"If I were the cook in this lovely establishment?"

"No!" she giggled and he had to kiss her for the impudence of it.

"If I were a mere country gentleman, living on an estate-because I do

have an estate, Lina. And rather more than one maid, I promise you that."

"Estates have nothing to do with it," she said and there was a distinct chill in her voice. "I'm not interested in marriage."

"Not even to me?"

He looked down at her in the light of the one whale oil lamp that lit the

back of the inn, and Lina's heart felt as if it turned over. Tom was so inexpressibly dear. And so beautiful too, with his dimples and deep-set eyes, and the masculine strength of him that made her feel-well, he wasn't at all like her ethereal, spiritual father. It was hard to believe that they were both vicars, to tell the truth.

"Perhaps if you weren't a vicar," she said reluctantly.

He dropped a kiss on her lips. "I love you."

Lina blushed, and she hadn't blushed in three years. "You're a fool, to

be sure," she muttered, brushing away his hands. "Now, shall we find Mrs.

Fishpole, or not?" Without waiting for an answer she marched back through the dingy door into the kitchen. Tom strode after her. He entered the kitchen to find Lina with her hands on her hips and an air of command that he'd never witnessed on her face before. "You'll tell me Mrs. Fishpole's direction immediately," she was saying in a clear voice, "or it will be the worse for you."

"Pshaw!" Sigglet said, and spat on the ground for emphasis.

Lina opened her mouth and sang one high, ear-piercing note.

"God in heaven!" Sigglet gasped. The glass in his hand shattered. Splatters of red wine joined the grease clinging to his beard and hair.

"I wish to know Mrs. Fishpole's direction in London," Lina said conversationally, "or I shall stroll into your public room and give a free performance. Do I make myself absolutely clear, Mr. Sigglet?"

He was eyeing her with a kind of malice that made Tom step closer. Sigglet's eyes shifted to him, and Tom eased back his cloak, the better to give Sigglet an unadorned view of his muscled body.

"She lives in Whitechapel, on Halcrow Street," he gabbled. "I don't know the number, so you can break all the glasses in the house before I can tell you."

"No need," Lina said with a tranquil smile. "We shall find out the house ourselves, thank you very much, Mr. Sigglet."

She turned to leave, Tom protectively at her heels. Then she paused at the door. Sigglet had taken to swigging wine straight from the bottle.

"I did want to tell you," she said sweetly, "that I fear a little glass may have flown into your soup. Although"-she eyed the gray water with distaste-"it may add flavor."

Sigglet curled his lip. "Complaints! All I ever gets is complaints!"

Tom pulled Lina out the door.

Chapter Thirty-one.

Lessons in Love... and Rage.

They seemed to have lost the others. Rees wanted Helene to see Roubiliac's statue of Handel, so they had left Esme and her husband watching Indian jugglers. There was a stiffness in Lord Bonnington's behavior toward Rees that made Helene quite uncomfortable although Rees, characteristically, didn't appear to have noticed. To her relief, Tom had whisked Lina off to another area of Vauxhall.

"I simply can't get over the fact that your brother shows no disinclination to-" but Helene stopped, realizing that it was hardly polite to point out just why a vicar might not wish to wander Vauxhall with a fallen woman. Under the circumstances.

But Rees, naturally, waded directly into the subject. "My brother is showing a striking desire to shepherd Lina from place to place. All with the purest of motives, naturally."

"It seems odd for a vicar," Helene commented.

"Perhaps he's bent on reforming her. Actually, I'm not sure Tom ever really wanted to be a vicar. My father had him staked out for the church before he could walk, and he did seem suited to the task. But now he seems changed."

"Do you think that he might give up the profession?"

"Hard to tell. The whole piety and charity business comes naturally to him."

"He's a good man," Helene said with reproof in her voice.

"Exactly," Rees replied, unperturbed. "A far better man than I."

"You're a good man too," she said, slipping her hand under his arm. Then she looked up to find him grinning at her.

"Is this my shrewish wife speaking? Wife? Wife? Wherefore art thou? A changeling has taken your place!"

"All right," she said, with an answering smile. "You're a horrible person who occasionally has good moments. Most of which take place at the piano "

"I'm learning," he said. "I have a great deal to learn."

"What do you mean?" They were approaching a large hedge, from within which emerged the sounds of an orchestra tuning its instruments.

"Handel is inside," Rees said, steering Helene toward an arch cut in the shrubbery, "likely shuddering at the sounds around him. I'm afraid that the Vauxhall Orchestra is not going to achieve fame any time soon."

