For a long moment, Arden stood rigidly, fighting his temper at the effrontery of this stranger. But he had had a long and instructive session with Mr. King at Swanmere before he left. There were things she could do, if she were driven to it; ways she could put herself and Beth beyond his reach and leave him fighting through the jungle of the courts for the rest of his natural life.

He forced himself to relax his hands and sit down again. In the most passive tone he could muster, he explained Zenia's zealous confinement of Beth and their single day of freedom. "I should not have ignored the calls for us to come," he said, feeling embarrassed to admit it. "But for God's sake-she was never in the least danger. Never."

"I see," Mr. Jocelyn said. "I see."

"I want to talk to my wife," Arden said, forcing himself to stay calm. "I insist upon it."

The lawyer did not quite smile, but he looked down and shuffled the papers without any particular result. "Lord .

Winter, I must beg your pardon. I think perhaps I have unintentionally involved myself in a little disharmony between you and Lady Winter which is none of my affair. I must apologize for taking up your time, but my duty to Mr. Bruce-" He put the papers away and offered his hand as he stood up. "I hope you will forgive me as a benevolent meddler when I say that I only wish the best for your wife and daughter. I shall tell her that she cannot do better than to see you, as you urged in your handsome note, so that you may speak together sensibly about the situation."

Arden saw Mr. Jocelyn out. A few moments later, he followed himself, walking out of the hotel with his collar turned up against the damp cold. He was inured to London weather, but the wind seemed to cut through his coat, provoking a queer shiver. He put his head down, turning toward a bookshop in The Strand.

He was well known there. A pile of geographical and scientific volumes awaited him, but the bookseller was a little perplexed by his request for a book of conversation.

"Something in Greek philosophy, sir?" the man asked.

"No. English." Arden leafed through an atlas, keeping his face down. "Examples. How to speak to-various persons."

"Ah! A book of diction, I believe you mean, my lord. Elegant means of expressing oneself. Proposals of marriage, congratulations upon promotion, that sort of thing, sir?"

Arden frowned at Cape St. Marie on the island of Madagascar. "That sort of thing, yes."

Zenia had chosen one of her new gowns, a subdued silk striped in russet and fawn. She had no maid, so she had to ask Mrs. Sutton to help her with the corset and buttons.

"It's Mrs. Lamb, madam," the nurse said, yanking at the strings, "now that we are not at the great house. Which his lordship asked me long ago was I really called Sutton, and I said to him no, and he has called me by my proper name this age."

Away from Swanmere, Zenia had discovered that Mrs. Sutton, or Lamb, as she chose, was a considerably more militant character. She made no secret that she deeply disapproved of Zenia's removal to town, and had even ventured one or two remarks indicating her respect for Lord Winter as a father and a gentleman, which hardly endeared her to Zenia. But there was no choice at the moment- Zenia could not do everything for Elizabeth herself, not while she was alone in London, so she merely said, "I will be happy to call you Mrs. Lamb if you please. You should have mentioned it before."

"Will you wear the bonnet with the pretty orange scarf, ma'am?" Mrs. Lamb asked, lifting Elizabeth away from the open wardrobe, wiping her runny nose and catching up the bonnet in question with her free hand.

"It is only Lord Winter," Zenia said. "My everyday black one will do. I'm afraid Elizabeth is catching a cold."

"Ma'am looks a fright in the black one, if I may say so," the nurse remarked. "His lordship will be passing through Oxford Street on his way here, and certain he'll see ladies aplenty who know something of fashion."

Zenia was well aware of the insidious intent of this remark, but it was nevertheless effective. "You are to keep Miss Elizabeth strictly to the nursery in the attic," she said. She felt Elizabeth's forehead. "She seems a little warm. You are not to bring her down under any circumstances. Do you understand?"

"Ma'am." The nurse dropped a curtsey. She picked up Elizabeth and carried her out, muttering that any child who had been pulled from her bed and carried all about the country in the middle of the night would certainly have a fever. Zenia turned her head toward the door, and when she heard them reach the second landing above, she put down the black bonnet and reached for the one with the colored scarf for a tie- "capucine," the dressmaker had called it, but the color was the deep vivid orange of the nasturtiums that had grown in her mother's garden. There was a shawl that went with it, so sheer that Zenia could see through it, and a pair of fawn gloves with tiny matching flowers embroidered on the back.

