Hermey looked down, still holding the letter. "No, I suppose… you would not consider it."

"Certainly not. The man cried off, Hermey. Don't you even remember how angry Papa was? No reason given, but then Major Sturgeon up and married that Miss Ladd within the two-month. It was ghastly."

"Yes, but-it was all so long ago, wasn't it? He's had a change of heart."

"I doubt that very much. I suppose you were a bit young to know the particulars. You must have been no more than-oh, fourteen perhaps, at best."

Hermey bit her lip. "I do remember that it made you cry."

"Merely on Papa's behalf," Callie said staunchly.

"Men are horrid." Hermey stood up and f lung the letter. It f luttered into the air and gently down onto the carpet.

"Well, I've not had much luck with them, but I'm sure that you'll find it a very different matter." Callie leaned down and retrieved the letter. "For one thing, you would never wear coquelicot with pink."

Hermey gave her a distracted smile and sat down again on the window seat. She toyed with the new ring on her hand, tracing her fingertip round and round the opal cabochon. Callie watched her sister's profile against the gray light. Quite suddenly, she remembered Hermey's fear that Sir Thomas Vickery might not wish to have a spinster sister intrude on his marriage. "Oh-" she said and stopped herself.

Hermey looked up.

Callie avoided her eyes and spread the paper on her lap. She felt a tightness in her throat, some thing threatening to fill her eyes. She cleared it with a cough.

"It's such an odd letter," she said, pretending to read it again. "My first impulse was to tear it up, but I must confess-this part where he admits he's making a botch of it…"

"Perhaps he's realized he made a botch of it years ago," Hermey said fiercely. "Which he most certainly did."

"He does say it was not a happy marriage. Perhaps he was…" Callie tapped her fingers on the sheet. "Well-things can happen, I suppose. Gentlemen find themselves… embarrassed."

Hermey looked at her aslant, her neat eyebrows raised. Callie did not know if she understood.

"I think perhaps he was in love with this other lady," Callie said.

"Oh poo. Then why did he ask you to marry him?" Hermey asked naïvely.

"Papa arranged it. But-" She broke off, at a loss to explain to her sister that it was quite likely Major Sturgeon had not been faithful to Callie during their engagement. "I'm not the one to cause a gentleman to forget his prior feelings, I don't think."

Hermey rose abruptly and crossed the room. She sat down on the bench and gave Callie a hard hug. "This dreadful major doesn't seem to have forgot you, though. I wish you may make him fall wildly in love, and then give him the cut and let him pine away until he dies of consumption."

"While writing poems in a garret."

"A freezing garret. With rats."

Callie turned the letter and squinted at it. "I'm not certain Major Sturgeon could bring himself to write a poem."

"For you, he would do anything!" Hermey opened her arm in an eloquent wave.

"Hmmm," Callie said. "Perhaps I will subjugate him and marry him after all, and keep him enslaved to my smallest wish for years."

"Yes! Exactly like Sir Thomas," Hermey agreed.

"I daresay it would annoy Dolly to have him call on me."

Hermey's eyes widened. "Oh yes!" She caught Callie's arm. "Oh, you must. For that alone."

Callie looked down at the letter. She blinked. "Yes," she said resolutely. "Yes, I think I must."

The London physician did nothing to allay Trev's worst apprehensions. He had ordered Jock to bring back the finest professional man he could locate, and the valet had gone right to the top, it seemed. Dr. Turner came with excellent credentials, chief ly that he was an esteemed friend of Sir Henry Halford, president of the Royal College and physician in ordinary to the sovereign. According to Sir Henry's letter, Trev could repose his full confidence in Dr. Turner, to whom Halford preferred to delegate his regular practice while he was in attendance on the king.

With that strong a recommendation, there seemed little hope that Turner's discouraging opinion could be dismissed as quackery. He didn't even try to replace the medicines with his own concoctions, as every other doctor Trev had ever known had done. After the examination, he sat with Trev in the parlor, writing instructions in a businesslike manner, before he finally looked up and said in an even voice that the duke would be wise to help his mother to put her affairs in order.

His meaning struck Trev like a blind-side blow in a sparring match. He had thought tentatively of future concerns, of course. He'd even sent his letter just yesterday to the French Chapel Royal in Little George Street, to request the attention of a priest to his mother's illness. Merely as a comfort, because he knew she must have been unable to attend any mass herself for some time. Certainly not for any idea of immediate danger. But to have it said so frankly, by a medical man… Trev found he could not seem to grasp the news. He only sat motionless, gazing at the physician's pen as it scratched across the page.

When he finally composed himself far enough to protest that she had been improving since he arrived, Dr. Turner merely nodded. That was characteristic of such cases, the doctor said; the patient underwent a sudden burst of energy and activity just before the final crisis, caused by migration of blood from the lungs to the heart. The winded speech and high color in his mother's cheeks were a sign of this phase. It might last a few days or a month, but she was much debilitated, and the doctor did not think she had a great deal of strength to spare.

Dr. Turner had brought with him a nurse, and a surgeon to assist with bloodletting. Trev was not fond of surgeons. He recalled too well the sensation of faintness and nausea that had accompanied the bleeding treatments his grandfather had insisted upon until Trev was old enough to bodily rebel. He had not let a knife or lancet touch him since the age of eight, and he didn't intend to allow it again, however impru dent and eccentric that might be. He didn't think his health had suffered a jot from keeping his ill humors shut up inside, though he was willing to admit it might have contributed to his dubious character.

He imagined trying to speak to his mother about putting her affairs in order and felt a familiar and potent urge come over him-the strong desire to be elsewhere. London. Or Paris. Or better yet, Peking. He hardly realized that Dr. Turner was rising to depart, or even felt the sleet on the back of his own neck as he escorted the physician under an umbrella to lodging at the Antlers. He woodenly expressed his gratitude for the doctor's forethought in making a professional nurse available for as long as his mother might require it, and promised to convey all instructions to the local surgeon. When he stood in the street again, he could think only that he needed fortification before he could face his maman. Not to put a fine point on it, he needed to be deeply, blessedly, besottedly drunk.

Not at the Antlers, of course. Nowhere in Shelford. Feral instinct pointed him toward a small alehouse that he recalled having passed on the Bromyard road. He was not a habitual tippler; he liked to keep his wits about him too much for that, but barring Peking, drink seemed the only recourse. He began to walk, holding the umbrella until the wind threatened to collapse it, and then put his face down and strode into the stinging drops.

At the pace he set, it was hardly more than a quarter hour before he saw the low thatched roof and cheerful smoke rising up through the sleet. As he pushed open the door, the scent of damp, sweaty wool and home brew engulfed him, carried outside on the rumble of laughter and talk.