Griselda knew well enough when there was no moving him. "Countess Godwin?" she said, with a raised eyebrow.

"Precisely."

"I heard all about it, naturally. I'd keep an eye out for Godwin, though. The man's not fully tamed, you know."

"He was civil enough when he found us in the music room together," Mayne said indifferently. "The problem is that the lady has disappeared. No one has seen her in days."

"Perhaps she's retired to the country, worn out by chopping off all her hair," Griselda suggested, giving her own blond tresses a loving pat. She shivered with fear when her ringlets had to be trimmed.

"Her household claims that she is taking the waters. But I went to Bath and there's no sign of her. Nor in her country house either."

"Goodness, you are all het up over this one," Griselda said, rather entertained. "Traveling all the way to Bath. Well, I can tell you precisely where she is!"

He swung around. "Where?"

"Hiding until her hair grows back. I didn't see the effect myself, but I am told that she made a Statement. And you know, Garret, one does rather regret a Statement the next morning. I certainly did, after I wore that Prussian gown with the blue ostrich feathers to the Queen's Birthday."

"Hiding where?" Mayne demanded. "I don't want her to hide. I thought her hair was delightful."

"You'll find her," Griselda replied, giving him a narrow-eyed glance over the pocket mirror she had taken out of her reticule. "Just get the whole business out of your way before the end of the season, will you not? I'd like to see you tie the knot this summer, and you'll need at least two weeks to choose a bride and ask for her hand."

Mayne suppressed a shudder. "I can't imagine I'll find a woman whom I'd wish to see every morning for breakfast."

Griselda was painting her mouth with a small brush. "Don't bother," she suggested. "After I learned that Willoughby was fond of eating calves' head pie for his first meal, we never ate together again. And our marriage was perfectly amiable, I promise you."

"I'll let myself out," Mayne said, bending down and dropping a kiss on his sister's cheek. "Prettying yourself up for Bamber, soi-disant Edmund Spenser, are you?"

"Naturally," she said, patting her cherry-red lips delicately with a handkerchief. "I am most looking forward to exposing his little scheme. You are such a useful brother, dearest. And you have such unusual talents! There's not another man in London who could identify that Spenser poem, I warrant you."

But the Earl of Mayne paid her compliment little heed. He had no interest in his own ability to remember poetry (he'd always found a love poem or two to be the greatest help in fixing a reluctant matron's affections, although he scrupulously granted the poems their proper authorship). He just wished he were cleverer at finding errant countesses.

It was positively infuriating. He couldn't get her out of his mind: that slender, fawnlike grace, the tender curve of her slim shoulder, the way her eyes seemed to take up half her face, the way her eyebrows arched high at the corners of her eyes, the way her hair-damn, but he hoped she wasn't growing her hair. A woman that beautiful had no reason to doll up her hair with fussy little ringlets, the way his sister did. Helene's hair had felt as sleek and slippery as water, gliding through his fingers. He wanted more.

Outside his sister's townhouse, the earl paused and adjusted the shoulder capes on his greatcoat before springing into the seat of his high-perch phaeton. If Helene were indeed hiding until her hair grew back, he thought with a grin, there was no reason not to afford her some amusement while in retirement. His smile grew as he considered the possibility. He never believed that story of Helene taking the waters, for all her household and friends had insisted on it. She wasn't the type of woman to sit around docilely sipping cups of water that smelled of rotten eggs. No, his sister was likely right. She regretted her hair, and she'd gone to ground like a partridge during a hunt.

With a flip of the reins, the earl started off decisively down Chandois Street. He could guess who might tell him where Helene was.

And he was a master at the hunt.

Chapter Twenty-four.

Come, Come, Come to the Ball.

She and Rees had worked on the score until morning light started to creep into the music room; by then her headache was already in full force. At some point Saunders had crept into the bedroom and enquired whether she wished to rise, but Helene had waved her off with a groan. "Not until this evening," she'd said, wondering whether she would ever rise from the bed again without feeling the ground lurch under her feet.

When the door to her chamber opened at two o'clock, and brisk footsteps approached the bed, Helene wearily opened her eyes again. But it wasn't Saunders; it was Rees, standing next to her bed looking disgustingly healthy.

"Go away," she moaned, putting her hand to her brow like any self-respecting heroine in a melodrama.

"Time for you to get up," he said cheerfully. "I heard from Leke that you're not in the pink of health, so I've brought you Cook's remedy for a bad head."

Helene eyed the glass he held with great suspicion. "Thank you, but no. I never drink things that foam," she said with a shudder.

"Today you do," Rees announced, and without further ado, he grabbed her around the shoulders, hoisted her into a sitting position and stuck the glass to her lips.

"How dare you!" Helene protested, rather feebly as her head was reeling from the sudden movement. She tasted the drink. It was as vile as it looked.

