Trev guided her round the bowing white heads of Queen Anne's lace that encroached on the lane. He was aware that he should make a better show of sympathy. Callie had adored her father. He knew it well. But he would never forget that whip across his face. He remembered it every time he shaved himself, each time he saw the faded scar in the mirror. For months afterward he had dreamed of revenge with a hopeless violence that only fed on knowing his fantasies were absurd. He'd shot more than one unfortunate British infantryman with the Earl of Shelford in his sights.

She walked with her face hidden from him. He looked down at the tendrils of reddish copper hair that had escaped her braids and bonnet, tiny curls that lay against the nape of her neck. Callous bastard that he was, the glimpse of white skin, tender and soft, made his throat fill with some unnamed clash of emotion, with resentment and protectiveness and a potent spike of simple lust. She smelled faintly of fresh hay and mown grass, as she always had.

They could be friends. He truly wished for that. A friend would enter into her obvious distress with real sympathy, the way she had instantly come to his aid with his mother. He tried to summon words of kind ness for her father's death, but they were not there. The only sort of words that came to him were sarcastic comments on just how pleased the old man would doubtless be to see her walking with him now.

Finally he said, "I'm sure you miss your father." It came out more stiff ly than he wished, but he had said it.

"Yes," she said. "Very much."

"He cared a great deal about your welfare."

"Oh yes," she said.

Trev hoped that was sufficient. He bewildered himself with the fresh rage that overcame him. He had no right to it, as he had no real right to tease and f lirt with Callie when he could go no further. Her father had rejected him as a penniless nobody of unsteady character, and that was in Trev's respect able days. Now he was one step ahead of the hang man's noose.

"He was very disappointed when I didn't marry," she said, so softly that he could barely hear. "He wished very much for that."

"Ah," Trev said. His rage found a new object: these three silly sods who had jilted her. He walked along for a few moments, all tame in his gentleman guise, gazing at wildf lowers and trying to think of a kindly and understanding response. With sudden ferocity, he uttered, "I'd like to kill them all for you."

She gave him a startled glance. Then she laughed, causing the trace of a tear to tumble down her cheek. The sound made his heart rise amazingly.

"Thank you!" she exclaimed. "I've been so vexed that I can't do it myself!"

He took deep pleasure in the happy crinkle that appeared at the corner of her eyes. "Only tell me who they are," he said, giving her a little bow. "I'm wholly at your service."

She sniffed and smiled. "Perhaps it wouldn't be quite the thing," she said. "It would cause a vast increase in the number of widows and orphans in the country."

"Reproducing themselves rapidly, are they? Just what the world needs, more bloody fools. I'd best set about eliminating them without delay."

She giggled, with a little hiccup of a sob. "Trev," she said, holding his arm with her gloved hand.

No more than that. Just his name. She looked up sideways at him under her hat, that shy, half-laughing look that had always made him want to pull her down in a rick of new hay and tumble her under him and do lustful and luxurious things amid that sweep of loosened coppery hair.

"We'll start with Number One," he said. "He should be skewered first, for setting a bad example to the rest."

"Major Sturgeon," she said readily.

"Sturgeon," he repeated. "Sturgeon, as in the fish?"

She nodded.

"So you might have been-dear God-the Lady Callista Sturgeon?"

"Well," she admitted, "I did consider that."

"A mortifying thought. I'm not sure that we shouldn't let him live, for sparing you from this fate."

"No, he should be skewered," she said firmly.

"As you wish, ma'am. Will it be swords or a knife in the back? Or I could shoot him at dawn, if you like."

She considered this, pulling at the dried blossoms of a wildf lower as they passed. She shook her head and scattered the seeds, dusting her glove on her skirt. "No-no duels, if you please. I wouldn't wish to see you put yourself in danger on my behalf."

"It would be an honor to put myself in danger on your behalf," he said gallantly. "But I'm a fair shot, I promise you. In the-" He paused. He'd been about to say that he'd been promoted to tirailleur and assigned to a battalion of sharpshooters in the Grande Armée because of his accuracy. "In the vineyards at Monceaux," he revised, "I can shoot a cluster of grapes from their stem at a hundred paces."

"Indeed! I'm sure that endears you to Monsieur Buzot."

"Oh, he only dislikes it when I make him stand with a basket and catch them."

She laughed aloud, her smile crinkling at the edge of her lashes. "You and the evil Buzot are well suited, Monsieur," she said reprovingly.

They ought to be, Trev supposed, since he had made up the man's existence out of whole cloth. "But please don't mention it in public, Mademoiselle," he murmured. "I haven't sold my soul. Only mortgaged it, you understand, at a very reasonable rate of interest."

"I quite comprehend the fine distinction."

"It's my belief," he said, putting his hand over hers and walking on, "that you are in grave want of excite ment. Have you had one single adventure lately?"

"Hundreds, of course." She waved airily. "We are awash in adventures in Shelford. Only last week a goat climbed too high in Mr. Turner's chestnut tree, and I was called to talk it down."

"But I doubt you've climbed down from your window even once."

She hid again, looking down at the hem of her skirt. "I'm afraid I've left the acrobatics to the goats."

He kept his gaze on what he could see of her face, enjoying the play of emotion and denial at the corner of her lips. Callie showed everything in her mobile expression, which was why she kept it concealed so often, he suspected.

"Do you suppose you could still manage it?" he asked softly. "Perhaps I'll put you to the test one night."

"Trev," she said under her breath. "We are coming into town."

"Should I cover my face with a scarf?" he asked. "Or would you prefer a bag over your head?"

He could see her bite her lower lip. It wasn't fair to her, this provocation. He hardly knew why he was doing it. He could have discussed her sister's betrothal or his mother's health or the weather.

"So it's to be cold-blooded murder for Sturgeon," he said, ignoring his own better impulse. "And who else would you like me to slay before I f lee the country? I'll require the names and directions of Numbers Two and Three, and their preferred methods of demise."

"Mr. Cyril Allen is Number Two," she said, lifting her chin. Her cheeks were quite pink.

"And what is to be his fate?"

"Oh, he should be strangled," she said strongly. "He told everyone in London that I wasn't quite right in my head and that's why he jilted me. And then he married his cook!"

"May I chop him into very small pieces first? I'll strangle him when there's not enough left to do else."

"Yes, you may," she said obligingly. "And I should like to have a slice of him put into her stew."

He gave a wicked chuckle. "I'm sure I can arrange it."

"Number Three has gone abroad with his exceed ingly beautiful wife," she said, pursing her lips. "To Italy, I believe."

"That will be convenient. I can boil and render Mr. Allen and then, while I abscond to the continent, drop round to Pisa and push Number Three off the Leaning Tower."

"I suppose it would be described in all the newspa pers," she said with relish.