"Oh, yes," she said, smiling at him.

"What are your favorite kinds?"

"I think-" She bent her head so far down that he could not see her face under the bonnet. "White roses," she murmured.

Nearly, very nearly, he said in an ironical tone, How gratifying! But he stopped himself in time. "Then I'm glad I finally managed to locate one. It was no easy task, you may believe me."

She slanted a look up at him, a faint surprise. "Wherever did you find it growing at this time of year?"

"Ah," he said. "Ah."

She was still looking at him in inquiry after that splendid answer.

"I ordered it from a florist," he said, driven rapidly onto the rocks. "But if I had picked it, it would certainly have reminded me of you."

Still she looked up slantwise at him, her lips pursed gently. He could not tell if she was offended or amused.

"I bought a book," he said in desperation. "There is a recommendation for each month, you see-January is a white rose."

She turned her face away, looking straight ahead as they walked. "I think," she said slowly, "that you are right, my lord. Perhaps we should become acquainted. Perhaps I do not know you at all."

"Then allow me to advise you at once that I'm a saphead," he said jovially. "Supposing you have not divined it already."

She lifted her chin. "If you please, sir-I shall draw my own conclusions."

He bowed. "A lady's perogative."

As they neared the rustic gates at the entrance of the Zoological Gardens, Lord Winter's pace slowed abruptly. "Damnation," he said under his breath, and as Zenia looked up at him in inquiry, he turned to Mrs. Lamb. "I'll take her-"

"Winter!" cried a lady's voice, modulated in the most genteel accents, but carrying well for all that. "How do you do? Your dear mother wrote me the glad news of your return to us unharmed! All the angels rejoice, my dear, but what a horrible boy you are, to give us such a dreadful fright!"

It was a matron of some years and considerable stature who held out her black-gloved hand. As she stood with her companions, two younger women, Lord Winter turned from Zenia and Mrs. Lamb to make a brief bow over her fingertips. "Ma'am," he said. "How do you do?"

"Of course you have not the slightest notion of me, do you? It is Lady Broxwood, your godmother's first cousin," she said imperturbably, and cast a look toward her friends. "We have not met above five hundred times, but since I do not ride a camel, he will have nothing to do with me."

"Oh, indeed," said the younger of the two, a pretty, petite blonde girl several years younger than Zenia, "is it-" She stopped, looking self-conscious.

"May I entreat you, Mrs. George, to allow me to introduce Lord Winter to you," Lady Broxwood said.

The older woman stepped forward and gave Lord Winter's hand a firm shake, her heavily freckled face lighting with an open, contagious smile. "It is a great pleasure," she said. The wrinkles of sun and laughter about her eyes made a cheerful contrast to her plainly styled widow's weeds. "I should very much like to hear of your travels."

"Mrs. George and her niece are famous travelers themselves," Lady Broxwood said. "Lady Caroline, I present Lord Winter to you. Winter, Lady Caroline Preston."

The younger girl shook hands with the same confidence as her aunt. Her face was aglow with such enthusiasm that her prettiness became a positive beauty. "You have no notion how I have longed to meet you, sir! Arabian horses are my passion! Oh, Aunt-Lady Broxwood-you do not treat this gentleman with enough respect! He has brought the greatest mare ever foaled out of the desert, the Jelibiyat String of Pearls!"

Zenia saw the reserved expression on Lord Winter's face change. He held Lady Caroline's hand a moment. "You are familiar with desert horses?"

"Oh, a mere dilettante, I assure you," she said. "But I have an extremely knowledgeable correspondent in Cairo, and another in Bombay. The word, my lord, is that she is beyond price. Beyond imagination. How I yearn to see her! Will you bring her to London?"

"You must come to Swanmere to see her," he said immediately.

"How wonderfully kind! I should be-indeed, I can hardly express myself! I am euphoric! I had not dreamed of such a chance." She smiled at him, her hand still in his, and then at Zenia. This open look seemed to prompt the other ladies to her presence, and there was a moment of expectation.

Lord Winter paused, the corner of his mouth turned up a little; an ironic, half-smiling twist as he glanced at her. "May I present-" There was the barest instant of hesitation. "-my good friend Miss Brace."

"How happy I am to meet you, Miss Bruce. And who is this?" Lady Caroline asked gaily, turning to Elizabeth after everyone had politely taken Zenia's hand. She leaned over and pursed her lips, blowing out her cheeks with a great pouf that made Elizabeth squeak and laugh and reach out toward her face. "Is this your jolly little niece, Miss Bruce? What a beautiful child! And fortunate to have an auntie as good as mine, to take you everywhere."

'This is Miss Elizabeth," Lord Winter said, into the long lull after her innocent remark. That was all.

