She would see Anna, Emily thought. And Anna would see how happy she was. She had been so worried that London was not at all the place for her youngest sister.

"And all my family too" Lord Quinn said. "Doris and my sister are already in town. Luke will come from Bow-den and Ashley will come from Penshurst."

Emily's insides performed a complete and uncomfortable somersault.

"You may think it quite unseemly at the age of fifty, Emily," Aunt Marjorie said, patting Emily's arm with her free hand, "'but 'tis going to be the happiest day of my life."

Ashley would come from Penshurst. As soon as the banns had been called. For the wedding. Within a month. She would see him again.

Ashley would come.

Emily closed her eyes and rested her head against the cushions. Her eyes ached. Did other people's ears ache from incessant conversation the way her eyes sometimes did? She longed suddenly for solitude and the sweet, undemanding companionship of nature.

But she had stepped out of that life into the real world. She had come to enjoy herself. She wasenjoying herself.

She opened her eyes determinedly and smiled, first at Lord Quinn and then at Aunt Marjorie, both of whom were regarding her silently but rather intently.

Ashley would come.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

There was no separate breakfast parlor at Penshurst. All meals were taken in the huge dining room, with its gilded paneled walls and its coved and painted ceiling. The massive oak table had been made especially for the room.

Ashley sat in lone state at the head of the table, eating his breakfast and reading his mail. There was nothing from Bowden. He had leafed through the pile first to ascertain that. Of course, the news, if and when it came, might not come from Bowden. She had gone to London with Lady Sterne. Luke had already mentioned that in an earlier letter. Emmy in London, with the very sociable Lady Sterne. It was difficult to imagine. Poor Emmy!

He had been at Penshurst for almost three weeks. She would probably know by now, or at least suspect. Would she tell anyone immediately? Would she even understand? Emmy was such a curious mixture of wisdom and innocence that it was impossible to know.

But the suspense was weighing heavily on him. And he could not at all decide if he wanted it to be so or not. Emmy with child-with his child-and forced after all to marry him.

Part of him hoped fervently that it would not happen. He did not want her in that way, and he did not want her forced into doing something she so clearly did not want to do. But part of him wished that she would be forced into allowing him to do the decent thing.

And part of him longed just for her, for her closeness, her companionship, her unconventionality, her-but he could never put into words exactly what it was about her that he longed for.

And part of him longed for a child. Son or daughter-it would not matter. A child of his own body. His first.

There was a letter from London, but it was from his uncle Theo and not from Lady Sterne. Theo would hardly be the one elected to send for him. Sometimes he considered going on his own. To London. It was the Season. He was newly returned to England. It would be easy to excuse his going there for a week or two. Just to see that she was in good health and good spirits. Just to see if she needed him.

He had always been the one to need her, not the other way around, he realized. It was quite the contrary to what an outside observer might have been led to believe. Emmy had always been the strong one, the independent one. Right to the end.

He looked down at his uncle's bold handwriting when he had broken the seal of the letter. He read the short note twice and then smiled and chuckled. The old rogue! It was an open family secret that Theo and Lady Sterne had been lovers for as far back as Ashley could remember. Finally they were to be married. And they were not going to creep quietly off to the nearest clergyman with a special license.

They were going to have a grand wedding at that most fashionable of all London churches, St. George's, in the presence of as many members of the fashionable world as could be packed within its pews.

He wished them well. He had no doubt that they would be happy together. They knew each other well enough-in all possible ways, Ashley did not doubt. It would never be said of them that they had rushed into marriage after a mere few weeks of acquaintance. The smile faded from Ashley's face.

And then the implication of what he had read struck him.

The letter was more than an announcement. It was an invitation.

Ashley folded the paper and set it down. He drummed his fingers slowly on it. He had told himself that he would not go to London.

She would not wish to see him. There was work to do here-he was still in the process of getting to know his new estate and of gradually taking charge of its administration. And there were invitations to honor from the neighbors who had been calling on him.

But the temptation to go had been strong even before the arrival of Theo's invitation. He found the house oppressive despite its still very new splendor. It was a feminine house. There were signs of Alice in every flounced drapery and every frilled cushion, in every delicate landscape painting and in every porcelain ornament. He was reminded powerfully of how she had transformed his own very comfortable home in India and of how she had raged against his habit of leaving books and garments and snuffboxes lying around.

And here at Penshurst there was one particular set of rooms that drew him like a magnet though he hated setting foot inside them. And yet he found himself unable to give the order to have them cleared out.

Alice's rooms, still full of her personal possessions, still with the distinctive perfume she had always worn clinging to the clothes in the wardrobes.

If only she had died naturally, he had thought one day, standing in the middle of her sitting room, his eyes tightly closed, or if only she had died in an accident for which he could not possibly feel personal blame, perhaps he would not feel so fettered by all this. She had been no wife to him. She had never even tried to deny that she had lovers.

