“It is the reason he hired me.”

“But he cannot demand that you work when you are in mourning. Miss Caulfield, I propose that we continue on holiday through the month of September. Then you might mourn in peace and I might delay the inevitable a bit longer. If you agree, I vow that come October I will learn everything you wish to teach me in half the time. Do you think I can do it?”

“That all depends on whether you are a very foolish pupil”—like her teacher—“or a very wise one.” Was this typical grief—regret and pain and longing at once? It was difficult to breathe. Difficult to speak. She had made a life of pretense and yet she had never suffered through it before.

Jacqueline cracked a grin. “Does it?”

“Oh, yes.” She forced her tongue. “I like the wise pupils best, of course, but I can make something of the silly ones as well. What they lack in character they typically make up for in a strident devotion to conformity. Since most of the gentlemen of the ton are likewise unoriginal and predictable, matches are rarely difficult to facilitate.”

“Oh, Miss Caulfield—”

“Arabella.”

“I do believe, Arabella, that we are going to get along fabulously.”

As fabulously as two friends could when one was hiding grief and the other was running from her future.

AFTER TEA THE butler, Monsieur Brissot, led Arabella to her bedchamber. She took one look at the sumptuous four-poster bed arrayed in ivory silks with golden tassels, the Italian marble fireplace and thick carpet of pale pinks and gold, and backed away from the threshold.

“I beg your pardon,” she said. “I thought you meant to show me my chamber.”

“Ça y est, madame.” He gestured within.

“No, monsieur. It must be a mistake.”

“It is no mistake. Lord Bedwyr’s instruction was quite clear.” He said this as though it meant nothing to him that a servant of lesser status than he was being assigned a bedchamber fit for a noble guest.

For four days Arabella kept largely to that bedchamber, joining the princess for walks in the park that spread to one side of the river and for tea and dinner. On the fifth day Prince Reiner sent the carriage to collect his sister for a party that was to be given in her honor by his host at the neighboring estate.

“I would beg your company, Arabella,” Jacqueline said with a kiss on either of her cheeks. “But I suspect you would rather remain here. Indeed, like I would.” She smiled ruefully and went off to the party.

Arabella went to the terrace overlooking the river and stared into the water, which terrified her even in its mirrorlike tranquility. She drew the ruby ring from her gown and ran her thumb over the symbols embossed in the thick gold.

When Jacqueline returned she would bring her brother with her: the prince. Arabella knew she should feel the same tug of anticipation that every step toward discovering her true identity had given her. But she felt only emptiness. She would have thought it was heartbreak, but she must have a heart for that, and she’d long known she no longer possessed one of those. Neither weddable maiden nor truly wife or widow, the notion that she might someday be a princess now seemed like an ambition from another woman’s life and foolish beyond measure.

FOR SOME TIME there were nightmares of dark and desert and thirst and more nightmares and more thirst. Then came moments of light and brief, godsent satisfaction on his tongue and in his throat. Following these came more thirst and more nightmares, punctuated by the screams of a boy then a woman. In the darkness, he could never find them. The thirst consumed him.

Then the light spread. It became pearly gray, then white.

“Ah, Lucien. Welcome back to the world of the living.”

“Wine,” he said.

His brow was heavy.

The heaviness vanished, and coolness replaced it. It was heaven.

“Wine.”

“Why, I believe he’s said something, Charles!”

“Of course he said something, Anthony. He is conscious. Thus the lucid open eye. Speak up, cousin, or I shan’t be responsible for what I pretend to hear you say.”

“God’s breath, Luc! You gave us a wretched scare for a bit there.”

His mouth was parchment, his tongue five sizes too big.

“Wine.”

“All right, all right. No need to shout, old fellow.”

“Fetch him a glass of wine, Anthony.”

He tried to rise. Pain seized his belly, then spasms. He gasped.

“It will be best if you refrain from movement.” Cam’s voice came beside him. “You’ve a nasty hole in your side and none of us wish it to open up again, least of all Gavin who has had to sew it back together twice because you are too strong to be held down in a raving fever by no fewer than all three of us at once, even as ill as you were, damn you.”

Luc closed his eye and concentrated on not fainting. Agony everywhere. He breathed shallowly, testing his limbs one after another.

A hand hovered above his chin. A hand with a cup. But his head was too heavy to lift.

“Damned wretched business,” Tony muttered. He reached around the back of Luc’s neck, tilting his head forward. “Drink up, old man. Must recover your strength speedily. Don’t want to leave that pretty wife of yours a widow for too long, now do you? A girl like that’ll find the fortune hunters beating down her door in no time.”

Luc sputtered out the wine. “Widow?”

“Now look what you’ve done, Anthony. You have confused him and he hasn’t even been conscious for ten minutes yet.”

“I’m alive.”

“Objecting to the widow part,” Tony said, and stood again. “See here, Luc, old man, it had to be done. Poor girl. Devastated, don’t you know. But it was better that way. Safer for her.”

“Throt—” Pain twisted his bowels. He gasped for air. “Throttle the both of you.”

“I dare you to try.” Cam’s voice was smooth.

Luc relinquished the struggle. From the bone-familiar lull of his body as he lay still and the smooth oak ceiling above he knew he was in the captain’s quarters on the Victory. He was weak and his bedclothes were cold and damp. He’d been in fevers before. Even muddled, he recognized the aftermath.

He closed his eye and let himself sink into the cool bed linens. “Tell me.”

“Wise man.” Cam’s voice came closer. “You have perished, Captain Andrew of the Retribution. Your remains were deposited at sea from the deck of your old naval vessel upon which we are now sailing up and down the Breton coast.”

He waited.

“Why, you might ask, have we staged your premature demise yet labored in secret for lo this sennight to make ourselves liars? Because, you see, we believe you are a marked man. Or, rather, that you were. The assassins, having done the deed, are now presumably off the job. Until you are once again revealed to be alive, you’ve nothing to fear in your weakened state. In short, we wish you to recover fully before placing yourself in the line of danger again.”

Luc’s hands curled into fists. The pain in his gut spiked with each breath of anger.

“Let’s wait to explain the rest, Charles. Old boy’s looking terribly white about the mouth. Father Stewart, do bring—”

“Where. Is. She?”

“At the chateau,” Cam said. “Miles accompanied her there the day after the attack and placed her in Reiner’s care. She is safe there, and until we discover who it is that sought your death no one need know anything of her elevation to the aristocracy, which we believe to be optimal and with which you will no doubt concur. For her part, she seems disinclined to accept the validity of your hasty nuptials, which is for the best until we have gotten to the bottom of this.”

His scar ached. His shoulder ached. Breathing hurt. It all made him atrociously tired.

“Cutpurses,” he mumbled, sleep tugging at him.

“Assassins.” A crinkle of paper unfolding. “Look.”