"Drink every drop," Rees commanded.

"Why are you plaguing me?" she moaned.

"I've a new idea for the second act," he said.

Some women might think his excitement was adorable, the way his eyes were gleaming with exhilaration.

"It came from something you said last night, about the tenor aria in The White Elephant."

Helene had given up the battle and was struggling her way through the glass. At the end she pushed him away and flopped back onto her bed. She felt worse, if that was possible. "Go away," she said. "Please."

A footman staggered in carrying pails of steaming water, followed by a second with a tin hipbath. "Bit of a pity having to carry it all the way up here," Rees remarked. "I've had water piped into the water closet off my bedchamber, Helene. You'll have to take a look."

Helene covered her eyes and wondered whether she could have slipped into a long bad dream, without noticing. How could her husband think that she would overlook the presence of his mistress in her bedchamber and merrily investigate the plumbing arrangements? Maybe she was dreaming all of this, and she would wake up back in her own bed. But if it was a dream, why was her head hurting so?

Although... she had to admit... the pain seemed to be receding slightly.

"Do you need some help getting into the bath?" Rees said, looking perfectly prepared to jerk her from her covers and toss her into a steaming tub of water.

"No," she said wearily, managing to get her feet on the ground. "Get out of here, Rees."

"I'll wait for you downstairs," he said.

"I refuse to work on your score. I need fresh air."

"Where are you going to get that? You do remember that this house hasn't a garden to speak of, don't you?"

"I'll go to Hyde Park in a closed carriage," Helene said, abruptly remembering that all of London thought she was in Bath, taking the waters. "But I'm not sitting down at the piano, Rees, so you can just forget that idea."

"We'll go for a walk then," he said with unimpaired good humor. "Excellent notion. I can sing you the aria while we're strolling."

Helene put her head in her hands. "Out," she said hollowly. "Out, out, out!"

"I like your hair this morning," her husband said, giving her a wicked smile. "Especially the bit on top. The rooster crest is a nice effect."

"Out!" Helene said, lurching to her feet and glaring at him.

An hour later she trailed down the stairs, still feeling like a despairing heroine from one of Rees's operas, albeit one dressed in an exquisite blue walking costume that likely cost as much as a whole chorus's worth of Quaker costumes.

Rees was sitting at the harpsichord. He got up as soon as she entered. "The carriage is waiting and I've told Cook to pack a hamper, as you haven't yet eaten."

"I couldn't," Helene said faintly.

"Then I'll eat it," he said with a shrug.

"I had no idea that this part of Hyde Park existed," Helene said with fascination, a short time later. The grasses to either side of the little winding path had grown so tall that they touched the slouching limbs of the huge oaks. Daisies poked their heads above the seas of grasses like intrepid soldiers, fighting off nettles and thistles growing breast high.

"I've never met another soul here," Rees said. "All the polite sort prefer raked gravel paths."

Sometimes the oak trees bent down as if they'd been humbled, brushing their branches to the ground, and then suddenly they would fall back, leaving a patch of emerald grass, or a cascade of daisies. Twenty minutes later, Helene could no longer hear any din from the city at all, no sound of carriages, bells, or shouts. "It's like being in the country," she said, awed.

They rounded the bend and the trees trailed off again, forming another clearing. "How lovely," she said, walking into the middle of a lake of frothy white flowers shaped like stars and stooping to pick herself a flower or two.

When she glanced back, Rees was still standing on the path, his face unreadable. The sun fell relentlessly on his harsh face, on the lines around his eyes, the scowling eyebrows, the generous lower lip, those two dimples...

And Helene realized with a great thump of her heart that she'd never gotten over that first infatuation with him, that first blinding passion that had driven her out her bedchamber window and into his carriage, the better to make their way to Gretna Green.

She almost dropped the flowers she held, the realization was so blinding.

When Rees appeared at her side, hamper in hand and plopped himself onto the grass, squashing a hundred starflowers as he did so, Helene couldn't even bring herself to speak. She'd spent nine years telling herself that the brief infatuation that led to their elopement was a dream, a moment's blindness.

But it wasn't. Oh, it wasn't.

Numbly she helped Rees pull a tablecloth from the basket and load it with pieces of chicken, pie, fruit, and a bottle of wine.

She refused a glass of wine. "Hair of the dog," Rees said, "and very nice hair it is." He grinned at her. He had a chicken leg in his hand and was eating it like a savage. And he "had that wicked look about him again, the one that made her think about the muscles hidden by his white shirt.

To her surprise, Helene found that she was hungry. She put a plate of chicken on her knee and began struggling to cut it properly.

"Don't bother," Rees said lazily. He was lying on his side, looking twice as comfortable in a bed of flowers as he did in a drawing room. "Just eat it, Helene."