She looked at herself in the glass and thought of all the fashionable ladies he would pass on his way. Her hair fell in ringlets against her cheeks, confined by the bonnet, perfectly clean and shining. The dress was tight at the waist and spread full over volumes of petticoats. It was fitted and trimmed and styled in the latest mode, entirely English, and yet she was afraid that he must still look at her and see the ragged Bedouin boy.

The knock came as she was descending the stairs. He was early-the housemaid hurried out of the dining room, stuffing a dust cloth into her apron, and answered the door. Zenia paused on the bottom step.

He stood in the doorway, a dark outline against the gray rain-soaked street behind him. He looked up as he took off his hat and stepped inside, lifting his blue eyes to hers.

If he could see beyond her English dress to her wretched barefoot past, he did not show it. His face was sober as he made a bow, handing his greatcoat and gloves to the maid. "Lady Winter," he said stiffly. "Good afternoon."

"Please come up," she said, turning on the stair. "Clare?"

The housemaid curtsied, instantly turning toward the back stairs to fetch the tea tray.

Zenia led him up to the drawing room. She and the maid had worked all day yesterday to hang the drapes again and pull the covers off the furniture and mirrors, but still the room appeared barren with no knickknacks or kickshaws set about. In the grim afternoon, the oil lamps cast a steady yellow glow.

"You look beautiful," he said in an abrupt way, and immediately turned as if he saw something that caught his eye in the street. Then he looked back at her with an air of detached survey.

Zenia's instantaneous glow of pleasure dimmed a little at his impersonal expression. "Thank you," she said. "You look very well." He looked as he always did to her: handsome, intensely masculine, darkness and cobalt blue. His physical presence carried with it a subtle impression of dominance; of solid strength. She had felt it in the desert; she had followed him there because of it. Slept near him because of it. She could have picked him out among a hundred men in the street outside because of it."Please sit down," she said, indicating an armchair near the fire screen."Where is Beth?""Upstairs. She has just fallen asleep. She is a little feverish, and I do not wish her to be disturbed."He looked as if he might for a moment dispute her, but instead he made a bow,waiting for her to seat herself on the settle before he placed the armchair facing her and sat down. Clare came in with the tea and a plate of thin-sliced bread and butter.She set the tray down on the tea table before Zenia and closed the door behind her."I'm sorry that we have no cake," Zenia said, pouring for him. "Will you take sugar?"

"Is it possible," he asked, "for us to dispense with this sort of polite diversion foronce, and simply talk together?"She put down the teapot without pouring her own cup and laid her hands in her lap.

"If you wish it.""Zenia," he said, "I'm not good at it-tea and cakes. I have no patience with it."She looked directly at him. "I suppose you would prefer to eat on the ground with your fingers?"Her dry remark seemed to take him aback. He looked at her with a faint frown."Shall I sprinkle some sand on the butter," she asked, "to put you more at ease?"He tilted up one corner of his mouth. "No." He lifted his cup, extending his little finger with an exaggerated delicacy. "I can play, if I must. How does your dear auntdo, Lady Winter? I hear she has the vapors once an hour. I have a receipt for arhubarb plaster-most efficacious! Of course, if you prefer a more permanent cure,nothing can surpass a fatal dose of arsenic."

In spite of herself, Zenia felt a reluctant tug at her lips. She picked up the teapot,drawing her cup and saucer toward her.

"Do you remember when Ghrallah woke me in the night?" he asked suddenly.Zenia bit her lower lip. His camel Chrallah had grown spoiled with handouts ofbread, and poked her long neck into the tent one night, her questing head hangingabove them like a huge white serpent, her warm breath tickling his ear.

"Yes," she said. "It was a nice tent while it lasted.""Unjust! What's one camel-sized hole?""One of her size, and one of yours," she exclaimed. "I did not think I would ever disentangle you.""Rubbish. You were merely laughing too hard to be of any serious use."Her lips pursed, and then spread irresistibly. "Poor Chrallah, standing there with a tent about her neck. She bore it with great dignity." Zenia glanced at him. "Quite

unlike you."

