Chapter Ten

As was their habit at the end of every day, Angelique and Delilah sank gratefully down on the settee in their little room

at the top of the stairs to do a little mending and review the daily affairs of The Grand Palace on the Thames—menus and budgets

and repairs and guests and the like.

They usually left the door of their little sitting room open, but tonight they closed it hurriedly just as the faintest strains

of a moan began to waft through the halls. Since they had discovered the Dawsons' favorite pastime, the Hardys and Durands

had gotten a little flinchy about going up to their rooms. They did not think they would ever reach Mrs. Pariseau levels of

sanguinity about the noises. They didn't want to walk through a moan any more than they wished to be confined in a small room

with Mr. Delacorte after he'd devoured a rich meal.

Angelique pulled a stocking needing darning from their basket, and she gave a little laugh. "Lately Lucien has taken to imitating Mrs. Cuthbert. Yesterday I dropped my stockings as I was tucking a bundle of clothes away into the press and I said to him, ‘Darling, will you get those stockings for me?' And he turned to me and said ‘ Stockings? Now it's stockings ?' with bristling outrage. We both fell about laughing. And yes, I know it's unworthy of us."

Delilah laughed, then sighed. "Now I feel guilty for laughing."

"I do suffer a bit, knowing that she's uncomfortable," she added.

"Mrs. Cuthbert not physically uncomfortable," Angelique said firmly. "We take good care of her, and we personally placed a

copy of the house rules into her hands before we took her money, so the sitting room ought not to have been a surprise. Then

again, there's no easy way to prepare anyone for Mr. Delacorte."

Angelique was always a little stricter and more pragmatic than Delilah, and Delilah knew in this instance she was right. But

they both worried a little when one of their guests was less than enchanted with their experience in the sitting room.

"You call Lucien ‘darling'?" Delilah asked a moment later.

Angelique nodded. Her cheeks colored a little. "We call each other that, and... other things."

"Tristan likes to say ‘sweetheart,'" Delilah confessed on a whisper.

They were both a little rosy now and they exchanged swift smiles.

They knew how lucky they were.

"Have you noticed the Brightwalls don't seem to use endearments?" Angelique said. "They don't really address each other directly at all. But they seem to be enjoying the company of everyone else in the sitting room, and at the dinner table," Delilah said. "Individually... they fit right in."

"But Mrs. Brightwall was so pretty this evening in that pink dress. And Colonel Brightwall was dashing."

"They did look handsome. I wish either one of them also looked happy."

Both had seemed trepidatious for two people about to attend a ball in honor of one of them.

Delilah fished in the basket for one of Mr. Delacorte's waistcoats. His love affair with Helga's cooking meant his waistcoats

frequently shed buttons due to enormous strain. He was always so touchingly grateful to have them restored. It really was

a pleasure to make him happy.

"Well, we know for certain we have at least one happy couple lodged at The Grand Palace on the Thames, currently," Angelique

said somewhat grimly.

"That must be why the Dawsons have been so quiet in the sitting room at night," Delilah reflected. "They're conserving their

energies."

Angelique laughed. "Or they're too exhausted for conversation."

"Isn't it funny... I suspect we were all guilty of thinking the Dawsons were a bit meek and unexceptional, which was unfair.

People will surprise you," Angelique mused.

"They will, indeed. I suppose it's only a surprise that something like this hasn't happened sooner. But we already have a rule about being quietly considerate of other guests. I sincerely hope we won't have to get any more specific than that. We just had new rule cards printed. And I wouldn't know how to begin to spell the sounds Mrs. Dawson makes in order to forbid them."

Angelique laughed.

"And I am not looking forward to having a word with them, if it comes to that," Delilah added.

"Well, I expect something like that probably happened every day, back in its Palace of Rogues incarnation," Angelique pointed

out.

"True enough."

Gordon, their fat striped cat, stretched in his basket and trilled in his sleep. Delilah bent over to give him some strokes.

He pointed his toes like a ballerina.

"Do you feel a little wistful that neither of us were able to spend that kind of time with our husbands when we were first

married?" Angelique ventured.

Delilah considered this. "Perhaps?" she confessed on a hush. "Just a little?"

"Me, too. A little."

In truth, they were both skirting around the fact they missed Lucien and Tristan lately, as their schedules had been at cross-purposes.

And all the sounds emanating from the Dawsons' room only reminded them of what wasn't happening behind the doors of their rooms. It was unnerving to discover how easy it was to begin to feel just a very little less close to the men they loved

when they couldn't love them with their hearts and their bodies, and the palpable reserve between the Brightwalls seemed evidence of what could happen when couples spent too much time apart.

