"I will not allow harm to come to you, Emmy," he said, not at all sure he was capable of keeping such a promise. He used signs along with the words. "I will always protect you, even with my life. Will you not trust me?"

Yes, she told him with a slight nod of the head.

"I do not like to see you frightened and vulnerable," he said. "I have come to see you as a woman of strong character and indomitable will, Emmy. I have come to believe that you are stronger than I. 'Twas seductively sweet to be able to comfort you tonight as you comforted me not so long ago. But I would rather take away the source of your fear if I might. Something happened this morning?''

No, she told him with a slow shaking of the head.

"But something mighthave happened?" he asked her. "You escaped from it?"

Still the shaking of her head. But her eyes told him this time that she was lying. Her eyes had become opaque- deliberately so. Why would she not tell him? Or even Luke? Was she afraid of causing trouble? Among neighbors, perhaps? Did she think it better to keep her secret and contain her fear as best she could? It would be so like Emmy to do that.

"I begin to realize," he said, "that I should have stayed in India, or that at least I should have come here and stayed away from Bowden.

You would have been happy, Emmy.You would have been preparing for your wedding to Powell.""

She sat up sharply, reached out a hand, and touched his knee. She was shaking her head. "No," she said. "No, Ahshley." He must not blame himself, her eyes and her hands told him. He must not blame himself.

"Well." He patted her hand. "Come then, Emmy. I will take you home."

No, she told him. No, she was going to stay here.

"All night?" he asked her, frowning.

"Yes."

He might have expected it, of course. Where would one expect Emmy to go if something had upset or frightened her? To where there was the comfort of other people? Certainly that had happened this morning-she had come running to him. But it was more likely that she would go running to the source of all that had brought serenity and happiness to a life that most people would have found impossibly difficult. Yes, it made sense when one knew Emmy to understand that she would spend this night up here in the hills rather than in the safety of her room at Penshurst.

"Very well." He curled his fingers about hers. "Then I will stay here with you, Emmy."

She did not argue. She got to her feet and drew him to his. She led him outside. As he had anticipated, the sky-was bright with moon and stars. The moon was shining in a bright band across the river below them. They stood outside the summer house for a long time, gazing at the sky and the land, holding hands until he released hers and set an arm loosely about her shoulders and she rested her head on his shoulder.

He wondered if the love she undoubtedly felt for him could possibly grow the one extra dimension. But it was not something deeply to be wished for, he supposed. He had not earned forgiveness and perhaps never would. His life was still full of darkness and perhaps always would be. He seemed to have been a blight on those he loved since his return from India and was perhaps incapable of ever bringing happiness to another person. Especially to Emmy.

Though of course, he knew, he must offer her marriage again. Once more there was the chance that she would be carrying his child. He did not know if he hoped more that she would accept him or that she would reject him.

But tonight was something of a time out of time. He turned his face into her hair and kissed the top of her head. She sighed. Tonight, he thought, she was in love with him because she had needed him and he had brought her comfort-and pleasure. He had never had a woman take that kind of pleasure from him before tonight. He had been awed by it. Tomorrow would be different. Tomorrow would bring back the safety of daylight and would be a new day. Tomorrow she would be strong again. She would love him in her own sweet, strong way again.

But tonight was a time out of time. A time to be silent and at peace.

Silent... Silence, he realized, was more than an absence of speech.

One could be silent and yet have one's mind so teeming with words that the silence was loud with inner noise. True silence involved a letting go of words, both spoken and thought. It involved abandoning oneself to one's senses. It involved... merely being.

He stood with Emily for a long time while the inner noise and turmoil gradually ceased their clamor and he became part of the beauty of the night with her. Part of the beauty of being.

"Let us go back inside," he said to her at last with a sigh, tipping her head back with a hand beneath her chin so that she would see his lips.

"Yes," she said.

He knew that she was consenting to a night of love. No frenzied reaching for comfort by either of them for the rest of the night.

Merely a mutual giving and taking. A night of love, even if tomorrow brought denial and a harsher reality.

As bad fortune would have it, Roderick Cunningham was wandering in the garden early in the morning and saw them returning, even though they had headed for the side door rather than the front entrance.

Ashley, who had an arm about Emily's waist, felt her tense and shrink against him. But it was impossible to cover up the truth. He tightened his arm reassuringly, kissed her swiftly on the lips, and opened the door for her.

"All will be well," he said quietly to her before she turned and disappeared up the stairs. "There is nothing to worry about."

