"I am most deeply apprehensive," Killigrew said with surprising gloom to Nicholas on the sixth day, as they both watched the rehearsal from the pit.

Nick looked startled. "How so?"

"Beside her, the rest of the cast appear as inept and as unappealing as wooden dummies. This audience will not know how to react. I doubt they have been treated to such talent or such beauty before. If they do not recognize the quality, but only that she is different both from what they are accustomed to and from her fellows, they may well hiss her off the stage."

"If there is any danger of that happening, Thomas, I'll not permit her to perform tomorrow." Nick spoke with finality. Polly was not going to be hurt in any way while he had a say in the matter.

Thomas smiled lazily. "How would you prevent her, my friend? I should dearly love to see you try." Rising to his feet, he strolled to the foot of the stage. "Polly, you are playing that fan as if 'tis a wet fish! It is a part of you, to be used as expressively as you use your eyes or your voice. In this instance, you are expressing annoyance. Flick your wrist so that it falls open and then closed. Just so. Do it several times, each time sharper than the last."

How would he prevent her? Nick shook his head ruefully, watching her as she discovered rapidly what Killigrew wanted, beginning, with obvious enjoyment, to add her own little touches. Of course he could not, short of locking her in her chamber. No, the performance must take place on the morrow. There would be some members of the audience who would know what they were seeing. Richard De Winter, Sir Peter, and Major Conway would be there, all as anxious as he to see how their protegee performed. Only then would they be truly able to judge whether their plan could succeed.

Nicholas knew that it could. He also knew that he did not want it to. What he did not know was how to reconcile those two facts with the promise he had made to his friends-a promise he was in honor bound to fulfill.

However, he had little time to dwell on his dilemma over the next twenty-four hours. Polly's moods fluctuated wildly and without warning as the hour of her testing drew nearer. She progressed through snappish irritability to unbridled temper to complete withdrawal. Nick struggled for patience, even as he wondered how such an extraordinary change could have been wrought in his sunny-tempered, equable, mischievous mistress. She was as impervious to his caresses as she was to his annoyance. It was not until, in complete exasperation, his patience finally shredded, he strode to the door of the parlor saying that he would leave her to enjoy her bad temper in solitude that she returned to her senses.

"Nay, do not leave me alone, please, Nick!" She ran to him, seizing his arm. "I beg your pardon for being so horrid, but I am so dreadfully afeard! I am certain I will forget what to say, or trip over my skirt, or sit on the floor instead of the chair! And they will laugh and throw oranges at me!"

"No one will throw oranges at you," he said in perfect truth. In Moorfields they favored tomatoes, but he did not add that. "Besides, you will have friends in the audience. You know that De Winter is promised, and Sir Peter, and the major. And I will be there-" He stopped, frowning, as the street knocker sounded from belowstairs. "Lord of hell! Who could that be at this hour?"

Polly ran to the window, peering down at the dark, rainy street. A lad with a lantern held a horse, which she immediately recognized as Richard's. "Why, Lord De Winter is come."

"A late visitor, I know." Richard spoke from the doorway, shaking free his russet frieze riding cloak in a shower of raindrops. "But.I have some news that I thought might be of sufficient interest to excuse my intrusion."

"Come to the fire, Richard, and take some wine. No visit

from you could be termed intrusion." Nicholas gestured hospitably as Polly took their guest's coat and hat.

Richard smiled his thanks, while casting an appraising look at his hostess. He raised an interrogative eyebrow at Nicholas, whose returning grimace explained all. "You are not in best looks, Polly," Richard said with customary directness. "You are perhaps apprehensive about the morrow?"

Polly turned from the table where she had been filling a goblet of Malaga for him. "Do you find it surprising, my lord, that I should be?" She was completely at her ease with De Winter, accepting him as Nick's closest friend with a natural warmth and confidence.

He took the glass from her and shook his head. "On the contrary. But what I have to tell you may well ease your trepidation." He paused. "Then again, it might worsen it. You shall be the judge." He sipped his wine. "This is a good Malaga, Nick. My compliments."

He reposed his long, elegant length in a carved oak chair and sipped his wine again. Polly clasped her hands in front of her, compressed her lips, and stood, a veritable monument of patience, until De Winter was quite overcome and could persist in his teasing no longer. "I was at court this evening. There was a dance in the queen's apartments. A somewhat insipid affair," he added, as if his audience would be interested in the judgment.

Nicholas smiled, throwing another log on the fire. "Polly, come here." He patted his lap in invitation. "You look as taut as if you have received the attentions of a clock winder!"

De Winter waited until she was settled upon Nick's knee, her head resting on his shoulder, his fingers twisting in the hair spilling over the warm mulberry wool of her nightgown. "The talk was mostly of some surprise that Master Killigrew is keeping up his sleeve. It is said that if one were to venture to the Nursery at Moorfields tomorrow afternoon-should one be prepared to mingle with such playgoers as one might find there-" Richard waved his cambric handkerchief through the air as if to dispel whatever noxious attributes might be found amongst such an audience "-one

might discover the surprise a little earlier than Thomas had intended."

"Clever," murmured Nick, mindful of the discussion when Killigrew had been afraid that a Moorfields audience would find Polly too rare a flower for their taste. If the theatre was filled with intrigued courtiers, who would most certainly respond with approval, those in the pit would either follow the courtiers' lead, or their disapproval would be drowned. "And is there a move to discover this secret?"

"It appears so." Richard smiled over his glass. "Even Dav-enant is anxious to see what is making his rival so smug. Buckingham has sworn to attend, and where the duke goes-"

"The world follows," Nick concluded, swallowing his unease before it could raise more than a prickle on his spine. "The king also?"

"He cannot. The French ambassador has requested an audience, and Clarendon is being most persuasive that it should be granted. There is still hope for an alliance in the question of this damned Dutch war."

"Fool's paradise!" scoffed Nick. "There'll be no help from the Spanish or the French. France has no need for gratuitous enemies, and Spain is too weak."

The conversation seemed to have veered off course as far as Polly was concerned. She sat up urgently. "I do not understand how anyone could know about me… Oh." A thought seemed to strike her. "That is, if I am the surprise of which you speak?" Receiving a reassuring nod, she went on. ''If Thomas did not intend that anyone at court should know about tomorrow's performance, how is it that they do?"

"I expect he told them," said Nick easily, stretching his legs beneath her. "In a roundabout fashion. He is a devious man, our Master Killigrew."

"But why would he?" Polly resisted the arm that made to draw her back against his shoulder.

Nick was not about to add to her anxieties by telling her Killigrew's reason, so he shrugged, saying lightly, "I expect you have made more improvement than he expected in such