"Don't you agree, John?"

What? What? Clarissa was gazing at him with something akin to adoration, and obviously waiting for an answer. "How could I disagree with you, my dear?" he replied, hoping that would satisfy, and wondering to what he had just put his imprimatur.

She appeared satisfied with his response, if he rightly interpreted the little squeeze she gave his arm. Pay attention, John, he admonished himself, even as her voice rippled on and he thought about his departure that morning.

Sally Claridge had met him in the breakfast room with the startling announcement that she was returning to Virginia with Robert. He had sputtered into his tea briefly, reminding her that : there were several young bucks-chaps he had handpicked, mind you, because they did not require a fortune-who were hovering on the brink of offering for her. She only treated this magnanimity on his part by a smile and a kiss in his general direction as she breezed by.

"I would rather go home," she had insisted when Lady Rags-dale added her admonitions to his. Sally smiled at him, then at Robert. "I am mindful of all you have both done for me, but I want to go home."

His pride piqued, Lord Ragsdale appealed to Robert. "Let me remind you, cousin, that for reasons which you know only too well, Sally will make a much better marriage over here."

Robert was no help. He only shook his head and dug a little deeper into his eggs and ham. "Cousin, you don't really argue with women, do you?"

"Well, I, no ..." he stammered.

Clarissa looked at him, her eyes wide, her lips in their ready-made pout, and he realized he was talking out loud. "My dear, I don't think I would be a disappointment to you behind a curricle of my own," she was saying. "Papa taught me to handle the ribbons."

"Oh! I am certain you would not," he agreed. "Whatever could I have been thinking?" Pay attention, you cloth wit, he told himself, then promptly dismissed Clarissa again.

Sally was not about to change her mind. "I will return home to Virginia," she had stated firmly, after he went through a patented catalog of reasons why she should remain in England. "Cousin, I do not care how poor we Claridges are, or how everyone else in Henrico County laughs at us because of Robert's spendthrift ways." She smiled at her brother. "I know he means to change, and besides all that, I want to be with my family. It's where I belong."

Of course she is right, he thought, as the carriage traveled through the spring finery of Berkshire. He listened patiently then to Clarissa's description of the rest of this year's Season, and the twin delights of a ball and a presentation next month, which, he knew in his bones, would somehow involve him to an unpleasant degree. He nodded where he was supposed to, and felt some small relief when Clarissa's eyes closed and her adorable head came to rest against his arm. Lady Partridge smiled indulgently at him, and returned to her tatting.

And so he had given his blessing for a happy journey to both ot the Claridges, had finished his breakfast, and had adjourned to the book room, where Emma waited with his correspondence to sign. He signed where she indicated, and was struck by the fact that if Emma found that her father and brother had indeed been transported, she would probably want to join them in Australia.

The thought was distressing in the extreme. He sat on the sofa and watched her as she finished some last-minute paperwork he had requested. She was young and strong and healthy, but the thought of her going to such a place made him want to rise up in protest. He had heard stories at his club from army officers who had returned from duty in the antipodes, and they had nothing kind to say. It would be the worst exile of all for someone so lovely, vibrant-for someone with such promise-as Emma, he decided. And she would be fifteen thousand miles away. She might as well be on the moon.

It was a melancholy reflection; the idea of losing his secretary pained him. I could keep her in the indenture, he told himself as he came closer and looked over her shoulder at the ledger and her careful entries. But that would be heartless, and if I have discovered anything this spring, it is that I have a heart. It is a dashed nuisance, but there you are.

But Emma among convicts? Emma condemned to toil for her bread in such an inhospitable climate? Emma so far away? I will not think about it, he told himself firmly. There is no indication that we are any closer to a solution to her mystery, and for all we know, the Costellos went down with the Lady Penthyn. He sighed and kissed the top of Clarissa's head, then leaned back, closed his eye, and wondered why on earth he had felt compelled to kiss Emma when he left.

They had just finished the most prosaic of conversations in the book room, like many others during the last few months. She had a.s.sured him that she would return to the dock for another look, and that she would partic.i.p.ate in his banker's upcoming audit. She even promised to go to Norfolk with Lady Ragsdale, if he did not return after two weeks, and check out progress on the construction.

Maybe I shouldn't have put my arm around her shoulder, he considered as the carriage bowled along. He had thought it was a brotherly gesture, perhaps even avuncular. He had not been surprised particularly when her arm went around his waist as they walked together to the book-room door. Truth to tell, they had both been through a lot in the past week.