As their eyes met, both of them smiling, she felt the blood rise in her cheeks. She looked away, flustered, and spooned sugar into her tea.

"When Beth laughs," he said, "I can see you laughing."

She kept her face down, sipping the tea. Her heart was beating hard, as if the next moment, the next thing he might say would change her life forever. Mr. Jocelyn had urged her strongly to marry him, in spite of all she had told the lawyer about her fears. He had made them seem overblown and foolish; he had not supposed that Lord Winter would separate Elizabeth from Zenia, even if the law gave him the means to do it as her husband. Every husband had the same ability under the law, when it came to that, Mr. Jocelyn said, and yet it was genuinely extraordinary to find any man cruel or mad enough to act upon it. The alternative, a life as a ruined woman with an illegitimate child, he stressed urgently, was far more to be feared, as much for Elizabeth's sake as Zenia's.

She was reassured, but not entirely certain. Lord Winter was no ordinary man. It would not be cruelty that drove him, but the diabolic force, the same djinni that had impelled her own mother to the East, to isolation and absolute liberty, the blood that Lady Belmaine said ran true in her son.

"Zenia," he said, with a seriousness that impelled her to lift her face again, "I want to say that I-"

She waited. Her look seemed to distract him from his sentence, though she was careful to keep any emotion from her face. He hesitated, watching her, as if he expected her to finish it for him somehow.

"I mean to say," he went on finally, with less authority in his voice, "that I have a very great . . . that I feel a particular . , ." He stood up, turning toward the fire. Looking at the screen appeared to restore his line of thought. He said abruptly, "I feel that you cannot truly have considered your position in a rational manner. That is why I wished for this meeting. All these damn-I beg your pardon-these lawyers have spoken to you, but perhaps no one has made you understand what it would mean for you and Beth to live outside my legal protection." He gripped his hands together behind his back. His voice hardened. "If a marriage to me is so abhorrent to you that it is your preference to be received nowhere, to live in poverty, to be out in the street, to have men-feel themselves free to approach you in an insulting manner -well, then, that is your choice. But you should understand that you will be condemning our daughter to the same indignities. You seem to think that I have no care for Beth's welfare-" His hands tightened; the veins stood out against his whitened knuckles. "-but I believe you are far more to be condemned, by this foolish-this selfish, unthinking, damned stupid, mulish obstinacy in the matter." He took a few strides, stopped and looked back at her with an aggressive set to his mouth and his shoulders. "I would have to be a far greater monster than I am to justify it!"

"I am not selfish or obstinate or foolish! I mean to protect Elizabeth!"

Behind him, the rain began to beat in earnest against the windows. He scowled fiercely at her. "Do you truly think I am a monster, Zenia? What terrible crime do you suppose I intend to commit against her?"

She lowered her eyes. "I do not think you would deliberately cause Elizabeth harm."

"Thank you!" he said bitterly.

"But if I marry you, I should have no authority to protect her from whatever you might do. Mr. Jocelyn admitted it. Even if you weren't her guardian, even if you had no right to do anything, if I marry you, I cannot prevent you- because a wife cannot go to the law against her husband." She stood up. "You said so to me yourself-that you could do anything you pleased with her, and I could not stop you."

"I was angry when I said that!"

"Perhaps you will be angry when you take her away from me. Perhaps you were angry when you drowned the girl you were to marry."

He turned as white as if she had slapped him. "It was an accident."

"That is not what you told me."

He stared at her rigidly, his jaw taut.

"You said that you did not want her." Zenia had to force herself to stand still, to not step backwards. "That she was going to imprison you, and so you killed her."

His lips parted. Almost imperceptibly, he shook his head.

"Why should I trust you?" Zenia cried. "I cannot!" She turned away, her skirt sweeping against the settee. She hated now having spoken of it; she could not bear to see the brutal expression on his face: it frightened her, squeezing her heart with remorse and dread.

In a low voice, he asked, "Why does any woman ever trust a man?"

"I do not know," she said, swallowing. "I am sure I do not know."

"Perhaps because he loves her," he said, barely above the sound of the rain.

