"We have conspired to do nothing, Rachel," Brianna replied, the certainty in her voice and eyes rocking her. "Ryan was thinking only of you when he told us."

Tears rushed and brimmed in her eyes. She felt trapped as if she was playing out a stage performance to an audience who already knew the ending. But they didn't know the ending, because no one knew her past, or anything else about her, for that matter.

"If you both will excuse me." She stepped away from the chair. "I should dress."

Rachel crossed the length of the loggia and entered her room, the breeze from her passing setting her drapes aflutter. She pressed a fist to her stomach and, drawing in a deep breath, sat on the bed.

Why could she not allow herself to be happy, she berated herself.

A cat leapt on the bed and, recognizing Brianna's spoiled Persian, she pulled it nearer. The old adage, "absence makes the heart grow fonder" took on meaning this past week-for she knew one way or the other, her life had irrevocably changed. Her cheek caressing the cat, she focused on the doll she'd set on the bedside table.

Four nights ago, the doll had been in the box tucked beneath her bed. Then it sat on the dresser. Last night she'd moved it to its present location. She reached out to touch the velvet dress-finally pulling itinto bed with her, displacing the cat."May I ask if you are in love with my brother?" Brianna queried from the doorway of Rachel's room."No." Rachel pressed her nose into the doll's blond hair.

"No you're not in love, or no I can't ask.""No." She sat cross-legged on the bed and laid the doll in the folds of her wrapper. She laughed. "Youcan't ask unless you have a few years to listen."

Brianna sat next to her on the bed. Her dark unbound hair flowed over her shoulders to her waist. "I do now."

"I thought that you and your husband ride every morning."

"He has an early meeting with the Foreign Secretary."

"Your children are probably looking for you."

"I'm sure they will when they awaken."

"Your servants?"

"All problems go to the housekeeper or the butler. So you see"-she held out her hands palms out-"I'

m all yours."

Rachel fingered the soft ruffles on the doll's dress. "What would you do if you had things in your past that

could ruin someone's life?""You're asking me?" Brianna laughed. "My reputation got me thrown out of England. But then I metMichael." She smiled. "Some things happen for the better."

"Trust me," Rachel whispered, feeling little vindicated by Brianna's words. "This is not for the better."

"Does this have anything to do with Lord Bathwick?" Brianna asked, looking anything but contrite in her

prying. "It's just that you've been seen together. Not that I listen to gossip, but when it has to do withsomeone that I care about very much, I'm all ears.""Ryan and I have already spoken words over Lord Bathwick."Brianna moved to sit on the edge of the mattress, and Rachel was suddenly laying her head against her shoulder. "I have been a terrible thorn in Ryan's side since I was a little girl. He has forever been gettinginto trouble because of me. Only now he has to think about his daughter. I don't want to hurt him, Brea.""Don't you think you should let Ryan worry about that?""How can I when it's my responsibility?""Ask yourself what you want, Rachel."

"It's not that simple. I know what I want.""Then make it simple." Brianna fluffed the frilly dress on the doll and set it directly in Rachel's lap."Johnny once told me that a good engineer utilized his knowledge of science and mathematics and appropriate experiences to find suitable solutions to the problems at hand. I believe he was talking about building a bridge at the time."

Rachel smiled at the metaphor and, perhaps for the first time in her life, her goals became clear as glass. "The only question remaining then is what kind of engineer am I to build a bridge that will withstand the course of time?"

Rachel drew rein at the high wrought-iron fence, her gaze touching the carved pair of griffins facing each other across two stone pillars. Smiling to herself, she thought how appropriate that she should be greeted by a mythical monster with the body and hind legs of a lion and the head, wings, and claws of an eagle. Tenting a hand over her eyes, she looked past the trees toward the distant towers before spurring the horse she'd rented from a village livery into a canter down the long tree-lined drive. As she passed from the grove of beech trees, she glimpsed the huge stone house just below the rise, and came to a stop. Until now, her calm had been laboriously contrived.

White stone architraves and columns framed large windows. From the garden level to the attic high within the gabled terraces and chimneys on the roof, the mullioned glass caught the sunlight and bathed the house gold. The horse did an impatient turn before Rachel continued down the long, winding slope.

As she neared the front entrance of the house, a groom came running toward her to take the horse. "Mum...We weren't expecting guests. Mr. Donally isn't in residence."

Rachel accepted the groom's aid to dismount. She was too sore to land on her feet with any grace or stealth. She was nervous, and it must have shown. She already felt minimized by the house. By the entire sphere of emotions surrounding her.

