"You would condemn your own unborn child to bastardy. She will hate you someday, when she has no one to marry except the local cowherd. Let's face it, it's not as if you and I would particularly enjoy being next door to each other anyway. Did you really want me able to enter your room at any hour of the day or night and slip between your sheets?"

She spat it at him. "Absolutely not!"

"Right. The chamber on the third floor is easily larger than my mother's room. You can fit a piano in there."

"That's not the point! I do not wish to spend even a moment under the same roof as your doxy, a fact which should be clear, even to a person with your perceptive nature."

"All right," he said. "We'll compromise. You live in the house until we conceive the child. You can come in secret, so there won't be any scandal. And then you can take the child and raise it elsewhere. Here, with your mother, if you wish. But I refuse to continue trailing around after you and stripping off my pantaloons in public."

"You could come here on occasion."

"I'm not going to waste my time flitting around to balls, and to my mother-in-law's house, trying to find my own wife. I have work to do."

"I don't spend my time flitting around to balls!" she retorted. "You know as well as I do that I spend most of each day here working on my piano. You could come here."

"I noticed an advertisement for Arrangements of Beethoven Piano Sonatas for Four Hands, by a Mr. H. G.," Rees said, distracted for a moment. "Are those the pieces you were working on last summer?"

She nodded. "I'm writing a waltz at the moment," she said. "Well, this has been an utterly enthralling conversation, Rees, but I really must-"

"I need you, Helene."

"What?"

"I need help." He said it jerkily, in the tone of a man who hasn't asked for help since he was eleven years old. "I have to put an opera on the stage next season, and I've only written a few songs that are even decent. I shouldn't have left the house this morning."

"That's not like you. I thought you poured out all that comic stuff as if it were dishwater."

There was a muscle working in his jaw. "Believe me, Helene, the stuff I'm writing now is worse than dishwater."

He met her eyes with the old flare of obstinacy and anger, but there was something else too. A plea? She frowned. "You need my help? How could I possibly help you?"

"I thought perhaps we could make an exchange. You've gotten better and better over the years. Whereas I've become pedestrian." He couldn't think how to frame it in proper terms. "If you can help me turn my score into something playable, I'd be grateful." It was clear how his gratitude would be expressed.

Helene felt her cheeks going pink. "That's-That's-" she spluttered. "Absolutely not."

He turned away, raking his hand through his hair. "All right."

Helene watched him suspiciously. He was giving up, just like that? He must not have wanted her help very much. And did he really think that she was a better composer than he?

"If you can wait nine months or so, until the opera is rehearsed and opens, I'll start coming over here whenever you want me to," he said, sounding extremely tired.

"Couldn't you possibly do so now?"

"I really couldn't." He was looking out the window, back to her. "I've dried up, Helene. I slave over the damn melodies, and they get worse every time I touch them. I lost most of last night due to the Hamilton ball. I can't afford to do that again."

"What part is she taking?" Helene said sharply, suddenly realizing something.

He looked at her. "The lead."

"So you need her in the house to sing the parts," Helene said, working it out.

"Yes."

"And for other reasons," she pointed out with a little edge to her voice.

He'd got his satirical gleam back now. "It's not as if you would like to

do any recreational bedding, is it, Helene?"

"No!" It was madness. Utter madness. And yet, she couldn't bear the idea of waiting months. She'd already waited half her lifetime, or so it felt.

If she were honest, there was also a small part of her reveling in the

idea that he wanted her help. That he admired her music. Fool that she was.

"I'll do it for one month, and on one condition."

"What?" Rees was rather startled to find how much he wanted her to agree.

"You can't even enter that woman's bedchamber while I'm in the house. Not

under any circumstances, Rees. Do I make myself absolutely clear? You are not going to parade from one bed to another. She can stay and sing, but that is all."

He looked at her, and for a moment she thought he was going to refuse.

Bile rose in her throat.

But then he said, "I see no problem with that request."

"And no one can know that I've returned to your house," Helene commanded.

"I'll inform my household that I'm traveling in the country. It's not as if anyone from polite society would think of paying you a call."

"No one ever comes to visit. But you would have to be a virtual recluse, Helene. And servants talk."

"Do you still have Leke?"

Rees nodded.

"Leke won't talk," Helene said. "You'll have to let anyone go whom you think might gossip."

He shrugged. "We haven't hardly any staff at the moment. There's Rosy, Leke's niece, a couple of footmen, and Cook."

"How you can live in such a pigsty, I don't know," she said.

"I'll tell Leke to expect you this evening then," Rees said, controlling his voice so that not even a trickle of pleasure came through.

"No. I'll arrive in a few days. What did you tell your singer?"

"The same thing I told you." He pulled open the door and told the butler to fetch his greatcoat. "Her name is Lina McKenna, by the way."

"What did Miss McKenna say of this scheme?" Helene demanded, dumbfounded to find that she was even considering such an action.

