"A plum pudding," she said reverently, looking at the perfect half-round mold, flickering with the last blue flames, set before her father.

"Steeping since October!" Marianne said. She turned the platter, adjusting it in a precise way, and handed her husband the knife. "Zenia's piece first," she said, with her hand over his to place his initial cut.

He gave her a pursed, laughing look aside. "I believe I understand you, my dear." He cut into the pudding, then moved the knife. "Here?"

"The other way," Marianne said imperturbably, and he obeyed her. As he scooped out the piece, a silver coin fell from among the crumbs.

"Good luck!" young Michael cried, sitting forward in his seat. "She got the shilling! Good luck for Zenia!"

"Good luck indeed," Mr. Jocelyn said pleasantly. He was younger than her father, with intelligent brown eyes that smiled easily. His clothes were exceptionally neat and his manners gentle. Zenia had felt at ease with him immediately.

Her fattier winked at him as he passed the plate. "Merry Christmas, and a fortunate and Happy New Year! Be so kind as to do the honors with the sauce, Michael."

Zenia chewed her lower lip, gazing excitedly at the pudding as Michael dropped a huge dollop of fluffy sauce upon it. She knew that they had arranged for her to get the coin, but that did not matter. It made everything better.

Young Michael set the plate in front of her. Everyone watched, quieting. Zenia glanced up with a tremulous smile, and took up a forkful of pudding and sauce.

She nearly choked. "Phew!" She put her hand to her mouth, laughing and grimacing. "Oh, no! Oh, no! It's awful!"

Everyone groaned. "Awful!" Marianne cried, and popped a cracker at her, spewing bright paper bits and sweets over the table.

"I'll eat it!" Michael cried, pulling her plate toward him and taking a huge bite. He rolled his eyes in extravagant satisfaction. "Perfect! Delicious! Utterly salubrious!"

Zenia picked up the little cardboard cracker by her plate and popped it at him, and laughed immoderately when the bang made him flinch.

"I'll take my coin back," Zenia said, picking up the keepsake and dusting crumbs from it.

"Keep your silly old coin, then," Michael said merrily. "If you have no better sense than to think our Christmas pudding awful! What an addle-brain!"

Zenia glanced anxiously at Marianne, hoping that her stepmother was not hurt, but Marianne was smiling, her color high. She had suffered a rheumatic attack not long after Zenia arrived, and Zenia had been glad to fetch and carry and do everything she could. The weeks of illness had made Zenia feel more at home. Useful. She was accustomed to serve, and more than happy to nurse such an undemanding patient. She would rather think of Marianne than of what was happening to herself.

The horrible black dress from Suez had been replaced, but Zenia still wore black, and the seamstress who had come to the house had matter-of-factly advised a style that could be let out easily in the waistline. No other mention had been made of her condition. Sometimes she looked up from sewing or writing a letter for Marianne to find her father gazing at her, a somber expression on his face, but he always smiled immediately, and with such warmth that she felt her fears recede.

She chose not to think about it. She chose to live in the moment, with holly and Christmas presents, to listen raptly to the carolers who came to the door, and bask in the pleasure of pouring out hot punch for them. She sang a duet that Mr. Jocelyn taught her as he played upon the pianoforte and harmonized in a rich baritone. She lost at forfeits, and won at Yes and No, and How and When and Where, and pantomime. For the last round, just as the church bells rang quarter to midnight, young Michael pantomimed a camel. Zenia did not win; she made herself laugh very hard, and then said that she must go upstairs for her shawl.

In her room, she put the shawl about her shoulders and sat down, fiddling with the ends, tying them in a knot and untying them again.

"Don't cry," she whispered to herself, staring into the coals behind the grate. "Don't cry!"

She did not know how much time had passed, until she heard the sound of young Michael's steps go up the stairs past her door. A little while later, her father quietly knocked. Zenia looked up and gathered the shawl about herself as he entered.

"Don't get up," he said softly. "It is high time for bed."

He closed the door behind him. She sat still, tying and untying the shawl. Her father came to the grate and stood with his back to it. He seemed awkward, as if he had forgotten why he was there.

"It was a wonderful Christmas," Zenia said. "The most wonderful-"

"Please," he said. "I know you mean to thank me, but it only makes me feel worse. It is the first you've had, isn't it?"

She did not answer, but looked past him into the fire.

