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She stood silent, turning the words over in her mind as if they were a strange device that she could not find the key to understand. With a shy move, she looked away and caught a glimpse of both of them in the mirror on her dressing table. Herself, with red hair and a high-colored complexion—if not quite dread fully plain, then certainly with no particular beauty— and him, watching her in the glass, dark-eyed and masculine, exceptionally handsome by any measure.

The f lush on her cheeks deepened. She felt strange to herself, mortified and confused. "I don't see how that can be true," she whispered.

"No," he said. His mouth was grim. "No, you can't, because all you can see is what's in that mirror. So! Eh bien! Sell yourself to Sturgeon. I'll b e removing to France in any event," he added, "where I'll find myself some vintner who'll overcome his republican scruples so that his daughter can call herself a duchesse. And everything will be très conven

able, n'est-ce pas?"

"You're mine?" she asked in a faint voice, still bemused by his words.

"I'll do my best to overcome the sentiment, so do not concern yourself about it." He thrust his hands in his pockets. "Ah, and here is your key." He withdrew the key and tossed it onto her dressing table. "I found nothing amiss with the books. They conform to the bank ledgers perfectly, so no hope that the good major can be dissuaded from his engagement to marry your fortune."

She picked up the key and turned it over in her palm, looking down at it. "Did you wish to dissuade him?"

"No such thing," he said in a curt voice. "I merely wanted to satisfy myself as to who had blackmailed him. But it remains a mystery, and I daresay it always will now. Since Mrs. Fowler has managed to locate me, and you've all these assistant secretaries running haphazardly about the house, I don't think I'll tarry here much longer."

"I don't understand you. If you weren't married—if you never loved her—then why—" She clenched her fist on the key. " Why did you do such a thing for her?"

"Because I am a screaming fool, that's why!" he snapped. "It wasn't out of love for her , you may be sure. I did it for a friend."

"A friend!" she cried indignantly. "What sort of friend would ask such a thing of you?"

"Hush. Do you want to bring the secretaries down upon on us?"

Callie plopped down in a chair, looking up at him. "What I want is to know how you came to be convicted of a crime on behalf of this Mrs. Fowler. I'm coming to dislike her extremely now, and perhaps I may turn her over to one of these secretaries myself."

He shrugged. "A benevolent thought, but it would do no good. There's no evidence against her that hasn't already been dismissed by the court. You'd have to bring her to confess to Sidmouth himself, and there's slim chance of that. She may complain of her notoriety, but she likes having her neck spared well enough."

"But why did you do it? You didn't raise a finger to defend yourself!"

"It was ill-judged, I'll admit. Though it might have been worse."

"So it might!" she agreed angrily. "I should like to know what so-called friend caused you to put yourself in such peril! And then I should like to see him tossed head over heels on Hubert's horns." She paused. "Or her," she added conscientiously.

"Him," Trev said. "But you'd have liked him, Callie. And I know he would have very much liked you. We had a quip between us—" He stopped himself, looking conscious. "Well, that's no matter. Perhaps a female wouldn't appreciate the humor."

"Perhaps," she said. Some of her rigidity left her, but she felt dissatisfied that she wasn't to be let in on whatever humor this might be. "I collect he is no longer living?"

"No," Trev said shortly. "He's dead."

"I'm sorry." Callie lowered her eyes. To be candid, she found herself jealous of any friend who commanded such loyalty from him. "I'm sure you miss him," she said, attempting to enter into his feel ings. "Was he a Frenchman?"

He gave a laugh. "The Rooster? No, not hardly! Though I met him in France."

"Oh," she said. "Oh, of course. The pugilist." Callie supposed she shouldn't be taken aback; the papers had mentioned his association with Mrs. Fowler's late husband, but she had never imagined that Trev would have a close rapport with one of the great, hulking men who pounded one another to bloody, raw f lesh in their illegal bouts.

He seemed to read her thoughts, for he clasped his hands behind his back and bowed. "I haven't led a very respectable life since I left Shelford, my lady."

She bent her head. "No, I suppose you haven't."

"I expect if you've read the papers, you know that I've got no property in France, either," he added gruff ly. "It's all a great fabrication that I made up to please my mother."

She had deduced that, in fact, and spent a number of her nights composing scornful remarks to her pillow on his general perfidy and falsehood. But she only said, "I see."

"I made an attempt to recover it," he said, "and all I received for my trouble was to find myself in the clutches of a moneylender the likes of whom I'd knife in the back if I met him today. But I was young and witless, and I wanted to have Monceaux; I wanted to go to my grandfather and tell him I had it back. Sadly for these fine ambitions, what I got was beaten sense less in a back alley of Paris."

Callie listened with her eyes lowered. In mockery he called her worldly wise, but she had stayed in Shelford, dreaming of adventures, reading his letters full of humor and invented tales, while he had gone out and been beaten up in an alley.