She had given birth to a red-haired child fourteen months after the only time she could possibly have conceived the child with him. She had told him they would be from home the night of the fire.

But nothing he had been able to say to himself in more than a year of mental torment had ever been able to convince him that he must not blame himself. While they were at home alone, dying in that fire, he had been taking re-heated and delighted pleasure in the bed of a married woman-ironically his only foray into adultery.

And so, as Roderick Cunningham had predicted, he punished himself with the house which almost breathed her presence-and longed for an excuse to be away from it.

There was another reason for wanting to be in London. An illogical reason, perhaps merely the exchange of one form of self-punishment for another. Lady Verney, his closest neighbor, had called on him with a couple of other neighbors. She was a lady of late middle age.

She talked of her son and daughter, both of whom were in London for the Season. She referred to them several times as Henry and Barbara. He had dreaded meeting Sir Henry Verney- Alice's lover, the man she had loved almost fanatically, Verney, Ashley believed, had blighted her life. If she had not loved him, if he had not for some reason abandoned her, perhaps she would not have been so driven by self-hatred. For that was what had motivated Alice. He was convinced of it. Though he had often hated her, he had pitied her too.

He did not want to meet Verney, he had thought. And yet now, finding the man absent, he discovered that part of his reason for coming here must have been to see Verney, to try to piece together exactly what had happened here five years or so ago, to try to wrest some meaning out of the turbulent events of the past three years. He was still seeking that peace he had blindly sought on his return, he realized, though with his rational mind he knew that he would never find it. He was too wrapped about with his own sin and guilt.

His steward was doing a quite capable job on the estate, even though Ashley had his own ideas for change and improvement. And the housekeeper and butler were managing the house perfectly well. His neighbors would understand his reason for canceling or postponing his promised visits. There was no reason not to go to Theo's wedding.

And if he went, he would escape the house for a while. He would be able to call upon the Verneys. And he would see Emmy.

He would see Emmy. He rested his hand flat on his uncle's letter and closed his eyes. He could picture her sitting cross-legged on the soaked grass at Bowden, the front of her dress dark with wetness and clinging to her, her bare feet covered with grass, her hair loose and untidy and damp and brushing the ground behind her. She was frowning in concentration and touching her fingertips to his throat.

He could hear her strange, low, curiously attractive voice saying yass.

Emmy. He would see her if he went to London- whenhe went.

There was really nothing to decide. He could not possibly absent himself from the wedding. And he had no wish to do so.

He would see her again.

It was a warm night, fortunately. She had hoped for it for all of the week past, a week during which the weather had been cloudy and somewhat chilly. But tonight was perfect. There were moonlight and starlight to sparkle off the surface of the River Thames as they crossed it by boat. She raised her face to the light for a few moments and was aware of the vast mystery of the universe.

And then they stepped out of the boat-Viscount Burdett took her hand and held it firmly and smiled at her while Lord Quinn helped Aunt Marjorie and the Earl of Weims helped Doris. A few moments later they were standing inside the entrance to Vauxhall Gardens, and she was looking around at the place she had been told about and had dreamed of seeing. The famous pleasure gardens, the great rival of Ranelagh Gardens, which she also longed to see. Both were said to be magical by night.

To their right, extending away into the distance, was a long colonnade with an arched, Gothic roof, hung with golden and red lamps. Ahead were the trees she had heard about, the grove, and the numerous shady walks. The trees were hung with festoons of lamps.

Along the wide central path, farther in among the trees, she could see a brighter blaze of light. That would be the rotunda, the place where orchestras played and famous singers performed and people danced, the place where the more wealthy patrons sat in boxes and ate and drank while they enjoyed the spectacles around them. Viscount Burdett had hired a box there to-night.

"Lady Emily." Her arm was resting on his satin sleeve. He touched his fingers briefly to hers. "Do you find it pleasing?"

It was magical, spectacular. It was hard to believe that this was a park, with trees and grass, with sky above. She wondered briefly what it must be like in the daytime, when there would be no lamplight to mask reality, or what it would be like with the lamps unlit and all the crowding masses gone. But she pushed the thought aside. She did not want to know.

She smiled dazzlingly at the man who had conversed with her at several balls during the past weeks and had called upon her at Aunt Marjorie's and walked with her in the Mall of St. James's Park. He was the most constant among a startlingly large number of gentlemen who paid her attention wherever she went. She did not know what the attraction was, unless perhaps there was novelty in paying court to a woman who could only smile and nod no matter how outrageous their compliments or how tedious their conversation. Almost always there was a group of them, who spoke with one another and did not therefore find her silence tedious. The crowds also released her from the necessity of concentrating every moment of every evening on other people's lips.