It felt a stinging blow. To be introduced as Miss Bruce, to have him fail to recognize Elizabeth as his daughter-a bitter anxiety settled in the pit of Zenia's stomach. Along with the papers, the contract that would send her to Switzerland, it put a new and chilling interpretation on his sudden gallantry and suggestion that they start afresh. She could not blame him; she had no one but herself to reproach, and yet, after his illness, after she had worried and feared and loved him so much-somehow it seemed that she would have another chance, that he had been giving it to her with his white rose and halting chivalry. For a few moments, for half an hour, she had thought-something. Something that she was not certain now that he meant.

She could see that Lady Broxwood was looking at her in that keen, expressionless way that the Countess Belmaine's friends had. While Zenia had not gone out into society during the Belmaines' mourning, she had always been introduced as his wife within the limited circle of Swan-mere. If Lady Broxwood was an acquaintance of his mother's, she must suspect who and what Zenia was to him-and Elizabeth too. Zenia waited apprehensively for some cut or rudeness, but Lady Broxwood only turned her attention to Lord Winter.

"You are a godsend, Winter," she said summarily. "A fellow of the zoo society, are you not? We were just told to our faces that we must have a member with us to enter today."

"Yes," he said, rather coldly. "I am a member."

"Come, you hateful boy-has your lady mother neglected all your manners? You don't object to taking us through? We will pay our own shilling, I promise you, if your pockets are so much to let!"

"Oh, no-perhaps Lord Winter is engaged-" Mrs. George said calmly. "I have every intention of subscribing myself, now that we are back in London to stay. We shall go through another day."

"Nonsense," said Lady Broxwood. "And what has Lady Caroline been pining to do since you both got off the boat? Come, Miss Bruce, I'm quite sure Miss Elizabeth is aux anges to ride an elephant, is she not? Lady Caroline can show her the way."

Lady Caroline laughed. "Oh, indeed, but you must not look so horrified, Miss Bruce! I very well can, you know. I was riding an elephant when I was but four days old. You must not be frightened of them. They are the gentlest of creatures in the proper hands. They can pick up a feather off the floor."

"Or out of your hat," said Mrs. George. "Let us not blame Miss Bruce if she maintains a prudent respect for the creatures. You, my young lady, are entirely too sanguine, and will undoubtedly come to your just end one fine day."

"Why, when I have seen you ride Tulwar straight at a tigress, Aunt! Mrs. George is perfectly intrepid, I promise you-far braver than I, and cunning too! There is not a hunter in India who would not take her advice on tracking wild boar."

"Come, child, you are embarrassing me extremely," her aunt said, with a little sharpness under her amiable smile. 'That is not at all true, and hardly the sort of thing that will draw admiration in polite circles."

"Then I think polite circles entirely foolish," Lady Caroline declared stubbornly. "If they do not appreciate you as they should, then I shall have nothing to do with them! What do you think of it, Lord Winter?"

"I believe polite circles are tolerably foolish," he said.

"There. Our oracle has spoken," Lady Caroline said. "Let us go in to the animals! Miss Elizabeth and I are on pins to ride the elephant!"

CHAPTER 25.

The afternoon took on a nightmarish quality to Arden. He made abortive attempts to assert some sort of authority, some organization that might separate him and Zenia and Beth at least a few yards from the rest, but of all the things he had no notion how to command, a herd of women, he discovered, was the foremost in perversity and festive obstinance.

He found himself entering the Lion House carrying Beth, with Lady Caroline beside him and Zenia trailing behind in an ever-changing regrouping, sometimes with Mrs. George, sometimes with a stone-faced Mrs. Lamb, and now and then, to Arden's dread, with Lady Broxwood. He did not trust that woman to be kind, or even civil- he had no idea of what she knew or assumed, but Lady Caroline kept addressing questions to him, perfectly intelligent, provocative questions about the animals and the Zoological Society's intentions in collecting them, forcing him to answer or to pretend he had not heard. She must think him remarkably deaf by now, but no matter how he tried to fall back and walk beside Zenia, he was cut out by one or the other feminine claim on his attention: Lady Broxwood's demand that he tell Mrs. George of the highest recorded temperature in the Arabian desert; Mrs. Lamb's curt mandate to give Miss Elizabeth to her for a change of napkin; Lady Caroline's questions about the different syllables used to command camels. Only Mrs. George seemed content to walk quietly, mostly beside Zenia-which finally seemed the least of evils to Arden, and so he ceased trying to rearrange it all and let them have their way.

The decided odor of exotic animals assailed them as he held open the door into the big cats' abode. The ladies filed past him. He held Beth close, walking well in the center of the long, wide corridor. It was dimly lit aijd stone cold, lined down both sides with barred cages.