"I'm just hoping desperately Mrs. Cuthbert hasn't heard those noises yet. She already thinks we're libertines."

Angelique laughed. "We were prescient when we put her on the floor below, in the corner."

" Are we libertines?" Delilah wondered, gingerly, only half jesting. "Our conversations do tend to careen a bit. Perhaps we've

created quite a daring salon in the sitting room without realizing it."

Angelique snorted. "We are a delightful, cozy, genteel, exclusive boardinghouse by the docks. I'm comfortable that Mrs. Cuthbert

is a stick-in-the-mud, but she's our stick while she's staying with us, and we will do our best to cherish her while she's here. And I'm fairly confident she,

at least, will never surprise us."

"I wasn't certain what to wear for the unveiling of a statue." Alexandra smoothed the skirts of her butter-gold silk day dress.

Magnus regarded her in silence so eloquent he might as well have been a speech before the House of Lords.

"You look like the very opposite of something made of stone," he said finally. Quietly.

Last night, after he'd stunned her with a compliment, they hadn't exchanged another word during their waltz. Nor had they danced again. The ride back to the boardinghouse had been quiet and civil.

But every polite word they'd exchanged after that seemed to echo with nuance. It was now clear that a new tension was gradually

building alongside the old rancor. Like the warmth of his hand hovering lightly at her waist, like the feel of his fingers

delicately folded around hers, she called up the words again and again for the pleasure of stealing her own breath. For the

mildly delicious torment of wondering what those words might mean to her or to him, if anything.

For another hour they had circulated through guests, so that as many people as possible who wished to say a few words to Magnus

would have an opportunity to do it. He was, as usual, grave, gracious, and succinct, sometimes a bit brisk; alongside him,

Alexandra did her best to sparkle and charm and make the people to whom they were introduced feel, momentarily, like the center

of their universe. Together, they enchanted. At least this was the surprised consensus murmured among guests.

With people he'd long known and liked, Magnus's demeanor eased and his dry wit would flash, and she'd found it as exhilarating

to witness as a shooting star.

Once she'd found herself reflexively, gently touching his elbow when he was a little too brisk with someone, a bit like an orchestra conductor telling the violins to ease back on the volume. He'd softened his tone immediately. It was as though they'd done this a thousand times before.

If another man had said to her But mostly it reminds me of how lucky I am to survive the war long enough to dance with you while you're wearing that pink dress , she would have ascribed it to flirting. But he wasn't a flirt. He'd said it with the same definitive gravity with which

he'd told her she was a kind person at that house party five years ago. In the same tone with which he'd told her he'd fought

that war so that Mr. Perriman could natter on about pigeons, and so that he could stand in the shrubbery, helping to untangle

her ribbon. He was not a frivolous person.

His silence after he'd said that during the waltz merely felt like a punctuation mark.

To her, the words seemed to reverberate in the room even now.

"Then again, you'll doubtless look a bit blurry to Mrs. Scofield," he said somewhat dryly.

Twenty minutes later they stood in his former housekeeper's comfortable rooms in a respectable, working-class neighborhood

a few minutes' carriage ride from the park. Mr. Lawler had sent word to Mrs. Scofield ahead of time that Magnus would be paying

her a visit.

"This is your wife, Magnus?" Mrs. Scofield squinted up at her when they were introduced. "Me eyes are not the same as they

once was but you looks to be a pretty one." She sounded skeptical.

"Oh, you guessed correctly, Mrs. Scofield. I am pretty." Alexandra said it mischievously.

The corner of Magnus's mouth twitched.

Mrs. Scofield's face was mapped with fine wrinkles and her soft, round body spilled over the seat of her rocking chair. Her

pewter-gray hair was scraped up into a tight knot on the top of her capless head. Her brown wool dress and her visible furniture—a

settee, a table and chairs, a rocking chair, in which she currently sat—she was unable to stand for very long now, due to

rheumatism—were serviceable and clean.

"Hmmph. You nivver thought a pretty girl would even look at ye, isn't that so, Magnus? D'yer remember what Molly use ter do

when she saw ye?"

Alexandra wondered immediately who Molly was.

But Magnus appeared not to be listening. He turned abruptly and paced to the window, apparently inspecting its frame. "Are

you comfortable, Mrs. Scofield? Are the flues kept clean? Does the housekeeper visit regularly?"

Perhaps her hearing wasn't what it was, either, because she didn't reply to Magnus's questions. "Must be the money," Mrs.