Lord Quinn said the attraction was that she was the loveliest young lady in London-or in England, for that matter. Emily laughed at him. Aunt Marjorie said it was that she sparkled and doubled her beauty with each smile. Emily laughed at her.

The almost reckless sense of freedom and gaiety that had taken her in its grip as soon as Aunt Marjorie had made her unexpected proposition in the garden at Bowden had not released her in the weeks since. She had not lived until now, she told herself. She was happy. And she knew now that she would never have to relinquish that freedom and that happiness. She had been a little afraid for herself when she learned that Aunt Marjorie was to marry Lord Quinn. But both had assured her that they had every intention of staying in London until the end of the Season and that then they would probably travel and wanted her to go with them. A lady needed more company than a man could provide, Lord Quinn had said. Gentlemen needed sometimes to be alone, Aunt Marjorie had said, as did ladies. But ladies did not have the freedom that men did to be quite alone. They needed companions. She would need Emily.

They were sitting in their box at the rotunda a few minutes after their arrival. They were just in time to watch the ballet, the viscount explained. He had deliberately chosen a night when there would be visual entertainment for Lady Emily as well as just music. She smiled at him. But before the ballet began, some gentlemen called at their box to pay their respects to her and to try to guess what message she was sending tonight by the design and positioning of the black patch she wore on one cheek. There had been much hilarity last night over the small heart she had worn close to the corner of her mouth.

Tonight she wore a star high on her cheekbone, near the outer corner of her eye. There was no message, of course, but it amused her to see how inventive the gentlemen could be and how much they enjoyed themselves at her expense. She always laughed with them. Sometimes she even stopped listening and looked about her instead. They did not seem to notice her inattention. None of them, she realized, though she never dwelled on the thought, were really interested in her. None of them knew her or realized they did not. She did not care.

She was laughing and tapping Mr. Maddox on one arm after he suggested that she was Venus and was rivaling the stars in brightness when someone else joined the group. Someone who made her insides jump even before she looked at him. She had known he was coming to London, of course, but she had not known that he had arrived.

Still, she told herself, she should have been prepared.

Fortunately she was locked safely inside the mask she had chosen to wear since her arrival in London. She turned her dazzling smile on him.

Unlike every other man present, he wore no wig. Neither was his hair powdered, as hers was. His hair, correctly rolled at the sides, neatly tied back, and bagged in black silk behind, looked startlingly dark. His face was still thinner than it should have been, angular, ascetic, handsome. He was dressed in dark blue velvet, a contrast to the pastel-shaded silks and satins of the other gentlemen.

It had been less than a month. It seemed an eternity. It was difficult to believe that those events at Bowden had really happened. She had come to feel that they had happened to a different person, someone who was no longer herself.

"Hello, Emmy," he said. His eyes were soft on her, though he did not really smile.

She raised her fan to her nose and kept her eyes sparkling. He turned to greet his sister and the other occupants of the box, then accepted an invitation to step inside and seated himself between Aunt Marjorie and Lord Quinn.

"Egad," one of her followers said just as she turned her eyes on him, "someone who has been granted the privilege of addressing you familiarly. Shall I call him out, Lady Emily? Or shall I put a bullet through my brain?"

Emily tapped him sharply on the arm.

"Do you not know Lord Ashley Kendrick, Max?" Viscount Burdett said. "Harndon's brother?"

"Ah," the other young man said. "Merely family. I will live on to hope, then." He held one hand theatrically over his heart.

But there were too many participating in the conversation. It was too dizzying to try to watch the right one. And they had nothing important to say. Emily smiled brightly and looked around her- everywhere except at him.

"If you will pardon us," Viscount Burdett said, taking Emily's hand and setting it on his sleeve again, "the ballet is about to begin. I would appreciate it if my invited guests could watch the dancing unobstructed."

The other gentlemen all grumbled good-naturedly and moved off.

Emily looked at Lord Burdett, who pointed at the orchestra. They were tuning their instruments. She had never seen ballet, and had been looking forward to it. She directed her eyes at the stage and resisted the urge to remove her hand from the viscount's arm.

Ashley had moved to Aunt Marjorie's other side, so that he was in the far corner of the box. He leaned back in his chair rather than forward as most people were doing as they waited for the performance to begin. He was watching her. She did not turn her head by even a fraction of an inch, but she had felt his every move.

And she felt his eyes.

Something inside her threatened to crumble. Everything that she had built so determinedly and so eagerly during the past weeks. She was not going to let it happen. It was herself she had created since coming to London-her free and happy self. She refused to crawl back into misery and slavery to a love that had held her in thrall for eight years and had brought her precious few moments of happiness. She was happy with this new life. More than happy.

She realized suddenly, with something of a jolt, that the ballet was in progress and had been for some time. Her eyes had watched it but had seen nothing at all. She thought for one moment that her smile had slipped, but it had not. She turned it briefly on the viscount and he returned it and touched her hand again with his free one.