But why had he kissed her? She had done nothing in particular to encourage it, other than look at him when he was raving on about being pitchforked into a visit to Bath that was destined to end in his proposal to Clarissa. It wasn't his fault that she got that twinkle in her eyes when he started to complain about exertion and ill-usage. And truth to tell, probably nothing would have happened, if she had not stopped, put her hand on his shoulder, and straightened his neck cloth.

It must have been Emma's fault, he decided, because I was only falling back on natural instinct. He thought about the matter, concluding that the experience was inevitable, considering that every time previous to his reformation that he got that close to a woman, he invariably kissed her. You put water in a streambed, and it will flow, he reasoned. If you place Lord Ragsdale in breathless proximity to a female who is not a relative, he will kiss her. It happens ten times out of ten, whether kisses or water. "Hydraulics," he murmured, then nodded and smiled at Lady Partridge when she looked up from the intricacies of her tatting with a faintly puzzled expression.

A mere few months ago, that would have been enough explanation to satisfy him. He would have promptly dismissed the event from his mind, and gone on to other conquests. Things are different now, he thought. I am now blessed with a modic.u.m of sense, and my sense tells me that I enjoy kissing Emma Costello.

The motion of putting his hand under her chin and his lips on hers had required not an iota of thought, so practiced was his lovemaking. The part that so unsettled him then, and that was breaking out sweat on his forehead now, was the way Emma's lips and then her embrace made him feel.

He eased out his pocket watch, so as not to disturb the sleeping Clarissa, and consulted it. Up until half past seven this morning, I kissed females with the idea of what I would get out of the exchange, he thought. Kissing Emma was the first time ever that I wanted to give more than receive. I wanted to let her know that someone cared what happens to her. I wanted to share my strength, I who have never been strong. That one little kiss-well, perhaps it was not so little-made me better than I ever was before.

He looked out the window at the glorious spring, and wished himself back in the book room. He tried to imagine how he would replay that good-bye again, and he could not envision any other conclusion. As surely as G.o.d made sinners and fools to test the world, he would have kissed Emma Costello. The thought shook him to his very soul, and he felt tears starting behind his eye. Why did I have to do the most stupid thing of all? he berated himself. Why did I have to fall in love with Emma?

At his insistence, they stopped for the night at Market Quavers. "I do not know why we cannot stop at Reading," Clarissa protested, her pout more p.r.o.nounced than usual. "I mean we usually stop in Reading."

Well, too bad, he wanted to say, change your blasted routine. Instead, he kissed his love's forehead. "I have a banking transaction to undertake in the morning, my dear," he explained, tucking his arm through hers as he escorted her to the Quail and Covey.

She suffered him to lead her along, pausing only at the doorway for another attempt to reason with him. When it failed, she gave him a searching look. "This quite cuts up my peace," she a.s.sured him.

"I trust you will forgive me," he said with a smile, all the while writhing inside and wondering if he had been so vacuous before his reformation. The realization that he had been that petty and more so did nothing to raise his spirits.

He allowed her to tease him into an explanation, partly to placate her for the disruption to her usual itinerary. "I wish to begin an annuity for Mrs. Mary Roney, the sister of my former secretary. That is all, Clarissa."

He paused, knowing that she would fawn over him for his kindness to the downtrodden, and embarra.s.s him with her praise. He waited uneasily for her to laud him for such benevolence to someone who had cheated him. What she said surprised him.

"You cannot be serious," Clarissa said, her voice a trifle flat, the music gone out of it.

"Of course I am," he replied, wondering where this was going.

"You are actually going to help the sister of the man who robbed you?"

He nodded. "It seems about the least I can do for David Breed-low, who only thieved from me to help his sister in her great need."

"John, what do you think prisons are for?" she asked, stamping her foot. "A servant should never steal from his master."

"Not even when the master was a stupid lout who should have cared enough to see to his servant's needs?" He heard his voice rising. "Clarissa, there is a man on his way to exile and possible death in a place I wouldn't wish on a dog because I whined about twenty pounds."

Clarissa, her eyes big at his outburst, yanked her arm from his and hurried to her mother's side. "I can only hope that you do not dole out too much of your income to gutter rats."