She turned. But he did not look at her; he was already walking toward the door, shoving a chair aside as if he hardly saw it. She heard his footsteps descending the stairs. A few moments later the front door slammed, a thud that echoed dully through the house. Zenia hurried to the window, but he did not pass below. She saw him ram his hat on his head and stride down the steps, careless of the rain, a tall shape that swung away at the iron baluster and vanished into the gray downpour.

Arden cursed the rain and cursed himself, falling back into the seat of the cab and shedding water over the cracked leather squab. He flung his dripping hat onto the opposite seat. He was breathing harder than he should have been, not so much from his effort to obtain a hackney as from the flush of emotion; the anger and the unnerving realization of what he had said.

He had meant to make a sane and logical statement of the situation, he had meant to see Beth, he had meant- anything but what had happened. He was the most maladroit blundering fool in nature; the more he cared for the outcome the more he butchered everything he did.

From a beginning worthy of a gawky schoolboy, he had found himself on the verge of his prepared declaration- and coward that he was, he'd shied off in the middle and made a cock of everything from there on. Every bloody thing. But he had the truth of what she thought of him now-what she feared-and in the black face of it he had heard himself say what laid him open and exposed, what he had known in his solitary heart, in his lonely heart, what he would not have betrayed for any prize on earth.

He was still breathing hard. He was nearly in a panic, because he had said that and she had not answered; he had not given her a chance to answer but run away.

He stared at his hat and the shabby hollows in the seat opposite him while cold water slid off his hair and down his neck. He had all his life been hunting, searching for some chimera that he did not know himself-he had thought it was anywhere but where he was. He had thought, usually, that it did not exist, and he was as much a fool as his father declared him. He had perceived, in a distant, disaffected way, that he was lonely, but there had been no other condition to know. He had always been that way, prowling the woods and the wastelands.

He rubbed both hands over his face, wet skin against wet skin, and opened his eyes, looking through his fingers like an animal looking out of a cage. He had discovered it, the thing he had never even known he was seeking-it was so close; for a breath of time he had possessed it: for a few months in the desert, for a week-a day-with his daughter. And the fear that it would vanish before he could reach it again made his muscles so tense that his head ached and his hands trembled in the seeping chill.

CHAPTER 23.

Zenia had never supposed, after that single call, that he would not come again. Elizabeth's cold turned into a real fever, and Mr. Jocelyn's physician had pronounced it the measles. At first Zenia had been frantic, blaming Lord Winter's careless taking of her into the weather, but the doctor stated without question that the disease was certainly a contagion Elizabeth had caught from an infected young person. And indeed on the very afternoon that the physician left, a letter had arrived from Lady Belmaine with the information that the village children were full of measles, and it was now verified that the new second nursemaid, the young one dismissed just a fortnight ago for sluggishness and stupidity, had come out in spots not three days after she had left the house. Lady Belmaine thought Zenobia would be wise to stay alert for symptoms in Miss Elizabeth.

Elizabeth came through it with ease, a mild case, with hardly any serious rash and only a week of drowsy fussiness before she was struggling to leave her bed. It was a blessing in disguise, the doctor said. If he had his way, all children would be deliberately infected before the age of two, so that they achieved immunity when the disease was so nearly innocuous. Zenia was not quite so sanguine-she had not slept for worry, and only the brief course of it reassured her that Elizabeth's first real illness would not at any moment turn deadly.

On the fourth night-the moderate crisis, as it turned out-she had even sent Lord Winter a note. She had not really thought Elizabeth in imminent danger, but she had thought that he would like to come. In her heart, she longed for him to come.

He had not. He had not even answered, although the boy had said he was still resident at the hotel.

What had come had been a packet from the legal offices of King and King, outlining a new proposal, since Miss Zenobia Stanhope appeared to reject the former one.

She sat again in her father's study while Mr. Jocelyn frowned over the papers, shaking his head. "I am afraid we have reason now for some concern," he said. "I do not like the threat inherent in this, my dear-I do not like it at all. Fraud is a very, very serious matter."

"I did not lie to anyone," Zenia said. "When Lord Belmaine asked me if I had proof of a marriage, I said no."