She looked at him with disdain. "I don't eat with my fingers. I discarded that habit in the nursery."

"Who's to see? There's only you and I, and we're nothing more than an old married couple."

Old married couple implied comfort and ease, and she didn't feel any of that with Rees, particularly with the secret prickling awareness she had of his body. He had removed his jacket and rolled up his sleeves and one bronzed arm lay all too close to her. "It seems to me that you are always removing your clothing," she told him, eyeing him with distinct hostility. How dare he be so comfortable, while she was both overheated and hungry? Her beautiful little blue jacket felt altogether winterish with the sun shining on her back.

In answer, he sat up. Helene edged back. Rees was overpowering at close quarters. "Here," he said simply, holding the chicken leg to her lips.

"I couldn't!" But she hadn't eaten all day. Her stomach gave a little gurgle.

Rees laughed. "Go ahead. There's no one to see."

"You're here," she said mulishly.

"I don't count," he said, giving her an oddly intent look. "That's one of the nicer things about being married, I always thought."

She took a bite. The chicken was delicious, faintly reminiscent of lemon. "It's exquisite," she admitted, taking another bite.

"I pay my cook extremely well," Rees said, ripping off a little strip of chicken and bringing it to her lips.

There was a dark, velvety something in his voice that made the little coil in Helene's stomach grow tighter.

But he drew back. "My idea is that I'll stage the second act not in the Puritan village, but in the court," he said. "You see, the Princess has left her beloved, Captain Charteris, behind. I'm thinking of adding a subplot in which the captain is being wooed by another lady."

"So the captain would be the focus of the act?"

Rees nodded. "I had an idea for a tenor solo. I took the words from the solo Fen wrote for the little Quaker girl who's in love with the Prince."

"I don't know how you keep all these lovers apart," Helene said, amused.

"See what you think," he said abruptly. And then he began to sing. "Love, you're the brightest of bubbles, out of the gold of the wine. Love, you're the gleam of a wonderful dream, foolish and sweet and divine!" Rees had a pure baritone that washed over her with as much potency as that brandy she had drunk the night before. And his music was wonderful: light, foolish, unutterably heartwarming.

Helene put the plate to the side and leaned back on her hands. Rees was watching her as he sang, which made her feel edgy, so she closed her eyes and tried to concentrate on the music. He was using too many long portamento phrases: it would sound mawkish in a tenor range, though it was lovely in Rees's warm baritone. Somehow, without the drive of the last nine years to prove to Rees that she was intelligent, she couldn't think of another critique.

"Come with me, come, come to the ball," Rees sang. The sunlight was warm on her eyelids. "Flow'rs and romances fade with the day. Come in your beauty, fair as a rose... At the ball! At the ball!" There was a finely tuned urgency in his voice, in the notes, a siren call that to miss the ball was to miss life, to miss love, to miss everything golden and beautiful.

Helene had to swallow a lump in her throat.

Now he'd reached the coda: his voice was deeper now, and slower, rather sleepy, but there was still that sense of deep urgency: "Come, Come, Come to the ball... Romances fade with the opening of day... Come, Come, Come to the ball!"

She didn't open her eyes when he finished, letting the emotion of it sweep through her, really enjoying Rees's music for the first time in years. Then the bright gold behind her eyelids darkened as his body blocked the sun. "Have I put you to sleep?"

At that, her eyes flew open, and she knew they were drenched and she didn't even care. "It was lovely."

He put a hand on her cheek. "Tears?"

She smiled, but the smile wobbled. "It was just so lovely. I've-I've missed your voice." She closed her eyes instinctively on seeing the look in his eyes and then his mouth was touching hers tentatively, just a brushing of lips.

How could she have forgotten how much she loved his kisses before they married? During her debutante year, they spent all the time they could retreating to the corners of ballrooms and talking of music, finding a piano and running through one of his compositions, and finally, when she knew him well enough, one of her compositions. And throughout it all, there was the thrilling matter of a kiss or two, stolen behind doors, taken in secret.

As to why they were so secret, who can tell? Her father was ecstatic that the heir to an earldom had formed an attachment to his gawky, plain daughter. "Why did we elope?" she asked now, weaving her fingers through his hair.

"I wanted you," Rees answered.

He was merely brushing his lips across hers. Helene hoped he wasn't thinking about how loudly she had proclaimed that kissing was disgusting, once it became associated with all the humiliation and pain of actual bedding.

Before those ugly times, before they eloped, her heart would become shallow and rapid at the mere sight of his mouth, and she dreamed of the moments he caught her behind a door and gave her a hard kiss. Those were the kisses of a boy, a boy without finesse and experience... at the time she thought he was the most potent and sophisticated lover who ever lived.

"Give me a real kiss, Rees," she said.