There will still be plenty of it left, and then some, for your ribbons, hats, and shoes, he thought. "But I thought you were pleased when I mentioned my work among the prisons?" he asked, reminding her of his fiction of several days ago.

"It is one thing to take Bible tracts and jellies to prisoners, but it is quite another to give them your money and encourage them," she said. "Come, Mother. I feel a headache coming on."

He ate in solitary splendor in the private dining room that night, and the food was excellent. To aid his digestion, he went for a long walk that took him through the village, out into the surrounding farmland, and back again. On the walk out, he had almost convinced himself not to make Clarissa Partridge an offer. On the way back, he realized that was impossible.

She expects me to propose, he thought, and I would be un-gentlemanly not to. My reformation will be complete, and I will free Emma from her indenture. If she ever finds that her father and brother are truly in Australia, she will go to them. He stood still in the road and watched the lamps lit in houses on the village outskirts. And even if she never leaves England, she has seen me at my worst, and could not possibly want anything to do with me.

No, he would speak to Clarissa's father tomorrow in Bath, propose, present her with a stupefying diamond, and become an unexceptionable husband. No one would ever know that he was in love with his secretary. How odd it is, he considered, that here I am, trying to help Emma find her relatives. If I succeed, she will certainly leave.

"The old Ragsdale never would have done this," he said out loud to a cow by the fence. "The old Ragsdale would have dragged his feet and whined, and not lifted a finger to help, especially if by so doing, he ruined his own chances. I am a fool."

He walked back slowly, trying to figure out at what point he fell in love with Emma. As he stood outside the tavern, he realized that he must have felt something that night she stood beside him with her fate resting on the turn of a card. Is it possible that what I took for hopeless submissiveness was courage on a scale so great that my own puny resources could not measure it? he reflected. Was that when something in me began to understand what Emma Costello meant?

He couldn't go inside. He stood beside the door, wondering at the workings of fate. If things had been different, Emma, perhaps you could have loved me, too. How tragic for us, this endless war between our people. You have been misunderstood, scotched, lied to, and diddled at every turn. I can only be grateful that at least you do not hate me anymore.

Clarissa was in good spirits in the morning. When he returned from his errand at the bank, she condescended to take his arm and allow him to walk with her to the waiting carriage. He helped her inside, then climbed in after her.

Lady Partridge was still inside the inn, giving a portion of her mind she could ill spare to the landlord over the damp sheets. He turned to Clarissa. Now was as good a time as any. He took a deep breath.

"Clarissa, I am sure you are aware of my pleasure in your company." I should take her hand, he thought, so he did. "I wonder if you would do me the honor, the ineffable honor, of consenting to become my wife."

There. That wasn't so difficult. It was words strung together, and from Clarissa's reaction, they were the right ones. She squeezed his hand, and he returned the pressure.

"I know a lady ought to turn down a first proposal," she said, and his heart rose for a moment. "But I shall not," she continued, "for I fear it would disappoint you, my dear. Yes, I will be your wife. Nothing would make me happier than to put some regularity into your disordered life."

He almost winced at her words, and by the greatest effort choked back his own indignation. Regularity? Regularity? he wanted to shout. I am so regular now that Greenwich could set its clock by me. You will make me boring, and prosy, and stuffy, and my children will only suffer me. They'll never know there was a time when I was fun, and a bit of a rakeh.e.l.l.

"I am so pleased," he said, and kissed her.

It was a test, really, and not a kiss, and he failed. Her lips were every bit as soft as Emma's, and if anything, her bosom pressing against him was more bountiful than Emma's, but he felt nothing beyond the usual stirrings of the healthy male. He could have kissed the most veteran doxy at Vauxhall, and felt nothing more.

She wasn't Emma, and he didn't care from his heart.

He was spared from another demonstration by the arrival of his future mother-in-law. Clarissa, all blushes and breathless sentences, told her the good news, and he was rewarded with a beaming smile from Lady Partridge, and the a.s.surance that she would devote the remainder of the Season to arranging the most brilliant wedding.

He was content to suffer in silence for the remainder of the trip to Bath. Clarissa and her mother moved with lightning speed from silver patterns to china to damask curtains, and were careening onto the honeymoon itself when Bath appeared like a benediction. He sighed with relief, and called their attention to the city before them, using it like raw meat before wolves to distract them. "Now tell me how I should approach your father," he interrupted, not wishing to think about his honeymoon because Emma would not be the last person he saw when his eyes closed, and his first sight in the morning.

