"Yes, I have a task for you." Marcus gave the boy his instructions. Tom received them in silence, nodding his head now and again to indicate comprehension. "Is that quite clear, Tom? I'm sure he'll be expecting someone on his tail and he won't try to throw you off, but I don't want you to make it obvious."

"Don't you worry, m'lord. Thinner than is shadow I'll be." The lad grinned cheerfully. "I could pick 'is pocket and the cove'd not know it."

"I'm sure you could," Marcus agreed. "But I beg you won't give in to the temptation."

Tom was an accomplished pickpocket, who two years earlier had had the great good fortune to pick the marquis's pocket in the crowd at a prize fight. Carrington hadn't realized his watch had gone, until an observant spectator had set up the cry of "pickpocket." The terror in the child's eyes as he'd been collared had had a powerful effect on Marcus, who'd suddenly seen the small body-hanging from a scaffold in Newgate Yard. He'd taken him in charge over the protestations of the irate citizens, handed him over to his head groom with the instructions that he be taught the consequences of theft in no uncertain fashion, and then set to work. Tom had been his most devoted employee ever since, evincing a degree of intelligence that certainly qualified him for a task such as this.

The search put in motion, there was nothing to do but wait. He retreated to his book room, wondering how to apportion the blame for the misunderstanding that had caused so much grief. They both bore some responsibility, but when he turned the cold, clear eyes of honesty on the question, he was obliged to accept that he had thrown the first stone.

The barouche drew up outside a tall, well-maintained house in Cambridge Gardens, North Kensington, and three women descended, looking about them with the curiosity of those on unfamiliar territory. Kensington was a perfectly respectable place, of course, but unfashionable and definitely not frequented by the ton.

"What a strange place for Judith to choose," observed Isobel.

"What a strange thing for her to choose to do," Cornelia responded with more point, as she lifted the hem of her dress and shook ineffectually at some clinging substance. "How did that get there?" She directed a hostile stare at the material, as if it alone were responsible for its less than immaculate appearance.

Neither of her friends bothered to answer the clearly rhetorical question. "Walk the horses, we shall be about an hour," Sally instructed her coachman, before raising the knocker on the blue-painted door.

"It doesn't seem like a hotel." Isobel's experience of hotels was limited to establishments such as Brown's or Grillon's.

However, the door was promptly opened by a maidservant, who asserted that it was indeed Cunningham's Hotel, and Mrs. Cunningham would be with them directly.

Mrs. Cunningham was a respectable female in shiny bombazine, all affability as she welcomed three such clear members of the Quality to her establishment.

"We are visiting Lady-" Cornelia stopped as Sally trod on her toe.

"Mrs. Devlin," Sally put in swiftly. "We understand that Mrs. Devlin is staying here." Judith's note, delivered to Sally by Sebastian, had warned them she was staying at Cunningham's Hotel under Marcus's family name.

"Oh, yes." Mrs Cunningham's smile broadened. "She has the best suite at the back-nice and quiet it is, as she wanted, looking over the garden. Dora will take you up and I'll have some tea sent up."

They followed the maidservant upstairs and along a corridor to double doors at the rear of the house.

Judith was sitting in a chair by the window, in front of a chess board, when her friends entered. She sprang up with a glad cry. "Oh, how good of you all to come. I was feeling thoroughly sorry for myself and horribly lonely."

"But of course we would come," Sally said, looking around the sitting room. It was pleasant enough, but nothing to the yellow drawing room in Berkeley Square. "Whatever are you about, Judith? Your note didn't explain, and Sebastian wouldn't say anything."

"Thinking," Judith replied. "That's what I'm about, but so far I haven't come up with any sensible thoughts… or even comforting ones," she added.

"Well, what's happened?" Cornelia sat on the sofa. "Why are you in this place?"

"It's a perfectly pleasant place," Judith said. "I have a large bedroom as well as the sitting room, and the woman who owns it is very attentive-"

"Yes, but why are you here?" Isobel interrupted this irrelevant defense of the accommodations.

Judith sighed. "Marcus and I had a dreadful fight. I had to get away somewhere quiet to think."

"You left your husband?" Even Cornelia was shaken. "You just walked out and came here?"

"In a nutshell. Marcus has forbidden my gaming and intends to control every penny I spend." Judith fiddled with the chess pieces as she told as much of the story as she could without revealing Brussels. "So, since I can't possibly accept such edicts," she finished, "and Marcus is determined that I will obey him, what else could I do?"

Isobel shook her head, saying doubtfully, "It seems a bit extreme. Husbands do demand obedience as a matter of course. One has to find a way around it."

The maidservant brought tea. "Mrs. Cunningham wants to know if you'd like some bread and butter, ma'am? Or cake?"

"Cake," Isobel said automatically, and Judith chuckled, feeling a little more cheerful. She'd been fighting waves of desolation all day… desolation and guilt, whenever she thought of how that moment of willful passion on the road to Quatre Bras had ruined all their carefully laid plans. And Sebastian had so far uttered not a word of reproach.

"But what are you going to do, Judith?" Sally asked, having sat in silence for some time, absorbing the situation.

"I don't know," Judith said truthfully. "But you can't just disappear. How would Marcus explain that?" Sally persisted. "The family…" She stopped with a helpless shrug. The might and prestige of the Devlin family were perhaps more apparent to her than to Judith. She'd been married into it for five years. The thought of damaging that prestige, of inviting the wrath of that might, sent a fearful shudder down her spine.

"Maybe I'll just be conveniently dead," Judith said. For some reason, the thought of her mother came to her. Her mother had died quietly in a French convent, leaving barely a ripple on the surface of the world… if you didn't count two children.

"Judith!" Cornelia protested. "Don't talk like that." "Oh, I don't mean really dead," she explained. "I'll disappear and Marcus can put it about that I've died of typhus, or a riding accident, or some such."

"You're mad," Sally pronounced. "If you believe for

one minute that the Devlin family will let you get away with that, you don't know anything about them."

Judith chewed her lip for a minute. She had a horrible feeling that Sally was probably right. "I'm not thinking clearly at the moment," she said finally. "I'll worry about the details later. Tell me some gossip. I feel so isolated at the moment."

"Oh, there's a famous story going around about Hester Stanning," Isobel said. "I had it from Godfrey Chauncet." She lowered her voice confidentially.

Judith listened to the on-dit with half an ear, her mind working on some way in which she could still play her part with Gracemere. Maybe, for the denouement, Sebastian could arrange a private card party and she could make an unexpected appearance…

"Don't you think that's funny, Judith?"

"Oh… yes… yes, very funny." She returned to the room with a jolt.

"You weren't listening," Isobel accused, eyeing the chocolate cake that Dora had brought in. "I wonder if I dare have another piece. It's really very good."

Judith cut another slice for her. "I was listening," she said.