Cassandra would buy the child some little trinkets too. And Mary. Not Alice, though. Alice would not accept any gift in her present mood.

She had a protector, Cassandra thought, verbalizing the word very clearly in her mind. She was a mistress – paid for the sexual favors she would provide. There would, of course, be nothing mutual in the things that would happen between her and the Earl of Merton, despite his insistence that there would. For she would /never/ want him despite his beauty and his undeniably appealing masculinity and virility. And despite what she suspected was a genuine kindness in his nature.

Nine years of marriage had killed any interest she could possibly have in what the Earl of Merton wanted her to enjoy with him. If he waited until she wanted what he wanted, he would wait forever and she would be taking money she had in no way earned.

She would earn her money. Every penny of it. She had /some/ pride. He would never know that there was nothing mutual at all in their sexual relations.

She would give very good value for money.

It all seemed worthwhile as she watched the child play with the dog, both of them equally and blissfully happy – and trusting.

Two precious innocents. /Anything/ was worthwhile if it could push back by even one day the loss of such innocence.

LADY Carling's at-home was for ladies only. Stephen wondered as he lifted the door knocker and let it fall back against the door if a large number of them would still be in the drawing room or if by half past four most of them would have taken their leave. Perhaps Lady Paget would already have left in an attempt to avoid driving in the park with him.

Perhaps she had not even come, though that would be foolish of her if she hoped to be received ever again by at least some of her peers. She must surely have come to London with a longer-term plan than merely finding a protector to help pay her bills for a few months, until the end of the Season.

Carling's butler took Stephen's card up to the drawing room, and Stephen caught the buzz of feminine conversation as the door opened upstairs and then closed again. /Some/ of the guests were still here.

"Lady Carling will be pleased to receive you, my lord," the butler said when he returned, and Stephen followed him back upstairs.

Many men would have been considerably disconcerted at the prospect of walking in on a company comprising exclusively ladies. Stephen was not among them. Most ladies, he found, were very willing to tease and laugh when they had one man at their mercy, and Stephen was always happy to oblige them and to tease and laugh right back at them. He was still somewhat out of humor today, it was true, but he had pushed most of his anger and irritability away while walking home from White's for luncheon. He could not remain angry for any protracted length of time.

Or at least, he /would/ not. No one would be granted that power over him.

He had apologized to Philbin, and his valet had made a stiff bow of acceptance and in so doing had spotted a virtually invisible film of dust over Stephen's boots, acquired when he had had the effrontery to /walk/ home in them when those particular boots were meant to be worn only indoors or inside a carriage, as his lordship very well knew. Did his lordship know /nothing/ of the damage such dust could do to the leather? And would his lordship remove them /right now/ before the damage was irreparable and Philbin found it quite impossible to hold up his head before the other servants for the rest of his days?

Stephen had sat meekly down and allowed his boots to be pulled off, and the relationship had been restored to a happy normality.

Carling's butler opened the drawing room doors with a flourish and announced Stephen in deep, ringing tones that brought first silence to the room and then a burst of flutterings and twitterings from the ladies gathered there.

Lady Carling was on her feet and coming toward him, one hand outstretched.

"Lord Merton," she said. "How delightful."

"Never tell me, ma'am," he said, taking her hand in his and looking at her in mock horror, "that your at-home is only for ladies. And all the way here I have been composing an abject apology for being so late arriving."

"Well, in that case, Lord Merton," she said, "I will hear it anyway. We will /all/ hear it."

There was a chorus of assent from the ladies gathered there.

"Well, you see," he said, "I thought it would be mainly Carling's friends who would be here, and so I drove through the park on my way in the hope of brightening my afternoon by seeing some of my favorite ladies before I came. And when I found the park almost deserted, I drove over to Bond Street to see if any of them were /there/, lured by the shops. Then I tried Oxford Street, but all to no avail. And /now/ I discover that every single one of the ladies I most wished to see has been here all the time."

His outrageous flatteries were met with derision and laughter, and he looked about at them all, a grin on his face. All three of his sisters were there. So was Lady Paget, seated beside Nessie. She was smartly dressed in green again, though it was a sage green today instead of emerald. Her clothes must be one of the few assets she had been allowed to keep after her widowhood. She was wearing no jewelry, just as she had not been last evening.

She did not join in the laughter and teasing of the other ladies. But she did smile – that faint, slightly mocking smile she had worn at the ball last evening and in her bedchamber early this morning. It was a smile he had quickly realized was part of a mask she wore to cover any suggestion of vulnerability she might be feeling.

The sun shining through the window was on the side of her face and in her hair. She looked vividly, almost shockingly beautiful.

"Ladies," Lady Carling said, linking an arm through his, "shall we send him away again? Or shall we keep him?"

"Keep him," a few ladies said, amid laughter.

"It would be a pity, Ethel," the dowager Lady Sinden said, raising a lorgnette to her eyes and regarding Stephen through it, "to doom our poor Lord Merton to wandering the streets and haunting the park for the next hour while he waits for his /favorite/ ladies to leave your drawing room. It would be best to keep him here and thus keep him happy. Is it your curricle you have been driving half over London, Merton? Or a more sensible carriage?"

"My curricle, ma'am," he said.

"Then you cannot take /me/ riding in the park afterward," she said,

"even though I am sure I must be your /very/ favorite among the present company. I stopped riding in curricles when I turned seventy a number of years ago. I can get up into them, but I cannot get down out of them without two stout footmen having to lift me bodily down."

"They must be weaklings of footmen even if they /are/ stout, ma'am,"

Stephen said, still grinning at her. "I could lift you down with one arm. You can weigh no more than a feather."

"Impudent puppy," she said with a bark of laughter that set her three chins to swaying.

"But alas, ma'am," he said, "I cannot prove it to you today. I have come because I have already persuaded another lady to drive in the park with me, and she is here."

"And who is the fortunate lady?" Lady Carling asked as she drew him down to sit beside her on a sofa. "Did I promise such a thing last evening and have simply forgotten? But how could any lady /possibly/ forget such a thing?"

She leaned forward to the tea tray in order to pour his tea.

"Alas, ma'am," he said, "Sir Graham was at your side and I dared not even ask. He might have throttled me. Lady Paget has agreed to drive with me."

There was a small silence in the room.