"Papa will be delighted," Clarissa a.s.sured him. "Only do not b.u.mp his foot, or ask for sherry. The doctor has put Papa on a strict regimen of pump water mixed with vinegar and cloves."

"Heavens," he said. Is this to be my future, as well? Gout and pump water?

To his dismay, a tidal wave did not roar in from the Bristol Channel and float them out to sea before they arrived at the Partridge home. Sir Clarence was in the library, with his bandaged foot propped on a footstool, looking at though he could chew through masonry. Lord Ragsdale took a deep breath, blew a kiss in the doorway to Clarissa, and closed it behind him.

"Sir Clarence," he heard himself saying, "how nice to see you again. I believe we have a matter of the heart to discuss."

I refuse to flog myself because I allowed Lord Ragsdale to kiss me, Emma told herself at least one hundred times before noon, laying on the mental lashes as she busied herself with his instructions. That the experience was pleasant beyond all reason only added to her logic that she was getting old now-almost twenty-five-and more susceptible to such things. She considered the matter, and resolved that, when this matter of her father and brother was settled one way or the other, she should give some thought to marriage and a family of her own.

Not that her future husband would be anything like Lord Ragsdale, she told herself, suppressing a small shudder. She allowed herself a smile, wondering what he would say if she told him that he had become her measuring stick of what not to look for in a husband.

She frowned, aware of the fiction of that statement. While it may have been true several months ago, it was not true today. Lord Ragsdale showed great potential now. Emma picked up the quill again and dipped it in the ink. Miss Clarissa, she thought grimly, I hope you appreciate the paragon-well, the improved person- that I have helped to fashion. I hope you will have the wit to scold him where he needs it, and give him plenty of headroom in matters where he shines. She sighed. I should write a manual for the care and upkeep of Lord Ragsdale and give it to you, Miss Clarissa. Why am I afraid that you won't know what to do with him?

The thought dogged her for several days, but she eventually put it aside as she and the footman made several more trips to Dept-ford Hard, and the shipping offices. No one had ever heard of the Minerva or the Hercules, not even when she attempted bribery. When she explained it to him, Robert Claridge took her task to heart, and traveled to Portsmouth, seeking news of the missing ships. There was no news, not even any sc.r.a.ps of information in the dusty boxes at the Home Office, which she returned to during the remaining days of the week.

"I begin to wonder if they ever existed," she told Robert as he sat in Sally's room, watching her pack.

"You could return to Virginia with us," he offered. "I do not think Lord Ragsdale would mind, and didn't you say he is probably engaged by now?"

She nodded, and began to fold the chemise in her hands smaller and smaller. "I am sure you are right." She looked down at the garment in her hands and shook it out, to begin again. "Perhaps Lord Ragsdale will have thought of something else. I should wait."

And so she did, although it gave her a pang to stand with Lady Ragsdale and wave good-bye as the Claridges departed for Portsmouth and a ship to America. Robert had kindly left her enough pa.s.sage money to see her to Virginia, "When you decide you've looked enough," he had told her the night before.

To take Lady Ragsdale's mind off the melancholy of farewell, Emma saw to it that they traveled to Norfolk to look in on the progress of construction and renovation. She took notes on the improvements, pleased to see how well Manwaring and Larch worked together. The sheepherders had already moved into their new quarters, and work would begin on the crofters' cottages as soon as the planting was finished.

"Lady Ragsdale, you can tell your lordship that he has a good instinct where people are concerned," Mrs. Larch told her as they walked around the newly dug foundations on her last evening in Norfolk.

"Mrs. Larch, I am not married to Lord Ragsdale," she said quickly, before she lost her nerve. "I serve him as his secretary. I do not know why he didn't correct you during that first visit, and then I was too embarra.s.sed to say anything."

Mrs. Larch stared at her in amazement. "I never would have believed it!" She looked at her husband, who was chatting with the bailiff. "And didn't my David remark to me that you two looked like you had been married years and years?"

Oh, my, Emma thought to herself. This is worse than I thought. "It was just Lord Ragsdale and his rather demented sense of humor, Mrs. Larch," she apologized. "I trust you will excuse him."

Mrs. Larch allowed as she could. "Well, you may say all that, but I think you would have made a grand Lady Ragsdale."

"Why, thank you," Emma replied. How curious, she thought. A few months ago, I would have pokered up and protested at such a statement. Perhaps I am learning something of toleration.

