"Of course."

He dropped his hand with a bark of laughter. "Do you know how I write

these scores, Helene? Do you?"

She blinked at him. "No."

"I sit here and I try something, and then I think, What would Helene think of that? And then I hear your voice saying that it's underwritten, or tiresome, or-sometimes-clever. Never exquisite."

"Oh, Rees," Helene said aghast. "I had no idea. None!"

"I know you didn't," he said with that little half-smile again.

There was an odd silence between them. "I feel like such an idiot," she said miserably. "Here I've spent the last nine years picking your music apart, just to make myself feel clever." She couldn't even bear to look at him; a sense of humiliation was growing in her chest.

"You have never been an idiot," Rees said. He pushed open the piano lid with a snap that made the candles flicker and dance. "What if I wrote this section in B-minor, then moved into D-major from the Cantabile?"

"Why a major?" Helene said, distracted from her self-loathing for a moment. She tried it. "Moving it to G-minor would make it even darker, more interesting."

"But I want a witty resonance there, not gloom," Rees said, pushing her aside in his turn and demonstrating.

Helene looked down at his powerful hands, then at his black hair, gleaming in the candles, at his powerful shoulders. It's all changed, she thought.

"You're not paying attention," Rees said. "Listen to this."

"Try it slower this time," she said. "Andante."

Chapter Twenty-two.

The Vicar Falls in Love.

Tom arrived in the breakfast room to find it empty. He was not a man given to self-delusion; he knew perfectly well that his step slowed at the door because he didn't see Lina, not because of the absence of his growling brother, nor Rees's incomprehensible wife.

"Would you like a dish of kippers, Mr. Holland?" Leke inquired.

"No, thank you, Leke. Merely a cup of coffee and some toast, please." He couldn't bring himself to ask about Lina. "Has my brother eaten yet?"

"Lord Godwin is still in bed," Leke responded. "He was working at the piano quite late at night." After fussing for a moment with the dishes on the side table, Leke left, closing the door behind him.

Tom sat down and found himself wondering what Lina looked like in the morning, all sleepy and rumpled. Before he realized it, he was struggling with the impulse to run up the stairs and knock on Lina's door. In the general run of things, Tom didn't find himself faced with much temptation of the ungodly sort. His parish was small and such nobility as there were in Beverley attended the much larger and more majestic Minster Church. That didn't mean he was ignored by the local gentry: the younger son of an earl, with a good private living, would never be ignored. But the temptations offered by local damsels had not, so far, been much of a struggle.

Lina was another story.

I want her, Tom thought to himself. I want her more than I've wanted any woman in my life. And it's not just lust (although he was uneasily unaware that he was possessed by a feverish variety of that emotion, such as he'd never experienced before). But I want all of her, he reassured himself: that silly chuckle, her odd knowledge of the Bible, even those horrible jokes she keeps offering to tell me.

Very precisely he cut his toast into small squares. He'd spent a great deal of his life respecting his instinct. An unmanly thing to do, perhaps, but it had worked for him. Instinct had led him to take the healthy inheritance his mother left him and more than triple it with shrewd investments. Instinct had told him to return to London and patch things together with his brother. Instinct told him...

Lina was the one for him. She was wildly unsuitable for a vicar's wife. Marrying her would likely ruin the possibility of his ever being transferred to a larger parish. Moreover, if his local Bishop found out that he had married his brother's mistress, he'd be thrown out of his parish entirely. Marrying her would... marrying her was his only option, so why should he worry about the consequences? He finished his toast. If only he could just throw her over a horse and flee back to the North Country.

He didn't see Lina until afternoon. She didn't come to luncheon, and neither did Rees. And neither did Helene for that matter, although Tom could hardly blame her for taking meals in her room. He was surprised his brother's wife emerged at all. Finally, he was so tired of waiting around downstairs that he decided to visit Meggin in the nursery.

The moment he walked down the hallway, he heard laughter. Lina laughed with the clear, belly-rocking enjoyment of a child, not with the practiced thrills of a courtesan. Because she was not a courtesan, Tom thought to himself, pushing open the door. Her clear eyes could not lie to him. His brother-his own rotgut brother-had made her a kept woman, a mistress. Tom hated the truth of it. It made him feel as if a piece of steel was lodged in his chest.

Lina was sitting on a low stool next to the window and Meggin was standing behind her, drawing a brush through her long hair. Neither of them saw him for a moment. Meggin was utterly concentrated on watching the gleaming river of Lina's hair run by her brush, and Lina was saying, "so you see, Meggin, the miller didn't have any choice other than to send his three sons out to seek their fortune."

"Why couldn't they stay home with him?" Tom said, walking toward them. Lina looked up quickly, and there was a welcome in her eyes. "Good afternoon, Miss McKenna," he said, with a bow, and, "Hello, Miss Meggin." Meggin didn't even look up, just kept watching as if mesmerized, as her brush swirled through the silk of Lina's hair.

"Meggin, darling," Lina said, twisting about. "I think my hair is sufficiently groomed. May I ask you to brush my hair again later, please?"

A flash of real anger crossed the little girl's face and she reached out to grab Lina's hair and keep it in place.

"This afternoon," Lina said calmly, standing up and handing Meggin the swansdown muff.

Meggin blinked and began to brush the muff carefully.

