"This one's fine," Sylvester said. "Go and change your dress. We're all famished."

"I'm also very thirsty," Theo responded with a twinkling smile, filling a glass. "All that exercise, you understand."

She was radiating mischief and energy. Sylvester had rarely seen her like this, and he realized with a shock that she was happy, and in the few weeks since he'd known her, he hadn't often seen her truly happy. At least not outside the bedchamber.

And she was happy because that encounter had exhilarated her, had enabled her to do something she was good at, something that pleased and satisfied her and made her feel useful.

She was never going to settle for the life of a society matron. Maybe motherhood would use up some of her surplus energies. Thinking of their passion-filled nights, he couldn't imagine it would be long acoming.

"Take it with you," he said. "You may have ten minutes to change."

"You wouldn't go without me?"

"I wouldn't put it to the test."

"What! After I saved your life?"

"Don't exaggerate. Nine minutes."

There was a distinct glimmer of laughter in the gray eyes, a complicit quiver to his mouth, and Theo felt the warmth of her own response leaping to meet him. These moments of private understanding in public places had been rare occurrences since their arrival in London, and she'd missed them.

Smiling to herself, she went upstairs to change.

The Pantheon on Oxford Street was big and busy, a ballroom and concert hall, with a supper room frequented not by the haut ton but by respectable, wealthy burghers and their ladies. Sylvester had judged that Rosie would feel more comfortable in its relative informality than in the fashionable Piazza, where disagreeable matrons and haughty young bucks would regard such a family party with disdain.

The Countess of Stoneridge also seemed more at home in the Pantheon than at Almack's, he noticed ruefully, as she kept the table in gales of laughter with a series of wickedly accurate comments on their fellow diners.

It was Theo who noticed Clarissa's abstraction first. "What are you looking at, Clarry?" She twisted in her chair to gaze over her shoulder.

"Don't stare, Theo," Clarissa exclaimed, blushing.

"But who…? Oh," she said with complete comprehension. "I see."

"Oh, do turn around, Theo," Clarissa said.

"He is very beautiful," Theo said. "Take a look, Emily. A veritable parfit gentil knight."

Emily turned around and, like her sister, had no difficulty identifying the cause of Clarissa's abstraction. "Oh, yes," she said.

"Who? What?" Rosie demanded, standing up to peer myopically around the supper room. "I don't see a knight. Is he in armor?"

"No, you goose. It's an expression. Sit down." Theo jerked her skirt, pulling her back into her seat. "How do we find out who he is, I wonder?"

"What are you talking about?" Sylvester asked, just as Edward turned from his own examination and chuckled merrily.

"Clarissa's found her knight," Theo said. "Don't blush, love." She patted her sister's hand. "Shall I go and introduce myself?"

"No!" exclaimed both Emily and Clarissa.

"Then Stoneridge shall introduce himself and invite him to come and take a glass of wine with us," Theo said firmly. "Do you see him, Stoneridge? That beautiful young man with the long fair hair, sitting with the elderly woman by the window. An elderly woman, that's a good sign, Clarry. It can't be his lover; it must be his mother."

"Theo!"

Theo ignored her sister's protest. "Go over and introduce yourself, Stoneridge, and invite him and his mother to join us. Pretend you know them, that you've met them somewhere before. And then you can just laugh and say you made a mistake, but invite them anyway."

"I will do no such thing," Sylvester declared. "You managing hussy."

"Then / will go." Theo pushed back her chair. "How can you expect anything to happen in this world if you don't make it so?"

Before anyone could stop her, she was weaving her way among the tables, a smile of greeting on her face.

"Oh, how could she?" Clarissa murmured, cooling her burning cheeks with her water glass.

Edward and Emily were convulsed with laughter, as if sharing an old joke. Sylvester felt as if he'd strayed into someone else's life and no one was behaving in a manner he understood. It was a familiar sensation in Belmont company. He took a resigned sip of wine and waited to be enlightened.

Rosie scraped the last morsel of pink ice from her bowl. "Theo never minds talking to strangers," she informed him, as if the confidence would enable him to make sense of the hilarity. Even Clarissa was half laughing, despite her blushes. "She's not in the least shy."

No, "shy" was not an adjective he'd ever have applied to his wife. He watched her. She was talking to the people at the window table, her head bent confidentially toward them. Then she turned, and her eyes flew across the room, brimful of laughter. She raised one hand and made a circle of her finger and thumb in a gesture of accomplishment, and then came back to the table.

"Well, it is his mother, and his name's Jonathan Lacey. And they're going to call in Curzon Street," she announced, resuming her seat. "They seem very respectable, not at all like mushrooms, and he has liquid eyes, Clarry. Huge, and the color of the tawniest port. Utterly beautiful. And you should see his hands. So long and slender."

Sylvester caught himself looking at his own hands. They weren't exactly short and fat, but he knew for a fact that he did not have liquid eyes.

"I'm sure he's an artist of some kind," Theo was continuing, sipping her wine. "Anyway, I could tell his mother liked the idea of calling upon the Countess of Stoneridge, so I'm sure we'll see them in a day or so."

"What did you say, Theo?" Edward asked, wiping his eyes with his napkin.

"Oh, I said I thought we'd met before, then realized my mistake, apologized, and introduced myself. The rest was easy."

"Would someone explain what the devil is going on here?" Sylvester inquired. "I realize I am singularly obtuse, but -"

"Oh, that's because you're not a Belmont," Theo said blithely.

There was a second's awkward silence; then Edward said, "Well, neither am I, but I have the advantage of you, sir. I've known this motley crew since I was in short coats."

"Then you do indeed have the advantage," Sylvester said evenly, pushing back his chair. "It's time Rosie was at home."

"But it's true," Theo said, refusing to allow the evening to end on this fractured note. "You are not a Belmont, so of course you don't understand our jokes. That doesn't mean you can't, if you wish to."

"And you are now a Gilbraith, madam wife," he stated.

"Maybe so," Theo declared. Now they'd started on this road, she couldn't see a way to get off it. She continued with her usual bluntness. "But your mother and sister lack a sense of humor, so I can hardly try to understand their jokes."

"That's out of order, Theo!" Edward exclaimed, unable to help himself.

"No," Theo said. "No, it's not." Her eyes were on her husband. "It's the truth. Isn't it, Stoneridge?"

"Unfortunately," he said quietly. "But we'll continue this discussion when it won't embarrass anyone else."

Only Theo and Sylvester understood what had happened. The others were puzzled and uncomfortable, but nothing further was said beyond the merest commonplace until the three Belmonts, escorted by Edward, were ensconced in the Stoneridge town carriage en route to Lady Belmont's house.

Sylvester handed Theo into a hackney and climbed in after her. She huddled into her cloak, wishing it hadn't happened. Everything had been going so well. She'd been telling the truth as she saw it, but it hadn't come out right. She'd sounded bitter and angry. And it was all because he'd reminded her she was a Gilbraith. The old sense of entrapment had washed over her in an acid tide that all the sweet reasoning she'd done with herself in the last weeks couldn't deflect.