On such a bright day in winter, there were not many patrons viewing the exhibit, only a few serious-looking gentlemen, one seated with a sketch pad before the black leopard, and a boy who was asking the attendant eagerly when feeding time would be. His high-pitched voice echoed in the hall, and somewhere down the row a lion's grumble escalated into an impressive roar. As the reverberations died away, Lady Caroline said softly, 'That makes my heart go hot and cold."

Arden looked at her with some interest. She was an unusual girl; he would have liked her rather better than he did if she had not been such a damned inconvenience. For a female, she was easy to talk to; certainly charming to look at-in his present state of long privation he was extremely easy to please with regard to feminine anatomy, and Lady Caroline's pink soft skin and shapely bosom positively endeared her to him in that respect. He felt like a lecherous bastard, but he was so shy of Zenia, so afraid of a repulse, of saying the wrong thing again, and Zenia gave him no help; she did not chatter easily like Lady Caroline or ask him things to which he instantly knew the answer or come and stand beside him and breathe in that exuberant way that made her breasts lift and pull at the tight buttoning on her military-style jacket. No, Zenia hung back even when he tried to join her, slowing her steps until they were almost standing still, which made the whole group pause and gather about them, remarking on whatever bird or beast happened to be nearest, as if that were what had caused them to halt.

He had given up on it by the time they reached the end of the aviary. His afternoon with Zenia was hopelessly scuttled; he decided that he would at least enjoy the time with Beth, who was boisterously delighted by every animal, and perhaps then he could take them home, and go in, and talk to Zenia, and if he made himself particularly affable, perhaps if he was exceptionally fortunate and she was feeling particularly affectionate ...

He stood holding Beth, contemplating the sexual act in powerful and vivid detail, hardly aware that he was staring at Lady Caroline as she stood before a tiger's cage; only conscious of the cat's rhythmic prowl and turn, back and forth and back and forth across the narrow limits of its cell, a vigorous beat to the cadence of his imagination.

Lady Caroline looked over her shoulder at him, frowning a little. "You will say I am a sentimental miss, but I cannot help but wish they could be free. Look at how he paces; how vehement his eyes are. He longs to be gone; to be back in his element."

Arden wrenched himself back from erotic invention to the present moment, profoundly embarrassed. "Yes," he said, his own voice sounding too loud in the echoing hall. He cast a guarded look to see if Zenia had been watching him. He thought she was, though he could not turn to be sure.

"You agree, Lord Winter?" Lady Caroline asked, smiling at him. "But you would understand. People speak often of freedom, but I believe it requires a knowledge of the true cost of a free life to genuinely value it. If he were in the jungle, this fellow, every day of his existence would be struggle and savagery. Here it is easy. But still he longs to be free. He has tasted it, and anything less will always be torture to him."

"Certainly," Arden said, wishing that she had not worn quite such a tight bodice. "Torture."

Lady Caroline slipped her hand into the crook of his arm, turning to move further down the hall. "I'm glad you don't think my conjectures so odd as others sometimes do. I've not been into London society yet. My aunt warns me that I may not find it pleasant. People can be disagreeably severe, she says, and I fear I may not be quite the thing."

"I'm sure you will be the thing," he said, pausing to let Beth coo at an ocelot that was sticking its paw through the bars. "Whatever the deuce the thing may be."

She laughed as if he had made a great jest, the sound of it resonating against the roof. "That is reassuring."

He shrugged. "I'm hardly the one to know," he said. "I detest polite society."

Her hand curled tighter on his arm. "Do you?" She lowered her voice and bent her head toward him. "I should not say so, for Lady Broxwood has been so kind-but I'm entirely of the same mind. There is nothing so dull as a ball or rout-in Bombay we used to have them until I was ready to scream for the tedium of it. But then Aunt and Uncle George would always promise to take me on a hunt, or a trek into the mountains. Have you seen the Himalayas, Lord Winter?"

"I have not," he said.

She squeezed his arm. "I wish I might have the privilege of being there, my lord, to see your face when you do."

Arden began to feel a sensation of entrapment. He turned, dismayed to find Zenia very close behind him. "You have her much too near," she said sharply, and for an instant he thought she was speaking of Lady Caroline's attachment to his arm, but he realized that she meant Beth and the ocelot, who were stretching toward one another.

"Of course," he said, using his move away from the spotted cat to slip free of Lady Caroline. "Am I the only one who finds this a melancholy exhibit? Let us proceed apace to feed the monkeys."

Lord Winter was by no means the only one who felt melancholy. Zenia suffered every degree of jealous misery, from rage to hurt to despair, struck to the heart with the look of stark intensity on his face as he gazed at Lady Caroline and the caged tiger.

Zenia hated the zoological exhibits. She hated the yellow-eyes cats pacing relentlessly in their prisons: their beauty and their wildness; their frustration. She hated Lady Caroline for speaking of it, for standing beside him as he held Elizabeth, for detesting polite society, for being exactly and precisely and effortlessly the woman who should be his wife.