"Thank you," she managed. "But I've come to see my goddaughter."

"Miss Bailey." A uniformed footman appeared.

Rachel recognized him from her last visit. "Please see that someone cools down the horse, Jeffers," she ordered.

"At once." The groom bowed to her at the waist.

Neither man commented that she'd come with no groom of her own, and she didn't indicate that she'd not been invited. Mutual ignorance benefited them all.

"I will need to find Miss Peabody," the footman said. "Please follow me."

Pulling aside the edge of her riding habit, Rachel followed him up the stairs into the house. Every muscle in her body ached. She'd left London early that afternoon and taken the train out of the city. Holding the doll in her arms against her own insecurities, she turned her head and glimpsed a painting of a hunting dog. The complexity of her emotions exasperated her and, forcing her hands to loosen their grip, she had just taken a deep breath when a child's tortured scream sent a knife of terror through Rachel chest.

"Good Lord." The footman beside her blanched pale.

He and Rachel both hit the first flight of steps running. She could hear someone trying to soothe Mary Elizabeth, but she would have none of it, and her sobs grew more desperate. Rachel came to an abrupt halt on the landing in front of a sobbing four-year-old and three apron-wringing servants. "He's lost. He's lost!" Mary Elizabeth's tear-ridden sobs fell over Rachel. "I can't get him! He went into a hole."

Rachel heard the words key, monsters, and something about a Button that had fallen into a black hole. Standing barefooted no taller than anyone's thigh, Ryan's daughter wore a mismatched blue top and green skirt with a white apron hanging untied at her waist. Mary Elizabeth took that moment to look up and see her.

Something on Rachel's face must have inspired the child because she ran to Rachel as if she had the power to save the entire world. "He's lost!" Mary Elizabeth sobbed into her skirts and every doubt, every insecurity Rachel had felt when she'd stepped into this house vanished as Ryan's daughter clung to her.

Rachel crouched beside the child. "Who is lost?"

"Button." Her small fists were clenched at her sides. "I telled him not to go into the hole." She wiped a

hand across her nose. "But he is bad dog. He piddled on the floor"-she sniffed-"and I taked him to hide him from Miss Peapoo, and now he is lost."

Completely befuddled, Rachel looked for guidance from the others. "The dog went into the room Mr.

Donally keeps locked, mum," Miss Peabody said. "In the attic.""Then unlock the door for grief's sake.""She is not supposed to be up there. We have been searching everywhere for her.""What happened to your clothes?" Rachel asked, noting the child's state of disrepair and lack of knickers, worrying what other disaster had befallen her.

"I wetted them."

"I see. And how long have you been running free?"

"Since I waked up from my nap and sneaked out the window. Miss Peapoo locked my door." War

drums hammered in her gaze when it fell on the older woman running up to them, who was obviously her governess. "I dressed all by myself. I wanted to make tea for Button."

"You locked her in her room?" Rachel asked the governess.

"The child needs discipline. And I will not tolerate her poor behavior. She needs bars on her window."

"Bars!"

Miss Peabody's dark eyes snapped to hers. "I am in charge of that child while Mr. Donally and Boswell are not here."

Rachel took Mary Elizabeth's hand. "Where is the key to the room upstairs?" she asked the gathered servants.

"You cannot go up there," Miss Peabody stepped in front of her.

Rachel eyed the woman. They were the same height. But Rachel had no doubt should it come to a fight who would win. "Move out of my way," Rachel warned.

"The key is in Mr. Donally's private chambers, mum," a servant hastily said."But we cannot be goin' into his private chambers, mum," another said.

Suspecting resistance from the troops, Mary Elizabeth tilted her chin. Rachel admired the little tyrant's spirit. Like her father-knock him down and he'll come back harder than before. "Show me the key," Rachel asked the girl.

Mary Elizabeth pulled her down the long corridor and into Ryan's chambers. The windows and glass doors were opened to the lake, and a honeysuckle-scented breeze filled the masculine chambers. The chambermaid bobbed and pointed to the desk at the far end of the room. "In the desk, mum," she said.

Rachel walked past the four-poster tester bed next to the small writing desk. "There." Mary Elizabeth pointed excitedly over her hand. "The key! The key!"

Rachel grabbed the key and ran after Mary Elizabeth up two flights of stairs to the attic above the servants' quarters. She could hear a dog yapping behind a locked door.

When she ducked through the door to the upper attic, her jaw dropped open.