Her voice was weak. She felt almost ill, faced suddenly with the consequences of her indecision. Unthinking, damned stupid, mulish obstinacy, he had said, and she very nearly agreed with him. She was to be treated now as a criminal, or at best a case of charity, utterly dependent on the generosity of the Belmaines. She had her father's promise still-but she had learned, from the rather oblique hints of Mr. Jocelyn, that the Bruces were not so comfortably provided for that the lifetime support of a daughter and grandchild would be a light thing.

"I could wish that we had never got to this point," the lawyer said. "This is tragic, my dear. Tragic. I supposed, when I saw him-but if Lord Winter has lost patience, can he be blamed? From his point of view, if there is not to be a marriage, then that fact must be made evident immediately, so that he is free to wed elsewhere." He shook his head again. "No doubt his counsel has advised him to act with vigor for a resolution."

Zenia bowed her head. She had not described her interview with Lord Winter, only said that nothing had been settled. "Well," she said, "Elizabeth and I will go to Switzerland. At least my father is there. And there is to be a house, and money for her."

"Little enough of that," Mr. Jocelyn said. "This is hardly as handsome an offer as the other was, even in its pecuniary terms. And they have left themselves several ways out, in particular by making things dependent on your character and conduct. However, we may negotiate upon those points. Lord Belmaine is a little nervous of his part in this alleged fraud-and you see that there is a clause dealing with him alone. And of course Lord Winter's desire for access to Miss Elizabeth is a point of leverage."

"Oh," Zenia said, "this is horrible."

'This sort of thing is seldom pretty, I fear." He cleared his throat. "I am sorry to say that it will likely be even less pleasant before it is over."

She sat with her hands clasped tightly in her lap. As Mr. Jocelyn studied the contract, she felt her lips press and tremble. A tear slid down her cheek. "I only want to keep Elizabeth," she said in a painful voice. "Oh, God, will I be transported?"

"My dear!" He instantly produced a crisp handkerchief. "I am very, very sorry. I should not frighten you. Certainly you will not. If you must go to the Continent on these terms, you must, and well before any peril of such a thing. I am quite certain that the Belmaines have no real desire to bring an action for fraud-that is simply to apply pressure to you to release Lord Winter entirely. But no matter what sort of paper you sign, they must be concerned that you might come back in the future and make some claim to be his wife." He gave her a perfunctory smile. "Indeed, if you could promptly move some fortunate young man to fall in love and marry you, we should have no concerns at all. I'm sure they would be perfectly delighted to drop these accusations, since your marriage to another man must remove any fears."

"I have come to hate the very word marriage," Zenia said. "And I am not fond of men, either."

He sat looking at her for a moment, his pleasant face cocked a little to one side, his brown eyes thoughtful.

"I beg your pardon,"" she said, realizing how she had spoken. "I didn't mean you, of course! But I do not think another marriage will answer," she said, rubbing her fingers on the smooth wood of the tabletop. "There is Elizabeth."

"Yes, of course," he said, as if she had started him out of a distant thought. "Miss Elizabeth. My dear, do you need to look in on her? I would like a little time to deliberate on a notion that has just come to me. I must leave for Edinburgh tomorrow, you know, so give me an hour now to ponder."

"I hope you still stay to dinner," Zenia said politely.

"That is very kind; I will be happy to do so."

She left him with his pen poised over a blank paper, glad enough to impart the burden to him. But even with Elizabeth, Zenia could not dispel the pall of worry. And pain. She could admit it, looking at Elizabeth's serious face as she worked to fit a beanbag through the tight neck of a tin cup. If Lord Winter could see Zenia in Elizabeth's laugh, she could see him with perfect clarity in his daughter's intensity and determination.

She had grieved for him once, but this was a different loss-she had demanded it herself, and yet the moment she had her will she had known with her entire being what a devastating blow it was. She had not expected him to relent; she had in some absurd way trusted that he would not-that somehow if she refused him and refused him and refused him, he would not go away, but change.

As if by taunting and taunting it, she could exorcise the djinni that compelled him to be what he was. As if she could erase the unhappiness in his eyes and make him want to stay. Glad to stay.

But he would not change. And by her folly she had ruined her own future-and worse, far worse-Elizabeth's.

Clare appeared at the door. "Mr. Jocelyn wishes to see you now, ma'am."