"My dear, Gracemere is not a contentious subject so long as you don't encourage him. You can't help but be in his company on occasion, and I won't shrivel and die at the mention of his name," he commented with a wry smile.

"I didn't want to run any risks," she said with perfect truth.

Marcus leaned over to catch a ringlet, twisting it

around his finger. "So that's what's been bothering you this evening?"

"Yes," she agreed. "But now that you've made me confess it, I feel as if I'm being fanciful about Agnes, so now I feel particularly silly."

Marcus laughed and threw off his brocade dressing gown. "Well, I'd better restore your self-esteem. Move over."

Judith obligingly did so, reflecting that she had pulled the chestnuts out of that particular fire without singeing herself too severely. She wondered how long her luck would hold.

24

"I can't understand how you can be so nonchalant about Gracemere's attentions to Harriet." Judith clasped her gloved hands tightly within her swansdown muff. It was a bitterly cold afternoon, not a comfortable one for walking at the fashionable hour in the park. However, Society's dictates always won out over comfort, and there were almost as many promenaders today as on the most clement afternoon.

Sebastian swished at the bare hedgerow with his cane. "Harriet detests him, you said as much yourself," he replied. "And she loves me," he added with a touch of complacence. "Why should I concern myself with Grace-mere? If it were anyone else, I might even pity him on such a fruitless quest."

"Agnes Barret is his accomplice."

"Oh, Ju, don't be so melodramatic. Accomplice, indeed. What kind of conspiracy are you imagining?"

Judith shook her head. She didn't know, she just knew she sensed that Agnes and Bernard were pure evil. "They're lovers," she said.

Sebastian shrugged. "Maybe so. So what?"

Judith gave up and abruptly changed the subject. "You will come to Carrington Manor for Christmas?"

"Where else would I go?" He laughed down at her.

"You might prefer to spend it with Lord and Lady Moreton," Judith declared loftily. "I'm sure they'll make an exception for Christmas and put something other than gruel and weak tea on their table."

"Stuff!" her brother responded amiably, well aware that Judith intended to invite Harriet to Carrington Manor, while delicately excluding the parents.

Judith waved at a passing laundelet in response to the vigorous greetings of its passengers. "There's Isobel and Cornelia." The laundelet drew up beside the path.

"Judith, that is the most divine hat," Isobel said. "Good afternoon, Sebastian… I saw a hat just like that in Bridge's, Judith, but it didn't look like anything at all. I didn't even try it on. I thought it might make me look bald or something."

Sebastian noticed the hat in question for the first time: a tight helmet that completely enclosed his sister's head, hiding her hair, leaving the lines and planes of her face to look upon the world unadorned. It wouldn't suit everyone, he decided.

"Bone structure," Cornelia commented. "You've got to have bones in your face." Her nose was reddened with the cold and she dabbed at it with her handkerchief. "I do wish I hadn't let you persuade me into this, Isobel. It's freezing and I'd much rather be beside my fire with a book."

"Oh, it's good for you to get some fresh air," Isobel said. "You can't spend all day buried in some Latin text, can she, Judith? Sebastian, what's your opinion?"

Sebastian regarded the red-nosed and distinctly disconsolate Cornelia. "I think there's much to be said for firesides and books… although I can't say I'm a great one for the classics."

Cornelia sniffed and blew her nose. "As it happens, I wasn't reading Latin, I was reading Guy Mannering. Have you come across it, Judith?"

Judith nodded. "I have a copy, but I haven't yet read it. It's said to be by Walter Scott, isn't it?"

"Yes, it has the same touch as Waverley … although he won't admit to having written that either."

A gust of wind set the plume in Isobel's hat quivering, and the coachman coughed pointedly as the horses stamped on the roadway.

"Your horses are getting cold, Isobel," Sebastian said, stepping back onto the path. "It's no weather for standing around."

"It's no weather for walking either," Judith declared, huddling into her pelisse.

After waving the laundelet on its way, she turned back to her brother. "Sebastian, I think it's time to step up the play for Gracemere. We should aim to have the business over by Christmas."

Sebastian nodded. "We've got him exactly where we want him. I'll begin taking increasingly heavy losses to whet his appetite for the last night."

"I trust we still have the funds we need?"

He nodded. "Enough."

"Has he cheated again?"

"Twice. I lost carelessly, of course. He has no idea I know why I lost."

"The Duchess of Devonshire's ball is in three weeks," Judith said thoughtfully. "A week before Christmas. It would be the perfect occasion for exposure- everyone will be there."

Sebastian thought for a minute, then nodded briskly. "I'll play mostly piquet with him from now on. Winning a little, losing a lot. The night before the ball, I'll lose so heavily he's bound to think I'm on the verge of ruin. On the night, he'll move in for the coup de grace."

"And on that night…" Judith shivered, but not with cold. On that night, together, they would destroy Bernard Melville, Earl of Gracemere.

With a resumption of briskness, she continued. "I'll become involved in the 'duel' you and he are engaged in -a playful thing, you understand. He'll think I'm wonderfully naive, to be seeing it as a game, not realizing that my brother is a fat pigeon that he's going to pluck clean."

"You'll have to make sure Marcus is somewhere else that night," Sebastian said matter-of-factly.

"Yes," Judith agreed. Then she said in a rush, "I don't know how much longer I can keep up this deceit, Sebastian. I feel such a traitor, so disloyal."

"Three more weeks," Sebastian said quietly. "That's all. I can't wait much longer either, Ju."

"No, I know that." She caught his hand, crushing his fingers in a convulsive grip. A minute later she spoke cheerfully, diminishing the intensity of the last few minutes. "Have you thought how you're going to manage Letitia?"

Sebastian groaned. "I'm hoping Yorkshire will prove too far for frequent visitations."

"Is Harriet able to stand up to her mother?"

Sebastian considered. "Yes, with support," he said finally. "She hasn't done so yet, of course, but I think, when we're married, she'll prefer to upset her mama than me."

Judith went into a peal of laughter. "Such a sweet, accommodating creature she is, Sebastian. It's fortunate she's fallen in love with someone who'll never injure her." That graveyard shiver ran across her scalp again and her laughter died as the twinned images of Agnes and Gracemere thrust themselves forward.

"I must go home," she said as they reached the Ap-sley gate. "Lord Castlereagh, Lord Liverpool, and the Duke of Wellington are dining with us."

"Such exalted circles you move in," Sebastian declared with a chuckle. "The prime minister and the foreign secretary no less."

"I suspect Marcus is turning his interests to politics, now that there aren't any wars being fought," Judith said. "And Wellington is certainly turning his attention that way. Marcus says it's because the duke has a very simple political philosophy: He's the servant of the Crown and obliged to do his duty by it in whatever way is necessary-on the battlefield or in Parliament. He's the most popular man in the country and he has such influence in the Lords, he can probably coordinate the Tories in a way that Liverpool can't." She frowned. "I wonder if Marcus is looking at a post in any ministry Wellington might set up. Funny, I only just thought of that."