Tiny knickers were dangling on an old discarded lamp near an open dormer window. And then Rachel noted the ghastly disaster.

A maze of blankets draped an old table and bureau, held precariously in place by lamps, books, and anything else in the room that moved. Clearly, the girl needed fort-building lessons. The slightest movement would send the whole structure crashing to the floor. As she carefully edged to the side along the wall, she noticed that wasn't even the worst of it. Evidence that Mary Elizabeth had raided the bread pantry lay in an incriminating trail across the length of the room to a table set with teacups and surrounded by dolls.

Hers and Kathleen's dolls. The sight stopped her.

Mary Elizabeth ran forward and dropped to her knees in front of the hole, soothing the poor puppy that was too dumb to come out the same hole it entered. "He's in here."

After Rachel opened the door and reunited the two, she dismissed the servants, who had followed and stopped just outside the door. As she was the child's godmother, no one argued her authority. But she was more than that to Ryan and Kathleen's daughter and, as her gaze dropped to Mary Elizabeth's upturned face, she knew in that moment that she'd been given a gift: a precious, tender gift handed into her heart for safekeeping. Her emotions grabbed and tightened, and she turned to glimpse the shadows in the room where Button had strayed.

A bedstead leaned against the far wall. Trunks lined the floor beside an armoire and an enameled bath. Cobwebs clung to the rafters. There was a sense of pain to the emptiness. Ryan had put everything in there with the intent of never seeing any of it again. Mary Elizabeth leaned against her, clearly afraid. "Miss Peapoo said that the monsters will eat me if I go in there."

Rachel lifted the girl and perched her on her hip. Furious that an adult could say that to any child. She wasn't leaving this child alone with that governess again. "When?"

Mary Elizabeth shrugged her narrow shoulders. "Before...when I was bad and went in there to see the pretty dresses."

"It's just a room, Mary Elizabeth. There are no monsters in there. I'll take you in there one day, but right now we need to respect your father's wishes not to go inside."

She shut the door and turned. Rachel knelt beside the dolls around the table.

"Where did you get these?"

She pointed to the door that Rachel had just shut. Rachel wondered how it was that Mary Elizabeth's sudden bravery could convey such a vivid unmistakable impression of loneliness. At least she'd never contended with a wicked governess. And Mary Elizabeth had a father who loved her.

"This doll's name is Angela." Rachel lifted the first doll. She had played with all of them as a little girl. "And the others are Marsha, Dyanne, Josey, and Betsy."

Mary Elizabeth's eyes brightened. "What's her name?" She pointed to the doll with the blond tresses, nearly identical to the one she'd brought with her from London. Rachel had left it on the stairway downstairs when she'd heard Mary Elizabeth scream.

"That one is Victoria. Your mother and I used to play with these." Rachel gently lifted Victoria and turned up her skirt. "This doll was her favorite. One day, I accidentally dropped her off the roof of my house. We'd gone up there because that was our favorite place to go where no one could find us." She'd smoked her first cigarette behind the chimney with Kathleen. And drunk her first glass of real whiskey. They'd talked about love and boys and dreams. Kathleen had wanted nothing more than to be a wife and mother. Rachel had wanted to be queen of the world.

"I had to fix Victoria's leg before your mother would stop crying," she said, rubbing a finger along the broken hip joint.

"How did you fix it?"

"I took poor Marsha here"-she exchanged dolls-"and traded legs. Your mother never even noticed." Bracing her elbow across her thigh, her riding habit spilling over her feet, she looked around the cavernous room. "I like this place. Do you hide up here often?"

"Sometimes." Burying her cheek against the puppy's neck, she cradled Button.

"Does that fort actually work?" Rachel asked, tipping her chin toward the structure.

Mary Elizabeth turned her head to look at the edifice in question. She shook her head. "It's broke."

"Let us plug the hole to that other room, shall we?" Rachel stood. "Then I'll show you how to build a fort that will stay up for all eternity."

But first, she was going downstairs to discharge Miss Peapoo.

Chapter 19.

P aris in late August sweltered. His thumb idly tracing the diamond design cut into the glass he held in one hand, Ryan sat back in the chair with his legs outstretched, ankles crossed, his eyes homed in on the men who sat on either side of the rosewood table.

Brendan droned on about the ongoing contract and the various assets the company had yet to put on the table. A window spanned the wall in front of him, providing Ryan with a clear view of the Parisian skyline, a mixture of old style and new architecture that spoke eloquently of both nostalgic grandeur and the direction of the future. Much like the timeworn glass and brass decor of this room spoke of this office.