"Zenia- I just want you to know that you are welcome here. When the child comes-"She looked up sharply."Yes, I know of it," he said. "Mrs. Smith informed me. I haven't wanted to pry, or make you feel uneasy. I just want you to know that you have a home. We don't gointo society much anymore; I've not cared for it for a long time, and Marianne-well,you know her situation. This is a liberal neighborhood, artists and writers and so on.No one much questions other people's business. I don't know what you havethought about for your future, but-"

"I would stay with you forever!" she said quickly. "If I might."He smiled a little. "Well, forever may be longer than you think, but you may stay until you choose of your own accord to go." He tilted his head. "You are young yet, andmay marry again."She turned her face down. 'Thank you," she whispered."Do you think," he said gently, "that your husband's family should be informed of your condition?"She shook her head."For the child's sake, Zenia?"That did not seem very real to her. Mrs. Smith had said so, and the seamstress, and now her father-she could feel the changes in her body, hard and soft, but

everything was so changed; they were just a part of all of it."For Lord Winter's sake?" he asked, when she did not answer. "Is it fair to hismemory, to keep his child hidden from his own family?"

She bit her lip.He knelt down beside her. "Zenia-is it Lord Winter's child?""Yes," she said. It came out more clearly and firmly than she had thought she could speak.

There was a frown between her father's brows. He looked at her for a long time, andthen he said, "Did he take advantage of you? Force you?""No." She closed her eyes. "Oh, no. He wanted me to sleep. I was afraid, and he wanted me to sleep."She thought he was going to ask more. But he knelt beside her unspcaking."He promised he would bring me to England," she said. She looked up at her father's worried face. "He gave me his word he would bring me. And he has doneit."He put both hands over hers. "Zenia-I must ask. I must. Did he marry you?"She clutched the ends of the shawl. "It will be very terrible if he didn't, will it not?

Will I be beaten? Will they take me away from you?""No!" He gripped her hands. "No, of course not!""I used his letter, to get a passage home. And everyone began to call me Lady Winter, and to help me, and be kind to me. And I-what was I to do? I had nowhere-I wanted to go home! I wanted to find you! That was all that I ever wanted, to findyou!"

"It's all right." He held her against his shoulder, rocking her. "It's all right. My sweet

girl.""I can't cry!" She exclaimed, pulling away and standing up. She was breathing hardand nervously. "He wouldn't like it if I cried."

Her father rose. His figure was blurred against the fire and the white marble

mantelpiece. She gritted her teeth together and dashed her hand at her eyes."If I can stay here," she said. "If I can stay here and help Marianne and have nextChristmas and tell Michael I'm happy when he gets his commission in the GrenadierGuards, which I'm sure that he will, he wants it so. If I can only stay here!"

"You can stay," her father said. "And I'll get down on my knees and pray to Godevery night in thanks for Lord Winter, because he brought you to me."

* * * * *It was the end of March when Zenia sat with Marianne in the back parlor, pouringwater on a forced pot of bright yellow daffodils. She set the watering can on thefloor, bending awkwardly over her increasing bulk.

The door opened. Her father came in. "Zenia," he said grimly, "You must come

downstairs, my dear. You have a caller."The expression on his face made Zenia's heart freeze. Marianne stood up. "Who isit, Michael?"

"It is the Earl Belmaine.""Oh dear," Marianne said. "Would you like me to come?"Zenia rose. She looked at them both anxiously. "Who is the Earl Belmaine?" she asked in a timid voice.Her father smiled at her, a sudden sweet warmth. "Ah, if he had only heard you ask,"he said. "It might shake his sense of himself a little. He is Lord Winter's father, my dear. You need not be afraid of him. I'll stay with you, and Marianne will come ifyou like."Zenia glanced at Marianne, who had been having a difficult week. "No. You must not come downstairs. If Papa will go with me . . .""I'll be there," her father said, holding open the door.* * * * *In her father's study a tall man waited, an elegant form standing beside the open drapes, the winter sun lighting a curve of cheek and brow that gave Zenia a start ofmemory, a resemblance that knocked all her desperately gathered poise intoconfusion. She stood before the door, lost.

He gazed at her for a long, hard moment, long enough for her to see that he wasprouder than his son, his eyes blue but colder, his skin pale and his carriageunyieldingly erect, the black hair dimmed with silver. He looked directly at herwaistline without embarrassment, with a frigid gravity, and then up into her face.

"I wish to speak to her alone," he said.

"My daughter has asked that I remain with her," her father said. "Zenobia, this isLord Belmaine. Belmaine-my daughter.""Lady Winter," the earl said caustically. "Or so I am informed.""Allow me to make one thing entirely clear." Her father spoke in a soft and dangerous voice, one Zenia had never yet heard him use before. "I will not tolerateany rudeness or insinuation regarding my daughter in my house. She lives with me.She has made no claims on you." He held a chair for Zenia, placing it near the fire."It is you, sir, who chose to call on her."

