what Lady Westerly means is that we are all our brothers' keepers."

Freddy said, "Is that what I mean? I have the most uncomfortable feeling that there is something wrong with the sink."

"The sink?" Mr. Pitt arched his brows at Dickie.

Bulstrode yanked the door open and announced that Mr. and Mrs. Tuttle would see the rector now. Margaret Tuttle entered the room with her arms outstretched and an insincere smile on her lips. "Reverend, did Bulstrode not tell you that the wedding has been canceled?"

Mr. Pitt set his teacup down and rose to his feet. "I did indeed hear news of your loss. I came to see if I could be of some comfort to you."

Mrs. Tuttle looked blank.

Mr. Tuttle looked as though he had just bitten into a bad apple. "We don't need any comforting, Reverend Pitt. Mr. Pillshanks has performed the last rites instead of the wedding we hired him for."