Lady Caroline loved the jungles and wild places, she spoke lightly of hardships and dangers. She was the first to feed the monkeys and bears, and pleaded with Zenia so prettily that Miss Elizabeth would be perfectly, perfectly safe upon the elephant that Zenia was constrained to let her ride. She had supposed it would be Lord Winter who took Elizabeth up, but it was Lord Winter and Lady Caroline, with Elizabeth tucked between them, squealing "'Fant! 'Fant!" at the top of her lungs, while the animal's huge ears flapped languidly back and forth as it walked ponderously about the yard, each huge foot squeezing up a circle of mud. Lady Caroline waved at them, her skirts all akimbo so that her boots and stockinged ankles showed, though she pretended with a mischievous smile to try to push down her petticoats-which only drew Lord Winter's attention to the whole business, Zenia thought angrily.

"I hope we have not spoiled your outing," Lady Brox-wood said in a low voice, coming up beside Zenia as she watched.

"Of course not," she said coldly.

"Lady Belmaine particularly wished him to be introduced to her. They do suit, do they not?"

Zenia could not bear it; she looked aside at Lady Broxwood.

"I should not in general notice a person of your position, Miss Bruce," the older woman said, "but as I understand that you and the little girl are to go the Continent directly, and Lord Winter so rarely appears in society, I felt I could not scruple to pass over such a golden opportunity for them to become acquainted." She gave Zenia a piercing look. "You have been most discreet today; I am sure you will continue so."

"You need not be concerned, ma'am," Zenia said, her lips curling proudly. "We are going home as soon as Elizabeth is let down."

Lord Winter escorted Zenia to the front door in Bentinck Street, while Lady Broxwood's large, elegant carriage waited beside the curb.

"Zenia, I will come back as soon as I see them to- wherever the devil they live," he said, while Zenia stood holding Elizabeth, waiting for the maid to answer the door. Mrs. Lamb lingered at the foot of the steps, finding the coal hole of supreme interest.

"You need not," Zenia said. She had kept the tremble from her voice for all the time it had taken to disengage from the party, to suffer the discussion of whether they should all ride home in Lady Broxwood's chaise, to listen to Lady Caroline's enthusiasm and Mrs. George's invitation to dinner. Lord Winter had accepted the invitation, looking hard at Zenia-and she had refused it, of course, on account of her fictitious sister, Elizabeth's fanciful nameless mother. "You need not come back," she said to him now, hearing the tremble threaten.

"It was horrible, I know," he said low. "I am so sorry, beloved."

The door opened. The housemaid held it wide, curtsying.

"I am coming back," he said. "I want to talk to you."

Zenia stepped inside. She didn't turn to look at him. She heard Mrs. Lamb come in, and the door closed behind her. "Please change Elizabeth's clothes immediately," Zenia said, handing her to the nurse. "She smells like a menagerie." Without pausing, Zenia pounded up the stairs.

In her bedroom, she tore off her cloak and gloves, hurling the muff into the corner of the room. She pulled her bonnet off and began to pace like the caged animals had paced.

"I cannot bear it." She panted a little, biting her lip. "Impossible, impossible, impossible." Her eyes blurred. "It is impossible!" she cried.

She stopped, staring out the window down into the little garden. Angry tears spilled down her cheeks.

"I have done this! I would not listen to them. It is my fault. Oh, Elizabeth, it is my fault!" She pressed her fists and forehead against the cold windowpane. "If only-"

If only what? If only she was married to him now? If only it had been Lady Winter who had stood there and watched him with her? And if not Lady Caroline, then some other; some free and fearless woman of his own heart-he did not even know himself; he still believed in some connection that could bind them-Zenia did not know if he meant marriage still or the house in Switzerland, but it made no matter. She could not bear either. She would not.

She flung herself down at the writing desk. The letter to Mr. Jocelyn in Edinburgh did not take so long to write, it was only that she stared for so long at the blank paper, weeping, and finally laid her head down on her arms and sobbed until she was hoarse.

Mrs. Lamb came in quietly and laid a hand on her shoulder. Zenia sat up, turning her face away.

"His lordship promised he would return," the nurse said firmly. "You must have a little faith in him, ma'am."

"You don't understand," Zenia said, leaning her forehead on her hand.

"A mustard seed will move mountains. And this is only a little hill, ma'am, if you'll pardon me."

"You don't understand. She is right for him. Perfect for him. He doesn't even understand himself. Freedom is everything to him. It is his very life. Like those animals in the cages-he will fret himself to death if he cannot go. And if I-if I don't-if I don't have the courage to let him go now, I shall have to w-watch-" She swallowed. "It would kill me."

"What, do you suppose he will fret to death if he cannot ride an elephant in some nasty desert? When he has you and Miss Elizabeth at home?"

"He will take her!"