"But to shorten this unedifying story," he continued, "I fell in with some English deserters after the war. Big fellows. We were all starving to death." He gave a humorless laugh. "I had the lucky notion of making an exhibition of English boxing in Paris. None of us knew a thing about fighting, so we fixed it. It was a sensation. I'd call for a volunteer to take on these English goddamns —you'll pardon another lesson in my language, Mademoiselle, but I'm afraid that's what we French call your countrymen under certain circumstances—and we'd have some hulking local géant ready to come up and fight. There'd be a lot of sound and fury before we made sure he won, and split the takings with him." He crossed his arms and leaned back against the mantel. "But Jem got tired of it. He began to fight in earnest. And he was good." His voice softened, and he shook his head a little. "He was amazing. But we couldn't make any profit in France by thrashing Frenchmen. So we changed his name, came back to England, and made a bid for the championship."

"Instead of coming home to your family," she said tartly, "as you might have done in place of starving on the streets of Paris or becoming a… a—"

"An operator of the Fancy," he supplied. "I arranged bouts and held the stakes. I didn't want to come back. My grandfather was still alive." He paused. "Among other reasons."

That cause she did comprehend. The old duc had used mockery and scorn like a rapier on his grandson; Trev had always ignored it or turned it away with a shrug, but Callie knew. Their wildest adventures were driven by his grandfather's sneering voice. Trev would give his alley-cat yowl under her window in the middle of the night, and all the rules were at naught then. There would be a hint of violence in his laughter that only some journey to the edge of disaster could quell. To stand before his grandfather and admit that he had tried to regain Monceaux and failed—no. She understood that much.

"But this is a boring topic," he said with a shrug. "We did well enough for ourselves. Jem fell in love with the adorable Emma, and they had a son, and everyone loved them all, and when the Rooster lay there dying on the grass, he asked me to take care of Emma and the boy." His tone was light and careless, but his expression was rather hard. "Perhaps they didn't print that part in the newspapers."

"No," she said quietly, "they didn't print that."

"God knows I tried to do it," he said, drawing a deep breath. "She'd listen to Jem. She's a remarkably silly woman, but she doted on him. Once he was gone—we couldn't deal at all, she and I. There was a nice sum of money that was meant for her and the boy. I had charge of it, but I could see she'd run through it before he was out of short coats. And she did. So I made her an allow ance myself—aye, you may lift your eyebrows, but I'd built up a pretty fortune, and a good deal of it was from making book on the Rooster's fights, so I reckoned it was only what I owed him. But she got herself on tick with some jeweler, and he frightened her, and she was too stupid or stubborn to come to me." He blew a scoffing breath. "As if we'd let a bill broker carry her off without breaking his legs for him first."

She sat looking at him, sorting out this new Trevelyan in her mind: this rather fierce gentleman of fisticuffs and a friendship that outlasted death. In truth, it suited him better than presiding gravely over a grand chateaus, something that she had always had a difficult time envisioning even with his letters from France full of details and embellishments.

But there was a certain force, a hint of real brutality about him now. In all her fantasies of pirates and swords, amid the skewering and cannon fire—clean and bloodless in imagination—Trev had been at the center. It had always been a part of him, that violence: hidden and checked, but understood. The world had brought it out in him, she thought. No, he'd never allow anyone under his protection to be carried off or threatened—not when Callie had been tagging along with him on adventures, and not now.

"I marvel at her lack of sense," she said thought fully. "Certainly you would break his legs."

He gave her a sardonic smile. "Well, I wouldn't do it personally, of course."

"I did wonder why all your menservants were so large."

He made a slight bow.

"I ought to be shocked," she said.

He tilted his head to the side. "Aren't you, ma mie ?"

Callie's forehead creased as she considered the ques tion. She stood up and took a turn across the carpet. "I am exceedingly cross with you, certainly."

"So I had noticed," he murmured.

"Trevelyan," she said with determination. She stopped and faced him, taking a deep breath into her lungs in preparation to speak her mind.

"Call me 'Seigneur,'" he suggested to her mildly. "If you wish to reduce me to a quivering dish of jelly in the most efficient manner."

She ignored this. "I was led to believe you were married to that woman." She gathered her skirt, strode across the room again, and then looked back at him. "Married!"

"I'm sure I never said so."

This was so reasonable that it merely fed her displeasure. "You also never said you weren't!"

"At what point did the topic enter into our conver sation?" he inquired.

"And that is another thing!" she expostulated. "Previous to this, sir, your conversation has been singularly uninformative regarding anything of any consequence whatsoever."

"I beg your pardon, Madame," he said, thrusting himself away from the mantel. "In that case I'll endeavor to confine myself to subjects of more worth and significance than my admiration for you."