Scofield decided. "'e's got money now, and the blokes with the money always get the pretty wives, am I right, Mrs. Brightwall,

no matter what them blokes look like?" She cackled.

This was when Alexandra went warily still.

She hadn't known what to expect—one of those cuddly, heart-of-gold, salt-of-the-earth family retainers? Perhaps Mrs. Scofield and Magnus shared a sort of jesting relationship?

"Indeed, it's better when a bloke has money than when he doesn't," Alexandra agreed somberly, somewhat wickedly.

Magnus's back was to her, but she could almost feel sardonic amusement raying from him.

"Oh, but ye oughter 'ave seen 'im in those days, Mrs. Brightwall." Mrs. Scofield shook her head. "Nivver would have guessed

such a homely, skinny baby would grow into such a great lout, all hands and feet. We found 'im girning in a potato sack next

to a delivery of turnips. 'e was lucky we kept 'im and didna throw 'im to the workhouse or for the rats to nibble on. Ha ha

ha! 'e wouldna be standin' 'ere today."

Alexandra tensed. Her heart began to race, as though someone had come at her with fists.

"All of England is lucky you brought him in," Alexandra managed evenly, carefully. "Which means you are lucky you brought

him in."

"Oh, I suppose, certainly." Mrs. Scofield was airily dismissive. "We didna feel that way at the time, ye see. Such a burden

'e was at first! Ye'd nivver think 'e'd marry anyone. What was the name of the lady's maid who would cross herself when she

saw ye in the 'all, Magnus? You would have thought she was a princess , way 'e looked at her. She was no better than she should be, that girl. And did she laugh at him! Said 'e looked like a—what was that word, Magnus? Fancy word."

"Satyr," Magnus said absently, as he peered up the flue.

The word squeezed Alexandra's breath right out of her.

"That was it! Too fancy by far, for him, that word. We called 'im Beast even then. Molly would cross 'erself and give a shiver

like she was afeared of him and we'd all have ourselves a little laugh. And didn't 'e leave 'er a flower one day on her bureau?

She thought it was from the footman she was sweet on and she tossed it right away, angry like, when she found out it was Magnus.

' ow we laughed at the boy."

Alexandra decided quite calmly then that she hated Mrs. Scofield.

She could feel the heat of antipathy wash over her skin. It filled her lungs, so that every breath she drew scorched her.

"But 'e made 'imself right useful every day, didn't 'e, though. Still does. Always watching to see what needed to be done.

So needful and eager to help. And so we kept 'im, like. 'e could do everything from sew to lifting great kettles and mucking

out stables and emptying slops. Did ye ever believe ye'd get yerself a pretty wife, now, when you was emptying slops?"

Magnus said, "Yes."

He moved away to the window.

This apparently gave Mrs. Scofield pause.

As if she'd never dreamed that the quiet, awkward, orphan child had in fact been seething with ambition.

"Mr. Coopersmith taught him to shoot and 'e won that contest and 'e nivver looked back. Was I surprised! We nivver did think 'e'd amount to much."

Alexandra stared at Magnus. Her heart still slammed in her chest sickeningly.

But he was looking at Mrs. Scofield.

"Everything in your flat looks to be in excellent order," Magnus said mildly. "I'm glad to see you're still comfortable. We

ought to leave now, Alexandra, or we'll be late for the ceremony. They're unveiling a statue in my honor today, Mrs. Scofield."

He said this conversationally. As if this was something that could happen to anybody. As if in his lifetime he'd endured everything

there was to endure, and nothing Mrs. Scofield could say or do to him now would stir him to anything other than ironic amusement.

"A statue! That ought to scare all the pigeons right out of the park! Ha ha!" Mrs. Scofield slapped her knee. "Goodbye, then,

Magnus, and thank you. Goodbye, Mrs. Brightwall."

Alexandra deferentially knelt next to Mrs. Scofield and gently reached for her hand. She clasped it gently and gazed at her

intently.

The woman gawked at her in bald astonishment.

Magnus went still.

"It's been an honor to meet the person who kept him alive even though he was allegedly not a pretty baby, Mrs. Scofield."

"Thank you," Mrs. Scofield said warily.

"And Mrs. Scofield?" Alexandra continued gently. "Do not ever speak that way of him or to him again."

Alexandra's voice was so light, respectful, and kind that it was apparently a moment before her words registered on Mrs. Scofield.

But then again, one scarcely feels the wasp land before it stings.

