“While I interpret your caps and the way your skirts whip and swish as you rampage through the house.” They reached the end of the garden, and Sara kept moving Beck away from the house. “I’m glad you’re not avoiding me, Sara. Did I offend last night?”

He wasn’t going to mention her lack of cap. He was instead going to hope that if he had offended, he’d also disappointed a bit too, when he’d chosen to limit his offenses.

“You did… not offend. I’m a widow, not some pampered lady.”

She was taking him in the direction of the trees that formed the hedgerow of the home wood, a dark, tangled mess sporting two decades of deadfall and windfall.

“I’m told widowhood can be lonely.” God knew, being a widower was lonely. “That it can feel like an ongoing wound, an indignity, not just a loss. I’ve wondered why you and Polly use the same last name.”

And yet if she was lonely, like him, she hadn’t remarried.

“Lonely is a good word, an honest word, but I don’t think you mean lonely, exactly.”

“Where are you taking me, Sara?” Because she was leading him down a declivity, such that the house had disappeared from view.

“To the springs.”

“One suspected a property named Three Springs might boast some of same.” He switched his grip on her as they approached the trees, linking his fingers with hers. They circled around the side of a medium-sized pond and traveled a little ways into the woods along the stream feeding the pond.

“Hot springs?” Beck guessed. Steam rose from the water in the deepening twilight, creating a land-of-the-faery quality. He took a whiff of the air. “And not sulfurous. Shall we sit a moment?”

Because hot springs were worth noting, but they weren’t the reason she’d dragged him away from home on an increasingly chilly night, nor why she’d dodged his question about her surname.

“We can’t sit for long. It will be dark in just a few minutes.”

Dark enough for kissing? As a very young man, Beck had cadged a tumble or two under the stars, but always with the benefit of a blanket and some congenial weather. Then too, Sara was giving off not a single hint she intended to tumble him.

Which ought to have occasioned more disappointment than it did. If Beck coaxed Sara Hunt into intimacies, he’d be using sex with her as an antidote to lust and something else—grief, maybe. That she would use him wasn’t the comfort it ought to have been.

“There’s a bench.” She tugged him over to a rude plank and arranged her skirts while Beck came down beside her. “You should have Gabriel bring you here. His back gets to bothering him, and he’s too stubborn to find what relief he might.”

Beck took her hand as an experiment in modest comforts. Sara’s weight settled against his side, perhaps her own version of an experiment.

“This is a pretty spot, Sara. Thank you for showing it to me.”

The location was peaceful and attractive, not just to the eye but also the ear, graced as it was with the sound of gently flowing water.

“I resumed the use of my maiden name because I wanted to forget most of what transpired while I was married. I wore my caps because it was appropriate to my station.”

Beck looped an arm around her shoulders—the evening was chilly, and the sun was all but gone. “You wore your caps because they meant you had a kind of privacy, but housekeeping is an occupation, not the sum total of who you are.”

The longer she remained silent, the more Beck pondered the rightness of his words. She was Polly’s sister, somebody’s daughter, Allie’s mother, and much more that he could only guess at but was sure of too, somehow.

The first star winked into view on the western horizon.

“I am not just a housekeeper, Beckman, and Three Springs is not just a list of purchases and tasks. It has beauty and dignity and value—also hot springs some people would find a very valuable addition to their holdings. Most people.”

Another star winked into view against the darkening sky. Beckman rose and offered Sara his hand, which she took. As they strolled back in the direction of the house, he admitted that making love with Sara Hunt—who also had beauty and dignity and value—might be about more than loneliness and lust after all.

“I love that sound,” Beck said as North set a mug of hot tea down before him.

“What sound?” North sat across from him at the kitchen table and shuffled a deck of cards.

“If you’re quiet,” Beck said, “you can hear the murmur of the women’s voices in their apartment. They’re discussing the day, trading opinions, making plans for tomorrow, and so on. It’s the same cadence and rhythm in any language.”

And it put him in mind of the music of the stream by the springs.

“You notice odd things. Prepare to be defeated.”

“I notice you’re still disconcerted by today’s letter,” Beck said. “One hopes you’ll be able to concentrate on the game.”

“With your witty repartee to distract me,” North drawled, “the matter is in question.” He played carefully but made the occasional chancy decision, and they were evenly matched halfway around the cribbage board.

Beck moved his pegs. “I have a question for you.”

“You always put your fives in the other fellow’s crib,” North said, which was fine advice provided a man wanted to lose badly.

“Earlier today, you said Polly spoke six languages and had been to every capital in Europe. Were you speaking literally?”

North appeared to consider his cards. “Sara, as well. I don’t think Allie was much more than an infant when they returned to England to visit. Why?”

“So Sara speaks all those languages? Sara’s been to all those exotic places?”

“She has.” North tossed down a card. “If what Polly says is true, Sara was touring.”

“Touring?” Beck glanced over his cards. “As in being a tourist, seeing the sights?”

“That too.” North waited for Beck to play a card. “Sara has musical talent, as a violinist. She performed all over Europe. The Continentals aren’t as stuffy about women on stage as we are.”

Beck set his cards down as a curious prickling sensation ran from his nape to his fingers. “She was that good, and she’s spending her days washing the lamps and polishing the silver?”

“I believe it was her choice,” North said. “She has a child, if you’ll recall, and that effectively ends a career before the public, even on the Continent. Or it should, in the minds of most.”

“Why isn’t she at least giving lessons? This place… you don’t keep house at a place like this if you have other options.”

“Beckman”—North’s voice took on that patient, long-suffering quality—“we all have other options. You, for example, could be with your brother, flirting and gaming your way across London during the Season, but you’re bathing in cisterns and mucking stalls here at Three Springs.”

“Valid point.” And while he did want to be at Belle Maison, Beck did not want to be racketing around the vice-ridden terrain of Mayfair in spring. “You’re impersonating a land steward, and Polly—who I assume is a talented artist—is impersonating a cook.”

“I cannot vouch for her artistic ability.” North counted up his hand. “Allie says her aunt is as good as anybody she saw in London.”

“Allie’s been to the museums?”

“I gather she would have been four at the time.” North moved his peg. “She remembers what she saw.”

“Sara…” Beck ran a hand through his hair, mentally revising and reassessing things he’d tried to tally up before. “She’s hiding then too.”

“What do you mean?” North appropriated the deck and began to deal the next hand.

“You’re hiding.”

“Earlier today I was entitled to privacy. Now I’m hiding. And what of you, are you hiding?”

Beck smiled a little. “Probably. When I keep company with my brother in Town, there are too many females willing to tolerate my attentions in exchange for an introduction to Nick. It’s safer for me and Nick both if we move independently.”