Poor Emmy. He would have saved her from the embarrassment and humiliation if he could have. She would not realize, of course, that Rod was the soul of discretion. Ashley turned to look rather ruefully at his friend, who was smiling back at him.

"If there had been a tree to duck behind, Ash," he said, "I would have discreetly availed myself of its services. I trust you have had a good night's... sleep?"

Rod did not understand. "She had need of me," Ashley said more curtly than he had intended. "I do not know what happened yesterday. She does not frighten easily. Somethinghappened. We are not involved in any sordid affair."

Major Cunningham looked instantly contrite. "I never for one moment thought you were, Ash," he said. "She appears to be a sweet lady. Tis too bad she suffers from such an affliction. She has been unable to explain what it was that happened?"

"Not unable," Ashley said. "Unwilling. I mean to wring some answers from someone else today, though. It will mean deserting you for an hour or two this morning, Rod. I trust you can amuse yourself?" He grinned. "But help my brother and sister-in-law keep an eye on Emmy, if you will be so good."

" 'Twill be my pleasure," the major said. "She is relaxing on the eye, Ash. Perhaps she will confide in me. a virtual stranger. Does she have any means of communicating?"

"She can write," Ashley said.

"If I were you," his friend said, looking him up and down, "I would follow Lady Emily through that door, Ash. Imight believe that those clothes are suited to a morning ride, but I am remarkably gullible."

Ashley slapped him on the shoulder and laughed. "Right," he said.

"My brother is decidedly not."

He let himself in through the side door, looked about to make sure there was no one in sight, and ran up the stairs.

The Duke of Harndon was reclining comfortably on a nursery chair, watching his wife suckle his youngest son. He had been there for only a few minutes.

"All is well," he said. "They have returned."

"All is well!" She looked up and met his keen gray eyes. "Were we foolish, Luke, to agree to bring her here?"

"As I remember it, my dear," he said, raising his eyebrows, "Emily was invited to come here and accepted and we were invited and accepted. We did not bring her as we brought Joy and George, James and Harry."

"Oh, Luke," she said, "you know what I mean."

"I do." He rested his elbows on the arms of the chair and steepled his fingers. "But it has come to my notice, madam, that Emily is not one of our children. Or a child at all, in fact. And that Ashley is no longer a boy in need of my guidance and discipline. They are adults, both of them."

"But-," she began.

"We cannot bear the burdens of other adults on our own shoulders, my dear, much as we love them. I cannot escape from the conviction that Theo somehow maneuvered this- with his lady as an eager accomplice. And I cannot help wondering if they have not been wise.

There is something between those two, Anna, something they must work out between them. Happily, 'tis to be hoped."

"Oh, Luke," she said. "If only-"

"But we can do nothing," he said firmly. "Our son is going to grow fat if you continue to so indulge him."

She smiled fondly down at Lord Harry, who was sucking lustily.

"You have said that of each child," she said. "But none of them are fat."

"Given the fact that I have been envious of each of them at this stage of their existence, madam," he said, "perhaps I can be forgiven for indulging a little spite." She laughed.

Lady Verney wished to discuss her health and inquire after that of each of Ashley's house guests. Barbara Verney conversed about London and the entertainments of the Season in which she and her brother had participated. Sir Henry Verney sat silent except for uttering the barest of courtesies. Ashley turned to him at last. He, after all, was the object of this visit.

'"I wonder if I might have a private word with you," he said, "on a matter with which I would not wish to bore the ladies." He smiled at them and felt rather sorry for the insult to the intelligence of Miss Verney that his words had implied. She was a lady he liked and respected.

"La, if 'tis business you wish to discuss, Lord Ashley," Lady Verney said, "Henry will take you out into the garden or into the study. Such matters give me the headache."

Sir Henry suggested the garden, since the day was sunny and warm.

They strolled along a secluded path that took them about the perimeter of the small park. A couple of dogs-a collie and a terrier-were soon ambling at their heels and making the occasional detour among the trees to sniff at roots.

"It is the dogs who are the main attraction for Eric Smith," Sir Henry said. "There is one more in the stables with a litter of puppies.

The boy scarcely moved from them yesterday." It was his first attempt at conversation, though he was making no great effort to ingratiate himself, Ashley noticed. He was glad there was no pretense of friendship between them.

"Yesterday," he said quietly. "You were early at Binchley's cottage.

Did you encounter anyone on your way there?"

Sir Henry looked at him consideringly. "It is no idle question, is it?"

he said. "I cannot remember without giving the question concentrated thought if I met anyone or not. Is it important that I go through that process? Perhaps you would like to tell me whom you suppose I met."

