He closed his eyes as his temples tightened. Theo had still said nothing openly about his humiliation of the other afternoon, and today her sisters and Edward were behaving just as always. Perhaps it was the distraction of the performance.

But perhaps, he thought, it was another way in which they were showing him their support. A kind of blind loyalty simply because he was now one of them. They were the most extraordinary family. But dear God, if only he could prove that their loyalty wasn't misplaced.

The familiar frustration washed through him. If he could just remember, or find someone who remembered, what had happened before the bayonet had slashed across his head. There had to be an explanation for that surrender. An explanation other than abject cowardice. He'd searched the records at Horseguards, forcing himself to meet the eye of men who passed him in the corridors, but the transcript of the court-martial yielded nothing that he didn't already know. It was time to start asking some questions.

Again Neil Gerard's face popped into his vision. Gerard had not yet put in an appearance in town, but it was very early in the Season. When he turned up, Sylvester would tackle him. If he cut him socially, then he would track him down in his lodgings. Somehow he would force the man to talk about Vimiera. Maybe now, now that Sylvester was distanced from the agony of his imprisonment and the immediacy of his shame, he might latch on to some infinitesimal fact or impression that would unlock his memory.

Unless he already knew the truth. Unless he knew everything there was to know: He'd yielded the colors, surrendered, condemned his own men. Perhaps the truth had been too terrible to remember.

Theo took her eyes from the ring for a minute and glanced at her husband. A shiver ran through her as she saw his expression. His eyes were blank, his face drawn, that muscle twitching in his cheek. What was it?

She glanced at her sisters, intent on the scene in the ring. With the natural delicacy of Elinor Belmont's children, no one had mentioned the other afternoon. If Theo didn't bring it up, then they wouldn't. They would have discussed it among themselves and with Elinor, but it would go no further than that unless they were given permission.

But for some reason she couldn't bring herself to speculate about some obscure dishonor in Sylvester's past, not even with her sisters or her mother, from whom she rarely held secrets. Just as something had held her back from revealing the true conditions of the old earl's will. Her motives for keeping quiet about it confused her, but for whatever reason, she kept silent.

"I wish I could ride," she declared with sudden fierceness, and was instantly rewarded as Sylvester's eyes focused and he came back to the world of Astley's amphitheater.

"But you do," Clarissa pointed out. "You rode only this morning in Hyde Park."

"You call that riding?" her sister retorted scornfully. "A decorous trot along the tan under the eyes of every old cat in town?"

Sylvester raised his eyebrows and caught Edward's eye. The younger man gave him a sympathetic smile.

"Look at that man swallowing a sword now!" Rosie cried. "That has to be a cheat. It must fold up or something as he pushes it down."

"A magician's nightmare audience," Sylvester murmured.

Theo's deep chuckle answered him.

"She has an inquiring mind."

"So I've noticed."

The grand finale brought the performance to a rousing close. Sylvester could see that the unsophisticated treat had been a success. Emily and Clarissa had been delighted, Rosie fascinated if less than credulous, and Theo diverted for a few hours.

"Supper," he announced cheerfully, placing Theo's cloak over her shoulders. Her hair was braided around her head, and the slim white column of her bared neck was irresistible. He forgot where they were for a minute and bent and kissed her nape.

Startled, she looked over her shoulder, her eyes glowing with sensual response to the caress. He kissed the corner of her mouth and the tip of her nose.

"Where are we going for supper?" Rosie asked, clearly unimpressed by this delay in the proceedings and quite unaware that her sisters and Edward were tactfully looking in the opposite direction.

"I thought you might enjoy the Pantheon, Rosie," Sylvester said easily.

"Will they have scalloped oysters and ices?" the child inquired, removing her glasses to wipe the lenses on her skirt. "I most particularly enjoy scalloped oysters and pink ices."

"Then you shall have them," Sylvester assured her. "Let's get out of this crush."

He shepherded his small flock ahead of him through the rowdy departing audience, a crowd of townspeople, raucous costermongers, fleet-footed urchins. Astley's was an entertainment that appealed to anyone who could afford the penny entrance fee in the pits.

There was an autumnal nip to the evening air as they emerged into a crowd as noisy and shrill as the one inside. Fruit and flower sellers called their wares, competing with the bellows of pie sellers, and the jangle of an organ grinder with his scrawny monkey dancing frantically.

"I'm just going to look at that monkey." Rosie dived into the crowd in the direction of the organ grinder.

"Rosie!" Theo plunged after her, but Sylvester was quicker.

He grabbed the child's pelisse and hauled her back.

"This is not Lulworth," he said. "You do not run off like that on your own, do you hear, Rosie?"

"I merely wished to see what kind of monkey it was," she said with an injured air. "There are many different kinds of monkeys, you should know, Stoneridge. I have a book about them, and I wanted to identify it."

"It's a little black monkey," Edward said. "Now, come along. Emily's getting cold." He took Rosie's hand and marched off with her, Emily and Clarissa arm in arm beside him, toward the corner where the chaise and Sylvester's curricle waited with coachman, groom, and tiger.

Sylvester and Theo followed, pushing their way through the crowd that seemed suddenly to grow thicker. It wasn't so much that, Theo realized suddenly, as that they were being pressed on either side by three men in the leather aprons of workmen. Three very large men. She glanced up at Sylvester and saw that he was now behind her; the men had somehow separated them just as they drew ahead of the crowd.

She saw the realization of danger flash in his eyes the minute she understood it herself.

"Theo, go to the carriage," he ordered, his voice low and intense as he stepped sideways, his eyes assessing the three men. They wore caps low on their foreheads. A hobnailed boot swung, kicking him on the shin, and his breath whistled through his teeth. He was surrounded now, no room for maneuver, the indifferent crowd behind them as they left the immediate vicinity of the amphitheater.

Sylvester was unarmed. A man on a family outing in the company of women and children didn't carry weapons. His driving whip was with the curricle. One of the men raised his arm, a heavy oak cudgel in his fist, and Sylvester wanted to scream as the memory of the bayonet slicing down at his unprotected head filled him with a momentarily paralyzing terror. He flung up his arms to protect his head at the same moment that Theo kicked the cudgel wielder in the kidneys.

The man bellowed, spinning toward her, giving Sylvester breathing space. Theo kicked again, her leg a perfectly straight weapon, her aim wickedly accurate, slamming into his groin. He doubled over with a scream.

The other two were on Sylvester now, and a knife glinted. He drove his fist upward under the jaw of one of his assailants, a massive bear of a man who simply shook his head and prepared to renew the attack. As he did so, Theo went for him, two fingers jabbing for the eyes. Blinded, he fell back with a panicked cry and her leg flashed upward, her heel driving against his heart just below his ribs.