Zenia sat down, supporting herself on the arms of the chair. The earl's nostrils flareda little. He looked at her as if he would eat her-angrily, almost hungrily."Well," he said to Zenia. "Do you have marriage lines? A record? Witnesses?"

"No," she said.He made a sharp turn and stood looking at a candle sconce on the wall, his handslocked behind his back. "No," he muttered. "Just 'no'!" He stared at the sconce."You used my son's name."

Zenia said nothing, ashamed of her subterfuge. It had been lies, though she had nottold them herself.

"Did you see him die?" Lord Belmaine asked the wall sconce."No. He put me up onto a camel with an Egyptian officer, and went for his rifle, andI did not see him again, because the Egyptian took me ahead."

The earl's eyes narrowed. 'Tell me the name of this-this horse he was to obtain.""The String of Pearls.""And what name he used in disguise?""Abu Haj Hasan, the Moor.""And what place they arrested him?""Hayil, in the Nejd."Lord Belmaine turned. "You were with him, then. You are this absurd Queen of the English. I've made inquiries; I've had letters from the consuls in Beyrout and Cairo.Every court from here to Calcutta is buzzing with it; Hester Stanhope's bastard,living as a filthy Bedouin in some tent!" He glanced at her father. "Hester Stanhope's -and yours."

"My daughter, Belmaine. Under my protection."

"I have no interest in your daughter, Bruce, unless she's carrying my son's child! And if she is-then she's under my protection. I've waited. I've thought an adventuress would come wheedling to me. I've had this house watched. For months I've waited. My son! My son is dead, and I've waited. But you aren't going to come, are you? You're not going to ask for money. Is it not his?" He swung away and sat down, his voice shaking. "Is this just a game to drive me mad?"

Zenia looked at the top of his bent head. She said, "Perhaps you will not believe the truth."

He looked up.

"I was with Lord Winter," she said coldly. "One night, when we both knew we were to be put to death at dawn. I have never been with another. He is the father of my child."

My child. It was the first time she had thought of it so. Hers alone. She sensed that this man wanted it, and a wave of ferocious possessiveness welled up in her. She had to lock her hands on the chair to keep from hugging her arms about her and holding the baby inside her to herself.

"I have no proof," she said, before he could ask. "I have no proof of anything. But I do not deny you the truth, because Lord Winter was your son."

He stared into her eyes for a long moment, his own that same familiar hue, but different. Paler.

He stood up suddenly. "You have no marriage lines," he said in a sharp voice. "They have been lost." He looked up at her father. "Do you understand me, Bruce? They have been lost in the desert. I myself feel that they will be recovered. I will make every effort to recover them. I will use all the resources at my command to see that they are found. Do you understand?"

Her father put his hand on her shoulder. He squeezed. "Zenia?"

She opened her mouth to say that there were no marriage lines to be recovered-but Lord Belmaine was frowning at her with his jaw set, scowling at her deeply.

"Madam," he said. "Do not speak. I admire scruple. I admire honesty. But before you speak, I lay before you the question of the higher principle at stake. You of anyone must know what it is to be a bastard. You have it in your power to give your child his father's name, his rightful name and place-or withhold it from him." He stood stiffly, his hands behind- his back. "Madam-Lady Winter-I do not want you to lie to me. I believe that you married my son, and you have lost your marriage lines, and they will be restored in good order. I believe this. I will act on this belief. I ask of you only that, for the sake of your child, for the sake of his future-please- do not speak unwisely."

My child. She thought of her mother, of her own life, of shame and defenselessness.

She turned her head and looked up at her father. He watched her soberly, a mirror of the miniature painting she had dreamed upon all her days. He had said she could stay as long as she wished. But the future was coming, relentlessly.

My child. With no name, as she had had none. With no father.

"No," she whispered. "I would not speak unwisely."

The baby was born at Swanmere, in a gilt and green room that smcllcd of age, with a doctor and two midwives hovering about, and Lady Belmaine standing beside the bed like a stately statue as Zenia sweated and panted and felt her body torn asunder. All through it, she kept opening her eyes and seeing Lady Belmaine, upright and grave, her hair smooth as dove's wings, her high cheekbones white as linen, her fine mouth unsmiling.

Zenia did not scream, though they told her that she should. She did not moan. She was Bedu, el-Nasr, Selim. She had crossed the red sands. She would not let Lady Belmaine see her break.

There was a surge of agony and then a flutter of exclamations: commands and advice that she could not hear. All she could hear was, Don't cry, damn you; all she could see was Lady Belmaine; all she could feel was pain.

"It is a girl," someone said from somewhere.

And in the silence Zenia heard it begin to cough and wail.