She knew when they registered because Mrs. Scofield jerked her hand back a little with surprise.

Alexandra refused to relinquish it. She gripped it just a little harder.

Mrs. Scofield swiveled her head toward Magnus, then back to Alexandra. Dumbfounded and alarmed.

Magnus seemed to have found something interesting to gaze at through the window.

"Magnus doesn't owe you a thing," Alexandra said calmly. "While I am grateful indeed that you and the rest of the staff kept

him alive, it is only what decent humans would do, when presented with a helpless, hungry baby fussing in a sack. Henceforth—"

"‘ Henceforth '?"—Mrs. Scofield quoted, startled.

"—if you are ever fortunate enough to speak to him again, you will address him with the respect and deference appropriate to the differences between his rank and stature and yours, or you will not speak to him at all. You will not use his Christian name. You will use his title. You will thank him any time he deigns to grace you with his presence. You will not mention mucking or slops to him again. You will rise from your chair and curtsy when you see him. Do you understand me?"

Her voice remained polite.

Mrs. Scofield gaped at her.

"Magnus?" Mrs. Scofield was querulous and indignant.

Magnus had turned his head toward the door now, and was idly tapping the brim of his hat against his palm, as if his thoughts

were entirely elsewhere. His lips seemed to be pursed in a silent whistle.

He said not a word.

"Do you understand me, Mrs. Scofield?"

Alexandra didn't raise her voice. But she somehow managed to imbue all of her words with the threatening tension of a drawn

bowstring.

Mrs. Scofield's head finally bobbed rapidly in agreement.

Alexandra released her hand.

"We'll bid you good day, then."

In the carriage Alexandra pressed herself against the far corner, as if she wished she could curl up in a burrow. She was

pale with anger. Positively suffering with it.

Fury always took a little time to ebb. Magnus knew, because he had a temper, too. His was icy. Downright biblical, when truly

aroused.

Hers fascinated him.

Hers continued to be a revelation.

In more ways than one.

"Alexandra?" he finally said gently.

She merely shook her head. As if she couldn't yet speak.

Finally she said, "I overstepped. I was awful. I apologize."

"You didn't overstep. You weren't."

"Oh, I think I did." She sighed. "I suppose," she said slowly, "that mean people upset me."

"You don't say."

She made a sound that was as much a sigh as it was a laugh. "I'm sorry if you consider her a beloved family member. But she's

a mean person, Magnus."

"She's not a beloved family member. I haven't any family members. And I know she's not a nice person. She has had a hard life. And she's elderly."

"You've had a harder life and you're not a mean person."

His slow smile evolved into a short laugh. "That's certainly a point of view. I could name a few dozen subalterns who would

definitely beg to differ."

Her smile was wan. "Mean for the pleasure of it. The kind of mean that someone inflicts upon someone else because it makes

them feel bigger. She knew the things she said were hurtful—how could she not?—and she said them anyway. That's the kind of

mean she is. I found it... I found it intolerable."

Her voice was thick.

Neither one of them took up the reason she might find it intolerable.

Or that her reaction might be a trifle outsized.

But Magnus could not ignore what felt something like a glow in the center of his chest.

She refused to look at him yet.

"I would have intervened if I'd objected to the direction of your conversation," he assured quietly, after a moment.

She exhaled. "All right."

They rolled along in silence for a time.

He cleared his throat. "I'm grateful that Mrs. Scofield took me in from the potato sack. I get enormous satisfaction from

knowing that I have the means to look after her. I would take no pleasure in knowing she was suffering any sort of penury

in her retirement. And I did it because I liked knowing that I had an anchor in the world, after a fashion—a place I could

point to and say, ‘I started there.' Having someone to look after is sort of an anchor, too. And for what it's worth, my sense

of duty is, I'm afraid, rather cast-iron."

She turned to study him.

Her eyes were somber, soft, and a little too searching. And as lovely as they were, he found he needed to turn away.

She was dutiful, too.

"I see how far I've come when I visit her," he said shortly. "And I like the reminder."

"So that's why you learned to shoot. I should say she was a marvelous incentive to improve your aim to get out of there."

He gave a short, not entirely amused laugh at her astuteness.

"She mentioned that you won a competition?" she prompted.