"Lady Emily Marlowe," Ashley said. He watched his neighbor closely and despite himself felt sorry that he had come to Penshurst so burdened. If he had known nothing about this man before he came, they might have been friends. But then he might have been deceived in the friendship. Something had happened to Emmy yesterday.

"Ah." Sir Henry said no more for a while. His voice was decidedly chilly when he did speak. "I understand, Kendrick, as I understood when we were in London, that you are a jealous and a possessive man. I do not know if your claim to Lady Emily's affections is real or imaginary, but either way the lady has my sincerest sympathy. Have you confronted her too? Expressed your displeasure or your cold disapproval to her? Do you imagine that because I was abroad early and because she presumably was out too, we must therefore have enjoyed a clandestine meeting? And would my denial make any difference to these suspicions of yours?"

"Are you denying it?" Ashley asked.

"No," Sir Henry said. "Nor am I admitting it. Unless you can assure me that you are betrothed to the lady, Kendrick, or married to her, I do not recognize your right to question either her movements or mine in relation to her. I was prepared to welcome you to this part of Kent with all the courtesy and even amiability due a neighbor and possible friend. I believe that you absolved me of any such obligation the last time we met in London."

They were trading civil insults. The thought of becoming openly uncivil was markedly unpleasant, especially in broad daylight and in the civilized surroundings of Verney's park. But Ashley had come for answers. He remembered the night before and the desperation in Emily that had drawn him into a repetition of his indiscretion at Bowden. "I am neither married to Lady Emily nor betrothed to her,"

he said. "But I will protect her, as I hope I would protect any lady, from harm and from terror. Moreover, she is a guest in my home. I mean to discover what happened to her yesterday morning. I need to know to what extent you assaulted her." It was as well to call a spade a spade.

"Terror? Assault?" Sir Henry had stopped walking and stood facing Ashley, with a coldness and a tension in his manner to match Ashley's own. "I am a gentleman, sir. By my life, instinct directs me to slap a glove in your face, since clearly you believe I have been responsible for both. Good sense, however, tells me that perhaps I should answer your earlier question after all. No, I did not meet or even set eyes on Lady Emily Marlowe yesterday morning. I have not seen her since I walked in the garden with her at Lady Bryant's ball."

Ashley stared hard at him while the dogs circled them, obviously eager for them to move onward. Dammit, Ashley thought, he believed the man. And yet he surely could not expect an instant admission even if he were guilty. Verney's open, honest face was perhaps his greatest asset. Alice must have trusted it, after all. "I must accept your word as a gentleman," he said.

"But with the greatest reluctance," Sir Henry said, lifting one eyebrow, "and with only a grain of trust. Very well, then. But I am sorry in my heart that something appears to have happened to upset Lady Emily. If she is unable to tell you the cause of her terror, then I can understand your concern. I can even perhaps excuse the conclusion you appear to have jumped to, since I wasout riding early and was alone until I took Eric up with me. But I did not see her.

Perhaps it will help you to know that my affections are otherwise engaged and have been-to the same lady- since I was a boy. And that at last it appears I may be having some success in engaging the lady's affections."

Ashley's head went back, almost as if he had been struck. Zounds but the words were wicked. Deliberately so? Verney had loved another woman since boyhood? He had never cared at all for Alice?

Well, he had come for answers and he would not be diverted. "Why did you treat my wife so badly?" he asked.

Sir Henry stared back at him before breaking eye contact and bending to pat one of his panting dogs on the head. He began to walk onward and Ashley fell into step beside him.

"I have regretted the harshness with which I spoke to her and the coldness with which I treated her during that final month before she left for India," Sir Henry said. "I was perhaps unjust. Certainly I was hasty. I should have taken more time for consideration. Undoubtedly she was devastated by the power of her own feelings, and my words only made matters worse for her. At the time I did not care. Any fondness I had ever had for her was forgotten. I cared for Katherine- and for myself. And yet a part of me, a guilty part of me, could not help being secretly glad of the gift Alice had presented to me. And so I lashed out at her to cover my own guilt. I am sorry-woefully inadequate words. Did I do her lasting damage?"

"I believe," Ashley said, "your question must be rhetorical, Verney?"

He had abandoned her-apparently quite abruptly and quite cruelly-for Katherine Binchley. And Katherine in her turn had abandoned him in order to marry Smith. It seemed hardly just that Verney was now having a second chance with her.