"If you would ring that bell, Mr. Holland," Lina said, "Rosy will return to the nursery to take charge of Meggin."

Tom rang the bell. "Meggin," he said, turning back to the little girl, "would you like to go for a ride in the park this afternoon?"

She didn't look up or reply in any way.

"I thought perhaps you might like to see the lions in the Tower of London?" he tried again.

She still didn't look up, but she said something.

"What?" he asked.

"Izzat near the Pewter Inn?"

"No," he said.

Her mouth trembled for a moment and she went back to brushing the muff

without a word.

At that moment, Rosy bounced into the room and so they left.

"Meggin is not happy," Lina said without preamble, after Tom closed the

door behind them. "She speaks only in order to ask when she will see Mrs.

Fishpole." "I could take her back there, but only for a visit," Tom said rather helplessly. "Meggin was sleeping on a pile of rags in the corner, and Mrs. Fishpole's circumstances were not such that she could take Meggin in herself."

Lina walked down the hall. "So you rescued her? Just like that? Took her away without a second thought?"

"I had no choice," Tom said, feeling oddly defensive.

"Why not?"

"Because there I was, and Mrs. Fishpole said to take her, and so I-"

"But why were you there?"

"I saw Meggin in an inn yard, and I thought perhaps she was in an unenviable position."

"You meant to rescue her," Lina said flatly. "You meant to rescue her from the moment you saw her."

"It wasn't so simple," Tom replied, nettled.

"How many children have you rescued?"

Her hips were swaying before him in a way that made it hard for Tom to concentrate. "Not many."

"It must give you quite a glow of virtue." She walked into the library

and tucked herself onto a couch, looking up at him.

Was her tone scornful? Tom felt a wave of irritation. "That has nothing to do with it," he said.

"Poppycock," she said flatly. "You vicar types are all the same. You enjoy wearing a halo, so you removed Meggin from the only mother she had ever known-Mrs. Fishpole. And that was a mistake."

Tom was conscious of a feeling of resentment. "Mrs. Fishpole couldn't keep her much longer. Meggin was sleeping on a pile of rags in the corner, and Mrs. Fishpole herself told me that she was worried for Meggin's safety. Do you understand what I mean?"

"Of course I do," Lina said impatiently. "So you galloped in like a knight in shining armor and took Meggin away, did you? It must have given you quite a pious glow, for an hour or two at least."

"It wasn't like that," he protested. "And why are you so scornful of an honest effort to help a child?"

"I'm not," she said. "But I am quite familiar with the godly sort rushing in to save people and doing it without forethought, and without the ability to admit that they may have been mistaken."

"So the mistake I made was to remove Meggin from Mrs. Fishpole, rather than Mrs. Fishpole from the inn," he said.

She nodded. "But surely you have thought of some pious justification for removing her so abruptly from her mother to counter my criticism?"

"Mrs. Fishpole is not her mother," Tom protested. But he'd never been one to deny a fair point. "You may be right. Although I do not agree that I did so merely for a sanctimonious bout of aggrandizement."

She wasn't looking at him anymore. Instead she was frowning and examining her fingernails. "We have to take her back."

Tom sat down next to her without asking for permission. "Meggin can't live in the kitchen forever."

"No, of course not," Lina said, throwing him an impatient look. "But she needs her mother. Mrs. Fishpole will have to find other circumstances. What a pity that Rees already has a cook."

"I suspect Rees wouldn't like a cook whose main facility seemed to lie in fish and sausage pie," Tom said. "Apparently he pays Cook one hundred guineas a year."

Lina gave up the idea of sacking Rees's Cook while he wasn't paying attention. "We have to do something. The poor little scrap: her eyes are like to make me start crying!" Lina never cried. That was a rule she set for herself the very first day she left home, when she got to London and discovered that her purse had been stolen and all her money was gone.

"I thought I would find her a family when I returned to East Riding," Tom said.

"Who would take in an orphan?" Lina asked. She had seen many so-called charitable people decline to give a farthing to a beggar.

"I could pay for her support."

"You? A vicar?" Lina laughed. "I can estimate how many pounds a year you earn, Mr. Holland. It's a wonder you had the money to come to London, let alone support an orphan!"

"How much do you think I earn?" he demanded.

"Of course, you may have money in rents, but your living is unlikely to pay more than two hundred pounds a year. An amount that would almost pay for this gown," she said, touching a fold of cloth.

Lina was wearing a crimson morning gown made in the Russian style, with white tassels on the shoulders. She looked adorable and utterly expensive. Tom had never had much use for the money his mother left him other than supporting charity, but now he sent up a fleeting prayer of thanks. Lina could be the best-dressed vicar's wife in the kingdom, if she wished. "The gown was a worthy purchase, in your mind?" he said, putting an arm on the back of the couch, but not touching her shoulder. "You certainly look lovely in it."

"Of course it was! I am particularly fond of the silk fringe, which is all the rage. One cannot step outdoors without a fringe this year."

"And would that gown cost more than I might give to a family to support Meggin for a year, in your estimation?"

She narrowed her eyes. "I despise that sort of trick, Reverend. Believe me, I'm an old hand at avoiding guilt. And I don't think much of you for trying it. I'm not one of your flock."

Tom grinned. "No more you are. A fact about which I am very sorry."