His brother-in-law's cool tones broke into his mussing, and he looked up, startled. Julian stood over him with the decanter, one eyebrow raised. “Deep thoughts, Gareth?”

Gareth's countenance took on a ruddy hue. “Nice for Lucy to have something to plan,” he said. “Makes her happy when she's got something to do.”

Julian merely raised an eyebrow and returned to his newspaper. Presenting Tamsyn formally to local society under his sister's auspices would be more convenient and more conventional than doing it himself. Lucy knew all the intricacies of the local family networks, and he could trust her not to step on any toes with her invitations. She would ensure that the old tabbies like the Honorable Mrs. Anslow and Miss Gretchen Dolby would be included, as well as the younger set. And it was always possible that someone of that generation might remember a disappearance over twenty years ago.

Tamsyn was still an exotic flower in this country backwater, but if she didn't talk too much and kept herself in the background, she should be able to muddle through an evening with Lucy and himself to steer her.

It was interesting that she and Lucy had become such good friends, the constraint of that first evening vanished. Gareth still attempted some heavy-handed flirtation, but Tamsyn skilfully turned it aside and Lucy no longer seemed troubled by it. In fact, she seemed happier altogether. It was one less thing to worry about. But it wasn't enough to lift his depression.

He knew perfectly well that he was depressed because he was stuck here while his friends and his men were enduring the broiling heat of the summer campaign. Unless some miracle happened, he would stay stuck until October, when he would leave Tamsyn to whatever life she'd made for herself here and sail back to Lisbon, hopefully rejoining the army before they went into winter quarters.

But dwelling on that prospect didn't lift his spirits either, and he knew why. He was not looking forward to bringing his liaison with the brigand to a close. In the dark reaches of the night, when she slept beside him curled like an exhausted puppy against his chest, he had allowed himself to imagine going back to Spain with her. Setting her up as his established mistress. She would have no trouble following the drum; campaigning was in her blood. But he'd have to persuade her to give up this plan to find her mother's family, and what would he be offering in its place? A liaison for an indeterminate length of time, trailing after the army over a country ravaged by war. And when the war was over, he'd have to come back here, take himself a wife, and set about building a dynasty.

It wasn't fair to ask her, and Tamsyn showed no signs of suggesting such a thing herself

In a small parlor at the rear of the house, Lucy drew a sheet of paper toward her. “I'll make a list of all the people we should invite. I'll explain who they are to you as I do it, so you'll learn who are the really important families. “

Tamsyn sat down beside her. “How many are you going to invite?”

Lucy tapped her teeth with her quill. “We really have to invite everyone,” she said. “Unless it's to be a very small, intimate gathering.”

“Which it isn't going to be.”

“No,” Lucy said with a chuckle. “What's the point of going to all this trouble just for twenty people? Julian won't mind so long as we don't trouble him with any of the arrangements.” She began to scribble a list of names, rattling through a description and titbits of gossip attached to various people as she compiled the list.

“There, now.” She sat back, shaking her wrist at the end of fifteen minutes of busy scribbling. “I think that's everyone who is anyone, from as far away as Truro. A few of them won't come, of course, but they'd be bitterly offended if they didn't receive an invitation.”

Tamsyn scanned the list of over a hundred names.

She'd been waiting for Lucy to mention the Penhallans, but the name didn't appear anywhere.

“Gabriel mentioned a very prominent family called Penhallan,” she said with an air of mild curiosity. “He'd heard talk of them in the taverns in Fowey.”

“Viscount Penhallan,” Lucy said. “He's very important, but he doesn't go into local society. He's very powerful in the government, I think. I've only met him twice, in London.” She frowned down at the list, saying absently, “I didn't like him. He's very intimidating.”

“Does your brother know him?”

“Oh, yes, of course,” Lucy said, still distracted. “But there was some scandal about his nephews, and no one receives them anymore… I don't know what it was, and don't say anything to Julian, because he'll accuse me of gossiping and then he'll be very toplofty and uncomfortable. “

“Shouldn't you invite Viscount Penhallan if everyone else is invited?” Tamsyn asked carelessly, helping herself to an apple from the fruit bowl on the table and polishing it busily against her skirt.

“Oh, he won't care to come,” Lucy said confidently. “But you said other people wouldn't come, but they had to be invited nevertheless.”

“Oh, yes, but they're different. Lord Penhallan is a very important person, and he wouldn't expect to be invited to a little reception like this.”

“A hundred guests isn't that little.” She scrunched into her apple. “It seems like half the county to me. At least if you invite him, he can't possibly be offended. Better to be safe than sorry, I always say.”

Lucy contemplated the list with a frown. “I suppose it might be considered a slight to leave him out.”

“I will write the invitation,” Tamsyn said, drawing a sheet of paper toward her with a businesslike air. “Shall I do the second half of the list and you do the top?”

Would he come? If he was curious about her, then he would come. She was convinced he hadn't set the twins to attack her-it was too clumsy an act for someone as clever and devious as she knew her uncle to be. But neither had it been random. The twins had taken their uncle's business into their own vile, clumsy hands.

Cedric Penhallan was definitely curious about her, and he would come.

The invitation arrived with Cedric's breakfast the next morning. He read it twice, a slight smile curving the fleshy mouth. The handwriting bold, the strokes heavily inked-not an overtly feminine hand. Certainly not the hand of Lucy Fortescue. Somehow he knew it had been written by the girl he'd seen on the stairs, the girl with the violet eyes who rode that milk-white Arabian. He scrutinized the missive, looking for some link to Celia. There was nothing, and yet he could scent the challenge rising from the heavy vellum. The invitation was an opening move.

But where in the name of grace did Julian St. Simon fit into all this?

“I SHALL WEAR THE RUBIES TO THIS PARTY,” TAMSYN announced, sitting cross-legged in the middle of Julian's bed. She was as usual naked, and she was watching him undress with close attention.

“No, you won't,” the colonel said, bending to splash water on his face from the ewer.

Tamsyn hungrily absorbed the clean lines of his back, the lovely, taut buttocks, the long, muscular length of thigh. “Why not?”

He turned and she lost interest in the answer to the question, jumping off the bed with a little predatory whoop like a huntsman on the track of the fox…

“Why won't I wear the rubies?” she asked some considerable time later. “They will go beautifully with the gown that Josefa is making for me. It's silver lace, opening over a half slip of cream silk, with a demitrain. I haven't the faintest idea how I'm to manage the train it catches in one's feet most dreadfully. I shall probably trip down the stairs, or fall flat on my backside in the middle of a dance.”