She was cast into confusion by that, but recovered and began to pace the carpet again. "Indeed, it's been an excellent diversion, all this making up to me. I collect it was your intention to keep me wholly in the dark about everything!"

"Well of course," he said. "I always tell women I'm in love with them in order to produce mystification and baff lement. What other reason could I possibly have?"

"I can comprehend that you didn't wish to reveal these things to your mother, about making money off of boxing matches, and not truly owning Monceaux, and nearly being hung—but you might have told me and saved us a good deal of trial and tribulation."

"I didn't want you to know," he said curtly.

"What's more," she added, "you talk a great deal of how you admire and… and… whatever it is that you say—"

"That I love you?" he interrupted.

"Well, that. Yes, you seem to say that." She became f lustered. "You have said that, several times. And that you would like to murder Major Sturgeon, and that sort of thing, which of course is quite nonsensical, and perhaps it is all nonsense." Callie stopped her pacing. She looked over at him where he stood beside the fire place. The hard expression had returned to his face.

"I think it is all nonsense, because it is only words," she ventured. She wet her lips and then blurted out: "Like your letters, and everything you've said before. Words, with nothing behind them."

She glanced toward him under her lashes. White lines had appeared at the corners of his mouth. For a long moment they stood in silence, but her heart was beating so hard that it seemed to fill her ears. She had never seen him look so forbidding.

"Because if…" she said, summoning all her nerve, "if you aren't already married, then…" She broke off, realizing with horror that she was as near as was prac tical to demanding that he propose to her instead. Her courage failed her, overcome by a miserable wave of shyness. "Of course I understand now," she continued hurriedly, trying to appear as if she had meant nothing of the sort, "your circumstances are—with what you've told me, it's quite plain—you have abundant reason for not seeking matrimony with any respectable lady."

"Any respectable lady such as yourself?" he asked in a smothered voice.

"Myself!" she said with a dismissive f lurry of her hands. Three gentlemen had assured Callie that they loved her, and then reexamined their characters and belatedly determined that they were not worthy of taking so bold a step as to actually escort her to the altar. He was going to say he wasn't worthy to marry her. She could feel it coming. "Oh no. I wasn't speaking of myself, of course. You wouldn't be offering for me!" She gave an unconvincing laugh. "I'm betrothed, am I not? I didn't mean that at all. I merely meant—some chance respectable lady."

He examined the coals in the fireplace. Callie examined the hem of her skirt.

"In fact," he said slowly, "you are correct. It was all nonsense. Merely words, with nothing behind them."

Since she had entered into the room, Callie's emotions had spun from fury and shame to astonish ment—and then a feeling that she could hardly put a name to, something rather like a fragile joy, but half-disbelieved, too tentative and tender to fully show itself. At these words, it snapped back into hiding like a frightened turtle.

"To be frank," he went on grimly, "I never wanted to see you again. I assumed you were married and long moved away from here. If I'd known you were in Shelford, I'd never have come back at all."

"Would you not?" she asked lightly, assuming a defensive shell of hauteur against the shock of this attack. "Perhaps, after all, that would have been best."

"Certainly it would." He plucked her scarf from the f loor and tossed it on her dressing table. "In point of fact, I don't care to be your lover." His voice gained strength. "I didn't want to tell you anything at all about what my life has been. Not a goddamned thing! Here you are in this quaint little village, a respectable lady with your fortune and your cattle, where you're safe and comfortable, where a goat up a tree is the about the greatest threat to anybody's peace of mind. If there's one thing that's certain, it's that I don't belong in this pretty scene—as your father made perfectly clear years ago. When I saw you in that ballroom, I should have turned on my heel and walked out. And that, as you suggest, would have saved us all a great deal of trial and tribulation."

"Of course!" She was forced to agree immediately, and indeed to raise the stakes. "I'm sure that would have been the best for all of us!" she exclaimed in an unsteady voice. "Except for your mother, and if you did her a great deal of good at first, I believe with these Runners and constables besetting her, you may be the death of her yet!"

The instant she spoke, she wished the words back. She lifted her hand quickly, but he was already turning away.

"I'll remedy that at once," he snapped. "I bid you adieu, my lady. Accept my felicitations on your marriage." He threw open the shutters and the sash. It had come on to rain heavily again, and a gust of cold air blew her scarf from the table.

"Wait!" she said hastily. "Of course, I didn't mean—please wait. Oh, please wait!"

He paused with his hand on the sash, the wind blowing past him, tousling his hair. "What is it? Quickly, before I'm seen here in broad daylight."

A tumble of words fought to reach her tongue, but all she could manage to utter was, "Where are you going?"

"Where I've always been going." He swung his legs fully over the windowsill and ducked out. "To the devil."