The visual spectacle of the ballet was magnificent. It was music for the eyes. The dancers moved with precision and grace to a silent melody. For a short while she felt the same connection she did when she was alone with nature.

But she also felt Ashley watching her.

He had arrived in London late in the morning and had called upon his uncle just an hour later. Ashley was staying at Harndon House, which had been opened in imminent expectation of the duke's arrival with his family. Luke had written to invite him to stay there, and after a brief hesitation he had accepted. He would not cower from his family like a whipped schoolboy. What was past was past-as far as his relations with his family were concerned, anyway.

His uncle had pumped his hand and slapped his shoulder and shown every sign of being delighted to see him. Ashley had wondered if the invitation had been a mere courtesy, if perhaps they would have preferred it if he had refused. He must pay his respects to Lady Sterne without delay, he was told, but the gels-his uncle's quite inappropriate word for his betrothed and Emmy-were to attend a private garden party during the afternoon. They were all going to Vauxhall that evening, though, as guests of Viscount Burdett. Ashley must come too-his uncle would send around to Burdett's to make the arrangements.

A note was delivered to Harndon House later in the day expressing the viscount's wish that Lord Ashley Kendrick would honor him by being one of his guests for the evening.

Who the devil was Viscount Burdett? Ashley wondered. And he wondered too if Emmy was one of his guests. But she must be, he reasoned, if Lady Sterne was to be there. Poor Emmy. He did not like the thought of her being dragged about to all the social entertainments. She would not like them.

He found himself aching to see her again. To see what he had done to her. She must have felt obliged to take herself away from Bowden and away from her brother and sisters for a while, he mused, and so she had come here, to exactly the wrong place for someone like Emmy. He expected to find her lost and wan and listless. Perhaps she would be ready to listen to another marriage offer. He was not particularly happy at Penshurst, but he could offer her countryside there, hills, a river, trees.

He went alone to Vauxhall and found his way to Viscount Burdett's box. He was not the first to arrive. He spotted Doris and Weims. The other occupants were blocked from his view by the press of men in front of the box. It was only as he drew closer that he saw what the attraction was--or who.

She looked much as she had looked at Luke's ball- fashionable, elegant, and quite extraordinarily beautiful. Except that there she had not worn cosmetics. Or a small black patch placed just where it would draw attention to her eyes. And there, though she had smiled and shone with delight at the occasion and at her first minuet, she had not been exuberant and laughing and-coquettish. She was tapping some foppish-looking gentleman in lavender on the arm and drawing to herself all the foolery of flattery and mindless gallantry.

Burdett-it must be he, Ashley figured-who sat beside her, looked like the cat who had drunk the cream or caught the canary or some such cliche. Emmy was flirting with the lot of them.

Ashley's first instinct, thankfully contained, was to lash about him with his fists.

She became aware of him. He expected her smile to soften on him.

She had refused to marry him, but they had parted on affectionate terms. He remembered that last hour they had spent together, both rashly sitting on the soaked grass, almost knee to knee, while she learned to speak her first word. And he remembered too that at the ball he had known as soon as he looked into her eyes that she was Emmy.

Her eyes-her very shallow eyes-continued to sparkle as she smiled at him and raised her fan to her nose. She looked wonderfully happy.

But her smile chilled him. She did not look like Emmy. He was sorry he had come. To Vauxhall. To London.

He entered the box and sat between his uncle and Lady Sterne after nodding to Doris and Weims and exchanging a few pleasantries with them. He congratulated Lady Sterne on her betrothal, kissed her hand, concentrated all his attention on her. But just as all the gentlemen clustered outside the box began to move away and the orchestra began to tune their instruments so that the ballet might begin, Lady Sterne leaned toward him and tapped him on the knee.

"I will change places with you if I may, dear boy," she said, "and sit next to Theo."

Ashley was briefly amused. The two of them had been lovers for twenty years or more and had always behaved with perfect good breeding in public, and yet it was important to them now to sit next to each other? He almost expected to see them linking hands. But his amusement soon waned. From the chair that Lady Sterne had occupied, he had no choice but to look across the box and see Emmy.

He might have turned his head, of course, to watch the ballet-it was rude to stare at one of the box's occupants. But he could not stop himself from doing just that.

She was watching the ballet, but she did not look absorbed, with the look of wonder he would have expected to see in her eyes. She still had the smile on her face, the coquettish smile that was not Emmy's at all. And her hand lay along Burdett's arm, her fingers splayed on his wide cuff. Her chin was lifted in a gesture of pride.

Was this what he had done to her?

He remembered-it was when he was dancing with her at Bowden-asking her if it was a disguise she wore or if that was what they had done to her. Have they tamed you and your heart has not cried out for the wild? he had asked her. Do they have you singing prettily here, like a linnet in a cage?