He nodded. "The master of the house, The Honorable John Coopersmith, began taking me out with him to the country on grouse

hunts to carry things for him. I think he viewed me as a sort of useful pack animal. But he discovered I wasn't a dolt. Taught

me to shoot both pistols and muskets. And..." He smiled slightly. "I became very good at it. And then he taught me to read,

because it amused him and he thought I would be useful to him that way, too. I was about twelve years old, then. Once I was

able to read and write I assisted him with some of his correspondence. I had a sleeping mat in the scullery and I was fed,

but I learned to forage, too, and I did odd jobs in exchange for more food. I owe Coopersmith a good deal. He died during

my second year in the army."

"I wish he could have lived to see the city erect a statue of you on a horse."

"So do I."

She was quiet a moment.

"They could have at least given you a bed."

He smiled slightly. "I was a superfluous household expense. A big, hungry one."

Alexandra shook her head again, roughly, shaking off this rationale. But she knew that was the lot of many servants, especially

children. And that's what he'd been.

A decade ago, she might have been outraged if anyone had suggested she would ever marry a former servant.

Her fingers curled into involuntary fists when she thought of Molly the servant girl's cruelty. "Satyr" wasn't at all the right word for him. But comparing him to a demigod was, surprisingly, not outlandish at all. Mrs. Scofield had no idea, no idea at all, what she'd helped wrought. Perhaps she did bear some responsibility for the extraordinary person he became.

"How did the shooting contest come about?"

"Every year a local squire—not Coopersmith—who had more money than sense would hold a shooting competition. Men would come

from miles around to participate. Hundreds of them. I didn't have my own gun, so it took all of my nerve to ask whether I

could borrow Coopersmith's musket. He loaned me the shot, too." He paused. "And I won." He smiled faintly. "And I don't mind

telling you, Alexandra, that sometimes I wonder if there wasn't more satisfaction in that win than in beating the French."

She smiled softly at that.

"That was the day I vowed that never again would a rich, indolent man compel me to perform tricks for money. And from that

moment I determined I would be wealthier by far than he was. And I am. I bought an ensign's commission with my prize winnings."

She knew that the price of a military commission was entirely out of reach for the average servant, let alone one who slept

in the scullery.

"I have always done my best to recommend men for promotions through the ranks based on talent and performance, because I know how much men who come from circumstances like my own have to prove, and how hard they're willing to work. I think some of my best strategic choices had to do with promoting some men and demoting others for this reason."

She didn't ask him why he'd taken her to meet Mrs. Scofield. She wasn't entirely certain. But she thought perhaps she knew.

Because he wasn't a man who did things on a whim.

Perhaps it was as simple as this: he wanted that harridan to see that he had indeed gotten himself a pretty wife. Even if

that wife had promptly been faithless.

Even if he was sending that wife away.

But it also afforded Alexandra a glimpse into the crucible in which Brightwall the Beast was forged. Those circumstances—the

labor, the humiliation, the resilience required to survive—had taught him control, endurance, determination. All had begun

when Mrs. Scofield brought him into the house.

Some men might be ashamed for anyone to know they'd begun life as an orphan who had emptied chamber pots and slept on the

scullery floor.

He probably knew it only made him seem more extraordinary.

His safety and survival had depended on observing people, on making himself useful, on learning everything he possibly could, on listen ing. And those were the skills that had helped him soar through the army ranks. That was how the boy who'd slept in the scullery had found a way to maneuver to checkmate.

This was how he'd become a military legend.

And this was how he'd strategized his way into getting himself a pretty wife.

She recalled that scrap of ribbon in a box.

And then she thought of a shy little boy leaving a flower on the bureau of a cruel girl.

She closed her eyes briefly as a stab of grief crushed the breath from her.

A great tarp had been whipped from the statue, which was spectacular: immense, gleaming, and graceful. Both Colonel Brightwall's

hair and the horse's mane and tail were, for infinity, windblown. His carved visage was stern enough to put the fear of God

into any pigeons who might take a notion to dribble shite upon it.

Magnus stood on the dais before the crowd.

Flanking him were the Lord Mayor of London, Mr. Thorp, and Alexandra, who was smiling proudly and fondly. It was thrilling

and humbling to realize that all those faces down below had come to see her husband immortalized in marble.

Magnus's voice boomed over the crowd. "Thank you for joining me on this auspicious occasion, ladies and gentlemen. I cannot begin to express how grateful I am to have given London an excuse to erect a statue of a man on a horse, since we have a dearth of them," Magnus began.

This was greeted by a roar of laughter, cheers, and applause.

"In truth, this one flatters both me and the horse. It's an exquisite work of art, rather unlike its inspiration." A scattering of laughter here, too. "I am proud

to have been found worthy of the skills of Signor Almondo, whose artistic gifts grace our parks and buildings. To know I have

been of any service to a country and people I love..."