"Congratulations," one of the doctors said heartily. "A fine healthy babe. Good color; excellent lungs."

Lady Belmaine's mouth pursed. She looked down at Zenia, a brief impatient look that skidded over her face and down to her clenched hands. "I will tell Belmaine," she said, turning away.

CHAPTER 12.

London, December 1841.

The calling card lay on the hall table, waiting for the master of the house when he came in. Michael Bruce glanced at it as he returned from his monthly dinner at Lincoln's Inn- and stopped dead in the hallway. He pulled off his glove and picked up the card.

In small copperplate print on exquisitely thin pasteboard, the name was Arden Mansfield, Viscount Winter. And jotted in the corner in firm black ink: Travellers' Club or Clarendon Hotel.

Michael Bruce shook his head. For a long moment he closed his eyes and shook his head back and forth, a half-laugh of horror choked in his throat. "Good God. Oh, great God. I am too old for this," he muttered, and turned toward the stair. "Marianne!" he shouted, and went up them two at a time.

Mr. Michael Bruce had not lived an entire lifetime in quiet peace in Marylebone. In his youth he had traveled the Continent at the height of Napoleon's power, he had witnessed the bombardment of Copenhagen at twenty and prowled behind enemy lines in the Peninsular battlefields at twenty-one. At twenty-two, he had lived with and loved a baffling, sensual, haughty, extraordinary woman eleven years older than himself, had sheltered her in his arms on a wave-dashed rock while their ship went down off Cyprus, followed her into Eastern palaces and smoked with pashas and princes straight out of the Arabian Nights, waited shoulder to shoulder with her in the desert, their pistols cocked and ready for Bedouin assault. He had been belittled and adored by her in the same sentence, had given way to her ego, walked in her shadow, implored her to marry him long after he had known it would be the greatest disaster of his life if she did. He had left her on the shores of the Lebanon because she screamed at him that he must go. He had traveled with the memory of her tear-stained face, and in Constantinople he had found a sweet, quiet girl to idolize him-the first in a series of affairs that took him home across France; because when he was young, women fell in love with him as easily as breathing, and he could never say no to them.

Even to Hester, he had never said a final farewell. Somehow, in his heart, he had always had the illusion that he could go back. He had even made plans to bring her to France, but she had refused to come-somewhat to his relief, he remembered ruefully. He'd had a taste for high tragediennes, he supposed-: he was by then deep in love with little Algae, and embroiled in the hopeless effort to save her husband Marshal Ney from execution. After that had come the famous-infamous-escape of Lavallette from a Paris prison-and Michael's arrest for high treason in France, the trial for his part in aiding the fugitive to flee; then his own imprisonment, six months in the Prison de la Force.

All long ago. So long ago. His daughter must have been two years old then.

He had returned to England something of a hero. For years, he had been "Lavallette Bruce" to the papers. And then Marianne-Marianne the quiet, smiling widow, who had suddenly and abruptly made all of his confused strikes and runs at life seem vain foolery. She had simply refused an affair. She would only see him with the permission of his family and hers. Modest, straightforward Marianne, who merely expected the highest standard of conduct, without explanation or excuse. Michael had been a master of explanations and excuses. He did not know if he would truly have gone back to Lebanon for his daughter, not when he was young and reckless. He hoped he would have-and he thought that Hester must have been sure of it, or she would not have kept her secret so well.

He walked through the rainy night, fingering Winter's card in his pocket. It was perhaps not so strange to have his past come back to him in the form of a daughter, considering the sort of past it was, but he felt exceedingly peculiar to be calling on a man supposed dead for two years, the father of his granddaughter, who might or might not be willing to admit it, who might or might not acquiesce in the convenient Fiction they had built, who might or might not be someone whom Michael, at fifty-four, could possibly knock down for taking advantage of his innocent daughter, whatever the bloody damned extenuating circumstances had been in the bloody damned desert.

When the door to the private parlor in the Clarendon opened, Michael saw that he was not likely to knock down Viscount Winter. Moral principle was not going to outweigh twenty years' age difference and a fighting weight that looked to be fourteen stone. The man who received him was powerfully built, hard-tanned, with the look of a coiled spring about him.

"Michael Bruce," Michael said, taking off his damp hat.

"Winter." The viscount thrust out his hand. He looked straight at Michael with brilliantly deep blue eyes. "Did you come alone, sir?"

Some evil genius made Michael say, "Who would I bring with me?"

The expression on Lord Winter's face made him repent instantly. "She did not reach you?" the viscount asked in a smothered voice.

In that moment, Michael forgave him. He made him suffer a few moments more, deliberately laying his hat and gloves on a table beside the door.