And something of patience, she told herself early the next week as she shook her head at Lasker's offer of hackney fare and started walking to the bank for the monthly audit of Lord Rags-dale's accounts. I will certainly need it if I am to say more than three or four sentences in my life to Clarissa Partridge.

That morning's interview with Clarissa called for a brisk walk, she decided. They had returned from Norfolk to a letter from Clarissa. Lady Ragsdale read it, then held it out to Emma, a broad smile on her face. "Well, it is about time," she commented.

Emma read the brief note, marveling that Clarissa could write as she spoke, in breathless sentences, little wispy fragments,that managed to convey her delight at Lord Ragsdale's proposal, and then ping off half a dozen other topics in the brief s.p.a.ce of half a page. She looked on the back, but there was nothing more.

And then only days later, the fiancee herself sat drinking tea in Lady Ragsdale's private sitting room, all blond and lovely and wearing a diamond that Emma thought vulgar. When Lady Ragsdale inquired where her son was, if he had not returned with her, Clarissa only shrugged her shoulders.

"He bolted out of Bath after only three days," she said, her expression somewhere between a pout and a simper. "He said something about business that would not wait. Yes, thank you," she said, selecting amacaroon from the tray that Emma held out to her. "I will have to speak to him about such precipitate behavior."

"He does his best work on impulse, I think," Emma noted.

"Well, it won't do, and so I will tell him," Clarissa concluded, speaking with finality. She took a long look at Emma. "And I will also tell him that once he is married, he can find himself a regular male secretary, like all his friends."

Oh, I like that, Emma thought as she quickened her pace to the bank. Of course, as soon as the wedding-and maybe sooner, if today's conversation were any indication-she would find herself an independent woman. There will be nothing for me here in England. There is nothing in Ireland. I suppose I will return to America.

The banker's audit was the usual ponderous process of reconciling ledgers and figures, with occasional reminders this time for her to pay attention. "Emma, this is not like you," the senior clerk scolded.

I suppose it is not, she considered as she turned her attention from a perusal of the paneling to the ledger before her. She accepted the Bath receipts, her eyes widening at the cost of the diamond ring that Lord Ragsdale had lavished on his bride-to-be. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, he must be dead in love, or monstrously vulgar, she thought as she. added the sum to her entries.

She looked up from the next receipt. "Mary Roney in Market Quavers?" she asked.

The clerk leaned over the ledger, his spectacles far down on his nose. "He has decided to award an annuity to the widowed sister of David Breedlow," he announced, then fixed her with that dry look that clerks reserve for the foolish wealthy.

You dear man, she thought as she finished her accounting and put the ledger under her arm again. Only marry now, and I will consider your redemption complete. She started the long walk home, then reconsidered. "No. I will celebrate," she told herself, as she stepped into the street to hail a hackney.

"Kensington, if you please," she instructed the jarvey, and settled back with a sigh. I will wander among those paintings I was too frightened to look at, when he took me to the gallery. Of course, it would be better if Lord Ragsdale were here, because then he could explain them to me.

She paid the small entrance fee from the few coins she allowed herself from Robert Claridge's pa.s.sage to Virginia, and strolled slowly through the gallery. The peace of the place made her sleepy, and she found a comfortable bench. I will sit here and think about my future, she told herself as her eyes closed.

She couldn't have put her finger on what woke her, except that the sun was slanting across the gallery floor and telling her it was time to go home. She sat up and looked right into Lord Rags-dale's eye. She gasped and let the ledger drop.

"I wondered how long I would have to stare at you before you woke up," he said to her from his seat across the gallery. "And I have only one eye."

Her face red with embarra.s.sment, she fumbled for the ledger and started to rise. He held up a hand to stop her, and started across the gallery.

"Stay where you are, my dear. I have such news, and I'd rather you were sitting down.

"Well, did you keep things running smoothly while I was away?" he asked as he reached inside his overcoat.

"Of course," she replied promptly. "Probably better than you would have, my lord," she teased. Her smile deepened as he pulled out a small packet and dropped it in her lap.

"From me to you, Emma. It was easy to find where I've been," he explained.

She unwrapped the package and held up a rosary. "Oh, thank you!"

"You're so welcome, Emma." He reached into his overcoat again. "Here's something else."

The smile left her face when he dropped a bundle of papers in her lap.