His voice graveled. Alexandra sucked in a breath.

"...well, the true honor is all mine. I thank His Majesty the king, Lord Mayor Thorp, my beautiful wife, and all of you

for sharing this moment with me, for this extraordinary tribute, and for allowing me to serve you and Britain. God save the

king."

"GOD SAVE THE KING!" the crowd echoed.

Magnus bowed to a cacophony of cheers and applause. A sea of hats waved.

Alexandra swallowed the lump in her throat.

"Mrs. Brightwall, if I may have a word?"

As Magnus shook the hands of various dignitaries and well-wishers, Alexandra turned to find before her a wiry man whose bright

little eyes were about level with hers. His features were button-neat.

"My name is Mr. Gelhorn, and I'm a writer for The Times. How do you do, soon-to-be Lady Montcroix?" He swept his hat from his head and bowed. "I hope you will forgive the presumption, but London readers are hungry for more information about you."

Well, then. The man was presumptuous, but this was the opportunity she and Magnus had been waiting for. She'd best make the most of it.

"How do you do, Mr. Gelhorn? It seems you've heard something about Colonel Brightwall's elevation to the peerage."

"Indeed, it is my business to remain apprised of momentous political developments, and my sources inform me that a warrant

has been delivered to the lord chancellor's office ordering the preparation of Letters Patent. It seems as good as done."

Her breath hitched. She wondered if Magnus knew.

"I wondered if you might be willing to share a statement with us on this auspicious occasion. Are you proud of your husband?"

She beamed. "I couldn't be more proud of him. Who wouldn't be? Don't you think he's magnificent? How intriguing it is that

you seem to already know he's to be styled the Earl of Montcroix. The Magnificent Montcroix. That's what I'll call him from

now on," she said mistily.

Mr. Gelhorn's eyes lit.

The newspapers and gossip sheets did adore their alliteration. She'd just given a gift to them.

"This might be a delicate subject, Lady Montcroix—shall I call you Lady Montcroix now, or do you consider it premature?"

"If you choose to do it, I shan't object," she allowed sweetly.

"—but I wondered if you'd like to comment on your recent incarceration in Newgate."

His eyes gleamed. He clearly thought he'd effected an ambush out of earshot of her big husband.

She didn't blink. "Oh, I saw that article. How silly, don't you think, that anyone would write such a thing?" She sounded puzzled. "You seem like such a nice person. I hope you didn't write that article, sir."

After a moment, Mr. Gelhorn's cheeks stained pink. Which answered the question.

"I did see the illustration, too. I can't imagine what the talented Mr. Rowlandson was thinking. But doesn't he have a gift

for satire and for capturing the tenor of our times? It's always healthy to laugh at ourselves a little. I thought it was

rather amusing, but I was also a little puzzled. Do I look like the sort of person who would ever spend a moment in prison?

Or do combat with English soldiers, especially considering my husband is one of the most greatest soldiers of all?"

She gazed shamelessly and limpidly into his eyes.

"Dear God , no," he replied faintly. Dazzled.

"Silly, then, wasn't it?" She laughed merrily.

"Silly," he repeated dazedly.

"And I imagine you've such a challenging job and it's so difficult to get facts correct all of the time, but my goodness, one would think a man of my husband's caliber should be allowed a moment's peace after all he's given to our country. Perhaps you'd consider writing an article lauding him? As a favor to me? It would mean so much and he deserves all of that and more." She said it softly, almost wistfully.

Mr. Gelhorn was visibly shrinking with remorse.

The shadow that fell across the two of them signaled the arrival of her husband at her side.

"Colonel Brightwall, ah, Lord Montcroix. Congratulations, sir." Mr. Gelhorn bowed. "I understand the Letters Patent have been

prepared. I wonder if you might share with the readers of The Times your thoughts on that, and your return to England."

If Magnus was surprised to hear this, not a twitch betrayed it.

He fixed the man with his patented stern gaze long enough for Mr. Gelhorn to shift his feet guiltily. The writer knew ambushing

Brightwall's wife hadn't precisely been cricket, and Magnus wanted him to know that he knew. "I am more honored than I can

adequately express to be styled the Earl of Montcroix, and tremendously happy indeed to be back in my beloved England, for

many reasons." He gazed down at Alexandra meaningfully. "I fear we must now take our leave of you. Shall we?"

From his vantage point of superior height, Magnus could see the pages of the little journal Gelhorn carried with him. The

man had written:

"...Newgate stay was nonsense."

"...wife blushed."