Sir Henry sighed. "The answer is apparently yes," he said. "Your coldness to me is understandable, then. But I cannot help but wonder if any permanent damage to Alice's happiness was not caused more by personal guilt than by anything I said to her."

Guilt? Guilt at having Iain with her seducer, the man she had loved?

The man she had been unable to forget? Ashley knew what it was to see red at that moment. His fist beneath one side of Sir Henry's jaw caught the man unprepared. He reeled backward and only just kept his footing. His hands balled into fists and he glared with anger. But he did not use his fists, Ashley was disappointed to find. He would have welcomed a good fight.

"She was your wife," Sir Henry said, breathing hard. "I must remember that. I am sorry. Sorry for the whole sordid mess and for your doubtless painful attempts to come to terms with it. But perhaps 'twould be as well, Kendrick, if we kept our distance from each other in future, maintaining merely a distant courtesy as neighbors."

"Perhaps," Ashley said coldly, "it would. Answer one more question for me before I take my leave. Did you kill Gregory Kersey?" The question hung between them almost like a tangible thing. But he would not withdraw it if he could have, Ashley thought. Verney was correct: Ashley was trying to come to terms with the past, though he doubted that knowing the full truth would help ease him of his own guilt. Perhaps he felt somehow honor-bound to understand the wife he had been unable to save better than he had ever understood her while she lived. Had she known that her lover was also her brother's murderer? Had that knowledge added to her torment?

Sir Henry blanched and the hand that had been rubbing at his jaw stilled. "Did I kill Greg?" he said in little more than a whisper. He closed his eyes. "Oh, God. Is that what she told you?"

" 'Tis a possibility that has struck me," Ashley said. "Did Kersey find out the truth? Did he confront you?"

"He had always known," Sir Henry said. "We quarreled bitterly over her, yes. There was a marked coolness between us up to the time of his death, though we had been close friends for too long and were still too close as neighbors to be fully estranged. We were shooting together that morning-along with several other neighbors." He paused to draw a deep breath. "No, I did not kill him. I wonder if Alice believed I did. She never accused me of it. But if she did believe it, then that would mean... Ah, who knows? The past is best left in the past, buried with the two of them."

"Why did Ned Binchley retire so abruptly after the death of Gregory Kersey?" Ashley asked.

Sir Henry sighed again. "You would have to ask him," he said.

"Though it was not retirement. Alice dismissed him."

"Why?" Ashley frowned.

"I believe," Sir Henry said, "that she did not realize he owned his cottage. Sir Alexander had made it over to him after a number of years of good service. I suppose Alice thought dismissing him would be a good way of ridding herself permanently of Katherine. There-I have answered your question after all."

"Yes," Ashley said curtly. "Yes, I see now." And he did, too. Alice had been in love with Verney and he, unable to win Katherine Binchley's affections, had taken advantage of Alice's devotion and had lain with her. That fact had caused a quarrel and a deep rift between her brother and her lover. And then after all Verney had abandoned her for Katherine. Had Katherine Binchley teased him- held back from him one moment, encouraged him the next? Alice's brother had died-perhaps at Verney's hands-Verney had abandoned her, and Katherine was still at the cottage with her father, the steward at Penshurst. And so Alice had tried to get rid of them, and failing at that had gone to India to join her father. It was little wonder that she had been emotionally scarred for life.

"I have comforted myself with the thought that they are both now at peace," Sir Henry said. '"Alice and Greg, I mean. The thought would not bring you so much comfort, of course. You did not even know him, and Alice was your wife. And of course, there was the child, your son. I am sorry. I wish you would believe that. But I understand that you blame me for some things and can never be disposed toward me in any friendly manner. I am sorry for that too. Can we agree at least to be civil?"

"Yes," Ashley said curtly. It was all they could do. And he knew he must let the matter drop now. He had the truth, or as much of it as he would ever have. He had to learn to live with past unhappiness, past guilt. Somehow he had to live on and find some new meaning in life. He thought of Emily. She deserved better. She deserved light and wholeness. He had so little that was of any value to offer her. Even the gift of freedom he had given her less than a week ago had turned sour. There had been their night of intimacy, a night during which he had bound her to him bodily over and over again. He had to offer her once more the protection of his name. And of a love that weighed heavily upon him because there was no real honor to offer with it. He had lost his honor during a certain night in India.

Sir Henry Verney was holding out his right hand. Ashley had been looking at it, unseeing-until almost too late.

"No," he said sharply as he watched the hand close upon itself and begin to drop to Sir Henry's side. "Please." He extended his own hand and they shook. "The past is, as you say, past."