"But what did you mean by learning?" Helene persisted. "Are you thinking in a musical sense?"

"No," he said. And showed no inclination to continue.

Helene let him seat her on a marble bench before the statue, and then said, "Honest to goodness, Rees, you must be the most frustrating conversationalist alive! What on earth did you mean by that comment?"

"Something Tom said to me."

Rees sprawled out next to her on the bench, muscled thighs clearly outlined by snug pantaloons, his arms carelessly flung on the back of the bench. Helene quickly looked away from his legs. The very sight of them-and the memory of him standing over her in the pasture, quite unclothed-made her feel hot and prickly.

"Yes?" she said encouragingly. Unfortunately, her gaze had alit on his hands, and that made her think of the way his fingers curved around her breast, and the way he bent his head to the same place, kissing her almost-almost reverently. She shifted uneasily in her seat. It was mortifying to be looking forward to Rees's daily bedding. That couldn't be the case. She must be delusional.

"Well?" she snapped, suddenly irritated. "Either you're learning or you're not. Out with it!"

He turned to her, distinctly amused. The dimples in his cheeks had deepened and there was laughter in his eyes. Other people might have called his face expressionless, but she- Helene took a deep breath. "Rees?" she said between clenched teeth.

"My father handily arranged his sons into two categories," he said, dropping his head back so that he could look up into the wilderness of black tree limbs curling into the night sky above them. "I was the sinner, and Tom the saint."

"Well, that seems fairly acute of him," Helene said a bit snappishly.

"Yes, but I begin to think I am less of a reprobate than he believed," Rees said. "I find it rather tedious, to tell the truth, Helene."

"Sinning?" she asked, disbelieving.

"Yes, sinning. And I begin to think that Tom is finding the saintly life just as tedious," Rees continued.

"Well, I certainly don't see any sign of your finding your life tedious!" Helene said, and then wished she could take the words back. He was watching her, so she carefully examined Handel's booted, marble toes.

"I don't find it tedious when I'm with you," he said suddenly.

Helene had to suppress a smile. "We hardly engage in sinning," she pointed out.

"That's just it," he said, and his hand began tangling in the little wisps of hair at the back of her neck.

Helene looked straight ahead, unable to turn her neck and see his expression.

He stood up, and his tone was utterly normal, as if he hadn't said something that turned her world upside down. "Shall we take a promenade?"

Helene rose and took his arm. They walked for a time in silence until he said, "I didn't mean to bring our conversation to a standstill with a disconcerting revelation. Lord knows, my father was probably right."

There was something tired in his voice that made her stumble into speech.

"Do you think that-that you might, that some of your actions during our marriage might have been due..." her voice trailed off.

"No question," he replied. "I eloped with you rather than get married in a proper fashion, in order to irritate my father although I've only recently come to understand this. And Helene, sometimes I think your exit in a coach and the Russian dancers who then graced the dining room table were directed to the same man."

Helene bit her lip. "We were not happy together, and that had little to do with your father."

"I was a bastard about it, though," he said. "I had no idea how to talk without being insulting. No one in my family simply talked. We still don't."

There was something in his crooked smile that made her heart ache, so she tried to think of a light, clever thing to say. And came up empty. "Shall we turn here?" she finally asked, in desperation.

The walk into which they turned seemed much dimmer than the one they had traversed; the gaslights strung in the trees were few and far between now, and shadows stretched like sleeping beasts across the path.

"This is Lovers' Walk," Rees said.

"Oh," Helene said faintly. They walked on, until they hadn't met anyone for at least ten minutes. The din of the Gardens proper seemed very far away now, and the orchestra couldn't be heard at all. Suddenly there was a popping noise and great flowering bursts of color splayed over their head.

"We can watch the fireworks from here," Rees remarked, pulling her into a

little recessed alcove graced with a marble bench.

He sat down next to her and bent his dark head back to watch lights burst and tumble in the sky. Helene watched him instead, until he turned and met her steady gaze.

"I haven't bedded you today," he said, in an absolutely conversational tone, as if they were discussing the weather.

Helene gasped and looked quickly down the path. "Don't say such a thing out loud!" she scolded. "What if someone heard you?"

"So what?" Rees grinned. "I'll bet I'm not the only man thinking hungrily about bedding his wife."

Helene's face was hot. He was hungry for her. That was an... interesting thought. No one had ever been hungry for her before.

Rees took off her loo mask and pushed back the hood of her cloak. The night air felt like a caress on her cheeks. Over his shoulder the London sky flew with sparks, as if the great fire of '66 had come again, as if a conflagration of huge proportions had seized the sky and was making kindling of the clouds.