Rees shrugged. "Something about the two of you pouring over fashion plates together." He left Helene staring at the door.

Chapter Sixteen.

The Nature of My Sex.

"What do you wish to do this morning?" Tom asked Meggin as they left the breakfast table. She didn't seem to have eaten much, although who knew what a child this age should eat? And why didn't he think to ask Mrs. Fishpole when her birthday was? He wasn't even quite certain how old she was. He'd have to return to the inn. How did children amuse themselves?

Meggin just looked up at him and didn't say anything.

"Would you like to have a bath?" he asked.

She didn't reply. It was rather irritating. Or it would be irritating, he quickly corrected himself, if she wasn't such a little girl. One couldn't be annoyed by an innocent orphan. Could one?

"What would you like to do today?" he said, rather more loudly. They were climbing the stairs. Meggin wasn't even pretending to pay attention. She was caressing the satiny finish of the stair rail as if it were a cat.

What was needed here, obviously, was a female.

He paused. "Wait here," he instructed her and then turned around. Meggin was nothing if not obedient. She sat down on the stair and began stroking the stair railings.

Tom clumped down the stairs feeling extremely irritable. He'd been thinking about this trip for over two years now. He had planned to arrive at Rees's house, and-and there's the rub. Talk to him. Tell him he missed him? Their father's taunts rang in his ears just as loudly as they obviously still did in Rees's: expressing such an emotion would be girlish. How could he tell Rees that he missed his big brother, that he missed talking to him, that he wished they were friends? From what he could see, the only friend Rees had was Simon Darby, and that all went back to the days when Rees would flee the house and disappear to the Darby household for days.

Tom sighed. "Leke!" he shouted.

"Here, sir." The butler trotted through the green door, drying cloth in hand. "I'm just on my way to the employment agency, sir. I think we could use a few maids."

"Undoubtedly," Tom said, allowing faint irony to enter his tone. The corners of his room were festooned with cobwebs.

"Had I known of your arrival, sir," Leke said majestically, "I would have had your room prepared."

"Never mind that, where's your niece? The one and only maid? I need someone to care for the child."

"I'm afraid she has let us down," Leke admitted. "She's run back to her mum this morning. I'm sure my sister will send her back with a good ear-warming, but meanwhile, there isn't a woman in the house barring Cook. And Cook is not the sort to do any child-minding. Takes her position very seriously. After all she cooked for the Prince of Wales once; his lordship pays her one hundred guineas a year just to stay in the household."

"Bejesus," Tom muttered. One hundred guineas was nearly what he made as vicar, and more than most of his parishioners made put together.

He started back up the stairs. Cook wasn't the only woman in the house. Lina was a woman. Anyone except a blind man could see that. Halfway up the stairs, he passed Meggin and she got up without a word and started following him, for all the world like a curious kitten. At the top of the stairs he turned left and marched down to his mother's room.

The door opened immediately. "Well hello, Reverend," Lina said, smiling as wicked a smile as any self-respecting Whore of Babylon would give a bishop.

Tom felt that smile all the way down to his groin. No wonder his brother had thrown his wife out and moved Lina into the bedchamber next to his. God help him, he probably would have done the same. He gave himself a mental shake. She's a fallen woman. Someone to pity and succor, not lust after as if he were a common ruffian.

She had changed into a tight costume made of green velvet that buttoned down the front and made a man's hands itch to stroke it. A green velvet hat nestled on her glossy brown curls. All in all, she looked like an enchantingly naughty wood elf.

"I gather you like my walking costume?" she said, as he remained silent.

"It's delightful," Tom barked, embarrassed. Meggin had inched forward and was stretching one dirty finger toward the white fuzzy stuff that edged Lina's jacket. "I came to request your assistance."

Lina raised an eyebrow. "You'd better come in, then. These shoes are the very devil to stand in, and 'tis against the nature of my sex to stand, anyway."

Tom followed her, trying to sort that out. Why not stand? Could she possibly have meant a joke on a man standing? Or rather, parts of a man, standing? Surely not. He must have misheard. Perhaps she was simply referring to her shoes.

Meggin followed Lina into the room as closely as she could, still touching her jacket. "It's swansdown," Lina told her briskly. "You may touch it as long as you don't soil it."

"May I borrow your lady's maid until Leke hires a temporary nursemaid?"

"I don't have a maid," she said, slipping into a seat next to the fireplace.

"You don't?" His mother had employed two personal maids.

"I had one when I first arrived, but I decided I could do without her. She didn't really approve of my situation." She wrinkled her nose. Her eyes were merry, and not at all bitter. "I always managed to dress myself at home, after all."

"Where is home?" Tom asked. "Do you mind if I seat myself as well?"

"A long way away, alas," she said, and it was as if a curtain fell over her face. "Now how can I possibly help you, Mr. Holland?"

"Meggin needs a wash, and I don't think she'll feel comfortable with me."

"Probably not," Lina murmured. She looked down at the little girl. "I suppose I could supervise a bath."