"Hardly surprising," he replied matter-of-factly. Learning was an unusual accomplishment for most women, and unheard of for either sex in the world where she had dwelt hitherto. "But how can you expect to become an actor if you cannot read a part?"

"I have a good memory," she said a little truculently. "If someone reads the lines to me, I will remember them."

"And you imagine that someone is going to be prepared to devote that amount of time to an inexperienced slip of a wench?" He allowed a faint note of derision to creep into his voice and saw her flush deepen.

"Then I will teach myself. If you will lend me a book, I am sure I will be able to learn." The note of confidence rang true, and Nicholas wondered if this was another of the actor's tricks, or if she genuinely believed it.

"It will be quicker and easier if you have a tutor," he pointed out mildly. "I will undertake the task in exchange for your agreement to abide by my decisions." It would also give him the opportunity to assess the quickness of her wit, he reflected. If she was as intelligent as he suspected, the task ahead of them, in all its manifestations, would be greatly facilitated.

"What is it that you wish me to do for you in return?" Polly asked with slightly unnerving directness. "You said we would be of service t amp; each other." Slipping his coat from her shoulders, she stood up and began to open her smock. Her fingers shook slightly, but he had seen her naked already, so any embarrassment was surely ridiculous. "Do you wish to lie with me now?" This was the exchange she had expected-her virtue for his patronage. And she would count her fiercely protected innocence well lost, the currency that would buy her access to ambition.

Nicholas knew that he did want her-very much. And that if she removed her smock again, revealing that peerless body, he would be lost. Circumstances had intervened the last time, but there would be no disturbances in his own

house, his own bed, and the task he had assigned himself was sufficiently complicated without added entanglements. "No, I do not for the moment," he denied, his voice a trifle thick. "I think you should get into your own bed quickly." He wrenched his eyes away from the temptation of her breasts and walked over to a low table where reposed a decanter of brandy.

"Do you not find me desirable?" She sounded surprised, and a little disconsolate. "It is not the case, in general."

He whirled on her. It was a mistake since she now stood quite naked, glowing and perfect in the lamplight. "You said you were a maid?" he rasped.

Slowly she nodded, the honeyed river of her hair pouring over her shoulders. "I am, but many men have wished… have tried-" Her shoulders lifted in an expressive movement. "Prue stood my friend in that, else I'd have succumbed to rape long since. When I have taken the gulls abovestairs, they have always fallen asleep almost straightway."

Gulls! Nicholas winced at the appropriate term. He had been gull enough to fall for that beauty and the accomplished performance. He tried to look at her dispassionately as she stood before him and found that he could not. He tried to find anger, but there was none. This exquisite creature, who talked so matter-of-factly about her narrow escape from rapine brutality, had been sufficiently bruised and battered by life's ferocity.

It was an effort, but he managed to turn back to the brandy decanter. He filled two glasses. "Put on your smock and get into bed." He waited with averted back until a rustle and a creak indicated that he had been obeyed, then he turned and brought one of the glasses over to the truckle bed. "This will warm you."

Polly took the glass of Venetian crystal; never before had she handled anything so delicate or so precious.

"Where did you learn to speak as you do?" Nicholas asked casually. It was a question that had puzzled him, but he

also hoped that a change of topic would deflect the awkward intensity that had sprung up between them.

Polly sipped her brandy, a thoughtful frown creasing her brow. "Speak like 'ow? Oi speaks awrigh', dun Oi?"

Nicholas laughed, and she smiled mischievously over the lip of her glass. "You are an impertinent jade, Polly. Answer my question."

"Prue used to be in service with a parson in the country. Long time ago, before she married Josh. They let her keep me with her, although I was too young to work. No one really noticed me much. I used to hide in the corners and listen to the gentry talking. Then I'd practice to make the same sounds." She chuckled. "I'd make the folk in the kitchen laugh when I mimicked the master and mistress, and then I'd get an apple tart or something, so I learned to do it all the time. The family, and any visitors… I'd just listen for a bit, then I'd have it perfect." Her shoulders lifted in a tiny shrug. "Then, of course, Prue had to go and wed Josh. We came back to London, and no one thought it at all funny that I could speak like that-quite the opposite. It used to make Josh madder than a cornered fox. So I stopped."

A perfectly simple explanation, Nick thought, seeing in his mind's eye a lonely little girl of whom no one took any notice, slipping in and out of shadows, listening and observing, performing party tricks for attention and an apple tart. It was not a happy picture. "Prue is your kin?"

"My aunt." Polly drained her glass, holding it out to him. Her eyes closed, and she swayed a little. "I seem to be falling asleep." She slid down the bed, drawing the covers up to her chin. "I was born in Newgate. They were going to hang my mother, but she pleaded her belly, so she was sentenced to transportation instead. Prue took me as soon as I was born, and my mother was sent to the colonies."

There was silence, broken only by the hiss and pop of the fire. Kincaid replaced the Venetian glasses on the tray. It seemed an eon since he had walked into the Dog tavern for his rendezvous with Richard De Winter. It would be dawn in another hour; before then he had to concoct an explana-

tion for the presence in his chamber of this ravishing Newgate brat-an explanation that would satisfy Margaret, who ruled her household with a now unfashionable Puritan's severity.

The Lady Margaret first heard of the night's strange doings from her maid, when she brought her mistress her morning draft of chocolate. "A wench?" she demanded, sitting up in bed and straightening her nightcap. "Lord Kincaid brought a wench to the house?"

"So young Tom says, m'lady." Susan bobbed a curtsy, her demure expression hiding the inner excitement. There would be a mighty explosion over this, and the entire household was waiting with bated breath. The master did not share his sister-in-law's Puritan inclinations, and indeed, was known to mind his lust and his pleasure with the best at the court at Whitehall Palace. But he had some consideration for the Lady Margaret and, in general, kept those activities of which she would disapprove out of the house. Although undisputed master of the house and all within it, he had been hitherto content to leave the management entirely in his sister-in-law's hands, as long as a fair table was kept and matters ran in decent order so that he need never be afraid for the hospitality he would offer his guests.

Margaret sipped her chocolate, torn between the desire to hear all that the maid had to tell her and the knowledge that listening to servants' gossip was bad for household discipline. "And where is the girl now?" she asked, with an assumption of casualness.

There was an instant's silence as Susan bent to poke the fire. "No one's seen her, m'lady." She hesitated, then continued boldly, "But Tom says that his lordship carried her into his bedchamber." Susan kept her back to the bed, afraid that if there was an explosion of wrath, she might receive the overspill. Her statement could be considered insolent in its forwardness, and Lady Margaret corrected insolence with a supple hazel stick.